The Effect Of Lexical Chunks On English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Among the four basic skills in English learning, writing is widely considered as the most difficult part in an English examination in senior high schools. It is widely acknowledged that poor writing has caused most students to fail to get high marks in the National College Entrance Examination. While students have read a lot of English reading materials, memorized a sufficient number of English words and phrases, and grasped most of the grammatical rules, they still can’t meet the requirements of the New Curriculum Standard for writing. Though teachers have spent a large amount of time rating their English compositions, attempting to correct mistakes, their efforts have not turned out to be very effective because their students’writing competence remains poor.Recently, theories of lexical chunks have been adopted as a new perspective into English teaching. According to the lexical approach put forward by Michael Lewis in 1993, the language itself has the functions of input and output in the form of lexical chunks, which is helpful to memorize and express the language. During the process of teaching the language, raising the learners’awareness of lexical chunks can lead to efficient input and output of the language. As a consequence, the lexical approach can make the learners expression more fluent and accurate and improve learners’ writing competence as well.This empirical study is based on the theory of the lexical approach. To explore the effects of lexical chunks on teaching English writing in senior high schools, the writer adopts lexical chunks in teaching. The subjects of the experiment are from two average classes of Grade 2 in No.2 High School in Yixing City. One is the experimental class, and the other is the control class. The writer adopts traditional teaching method to the control class by presenting Chinese meanings and common usages of new words, and concentrating on the language points and grammatical rules. The students in the experimental class are divided into three groups, namely, Group A, Group B, and Group C, according to their writing scores in the pre-test. During the teaching process, the writer arouses the students’ awareness of chunks, develops their ability of recognizing chunks, and conducts different teaching methods based on different groups. Requirements vary among the three groups as well. The first monthly examination is regarded as the pre-test, after which the experiment lasts three months. The final-term examination is viewed as the post-test. The tested scores and numbers of chunks are collected and analysed by statistical software SPSS 16.0. The analytical results of the experiment show that the mean score of the experimental class is higher than that of the control class. The results also reveal that the chunks used by the experimental class are much more than those of the control class. Besides, the progress Group B students made is the most obvious in composition scores and they are better at using lexical chunks, compared with the other two groups. As is shown in the questionnaires and interviews conducted in the experimental class, the students show great interest in the lexical approach, and benefit a lot from the new method. It does improve their writing competence.According to the findings, lexical chunks have positive effects on English writing teaching and they can improve students’ writing competence. What’s more, it is very beneficial to the average students.