An Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Lexical Chunks On Writing Skills—A Study Of High School English Learners

Lexical chunks have the advantage of combining grammar,semantics and discourse,and become one important factor in English language learning and teaching.Using lexical chunks helps learners to ease language learning pressure and promote the acquisition of accurate and authentic expressions.This study chooses 60 compositions as samples to classify and analyze the lexical chunks,which are taken from the mid-term test papers in Year Ten in a high school in China.Based on the writing scores,the sample compositions are divided into 30high-grade compositions and 30 low-grade compositions.On the basis of the classifications of lexical chunks by Nattinger and DeCarrico(2000),together with the reference to the classifications by Lewis(1997),the lexical chunks in this study are divided into five types,including poly-words,collocations,phrasal constraints,sentence builders and institutionalized expressions.This research adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods,with the aid of SPSS22.0 and Excel,to make a comparative analysis of lexical chunks between the high proficiency level group and the low proficiency level group.The study mainly aims to find the differences in the frequency of lexical chunks between the two groups,correlation between the occurance of lexical chunks and writing scores,the significant differences in the same kind of lexical chunks between the two groups,as well as the significant difference in the lexical chunks which are used to express the same functions between the two groups.In order to make further exploration in the application of lexical chunks in writing,the author also conducts 120 questionnaires and interviews 6 students.The result of the study shows that,first of all,there is a significant difference in the number of lexical chunks between the high proficiency level group and the low proficiency level group,and the high proficiency level students use more lexical chunks and use them more frequently than the low proficiency level students.It is implied that the students in the high proficiency level group master and apply lexical chunks better than the ones in the low proficiency level group.Besides,it is found that there is a strong correlation between the number of lexical chunks and writing scores.Thus it can be inferred that the more accurate lexical chunks students use,the higher writing scores they may get.Moreover,there are significant differences in the use of collocations,poly-words and sentence builders between the two groups,while there is no significant differences inthe use of phrasal constraints and institutionalized expressions between the two groups.The result indicates that students' writing scores are mainly influenced by collocations,poly-words and sentence builders.In addition,the accuracy rate of collocations and sentence builders in the high proficiency level group is much higher than the one in the low proficiency level group,which implies that students in the high proficiency level group can apply these lexical chunks more proficiently and correctly.Furthermore,it is found that when expressing the same functions,students in the high proficiency level group can extract various lexical chunks,while students in the low proficiency level group tend to use the simple lexical chunks repeatedly.According to the questionnaires and interview,students hold relatively active and positive attitudes towards the learning and application of lexical chunks in their writing,.However,they do not find efficient ways to learn and apply them and there are many problems to be discussed.In conclusion,it is helpful to improve students' writing skills by applying lexical chunks properly.Therefore,it is suggested that both teachers and students enrich their lexical chunks and raise the awareness of lexical chunks.