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

Writing is an important productive skill among the skills in English learning process in that it can best manifest the students' comprehensive competence in using English.However,the teaching of English writing has always been the weakest in junior high school English teaching,and it has been a hot issue for long as to how to improve the junior high school students' abilities in English writing.In recent years,the application of the lexical chunk has gained much popularity.Lexical chunk theory explains that the lexical chunk is a language phenomenon and it frequently occurs as a lexical unit which is bigger than a word.What is more,it is a fixed unity with grammar,meaning and context as a whole.This research,based upon the previous studies on the lexical chunk,attempts to conduct a teaching experiment on the application of the lexical chunk to the teaching of English writing in junior high schools and aims to explore the positive impacts that the lexical chunk exerts on the English writing in junior high schools.This research has based principally upon the classification of James R.Nattinger & Jeanette S.DeCarrico(1992)and Michael Lewis' Lexical Approach(1993)to conduct a one-term teaching experiment.The participants involved in this experiment are the 50 students in Grade Eight in Lizhuang Junior High School in Baofeng County,Pingdingshan.This research was conducted on the basis of the following three questions:(1)What is the current situation of the students' using the lexical chunks in their English writings in junior high schools?(2)What are the major effective methods in the application of the lexical chunk to the teaching of English writing in junior high schools?(3)What are the main positive impacts that the lexical chunk exerts on the students' English writing competence in junior high schools?The results of this research include:(1)The students in junior high schools show low proficiency in using the lexical chunks in their English writings and few students have a good command of the lexical chunks.The main problems are shown in three aspects: the small amount of the lexical chunks used in their English writings,the collocation errors and the single sentence patterns.(2)The major effective methods used in the application of the lexical chunk to the teaching of English writing in junior high schools are reciting and practicing.The latter includes filling blanks with lexical chunks,correcting errors and rewriting sentences with lexical chunks.(3)The main positive effects of the lexical chunk has on the students' English writing competence in junior high schools include the increase of the amount of thelexical chunks used in the their English writings,the decrease of the collocation errors,the increase of the students' idiomatic sentences in their writings,and the cultivation of the students' interest and confidence in English writing.This thesis is made up of five chapters.The first chapter,Introduction,includes research background,research objectives and organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is Literature Review,which mainly introduces the theories of the lexical chunk and the previous studies on the lexical chunk at home and abroad.Chapter Three is Research Design,which presents the research questions,subject,instruments and procedure.Chapter Four is the part which presents the results and discussion of the research.It is mainly concerned about the analysis of data collected from the questionnaires,the interview and the composition tests.The last chapter is the conclusion of this study,which covers the major findings,the pedagogical implications,the limitations of the research and the prospect for the further study.