Application Of Lexical Chunks Theory To Teaching English Business Letter Writing In Vocational College

In recent years, linguists and foreign language teachers are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of lexical chunks in language learning and teaching. Many linguists have made a lot of studies on the lexical chunks theory. Lexical chunks theory supports the development of syntactic rules, helps learners to achieve idiomaticity and appropriateness of expressions. The most important principle of lexical approach is "language consists of grammaticalized lexis---not lexicalized grammar."The present studies on lexical chunks still mostly rest on the theoretical discussion. In China, though there are a few empirical studies in Lexical Approach, they are conducted with English majors. In this thesis, an empirical study is conducted aiming at investigating whether the learning of lexical chunks are learnable and teachable in vocational college. It is also hoped that the chunk-awareness raising activities and productivity training methods in teaching lexical chunks in the study can be helpful in teaching business English letter.The study in the thesis involves60sophomores coming from two natural classes in Liaoning University of International Business and Economics being taught by the author. The two classes are designed as one Experiment Group and one Control Group. In the study, which spans one semester, the Control Group is taught with the traditional teaching method. Meanwhile, Lexical Approach is applied to the Experiment Group. In quantitative analysis, the Independent Samples Test of the compositions written by all the students of both Experiment Group and Control Group and of the lexical chunks used in their compositions suggests that Lexical Approach improves the writing proficiency of the students of EG effectively. Person correlation coefficient shows further that lexical chunks have positive correlation with students’ compositions scores. Findings of the study indicate that the chunk-awareness raising activities and productivity training methods used in the implementation of Lexical Approach are feasible and effective. The use of lexical chunks contributes to fluency and accuracy in students’ business English letter writing.