Application Of A Writing Model Under Lexical Chunks Approach:An Empirical Study On Teaching Of English Writing In Senior High School

Writing is an important part in English proficiency for ESL learners in senior high school who feel it difficult to write something free from errors of grammar and vocabulary and even a greater challenge to write in an appropriate or idiomatic way, which means they create writing with improper words and wrong collocations just because of following the Chinese language structures rather than English language constructions.To solve this problem, this thesis has resorted to lexical chunks approach as a theoretical basis by adopting a writing model under this approach to do an experiment in a high school.The lexical chunk that has its nature of being a lexicon-grammatical composite, is related with students’ writing ability. Lexical chunks can speed up information producing and play an important role in language input and output. However, Chinese English learners’ knowledge of lexical chunk is extremely scarce, and their use of lexical chunks is insufficient. Therefore, It is by the application of the proposed model that is based on the Lexical Approach initiated by Michael Lewis that the thesis is intended to find out whether or not the model has its practical use in writing teaching for senior high students in the local learning environment and its effects on students’ writing outcomes.This study employed an experiment which last a semester, involving 94 students from two parallel classes at the same level of English ability in Grade one in No.1 High School in Guiyang. Both two classes taught by the author were assigned as the control class and the experimental class. In the control class the traditional teaching instruction for writing was given while in the experimental class the proposed writing model which emphasized the cultivation of awareness of lexical chunks, and accumulation and use of lexical chunks in their writing.Data were collected from two compositions in both the pretest and posttest. All the compositions were scored and the computer was used to calculate the related data. Then, the data were treated with Independent T-test and analyzed. The more correct lexical chunks students used, the higher writing skill students achieved. If the students mastered the lexical chunks that had relatively-fixed grammatical structure and collocations of target language, they could correctly retrieve and apply them and make make their writing more expressive.The research findings of this thesis reveal that, compared with the traditional writing teaching, the teaching under the lexical-chunk writing model has enabled the students to cultivate good habits of memorizing lexical chunks and using them creatively in their English writing. Through the practice under this writing model students have raised their awareness of lexical chunks, and made the most of them in their English writing which make their writing more smoothly and appropriately.The research is helpful to apply lexical chunks in the teaching of English writing, thereby enabling lexical chunks to play a positive and effective part in the teaching of high school’s English.