Application Of Lexical Chunks To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Lexical chunk is the combination of the syntax, semantics, and context in the relatively fixed form, as a whole to be learned and stored in the memory. In the writing process, chunks can be direct extracted, which not only can improve the efficiency of information processing but also can greatly enhance their English writing accurate and authentic. With the development of corpus linguistics in recent years, the researchers found the chunks abound in the actual language use. The lexical chunks arouse the interests of the psycholinguists, applied linguists. Nattinger & Decarrico(1992) and Lewis(1993) put forward the lexical approach as a new teaching method and hold that this teaching approach can improve the language proficiency of the learners and provide some basic teaching principles and activities. The feasibility and practical value of the lexical approach in the field of the second language writing teaching need to be further studied.This research is designed to test whether the application of lexical chunks can improve the students` writing proficiency. Two parallel classes of the second-year senior high school students in Xining NO.4 Senior High School participate in this experiment. Class 8 and Class 10 are chosen randomly as the experimental class and controlled class. There are 55 students are included in each class. The experiment is conducted during a semester. At the beginning of the semester, pre-test is carried out in both two classes with the purpose of knowing about the students` use of lexical chunks and writing competence before the instruction. Then the lexical approach is applied in the experimental class while the control class use the ordinary way like usual. All the students in the experimental class and control class employ the same text book. At the ending of the semester, both classes take the post-test in order to examine the teaching effect. In order to fully recognize the experimental class students` ideas and attitude of lexical approach, author conducts the questionnaire and interview to collect the data.From the analysis of two tests, the author finds out the experimental class had significantly increased in the term of the use of lexical chunks in composition and the writing scores after the conduction, while the control class had make no significant difference through a semester. Besides, compared with control class, the experimental class have improved much more in the idiomatic and complexity of the language and the coherence of the structure in the compositions.What’s more, the results of the questionnaire and the interview show the overwhelming majority of the students favor the application of lexical approach in English writing class. Therefore, the comprehensive analysis of the experiment confirmed the application of lexical chunks in English writing teaching in senior high school is not only feasible and effective, but also enhance the students` writing confidence and interest.