A Focus On The Use Of Lexical Chunks In Discourse

That language has been viewed as a highly systematic and rule-governed behavior has dominated linguistic theory over the last several decades of years. In fact, following Chomsky's critique of Skinner's verbal behavior (Chomsky 1964) and his rejection of behaviorist accounts of language use, subsequent research in (second) language acquisition has concentrated on demonstrating the involvement of creative cognitive processes in language learning and the systematic nature of learner language. It is obvious that the notion that learner language, just like full adult language, is based on a system of generative rules still motivates the majority of the studies in second language acquisition.At the same time, the unexpected levels of lexical chunks have been observed by many researchers for a long history. They apply different terminologies such as chunks, formulas, formulaic utterances, frame structures, idioms, lexicalized sentence stems, memorized sentences, patterns, prefabricated chunks, prefabricated or ready-made language, routines, speech formulas, and unanalyzed language or wholes, etc. However, according to Weinert (1995), while the labels vary, it seems that researchers have very much the same phenomenon in mind.Most debates about these lexical chunks have been focused on the role of memorized chunks of sentences (we will use the term lexical chunks in the dissertation) in second language acquisition. Mainly because of a methodological problem in defining and identifying lexical chunks and in distinguishing lexical chunks and their role from creative language, previous studies of lexical chunks have not provided clear and convincing evidence to support the assumption that lexical chunks can be directly analyzed into creative rules or creative language. All these things mentioned above have hindered the application of lexical chunks in language teaching, including teaching spoken discourse and written discourse.The purpose of the present paper is to explore the use of lexical chunks, which are learned as an ensemble in writing discourse in Chinese English-learning environment. In order to determine the relationship between lexical chunks and writing discourse, the author borrowed the classification of lexical chunks into four groups in terms of their structural criteria, which is suggested by Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992), collected the data from the subjects'compositions and compared the use of lexical chunks in those compositions written by three remarkably different groups of college students by using SPSS.The results show that lexical chunks and writing discourse are closely related, and that the three groups of subjects embody great differences in applying lexical chunks in writing. These findings suggest that lexical chunks play a major role in the study ofsecond language acquisition. Researches of the use of lexical chunks are illustrated to indicate that lexical chunks are applicable and important in improving the writing discourse in Chinese English-learning environment. This study, which has some pedagogical implications, also raises issues for future studies.This dissertation falls into six chapters. In chapter one, by introducing the definition, identification and function of lexical chunks in both old and new studies, we mainly come to a revised and working definition of lexical chunks. General researches on lexical chunks will be mentioned in chapter two. Chapter three examines some theories and models in cognitive science on lexical chunks. Chapter four focuses on examining the relationship between lexical chunks and writing discourse. In chapter five, a practical research is made to illustrate the use of lexical chunks in writing discourse in Chinese English-learning environment. Chapter six is the conclusive part. In this chapter, we arrive at some conclusions based on the data analysis and point out some pedagogical implications and future research as well.