A Survey On The Use Of Lexical Chunks In English Writing By Senior Three Students

The study of lexical chunks can be traced back to the1970s. And since the1980s, it hasbeen popular with scholars at home and abroad. Especially with the rapid development of thecorpus linguistics, an increasing number of scholars pay more and more attention to the roleand significance of lexical chunks in language acquisition and application, such as therelations and effect between chunks and listening, speaking, writing and reading. Having thecharacteristics of both vocabulary and grammar and also combining the advantages ofgrammar, semantics and context，lexical chunks that can be stored and retrieved as a wholehave the specific expressing function and exist widely in speaking and writing of people’sdaily communication so that the understanding and mastery of lexical chunks are good for thefluency of speaking and writing and can improve the property and vitality of languageexpressions. Based on the very features, lexical chunks are considered to have opened up anew perspective for the teaching research of foreign language writing.Because of lexical chunks’ important role and position in language acquisition, theresearch on the usage of lexical chunks appears to be apparently vital. Although manyChinese linguists have done a huge amount of research on the relation between lexical chunksand listening, speaking, writing and reading in second language acquisition, the empiricalinvestigations of English lexical chunks in high school are rare. What’s more, the research onthe usage of lexical chunks in high school seniors’ English writing seems to be less. Thisresearch, based on the lexical chunks theory, makes use of qualitative and quantitativemethodolgy and takes496seniors from Zhangzhou NO.3Middle School as the researchobject and then compares and analyses the application of lexical chunks used in40high-graded and40low-graded compositions to investigate the features and reasons of lexicalchunks used in English writing. Based on the results of the research, English teaching andlearning can have access to timely reflection and fine-tuning. What’s more, the research cangive a very meaningful inspiration to the future English writing teaching and learning, thuseffectively improving the pertinence and effectiveness of teaching. The results of the research are the following. The high-graded group students not onlycan write longer compositions but also can make use of a larger number of lexical chunks.The frequency of application of lexical chunks in high-graded compositions is obviouslyhigher than that of low-graded ones. In both high-graded and low-graded compositions, thelargest proportion of lexical chunks is collocation chunks, and the sentence pattern framechunks take the second place, polywords rank the third, while the discourse frame chunks areused least. By means of T-test, the result is released that there are significantly morecollocation chunks, sentence pattern frame chunks and discourse frame chunks in high-gradedcompositions, while the polywords in both groups have no obvious differences. The rate ofcorrect collocation chunks and sentence pattern frame chunks in high-graded compositions ishigher than that of low-graded compositions. The application types, total and averagenumbers of lexical chunks used for expressing personal opinions and discourse cohesiontransition in high-graded compositions are more and larger than those in low-graded ones. Thelexical chunks mastered by low-graded group students are less and chunks also appear to beless, easier, more repetitive and higher error rate. In fact, there are many factors affectingsenior students’ writing, but the role of lexical chunks couldn’t be neglected.