An Application Of Lexical Approach To Senior English Writing

Recently, SLA researchers focus more and more on the lexical chunks. By definition, a lexical chunk is a synthesis, which combines "form" and "function". It is a ubiquitous phenomenon which deserves more attention in the process of second language acquisition. With the development of English corpus linguistics in recent years, many researchers have found that the communication in English is not completed only through words, phrases or sentences. Most natural utterances are completed by the semi-fixed "chunks" existing between words and fixed phrases(杨玉晨1999). Lexical chunks are the ready-made memorized combinations in the language. Once they are acquired and stored in the human brain, they are easily retrievable and accessible. Besides, they are context-bound and occur quite frequently, which makes them highly memorable for students.In the history of language teaching approach development, the structural approach and the communicative approach played a very important role. The structural approach emphasized appropriate grammar, while the communicative approach put its emphasis on usage in the context. The teaching approach centered on grammar (syntax) implies that language is a dichotomy of grammar/lexicon, that is, the basic frame is grammar, and the lexicon is the filler. The disadvantage of this approach is the lack of "appropriateness", because after learners have accumulated a lot of knowledge on grammar, words and phrases, they still may not use proper utterances in certain situation appropriately. The communicative approach emphasizes the communicative function and it is lack of the knowledge of grammar related to making sentences. With lexical chunks as the core and based on cognitive psychology, the lexical approach (Lewis 1993) is a kind of compromise between structural approach and communicative approach. It involves a completely different concept of foreign language teaching and learning, attaches great significance to "chunk" but not vocabulary, language sense but not grammar.Writing is the most difficult one of the four skills in foreign language acquisition, but the present situation of Chinese senior middle school students' writing is far from satisfactory. In this paper, the lexical approach is introduced as a new way to improve senior English writing. On the basis of a brief introduction to its definition and characteristics, an empirical study is made of the students' compositions aiming at investigating whether the learning of lexical chunks improves senior middle school students' English writing.The experiment involved 100 students coming from two naturally occurring classes in No.16 High School of WISCO, 50 students in each class. The two classes were designated randomly as one experimental group (EG) and one control group(CG). In this experiment, the control group was taught in the traditional teaching method through the whole term. In the mean time, lexical approach was applied to the experimental group. At the end of the term, the writing scores in the unified final-examination of Wuhan are compared. The results showed that all the students made progress, while the students from EG made more progress than the students from CG.It has been proved that the new approach is effective for senior middle school students' English writing. Although the causes for low-grade compositions are various, the application of the lexical approach to senior English writing, as the study demonstrates, is practical as well as operative.