Application Of The Lexical Approach To The Teaching Of English Writing In Grade Seven

As an important productive skill in language acquisition, writing can reflect the proficiency of language learners. In China, many English learners have started to learn English since Grade One in the primary school. However, most of them can’t express themselves in English writing accurately even though they have graduated from the university. What’s worse is that lots of them feel it too hard to write in English and have given up writing at the beginning. Thus, how to improve English learners’ writing performance and arouse their interest in English writing is a big problem faced by teachers and learners.The present study, taking Michael Lewis’s Lexical Approach as its theoretical basis, attempts to test whether the Lexical Approach can effectively improve students’writing performance and increase their interest in English writing by implementing the Lexical Approach in the teaching of English writing in Grade Seven. The research was conducted by means of empirical study which lasted one term. The subjects were the students from Dasi middle School, Xiqing District, Tianjin, with two contrast classes in Grade Seven in the year2011. Data for the study was collected from80students. All the students in both the experimental class and the control class took the same twice tests and questionnaires before and after the experiment. With the aid of SPSS16.0on data processing, statistical analyses of questionnaires and twice tests taken by the experimental class and the control class were made. The findings from the experiment support the hypothesis that the application of the Lexical Approach can help students improve their writing scores with more chunks used in their compositions and at the same time their interest in English writing can be aroused.