Chunks In Senior English Writing

English writing, examining students'comprehensive abilities in English, is one of the important tasks of English teaching in secondary schools. However, vocabulary has always been the main obstacle of English writing even when learners have realized its critical and dominant position in language learning. Even though students have mastered a large quantity of English vocabulary, they fail to write authentic or native-like English essays.In 1993 Michael Lewis put forward the theory of the Lexical Approach. Lexical chunks are linguistic units, providing an ideal learning way to improve their English. Lexical chunks, with a relatively stable grammatical structure, stability, and the specific pragmatic meaning, is integration of syntax, semantics and context, helping improve language fluency of output and the authentic nature of the choice of words. This paper aims to introduce lexical chunks-based approach to the English teaching of high school students to explore the possibility of raising the level of written expression.The thesis is aimed at attesting the feasibility of lexical chunks in middle-school English teaching. The participants of this research consist of the students in the two natural classes of grade two in Qianhuang Senior High school, Jiangsu Province. Before the experiment, the students in two classes were asked to complete the pre-test paper respectively. The result of it shows these two groups are almost at the same level, so one of the two classes is appointed as the experimental group (EG), and the other as the control group (CG). The experimental group is given the instruction on lexical chunks in class while the control group is given the traditional English teaching. The experiment lasts about 4 months. The final exam is used as the post-test paper. After the experiment, a comparison and an analysis are made between5 the pre-test and post-test paper scores and the numbers and types that students have used in the two exams. In addition, an interview with some students is conducted at the end of the experiment to know what students think of lexical chunks.Experimental results show that the application of lexical chunks makes a difference to students'English writing. The English writing ability of the two groups of students has improved to some degree, but the experimental group students have made greater progress. The application of lexical chunks does help improve the accuracy and fluency of students' English writing and can enhance students writing skills. Students from EG can use lexical chunks smoothly and appropriately after learning them. Besides, students from EG show greater interest in English writing and they are more confident of it. The results, also suggest that lexical approach teaching is effective and feasible in English teaching in senior high schools.