Experimental Study On The Effect Of Lexical Approach On Non-English Majors’ English Writing Competence

Of the four basic skills of English learning, writing is the most difficult one forstudents to acquire. Though most of them have mastered a large number of Englishwords and grammar rules, there does exist a discrepancy between their input andoutput. Students either feel it a headache to write a composition or make a lot ofmistakes in their writing, for example, their choice of words doesn’t conform to thehabits of English composition. In reaction to this situation, researchers have putforward some approaches to writing teaching, such as product approach, processapproach, length approach and genre approach. However, these approaches do notdirectly tackle lexical problem in English writing.With the development of corpus linguistics, a lot of researchers think that thereexists a multi-word lexical phenomenon which is a form\function composite betweenthe traditional poles of lexicon and syntax. Therefore, the concept of lexical chunkscomes into being and sheds some light on English writing teaching for its uniqueadvantages, for example, once acquired and stored in brain, lexical chunks are easilyretrievable and accessible. Moreover, they can improve the idiomaticity and accuracyof expression in learners’ writing.Recently, linguists and foreign language teachers are becoming increasinglyaware of the importance of lexical chunks in language learning, and there have beenquite a few researches on the lexical approach, but little has been done for empiricalinquiry. This thesis aims to testify, under the theoretical framework of chunkingtheory and memetics theory, the effect of lexical approach on non-English majors’writing competence and answer two research questions:1. Does lexical approachcontribute more to non-English majors’ English writing competence compared withgenre approach?2. Does lexical approach affect non-English majors’ learning strategyof vocabulary?Two classes from hotel management majors of Guangdong AIB Poly-technicCollege are chosen as subjects who are randomly designated as experimental group and control group. The lexical approach conducted under lexical principles is appliedto the experimental group while genre approach to the control group in the one-termexperiment. The instruments used in this experiment are tests and questionnaires.Based on the scores of students’ final examination, Independent and Paired SampleT-tests are conducted to test whether there exists significant difference in their overallEnglish competence and writing competence before and after the experiment.Meanwhile, questionnaires are also conducted before and after the experiment toinvestigate students’ learning strategy of vocabulary. Results show that students sharesimilar comprehensive English competence and writing competence before theexperiment. However, the post-test analysis results show that there exists significantdifference. The experimental group’s writing scores are higher than that of the controlgroup, which indicates that the application of lexical approach can contribute more toEnglish writing competence than genre approach. Besides, the experimental group’learning strategy of vocabulary has improved more obviouslyThe findings of the study indicate that lexical approach contributes more to thewriting competence of non-English majors at tertiary colleges whose productivevocabulary is quite limited compared with genre approach. Besides, the conclusioncan be drawn that lexical approach affects，to some extent，students’ learning strategyof vocabulary. In light of the teaching activities implemented in the present study andthe above findings, some pedagogical implications can be drawn. Firstly, in the courseof applying lexical approach, it is vitally important for teachers to improve students’awareness of chunks from the very beginning. Secondly, in the implementation oflexical approach, the teacher should offer some clues to students as to how tomemorize them and use them, which will in turn improve their overall Englishcompetence and learning strategies. In a word, lexical approach is feasible andeffective in improving students’ writing competence.