An Empirical Study Of Lexical Approach In College English Writing

Writing is considered to be the toughest task among the four language abilitiesand thus can’t be easily improved in students’ language competence in comparisonwith the rest of the three basic skills, namely listening, speaking and reading. Writingsets such a high demand on learner’s ability to have equipped with a considerableamount of vocabulary in advance and more importantly the requirements on theappropriate and accurate use of what acquired into real contexts. According to thequestionnaire conducted in this thesis, one of the obstacles in student’s writing tasklies in the lack of preserved and sufficient so-called lexical chunks.According to the Lexical Approach proposed by Michael Lewis (1993), languageconsists of multi-word units rather than individual word with comparatively fixed formand meaning, among which collocations, fixed and semi-fixed phrases and idioms arethe common forms included in lexical chunks. Based on some previous researches oncorpora analysis of some native languages, striking differences have been discernedbetween native speakers and second language(SL) learners that the most obviousdiscrepancy lied in the number of preserved multi-word lexical chunks while theformer having stored a great deal of ready-made chunks available for instant retrieval,which accounts for the effective use of language among native speakers by virtue ofrelieving the pressure of language processing and thus leading to the improvement oftheir fluency and accuracy in language production. However, SL learners are not in thesame condition with them in this aspect.Based on the following three research questions:1. In the perspective of lexicalchunks, what are the main factors that influence students’ writing ability?2. What arethe effective ways to cultivate students’ awareness on lexical chunks?3. What are theeffects of lexical chunks on students’ performance in English writing? This thesis takesadvantage of both Lexical Approach (LA) and Language Processing Theory to designteaching the curriculum by empirically adopting Lexical Approach into class teachingwith a view to improving students’ writing proficiency through incorporating a seriesof activities in aspects of language input, intake and output. Meanwhile, the authorconducted a large-scale survey about the current situation of students’ knowledge anddevelopment of lexical chunks, which can serve as a complementary guidance for theauthor in teaching design, with much more focus on students’ weak aspects. Bothpractical and free writing were adopted in the writing tasks, with five rating indexes in terms of language fluency, idimaticity, accuracy, completeness and diversity of words.It is supposed to figure out in what ways can lexical chunks improve students’ writingproficiency.This paper consisted of six chapters; the first chapter concisely introduced theresearch origin, significance and the global arrangement of this thesis; the secondchapter provided a theoretical basis for this empirical study which contains some basicconcepts, classifications and advantages of lexical chunks in Foreign LanguageAcquisition and teaching, and then came to current research both from home andabroad; the third chapter presented the methodology of this study and clarified itsresearch method, subject, questions and procedures. Based on the questionnaire,studies on learner’s vocabulary learning and memory strategies, the current situation ofstudents’ knowledge, the development of lexical chunks, the writing habits and theirproblems involved. Statistics and results will be of significant data to guide the authoron how to get students fully engaged in chunks acquisition; the fourth chapter goes tothe essence, which analyzed the data collected from two writing tasks andquestionnaire analysis with the SPSS assistance; the fifth chapter summarized somemain findings in this empirical study, with further confirmation on the importance oflexical chunks on language learning. Besides, some suggestions were proposed forsecond language teaching in the future; Last but not least goes to the conclusion of itsteaching implications together with some insightful guidance for future researchers.