A Study On The Application Of Lexical Chunks In Teaching English Writing At Junior High School

Writing, a form of output in English, occupies an important place in English teaching and learning. Students have to write up to 90 words for the writing item of the senior high school entrance examination. The difficulty coefficient and openness of the written expression are also increasing. It is really a challenge to write a composition well. But junior school students have a low level of written English as they are poor in vocabulary storage and grammar and their writing is often interfered by their mother-tongue. Consequently, they either feel afraid to write English compositions or make a lot of mistakes in their English writing. Though some of them have mastered a large number of English words and grammar rules, there still exist a discrepancy between their input and output.Therefore, how to improve the students? writing ability has become a hot topic in the field of foreign language teaching and research. Lexical chunks, as the minimum unit of language input, memory, storage and output, possess the advantage of grammatical rules, pragmatic contexts and semantic meanings. They serve as the unity of functions and forms and exist as fixed or semi-fixed forms. They are often regarded as ready-made, prefabricated language units, which are relatively easy for learners to use and memorize. As a result, they can also help ease the burden of language production and processing, improve their writing ability, and achieve their language accuracy, fluency and authenticity.By adopting the quantitative and qualitative research methods, this author carried out a one-term experiment in which 80 eighth graders from two classes in Wuxi Binhu Middle School participated, with 40 students chosen as the experimental class and 40 students as the control class. In this experiment, the author guided the learners to indentify, internalize and accumulate writing–related lexical chunks through the lexical chunks and the texts, and combined the process of writing to output the lexical chunks, and consolidated lexical chunks after the writing so as to act as a bridge between "input" and "output" in their writing. Before and after the experiment, this author asked the students from the two classes to take two tests in writing, conducted a questionnaire survey twice and had interviews with 3 students from the experimental class. The data of these tests are analyzed with SPSS 19 and a conclusion is reached.Through this study, the author has got the following results:(1) The teaching of lexical chunks can raise the level of junior high school students? English writing to some extent. Through the experiment, the amount of lexical chunks in the writing of experimental class increased and their scores obviously surpassed those of the control class.(2) The teaching of lexical chunks can increase the enthusiasm and initiative of junior high school students’ English writing, and enhance the students’ interest and self-confidence in learning English.(3) Through the application of the lexical chunks in the teaching of English writing, the students in the experimental class have greatly improved their accuracy, integrity and organization in their writing.This study explores the model of combining lexical chunks and junior high school English writing. It is hoped that this study can provide a guide to the English writing in junior high school students, and offer an operational program for the teachers of such schools.