A Study On The Use Of Lexical Chunks In College English Writing And Its Pedagogical Implications

With the development of cognitive research, it has been found that words are not the only unit in language processing, instead, there exist lexical chunks that are ideal units in both interpretation and production. Recently, corpus analysis provides evidence that lexical chunks take a great part in naturally occurring language. That is why some grammatically well-formed but not conventionalized sentences are regarded unnatural by native speakers. Nowadays, the role of lexical chunks in both first and second language acquisition has been widely recognized, and a lexical approach throws light on language teaching and learning from a new perspective. As a result, it has aroused great interest in applied linguistics both at home and abroad.This thesis will study the use of lexical chunks by focusing on one aspect of EFL teaching and learning -- writing, which many learners find very difficult. It further narrows down to a specific form which frequently occurs in CET-4 -- argumentative essays. The author randomly chooses 100 non-English-majors from Zhejiang Normal University to write argumentative essays, and selects 60 out of their 100 essays as data for analysis, 30 from the top and 30 from the bottom. The study uses SPSS software to conduct the quantitative analysis, which is followed by a qualitative analysis of the typical erroneous lexical chunks selected from these sample essays. Through the investigation of the correlation between the number of lexical chunks used and the quality of the essays, and the difference between the high score group and the low score group, the role of lexical chunks in essay writing is examined. Moreover, the general features of the use of lexical chunks in the essays are studied. From the analysis of the general features of the misused lexical chunks, the learning strategies applied by the learners are explored. From the significant correlation between the number of lexical chunks and the scores, and the significant difference between the two groups, it has been found that lexical chunks play an important role in writing. The difference between the 4 categories implies that the 4 types of lexical chunks have not been gained equal recognition by the learners and they are not equally difficult to Chinese learners. The general features displayed in the use of lexical chunks and the occurrences of erroneous lexical chunks provide pedagogical implications for carrying out the lexical approach.