Application Of The Lexical Chunk Approach To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Writing plays an important role in English teaching today. It is not only one ofthe elementary and important skills in English learning，but also an important part ofthe College Entrance Examination. However, English witting in senior high school isnot very optimistic. Most of senior high school students usually face problems of howto write fluent articles as well as conforming to the rules of grammar and Englishthinking logic.Linguists Lewis found that the principle of the Lexical Chunk Approach, that is,“a language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar ’"(Lewis,1993).The lexical chunk refers to some fix or semifix phrases, which blends theadvantage of syntax, semantics and context and has a relatively stable form. Sincelexical chunks can be stored, remembered and retrieved as a whole, it is accord topeople’s cognitive psychology. Thus,“lexical chunks” teaching approach has broughta new breakthrough for high school English writing teaching.Based on Nattinger and DeCarrico "chunk" classification and teaching theory, ateaching experiment is conducted in two parallel classes; in which80students fromGrade Two of a Senior High School in Lincang are participated. Traditional writingteaching is applied in the control class and the Lexical Chunk Approach is applied inthe treated class. A semester of the experiment proves the validity of the "lexicalchunks" writing teaching,Firstly, the present study employed a closed-ended questionnaire to see howmuch they know about the lexical chunks. Then, this thesis adopts pre-test andpost-test to collect data, which are analyzed by SPSS15.0. Furthermore, the thesisadopts quantitative research methods to figure out the lexical chunks in students’composition and count the number of "language chunks" errors, at the same time, thequalitative research method is used to analyze the causes of errors.This research mainly centers on the following questions: First, Can the lexicalchunk approach improve students’ writing proficiency? Second, what are the "lexical chunks" errors committed in the students’ writing; Third, what is the cause of the"language chunks" errors; finally, how to avoid "lexical chunks" errors in the futurewriting?The findings show that the "lexical chunks" error rates in their English writingsin control class are quite different from the treated class. After a semester of "lexicalchunks” writing teaching,"language chunks" errors in treated class are significantlyreduced, while the situation in the treated class is not obvious. The causes of the"lexical chunk” errors are summarized into three ones, mainly, lack of consciousnessof "lexical chunks", negative transfer of mother tongue and irrational attitude to errorsand correcting ways.In order to avoid similar "lexical chunks” errors and improve the students’ Englishwriting, this thesis puts forward some practicable pedagogical implications for thefuture teaching of writing. First, teachers ought to systematically teach English“lexical chunks”; Second, strengthen the teachers’ and students’ discourseconsciousness and to use "lexical chunks” consciousness; Moreover, more inspiringinput should be supplied to avoid the influence of the negative transfer of the mothertongue.At last, it points out the main limitation of the study. Due to the limited samplesand manual statistics, the theoretical level and teaching practical level is limited; thefindings of this study should be tested and verified in large scale in the future.