An Empirical Study On Improving Junior High School Students' Writing By Lexical Chunk Recitation Input

Writing is an important part of English language skills for students in junior high school.However,the ability of English writing in junior high school students is relatively low because of such factors: teachers' teaching strategies,students' lack of vocabulary and writing training.Therefore,it is very necessary to find effective writing teaching methods to improve students' ability in English writing.As a coalition of grammar,semantics,and context,lexical chunks are relatively fixed in form and meaning.By using lexical chunks properly in production,students can not only overcome the negative impact of the mother tongue effectively,but also cultivate the organizational ability of the discourse,thereby increasing the fluency and authenticity of the language and improving their English writing.Previous studies have shown that recitation makes a contribution to strengthening the language input and improving the effect of memorizing vocabularies,sentence patterns and fixed expressions.What's more,recitation can increase language accumulation thus normalizing language output.Based on the previous research about application of lexical chunks,the author tries to explore an effective and feasible way to help teachers improve junior high school English writing teaching through combining with recitation.This study explores the following questions:(1)Can recitation input of lexical chunks improve students' English writing ability?(2)Does the number of lexical chunks used in students' compositions increase? What's the situation of different types of lexical chunks usage?(3)Is there a correlation between recitation input of lexical chunks and students' scores in listening,multiple choices,cloze,reading and filling blanks?In order to find the answers to the questions above,an instructional experiment was conducted for a semester in two classes in Taosi Middle School in Linfen.There are both 51 students in each class who have the same learning background and the same teacher(the author).Before the experiment,all students in these two classes did not receive the systematic writing practice and learning of lexical chunks.In the experimental class,the author emphasized the learning and accumulation of lexical chunks and presented some exercises topractice.While the conventional approach and autonomous writing were adopted in the control class without lexical chunks teaching concluded.The author collected the data of the results of pre-test and post-test and analyzed them by taking advantage of SPSS 17.0.The findings are as follows:(1)The recitation input of lexical chunks can improve junior high school students' writing ability effectively.(2)The quantity of lexical chunks used in the composition of post-test in the experimental class increased significantly.Various lexical chunks could be used appropriately and accurately in the composition,with poly words employed the most,followed by phrase constrains.(3)There is a correlation between the recitation input of lexical chunks and students' ability in multiple choices,cloze and filling in the blanks.