The Application Of The Lexical Approach To College Englsih Writing

With the development of corpus linguistics, lexical chunks have received more and moreattention. A chunk is a synthesis of form and function which embodies the interaction ofsyntax, semantics and pragmatics. It can be a pre-stored multi-word unit for quick retrievalwithout binding isolate words into grammatical frames during language production. Thelexical approach holds the view that language learning should been grammar-aided, ratherthan grammar-centered. According to this approach, comprehension and output of chunksare two aspects of great importance in the language acquisition.This paper attempted to discuss the application of the lexical approach in college Englishwriting, including the number of chunks the students used in their compositions, the extentto which these chunks helped to improve the students’ writing scores and their attitudestoward the lexical approach. Before the experiment, the students in both groups received apre-test. Three months later, there were a post-test for both groups and a questionnaire aswell as an interview for the experiment group.After the analyses of the statistics in the experiment, the author found that the experimentgroup and the control group had similar writing proficiency in the pre-test. Three monthslater, the students in the experiment group employed more lexical chunks, which increasedtheir writing scores. The result of the questionnaire showed that the students consideredlexical chunks to be of great help to their writing. Therefore, the teacher should cultivateand enhance the students’ consciousness of lexical chunks. Provided with the context oflearning, the students may have a skillful mastery and make full use of lexical chunks.