The Application Of Lexical-chunk Strategy To English Writing In Senior High School

In recent years, English is becoming more and more important as an instrument of international communication. Writing plays an important role in English learning. Francis Bacon, an British philosopher in the 17th century, said:"Writing makes an exact man." English writing is an important skill in language acquisition, and the level of writing is an important index for English ability of English learners. However, English writing is still very difficult for most Chinese learners who have learned English for six or seven years. Although they have memorized a lot of words and phrases, the words and sentences in their compositions usually don't conform to authentic English expression. Therefore, how to improve English writing level of senior high school students is a big problem for English teachers in middle school.Recently, many linguists and language teaching experts are paying more attention to lexical chunks in language teaching and learning. Work in corpus analysis and computational linguistics has revealed a widespread occurrence of lexical chunks in English language use. Lexical chunks are frequently-occurred, fixed or semi-fixed multi-words or sentences which are beyond users'current linguistic ability and are required as wholes in the process of language acquisition. With lexical chunks as the core based on cognitive psychology, Michael Lewis put forward Lexical Approach in 1993, which combines communicative approach and structural approach. It involves a completely different concept of foreign language teaching and learning, and attaches great significance to "chunk" but not vocabulary and grammar.English writing is one of the most important skills in foreign language learning, however the present situation of English writing for Chinese senior high school students is far from satisfactory. Although many linguists and language teaching experts have paid more attention to lexical chunks, the studies of lexical chunk mainly remain on the level of theoretical discussion, leaving many practical problems especially for students in senior high school unexplored.On the basis of Michael Lewis'new theory—Lexical Approach, the author applied lexical-chunk strategy in English class in order to find out whether the application of lexical-chunk strategy can effectively improve English learners' writing ability in senior high school and develop their positive attitude towards English learning. In order to verify its feasibility, the author does this experiment in her two English classes and it lasts for about three months, from September 2010 to November 2010. The author applies lexical-chunk strategy to English writing in the experimental group. In the process of English teaching, the author adopts various methods to strengthen students'awareness of lexical chunks and ability to the use of lexical chunks. At last, the author collects the twice scores of compositions of experimental group and controlled group as experimental statistics. Through the statistical analysis, the results show that, compared with controlled group, the compositions of experimental group includes more lexical chunks, are more fluent and conforms to authentic English expression. For experimental group, the scores of compositions have been greatly improved and their writing abilities have been also strengthened than before the experiment.