An Action Research On Improving Vocational Students’ English Writing Ability By Lexical Chunk Approach

Due to the weakness in writing and short of effective input,and the influence of negative transfer of Chinese in English writing,the writing performances of some vocational school students are far from satisfactory.Based on the domestic and foreign research results of lexical chunk theory,the present research takes Michael Lewis’ lexical approach as the theoretical foundation,applies the action research pattern of Lewin,and puts the lexical approach theory into practice in English class of vocational school,hoping to explore an effective new way to improve the English writing skills of vocational schools in China.The action research lasts for a duration of one semester.It is divided into three stages.The experimental group is given three composition tests.And students in the experimental class are interviewed and data are collected.By analyzing the relevant data,the author finds that the average score of the post-test writing is 13.838 higher than that of the pre-test writing,the excellent rate raises from 13% to 23%,the total amount of the chunks used raises from 365 to 444,the types of the lexical chunks they use in the post-test writing are more than those in the pre-test writing,.By analyzing the result of the interviews,the author finds that the students’ awareness of the lexical chunks has been developed,the difficulty of English writing has been reduced.According to the data-analysis,the author concludes that: 1)applying lexical approach to the English class in vocational school can not only increase the chunk quantity in students’ writings,it can also enrich the types of the chunks.It is proved that the number and types of lexical chunks are positively correlated with the writing scores.At the same time,the fluency and the discourse structure of their writings are also improved.2)Vocational school students can eliminate their fear of writing English articles by learning the lexical chunks,and become interested in the English learning...