The Application Of Lexical Chunks To English Writing Teaching In Rural Junior Middle Schools

With the development of corpus,more and more attention has been paid to the research of lexical chunks.On the basis of substantive authentic language materials,linguists revealed that 90 percent of natural language consists of lexical chunks.For English writing,lexical chunks have a great power in enhancing English learners' level of accuracy,and fluency in output process.From several years' teaching,it is found by the author that writing is still the most difficult part for students in rural junior middle schools.Therefore,the author tries to use lexical chunks in English writing teaching of Grade Eight in a rural junior middle school.This study is based on the lexical chunk theory to explore the role of lexical chunks in English writing teaching in rural junior high schools.Two parallel classes in Grade Eight of the No.3 Middle School in Tongxiang City are used as the experimental subjects.One of them is a control class,using traditional teaching methods.When explaining new words,the meaning of the words is presented,and language points and grammar knowledge are concerned.The other is an experimental class.According to their scores measured before,students in the experimental class are divided into three groups A,B,and C(high,medium and low level).In the teaching process,students' awareness of lexical chunks is consciously developed,and their ability to identify and use lexical chunks is improved.According to the conditions of the grouped students,different teaching strategies are used and different requirements are put forward.The test scores at the end of the second semester of Grade Seven is taken as the pretest,followed by the teaching experiment for three months,and the results of the final exam of the first semester of Grade Eight as the posttest.Test scores and the number of lexical chunks used are collected and processed using statistical software SPSS 16.0.The experimental data analysis shows that both the average score of the composition of the experimental class and the number of use of the lexical chunks are far higher than those of the control class.Among the three groups in the experimental class,Group B made greater progress than Group A and C.The competence improved quickly.Through questionnaires and interviews with students in the experimental class,it is found by the author that the students are very interested in the lexical chunks and this new method can contribute to the improvement of English writing skills,especially the students of medium level.