An Empirical Study Of The Lexical Approach To Reducing Chinglish In English Writing

Writing severs as an embodiment of comprehensive ability for language output andthinking mode. According to statistic results of CET (Colleague English Test) Band4and6inrecent years, although English writing proficiency of Chinese colleague students has gainedmuch improvement, they often commit unidiomatic Chinglish errors due to interference ofChinese thinking mode, which greatly reduces the quality of written expressions. Under suchcurrent tendency, emphasis is placed on how to reduce Chinglish and ensure idiomaticity ofcolleague students’ language output in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) writing teaching.This research provides evidence that native speakers can produce fluent and idiomaticlanguage outputs on account of the input of chunks that a vast number of formulaic linguisticunits with integration of grammar and lexis in natural language. Based on the fundamentalprinciple that language is grammaticalized chunks, Michael Lewis (1993) proposed lexicalapproach centered on lexical chunks with integration of meanings, syntactic and pragmaticcharacteristics. Based on the lexical approach, this study aims to investigate how to overcomeChinglish errors occurring in students’ compositions from perspective of English writingteaching. In order to testify whether lexical approach can reduce the occurrence of Chinglish inEnglish writing, this research involved76non-English major freshmen selected randomly fromtwo intact classes. Of all subjects are divided into experiment class and control class.Experiment class will be subjected to lexical approach based on Michael Lewis’. Whiletraditional approach will be employed in control class. During experimental period of fourmonths from September to December in2011, two writing tests were conducted respectivelybefore and after experiment. At the end of experiment, qualitative analysis together withquantitative analysis was conducted with view to investigating the differences of Chinglishnumber and scores by students between pretest and posttest based on the criterion of identifyingChinglish, error analysis and holistic scoring. By comparison, it is concluded that there is nosignificant difference in pretest scores and Chinglish errors number between the two classes.Conversely, experiment class performed much better than control class did in posttest andcommitted less Chinglish errors than control class did, whose writing scores were much higherthan control class’s. In addition, a correlation analysis was performed to investigate therelationship between correct chunks number and writing scores by experiment class in posttestof which result indicates significantly positive correlation between the two variables.Afterwards, one questionnaire was first administrated to investigate students’ English learningbehaviors, writing strategy, teaching approach and learning problems at the end of theexperiment, the results from which testified whether awareness of the experiment class towards chunks had gained much improvement by the application of the Lexical Approach. During thewhole data analysis, statistic results were obtained by means of statistic software SPASS13.0.To sum up, results of experiment indicated that Chinglish at syntactic and lexical level hadoccupied the majority in total errors committed by the two classes. After implementing lexicalapproach into experiment class, the number of Chinglish was dramatically reduced in theircompositions. Under the direction of lexical approach, much improvement had been gained instudents’ collocation competences and writing scores. In contrast, control class made littleimprovement in reducing Chinglish.However, due to limited experimental condition as well as phrases, some limitationsinevitably came into existence and it remained to be analyzed and investigated that how toeffectively reduce Chinglish at syntactic level. Even so, this research will be beneficial toavoidance of Chinglish and enhance colleague students’ writing proficiency as well as theidiomaticity of their language output. As a result, this exploratory experimental study hasachieved the expected results and has the great significance of theory and pedagogy.