A Study On The Use Of Lexical Chunks In Argumentative Timed Writing Of English Junior Students

It is widely acknowledged by many linguists that90%of natural language in human daily communication is made up of lexical chunks in fixed or semi-fixed form instead of separate single words (Altenberg,1998; Nattinger&DeCarrico,1992and so on). Beside, due to its dual function of structure and meaning,"lexical chunk" has been gradually recognized as the perfect language teaching unit since the recent years. It plays an important role in English teaching and learning, for it can help students grasp idiomatic English expressions and facilitate their language output. Therefore, it is of great value to undertake researches on lexical chunks.This paper tries to explore English junior students’use of lexical chunks in English writing. This study attempts to answer the following three research questions:1) What are the general characteristics of the use of lexical chunks in English junior students’argumentative timed writing?2) Are there any differences of the use of lexical chunks between the high-score group and the low-score group? If yes, what are they?3) What is the relationship between the use of lexical chunks and the students’writing scores?The materials used in this study are30pieces of compositions written by30English junior students from English Translation Major in their final examination of Advanced Writing class. In addition, based on different scores of the compositions, the author divides the top10pieces of compositions into the high-score group and the last10into the low-score group. Based on the definition and classification of lexical chunks, the data are analyzed quantitively, focusing on the total number of lexical chunks, the frequency of using lexical chunks, different types of lexical chunks and erroneous lexical chunks respectively. Besides, a semi-structure interview with3students from the high-score group and3from low-score group is involved in this study so as to explore the use of lexical chunks among English junior students in a comprehensive way.Detailed analysis of both quantitative and qualitative research yields the following findings:Firstly, the overall use of lexical chunks among the junior students of English major represents the following characteristics:1) The total number and the frequency of using lexical chunks are not so satisfactory.2) Students use Phrasal Constraint the most, followed by Poly Word and Sentence Builder, with Institutional Expression the fewest.3) Students make fewer mistakes on lexical chunks in general and among the four types of lexical chunks, they make more mistakes on Phrasal Constraint than on the other three types.Secondly, there are some significant differences in the use of lexical chunks between the high-score group and the low-score group. In terms of the total number and frequency of using lexical chunks, the high-score group use much more lexical chunks than the low-score group and the former use lexical chunks more frequently than the latter. With regard to the types of lexical chunks, there are obvious differences in Phrasal Constraint and Sentence Builder between the two groups. But there is no significant difference in the erroneous lexical chunks between the two groups.Thirdly, the use of lexical chunks is highly correlated with students’ writing scores. In terms of the total number and frequency of using lexical chunks, the more lexical chunks the students use, the more frequently lexical chunks appear in students’writing, the higher students’writing scores will be. When it comes to different types of lexical chunks, they are all highly correlated with students’ writing scores, among which Phrasal Constraint and Sentence Builder contribute the most to the students’writing scores. In addition, there is no significant correlation between the erroneous lexical chunks and students’writing scores.In light of the above findings, this study provides some pedagogical implications both for English teachers and students. For teachers, they should take measures to raise students’ awareness of the importance of lexical chunks in English learning, help them form the good habit of accumulating and memorizing lexical chunks in daily English learning and guide them in the use of lexical chunks according to the different use of lexical chunks between the high-score students and the low-score students. For students themselves, they must pay attention to lexical chunks and try to accumulate more lexical chunks and make an extensive and intensive use of them in their English learning.