An Empirical Study On The Application Of The Lexical Approach To The English Writing Of High School Students

Among the four basic skills of English competence including listening,speaking,reading and writing,writing is most widely investigated.Many studies propose the idea that with the help of lexical chunks,learners can express their opinions more efficiently and accurately in an easier way.Those previous studies mainly focus on college students as the subjects.In this paper,the research scope is expanded to the senior high school students.The current study aims to find out the practical significance of applying Lexical Approach in English writing,such as the specific teaching model(Input--Internalization--Output)based on Lexical Chunk designed to enhance the acquisition of lexical chunks.Furthermore,quantities and qualities of lexical chunks used in compositions and alteration of interest in English writing will also be investigated.Therefore the thesis will focus on addressing the following two questions.1)Will the writing competence of senior high school students be improved by the implementation of the Lexical Approach?2)Will students increase their interest in writing through the implementation of Lexical Approach?Students from two natural classes of Grade Senior One in Zhanjiang No.2Middle School,are selected as research subjects.One is the experimental group with49 students,and another is the control group with 46 students.Lexical Approach will be applied in the experimental group as the teaching method of English writing.The proposed method includes three parts including tests(pre-test and post-test),questionnaires and interview.Pre-test is implemented to ensure no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group before the experiment.Post-test is used to analyze the effect of implementation of lexical approach in improving students' English writing competence.Questionnaires are distributed to students to learn about students' interest in English writing.Interviews target on 10 participants selected randomly to find out their specific idea and attitudes towards lexical chunks and English writing.The experiment lasted for 16 weeks.The textbook for the experiment is the English Book 1 and Book 2 published by People Education Press covering 10 units with 10 different topics.Each unit contains three periods,including reading,learning about language and writing to realize the input,internalization and output.The results of quantitative analysis show the application of lexical approach has a positive effect on English writing.Students' writing ability in experimental group obviously gets improved than before,also performs better than students of the control group.Also,the frequency of lexical chunks used in writing is higher than the control group.The result indicates that lexical chunks can release students' pressure in constructing and writing English composition with high accuracy and fluency..The new method are also able to attract students in writing by improving t raise their confidence and motivation.Therefore students' attitudes towards English writing will become more open and positive.In a conclusion,the use of lexical approach can improve high school students' English writing ability,and raise their interest in English writing.Therefore,this study implicates the effect of involvement of lexical approach in English writing.