An Application Of Lexical Chunk Approach To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Recently, the importance of lexical chunks is increasingly becoming a subject studied by linguists and SLA researchers which deserves more attention in the process of second language acquisition. With the development of English corpus linguistics in recent years, many scholars have found that the communication in English is not only through words, phrases or sentences. Most natural language are accomplished by fixed or semi-fixed "chunks" existing between words and phrases. Lexical chunks are a string of words which occurred frequently, fixed or semi-fixed multi-words or sentences, which once have been acquired and stored in human brains, can be easily retrieved and used automatically as wholes in the process of language acquisition. It plays a vital role in second language acquisition.In China’s EFL teaching, lexical chunk approach has been successfully applied to vocabulary teaching, which plays a significant role in improving the vocabulary competence of second language learners. Many scholars have already explored the application of lexical chunk approach to other aspects of English teaching, like listening, oral English and reading comprehension. In this thesis, the author tries to explore the application of lexical chunks to English writing teaching. Writing is a complex process, learners should have a high proficiency of language output. Chinese senior high schools students’writing competence is far from expectation. Even though they can memorize a large number of vocabulary, problems still arise in their writing. Their compositions lack language fluency, grammar mistakes of varied degrees exist in the composition, sentences they used are mainly simple sentences. So it is meaningful to apply lexical chunks to English writing teaching. The research questions are as follows:1) Does the application of lexical chunk approach to English writing teaching help students increase the number of chunks in their compositions?2) Does the application of lexical chunk approach help students reduce the number of errors of collocations in their compositions?3) Does the application of lexical chunk approach help students increase the number of chunks and complex sentences in their compositions?In order to write this thesis, the author carried out an experiment which involved60students coming from No.102Senior High School in Dalian,30students in each class. One of the two classes were randomly designated as an experimental group (EG) and the other control group (CG). Pre-test, post-test, questionnaire and six practice compositions were used in the experiment. The experiment lasted one term. In the experiment, the control group was generally taught in the traditional instruction, lexical chunk approach was applied to the experimental group. The author analyzed and contrasted the scores, the number of chunks, errors of collocations and complex sentences in the pre-test and post-test. At the same time, the number of chunks, errors of collocations and complex sentences were analyzed and contrasted in composition tests in EG and CG.The results show that the application of lexical chunks to English writing teaching to some extent does help improve learners’English writing proficiency. The students from EG use lexical chunks more fluently. Meanwhile, they make more lexical chunks and complex sentences and fewer errors of collocations than CG. Scores of EG are higher than CG. The results also suggest that the application of lexical chunks to English writing teaching is effective in senior high school.