The Research On The Use Of Lexical Chunks In English Writing In Senior High School

The requirement of The New Curricular Standard of English for Senior High School is that students’ English writing should be coherent with appropriate words, accurate expression, correct grammar and rational structure. However, there are some problems in English writing. Some English teachers do not pay enough attention to English writing, and students lack self-confidence in it. Students hold a negative attitude and they complete the writing task just for meeting the teachers’ requirement and coping with the English exam. Some students do not master enough vocabularies and grammar rules. Therefore, in English writing, they often use the single sentence structure and make mistakes in grammar and words’ collocation. As for many students, it is difficult to complete a composition with high quality. In order to solve these problems, the thesis tries to combine lexical chunks with English writing and apply lexical chunks to English writing teaching class to strengthen the awareness of lexical chunks of students and teachers, enlarge the input and output of lexical chunks and improve students’ application ability of lexical chunks so as to improve students’ writing ability.Lexical chunks model has been researched by many linguists for a long time in western countries, and it has become a complete theoretical system. Some scholars have pointed out that lexical chunks have a big positive influence in language acquisition. However, the research about the way how to use lexical chunks to improve students’ writing ability is still not enough. The thesis tries to apply lexical chunks theory to English teaching and sets up a new English writing teaching method with lexical chunks to improve students writing ability.Based on the theory of lexical chunks and the writing situation of senior high school, this paper carries out the experiment in Shangqiu NO.1 senior high school. The subjects are the students of Class 1 and Class 5 Grade 1. This experiment lasts for one semester and 142 students take part in this experiment. Through collecting and comparing the scores of the test compositions of the experimental class and the control class, the thesis finds that the average score of post-test of the experimental class is higher than that of the control class. The results show that lexical chunks play an important role in English writing. Furthermore, through the analysis of the results of the questionnaires and the interviews, this thesis finds that the teaching and learning of lexical chunks can help students build up their self-confidence and hold a positive attitude to English writing.Through the analysis of the theories and the experimental results, it comes to the conclusion that applying lexical chunks theory to English learning and teaching can help students to improve their writing ability and that good cooperation between students and teachers is the basis of teaching and learning lexical chunks.