A Correlation Study On Different Senior High Students And The Distribution Of Their Lexical Chunk Use In English Writing

With the development of modern cognitive psychology and constructivism,the emphasis and focus of modern Foreign Language Teaching(FLT)researches have shifted from formerly focusing on teacher's “teaching” to students' “learning process” now.Lexical chunks,as a fixed or semi-fixed structure,can be stored and retrieved in the processes of writing.They are used as a good way to ease the burden of working memory.Their development reflects the process of students' foreign language learning and has become a new perspective to explore approaches to foreign language teaching.Based on learner differences of foreign language and the classification of lexical chunks,this research takes 150 students in 6 classes at three levels of Senior III in an urban key senior high school in Ganzhou as the research subjects in order to explore the distribution of the students' use of four lexical chunks in different level students' compositions and the correlations between some factors.This research aims to answer the following questions:(1)What's the distribution of four types of lexical chunks in different level students' compositions?(2)Is there any correlation between students' writing performance and the division of liberal arts/science classes? If yes,what's the significant difference?(3)Is there any correlation between the students' writing performance and genders? If yes,what's the significant difference?(4)What are the implications for ELT in the pilot senior high school?As a result,this research finds out that the distribution of the four lexical chunks is unbalanced.Level A performs better than level B,followed by level C.And there exists significant correlation between the use of lexical chunks and division of liberal arts / science classes,but no correlation in gender difference.Through learning about students' use of lexical chunks in English writing,the paper attempts to provide helpful references for the further researches and some implications for English teachers.