A Study Of Lexical Repetition In ESL Writings By Chinese College Students

Lexical repetition, an important aspect of the use of vocabulary, plays a significant role in writing. The present study aims to prove the significance of lexical repetition as an expressing device in ESL writings by Chinese college students, and attempts to explore the factors that are supposed to affect its employment in writing.This study focuses on two questions: 1) what are the differences, if any, of lexical repetition devices employed by students of different English levels in their writings? 2) what are the factors affecting their use of lexical repetition in their writings? The study combines both quantitative and qualitative analyses. The subjects in this study consist of two groups of students: a high-English-level group comprised by 30 junior English majors in Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a low-English-level group comprised by 30 freshmen of non-English majors coming from Jincheng College of NUAA and Auto Management Academy of PLA. All the subjects were asked to complete an English composition as long as possible on the same topic within the same time. After that, every subject was required to fill in a questionnaire. A total of 60 compositions as well as 60 questionnaires were collected for the study, and twelve subjects were interviewed.By analyzing their writing performances, this study finds that students of low English level frequently use simple repetition and complex repetition with inflection in their writings, but students of high English level use a wide variety of the lexical repetition devices such as complex repetition with derivation, synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy. Through investigation with questionnaire and interviews, it turns out that such differences are not only due to their vocabulary size and English proficiency, but also due to the combined factors including their attitudes towards language form and attention to expressing effect in writing, vocabulary learning strategies, strategies of vocabulary use in writing, and dependence on thinking in mother tongue. Different teaching methods and styles are also considered as one factor. These findings prove that lexical repetition plays a significant role in writing, and provide helpful inspirations for both language learners and teachers.