A Study On The Correlation Between The Use Of Lexical Chunks And The Output Effect In College English Writing

The traditional college English teaching put word meaning, grammar and error correction as the core of teaching content, while phrasal, sentential and textual constructions are somewhat neglected, so language fails to be retrieved and used as a whole. In recent years, many linguists have discovered from the researches on corpus that90%of human natural language is made up of fixed or semi-fixed lexical chunks with function and conventionalized form which exist between the lexis and syntax. As for the college English writing, many researches conducted recently indicate that the application of lexical chunks by stored and retrieved as a whole appropriately can ease the burden of language output processing, improve language production fluency and idiomaticity in written language.On the basis of the previous studies, in the present study, the author randomly collected32copies of samples of range-finders from CET-4and CET-6compositions, and analyzed them by borrowing the categorizations of lexical chunks of Nattinger and DeCarrico which are widely accepted, namely, poly-words, institutionalized expressions, phrasal constraints and sentence builders, and then, analyzed the data by using SPSS13.0. The present study tries to investigate several questions as follows:1. What are the proportion distributions of the four categories of lexical chunks in the compositions of CET-4and CET-6? And which category (es) of lexical chunks is (are) most correlated with the quality of college English writing (as measured by the scores)?2. Is there any difference between CET-4and CET-6compositions of using a same type of lexical chunk?3. In the compositions of CET-4and CET-6, what is the situation of application of lexical chunks between high-score group and low-score group? 4. Is there any relationship between the quality of compositions and the number of using lexical chunks in CET-4and CET-6compositions?The results of this investigation indicate that:firstly, the number of the usage of different categories of lexical chunks is uneven. The total number of using lexical chunks from low to high is institutionalized expression followed by polywords, phrasal constraints and sentence builders. It is thus clear that among these four categories of lexical chunks, the application of phrasal constraints and sentence builders have more influences on the quality of college English writing, and are closer to the scores of college English writing. Secondly, the application of institutionalized expression and polywords chunks is nearly the same, but the employment of phrasal constraints and sentence builder chunks in the compositions of CET-6is more than that in CET-4. Thirdly, more lexical chunks are used in high-score group than in low-score group, only as for the usage of phrasal constraint and sentence builder chunks in CET-4and CET-6compositions, but there are differences among individuals within high-score group and low-score group both in CET-4and CET-6compositions. That is, the differences among individuals within high-score group are more evident than those in low-score group in CET-4compositions, while the differences in CET-6compositions are just the opposite. And last, there is a significant correlation between the scores of the compositions and the number of lexical chunks applied in the compositions. The more lexical chunks employed, the higher score students got.According to the results of the study, several suggestions are made for college English writing teaching: Firstly, in English teaching, the teachers should cultivate the students’awareness of recognizing and using lexical chunks consciously. Secondly, teachers should perform different teaching methods to help students acquire different types of lexical chunks. Last, teachers should encourage students’progress on the application of lexical chunks, in order to enhance the students’interest and enthusiasm in lexical chunks learning.