A Study Of The Use Of Lexical Chunks In Timed And Untimed Writing By English Majors

Since the new century, researches on lexical chunks have been centered in China.From the theory research to experience research, scholars gradually tend to pay moreattention to student-centered study, with a special emphasis on the relationshipbetween lexical chunk acquisition and student’s ability of input and output, and onthe internal and external factors influencing student’s language competence (DuanShiping,2008). This thesis mainly discusses the influence of lexical chunks on theEnglish majors’ writing result, by considering the variable of time to investigatestudent’s lexical chunk acquisition ability. It aims to discuss how to guide thestudents to acquire lexical chunks by combining the advantages of in-class andout-of-class teaching and learning, so as to promote their English writing proficiency.In this study the research questions are:1) Are there any differences in theoverall comparison between timed writing and untimed writing by English majors?2)What are the features of the use of lexical chunks by English majors in timed writingand untimed writing respectively?3) Are there any differences in the use of lexicalchunks between timed and untimed writing by English majors with high writingscores? Why? What about the students with low writing scores?4) Do the Englishmajors have the habit and awareness of using lexical chunks?The researcher collects compositions and questionnaires from two classes ofEnglish majors in Grade two. After collecting the data of writing scores and numberof lexical chunks, the researcher uses SPSS17.0to analyze the data. Results showthat the average number of words of timed writing is much more than that ofuntimed writing. Many students’ untimed writing is even less than200words.Meanwhile, the average number of sentence and sentence length in timed writingare more and longer than that in untimed writing, which shows that students hold aninactive attitude towards extracurricular writing. But students who take the untimed writing pay more attention to expressions. Although the total words of compositionin untimed writing are less than that in timed writing, the number of lexical chunks,number of words of lexical chunks and frequency of using lexical chunks inuntimed writing are all more than those in timed writing. Correlation analyses showthat the use of lexical chunks has positive influence on writing scores in untimedwriting, but no that influence in timed writing. In timed writing students focus onthe structure, ideas and the length of the composition.Through the analyses of questionnaires and students’ writing samples, theresearcher finds that the students have the idea that lexical chunks do help thempromote their English writing, but actually they have the weak awareness of usinglexical chunks while writing. Subjectively, students have the notion of learninglexical chunks, but in practice, they do not try enough effort to input lexical chunks,not to speak of their outputting lexical chunks. Students use auxiliary tools duringtheir study, but they are just satisfied with using some common dictionaries, that’s farfrom enough as for the English majors. Students know clearly about the advantagesand disadvantages of in-class writing and out-of-class writing, and the compositionanalysis also shows that out-of-class writing helps them acquire lexical chunks.Above all, untimed writing and timed writing have demonstrated the students’awareness and competence of using lexical chunks, so the researcher concludes thethesis with some pedagogical implications, such as how to arouse students’awareness of lexical chunks, and what methods can be employed to teach studentslexical chunks, with a special attention being paid to the practice of outputting lexicalchunks, and how to take the advantage of extracurricular writing to help the studentsacquire lexical chunks by making full use of various English dictionaries. In doing so,the efficient input and output of lexical chunks can help improve students’ Englishwriting proficiency.