A Study On The Application Of Chunk-based Process Writing In Senior High Schools English Writing

National English Curriculum Standards for General High Schools(2017)clearly points out that English courses should focus on the development and improvement of students’ comprehensive quality of English subject.It advocates student-centered teaching activities to optimize students’ learning methods,and English teaching in Senior High schools must be further reformed.As a comprehensive skill,English writing is one of the most important aspects of the development of students’ language ability.However,English writing has not been paid enough attention to in the teaching process.Most of teachers usually focus on the interpretation of the model essays in class and then ask students to imitate them in their own writing.Such writing teaching lacks systematic writing training so that high school students lack confidence and interest when they are faced with writing tasks.Some students even take a writing course as a frightening experience.They repeatably use some basic dull or single sentence patterns in English writing and lack the ability to master complex sentence patterns.Influenced by Chinese thinking patterns and their limited vocabulary,they are unable to express themselves vividly and accurately,and students’ enthusiasm of English writing is not high.Owing to the above factors,English writing teaching appears to be time-consuming and ineffective.This teaching situation is not conducive to the cultivation of students’ language ability,therefore improving the high school English writing teaching is imperative.In recent years,many researchers have applied lexical chunks to language teaching.They believe that lexical chunks are new resources which can be used in English teaching,providing a new perspective for English writing teaching.Process Writing Approach attaches great importance to students’ writing process and the cultivation of students’ writing skills,which reflects the essence of writing teaching and conforms to the development of language teaching.Based on second language acquisition theories of input hypothesis and output hypothesis and constructivism learning theory,this study introduces a teaching model that combines lexical chunks learning and process writing in senior high school English writing to testify whether this teaching model is effective in improving students’ writing ability.Fifty students from a class in a Senior High School in Liaoning province are taken as the research subjects.This class adopts the chunk-based process writing teaching model and the writing instructions lasts for one semester.Meanwhile,tests,questionnaires,students’ composition samples and interviews are used as research instruments.The three research questions are:1.What effect does the chunk-based process writing teaching have on students’ writing ability? 2.Which aspects in students’ writing ability will be improved through the chunk-based process writing teaching ? 3.What effect does the chunk-based process writing have on students’ writing attitudes and writing strategies?Through this study,it is found that the chunk-based process writing teaching effectively improves students’ writing ability and their writing performance.Specifically speaking,the final written products handed by students are more accurate,fluent and native with abundant lexical chunks and various sentence patterns.And their written work also reflects that students have developed their English thinking modes to some extent.In addition,this teaching model can stimulate students’ interest,bring their initiative into full play in the writing process.It can also help them improve their self-confidence in English writing and master useful writing strategies.