A Study On The Application Of Lexical Chunks To English Writing Teaching In Rural Junior High Schools

English writing, as one of the four basic skills, is a good reflection of the students' mastery of English. However, English writing has not been given due attention in English teaching of junior high schools for a long time, especially in rural areas. It is an indisputable fact that the improvement of students' writing ability is a difficult point and weak link in English teaching in rural junior high schools. The teaching environment and methods in rural junior high schools are relatively backward, so the students' English writing situation is even worrying. There are all kinds of problems in students' English writing, such as spelling mistakes, inadequate amount of vocabulary, improper collocations, confused organization, misuse of English sentence patterns and negative writing attitude. What's worse, most junior high school students often translate Chinese into English word by word during writing, which leads to the emergence of many Chinglish sentences in the whole compositions. It is no doubt that these sentences are not in conformity with the English expressive habits. These problems make teachers in junior high schools worried. To find an effective way to improve students' writing becomes a priority in English teaching. Therefore, some researchers have introduced lexical chunks into English writing teaching.Lexical chunks, the semi-finished products of language, have the characteristics of grammar and vocabulary, which can be integrally stored and recalled. Thus, lexical chunks are the ideal units for the language use and they play important roles in English writing teaching. The study of the previous researches shows that there are a number of researches on lexical chunks and plenty of studies are about the relationship between lexical chunks and English writing teaching. But most of these studies are theoretical researches. What's more, a small number of empirical studies mainly deal with the writing situation of senior highs or college students. Among them, only a few studies are about the application of lexical chunks to English teaching practice in junior high schools, needless to say the rural junior high schools. Therefore, under the guidance of the chunking theory and the theory of input hypothesis, the author tries to apply lexical chunks to English writing teaching in rural junior high schools. Based on the practical situation of rural junior high schools, this thesis aims to explore the following three questions:Question 1: How should the lexical chunks be applied to English writing teaching in rural junior high schools?Question 2: To what extent does the application of lexical chunks improve the students' writing performance?Question 3: How does the application of lexical chunks affect the students' attitude towards English writing in rural junior high schools?To answer these questions, the author carried out an empirical study by employing the method of experiment, questionnaire and interview through the in-depth study and analysis of lexical chunks. 92 junior two students from two parallel classes of Fanji middle school in Xinye county Nanyang city were chosen as the research subjects, with 46 students in each class. One class was randomly regarded as experimental class and the other was taken as control class. First of all, a pre-test was firstly conducted to all the subjects. The pre-test results showed that there was no significant difference between the writing achievements of the two classes. Then at the beginning and end of the semester, the author carried out a questionnaire survey respectively in the experimental class with an attempt to find out the changes of the students' understanding of lexical chunks and attitude towards English writing before and after the experiment. At the same time, during the 5-month teaching experiment, the author adopted conventional teaching in the control class. On the basis of the routine teaching, the author took lexical chunks as the mainline in the experimental class with the text as point cut guiding the students to identify and consolidate the lexical chunks so as to enable students to apply them during writing. At last, all the students took part in the final examination, and some students from experimental class were chosen to be interviewed by the author. The experimental data were analyzed and compared by SPSS20.0.The experimental results show that compared with the control class, students in experimental class have improved the writing scores significantly, which reflects that there has been a certain correlation between the writing scores and the application of lexical chunks. Students in experimental class have also improved their writing greatly in terms of the fluency and accuracy of the language expression. Secondly, with the experiment going on, students can skillfully master the lexical chunks and acquire the learning strategies about lexical chunks, which can improve their interest in writing. Correspondingly, their writing confidence has also been enhanced. Finally, according to the teaching situation of rural junior high schools, the author puts forward how to improve the students' writing performance by applying lexical chunks to English writing teaching. The results of the five-month research confirm that the application of lexical chunks in English teaching in rural junior high schools can effectively improve students' writing performance. To be specific, it can have certain significance on students' writing ability in respect of English vocabulary, syntax and discourse. Moreover, this method can provide practical suggestions for English teachers in rural junior high schools so as to promote the improvement and updating of the teaching methods.