An Empirical Study On The Application Of Lexical Chunk Approach To Teaching English Writing In Junior Middle Schools

Chunk theory has drawn increasing attention in recent years,and many scholars have been working on it.However,the existing research on the Lexical Chunk Approach mainly focuses on its influence on the English learners' vocabulary,and there is less research on its impact on learners' writing performance.Most of the study subjects were college students and high school students,and very few studies involved middle school students as subjects.English writing ability is one of the indicators of the comprehensive ability,which has a profound effect on learners'confidence in English learning.Therefore,this study aims to explore the impact of the application of chunk theory to junior middle school students' English writing.Based on Krashen's input hypothesis and Swain's output theory,this study mainly address the following two research questions:(1)What are the effects of Lexical Chunk Approach on Middle School Students' writing interest and attitude?(2)What are the effects of Lexical Chunk Approach on Middle School Students' writing competence?This study's subjects involved 96 students from two classes of a junior middle school(48 students in Experimental Class,and 48 students in Control Class).Research time was 12 weeks.Experimental Class adopted Lexical Chunk Approach for writing teaching,and Control Class adopted traditional writing teaching method.The questionnaires,Pretest and posttest were used in this study.Data were analyzed by SPSS 21.0.The major findings are as follows:1)The Lexical Chunk Approach can effectively improve learners' autonomous learning abilities,and it can also improve their interest in English writing,so their attitude towards English learning changed a lot after the experiment.2)The Lexical Chunk Approach can improve the students' writing abilities,especially for junior middle school students,and it can also raise their ability to use lexical chunks obviously.After the experiment,the students of Experimental Class could express their ideas accurately in writing by using different words and chunks with the adoption of the Lexical Chunk Approach.Besides,the size of vocabulary,and grammar usage were improved significantly.After the experiment,all the students from these two classes had a great improvement in their English writing,but the students' overall writing competence from Experiment Class were higher than the students' competence from Control Class,and the number of chunks in their texts increased a lot.The results show that it is feasible for junior middle school students to apply the Lexical Chunk Approach to improve their writing competence.With limited time and place,the present study has some limitations.This experiment lasted for a semester,which is not long enough for the research,and it involved 96 people,which is not big enough for a stricter result.In order to seek more accurate conclusions,we can extend the experimental time and increase the sample size in future studies.However,the author thinks that this experiment still has theoretical and practical value,for it can provide some enlightenment for Chinese Middle Schools'English writing teaching.