An Empirical Study On The Influence Of Lexical Approach On English Practical Writing In Senior High Schools

The reform of college entrance examination in Zhejiang province in 2015 puts further emphasis on writing ability.In the new form of test,students are required to finish two writing tasks,the first one a piece of practical writing,and the second a task of continuation writing or summary writing,making writing more challenging.It is common to find students not having enough time to finish the writing tasks,or compositions full of language errors,such as monotonous wording and sentence construction,collocation errors,and negative transfer of the first language.Based on the previous studies on lexical chunks and Lexical Approach,especially Michael Lewis' viewpoint about how to implement Lexical Approach,an empirical study is conducted to testify if Lexical Approach has influences on practical writing in senior high schools.The focus on practical writing mainly derives from the following two reasons: practical writing is very important and useful in both examination and daily life;compared with summary writing and continuation writing,practical writing has a closer and more direct relationship with lexical chunks from the author's perspective.The experiment lasts for 12 weeks,during which Lexical Approach is adopted in the Experimental Class(EC),and traditional approach in the Controlled Class(CC).The implementation process is described in detail in Chapter Four with various practical examples.This thesis aims to answer the following questions:1.How does the Lexical Approach influence senior high school students' competence of practical writing?(1)What are the effects of the Lexical Approach on their writing scores?(2)Do the students from EC apply more lexical chunks in writing after the implementation of Lexical Approach? Does the number of students' use of lexical chunks correlate with their practical writing scores?2.How do the students from EC accept Lexical Approach and are their confidence and interest strengthened in EFL writing?On one hand,two practical writing tests(pretest and posttest)are employed in the experiment in both EC and CC to test the participants' writing proficiency.On the other hand,to obtain the students' general attitudes towards lexical chunks and Lexical Approach,questionnaires and interviews are applied in the EC.And through the analysis of the data collected in the pretest,posttest,questionnaires and interviews,the major findings are as follows:(1)Lexical Approach has significant effects on practical writing in senior high schools.The students in EC have made much greater progress after 12 weeks' experiment than in CC.It has significant effects on the students' scores and the significance is of high level.(2)According to the statistics,students from the EC apply more lexical chunks in writing after the implementation of Lexical Approach.And as analyzed by the SPSS,the number of students' use of lexical chunks correlates with their practical writing scores,and the correlation coefficient is of a significant level.(3)The analysis of the questionnaires and interviews show that students in EC accept Lexical Approach quite well,and after the experiment,most of them have to some extent strengthened their confidence in practical writing,and many have more confidence in other forms of writing and are more interested in English writing.The study shows Lexical Approach has great effects on English practical writing in senior high schools and therefore it deserves our special attention,attempt and efforts.