A Study On The Application Of Prefabricated Chunks In The Teaching Of College English Writing

Compared with the other three skills in English learning-listening, speaking and reading, writing is considered as the most difficult and demanding. In China, although college students have already accumulated a certain amount of knowledge in English grammar and had a comparatively large vocabulary, they still have difficulty in writing a native-like English composition.In recent years, with the rapid development of corpus linguistics, many scholars have found through lots of studies that there are a large number of prefabricated chunks stored in language learners’ brains. When needed, those chunks can be retrieved directly, relieving the pressure of language processing and contributing to the fluency and accuracy in language output. The teaching of prefabricated chunks has caught considerable attention in English teaching.In response to the writing problems existing in English teaching and learning, this thesis mainly explores the influence of prefabricated chunks on students’ writing grades after applying them to college students’ English writing. This thesis mainly employs three research methods-experimentation, questionnaire and interview. The58non-English major freshmen were chosen as the subjects to participate in a semester’ experiment for the purpose of studying the influence of the application of chunks on college English writing teaching. Before the experiment, the author conducted a detailed questionnaire and interviews on those subjects and the teachers of the same grade in order to have a general idea of the current situation of college English writing teaching and investigate the students’ attitudes and strategies in English writing. Based on the qualitative analysis of the results, the experiment took place. The data obtained from this experiment were analyzed so that the conclusion was drawn that the application of prefabricated chunks contributes to the improvement of college students’ writing proficiency. The scores in posttest of the experimental class students’ are significantly higher than those of controlled class students, which indicates the teaching of prefabricated chunks is more efficient than traditional teaching methods in improving college students’ English writing levels.The thesis hopes to attract the attention of college English teachers and students to the importance of prefabricated chunks in English writing through analysis of prefabricated chunks’ functions and its applications in Chinese college English writing practice so as to make better use of prefabricated chunks in their future English teaching and learning.