The Influence Of Prefabricated Chunks On Senior Middle School Students’ English Writing

As one of the four basic skills, writing, which can well reflect students’comprehensive language ability and creativity, plays a very important role in Englishlearning. However, due to limited vocabulary, negative transfer from one’s native language,and lack of writing skills, English writing remains a big difficulty for both teachers andstudents. Prefabricated chunks, having features of both vocabulary and grammar, areusually stored in human’s memory system as a unified whole and can be retrieved directlywhen necessary, thus saving a lot of effort in language processing. So they are consideredby many experts as an effective way to increase accuracy and fluency in languageexpression. Moreover, it is believed that the application of prefabricated chunks can makewriting more organized and students more confident. That’s why prefabricated chunks aregetting increasing attention in the field of second language teaching and research. Despitethis, a majority of relative research focuses on cases in universities and colleges instead ofsenior middle schools.This thesis aims to find out the positive influence of prefabricated chunks on Englishwriting in senior middle schools, and to discover how to make good use of their advantagesto improve students’ writing. Participants in this study, which lasts for one term, include69Grade2students from two classes in a senior high school in Wujiang, Suzhou.Prefabricated chunks are introduced and taught in the experimental group while traditionalteaching method is adopted in the control group. The results of the study show that thecurrent situation of senior high school students’ writing is not optimistic. Most studentsshow no interest or confidence in writing, and often have difficulty with it. More than halfof them are influenced by their native language while writing. However, after learning thestrategy of prefabricated chunks, the experimental group has made obvious progress inEnglish writing. Besides, the study reveals the positive influence of prefabricated chunkson writing. Therefore it is necessary to teach and learn more prefabricated chunks in seniormiddle schools. Based on the findings, suggestions on how to effectively teach and learn prefabricated chunks are proposed.