The Study Of Lexical Use In English Writing At Senior High School

In senior high school, accuracy and authenticity of the English language cannot only be represented by English writing skill, but also a comprehensive reflection of the knowledge and humanities connotation of English learner s. The National Program for Elementary Education C urriculum Reform(2001) and The English C urriculum Standards(2013)in senior high school also puts forward certain demands on the writing skills. Thus, the important role of writing cannot be ignored in English teaching.The traditional methods currently used in English writing neglects the meaningful link between words, which causes some difficulties for the students to learn, to understand and to use English words, and restricts the ability of students’ English writing as well. In senior high school, English writing activities often make students dread it. They often do not know how to write, or how to choose appropriate vocabulary to express their thoughts precisely. They also have some other problems on constructing compositions. In order to change this situation, a number of English learners and educators pay more attention to lexical chunks. However, most of current researches focus on universities, while small numbers of researches focus on senior high school.Therefore, this research of lexical chunks is mainly based on Lewis’ s lexical theory in Haikou senior school. The research analyzes the actual status of lexical application through 80 pieces of compositions, 110 pieces of questionnaire and 16 interviewees. The research studies the frequency of variation of the lexical chunks, the type of difference and error-prone type of lexical chunks and input and output situation of lexical chunks in collected compositions between high score group and low score group. Through questionnaire and interview, it can reveal the senior students’ generative awareness of and attitude towards lexical chunks, and strategies of lexical chunks.The results of the research manifests that most students pay little attention to use lexical chunks, though they generally consider lexical chunks play an important role in English writing. In terms of the type of lexical application, collocation is the most employed, and the second one is poly-word both in high and low score group. The sentence frames and heads is in the third place, and institutionalized utterances is in the fourth place in high score group. But it has an opposite position in low score group. And the students, in low score group, are usually to make mistakes in the types of collocation and the sentence frames and heads. It indicates that students in high score group have a better generative awareness of lexical chunks and construction of composition. Besides, both groups consider their ability of lexical output is not proportional to the lexical input. English teachers generally lost sight of imparting the new lexical in English writing.The research mainly contains four conclusions. Firstly, both teachers and students consider lexical chunks play a significant and indispensable role in English writing. However, the students have little awareness of lexical use. Secondly, there is a positive correlation between lexical chunks used write and writing proficiency. Thirdly, there is a lack of bridge between lexical chunks input and output. The last one is that the leading role of English teacher can facilitate the development of lexical learning.To improve learners’ English writing skills, some suggestions are proposed based on the English curriculum requirements for senior high school students. English teachers should cultivate the students’ awareness of lexical application, train the students scientifically with lexical strategies, and provide different ways for students to learn words. Meanwhile, the teachers should adjust their lexical teaching approach in practice, so that it can facilitate students to learn better.