A Corpus-based Study On Lexical Chunks In English Writings Of Chinese EFL Learners

As an important linguistic phenomenon,lexical chunks can help to simplify the language processing,so it can better help English learners to improve the basic language skills such as listening,speaking,reading and writing,etc.In recent years,the research on lexical chunks has attracted more and more attention from scholars at home and abroad.These researches on lexical chunks ma inly focus on: exploring the usage of lexical chunks by English learners and native speakers;expounding the importance of lexical chunks in children's and adults' discourse;the relationship between lexical chunks and learners' spoken and written language proficiency.However,the research on the us age of lexical chunks by Chinese English learners generally inclines to explore the usage of lexical chunks of students at a certain level.There is almost no research on investigating the changes of lexical chunks used by Chinese English learners at different proficiency levels,and on the differences between Chinese EFL learners and native students.Therefore,based on the Chinese Learner English Corpus,with the English native language corpus as a reference,this paper intends to compare the similar ities and differences on the usage of lexical chunks of Chinese EFL learners along with their language development,and the differences between Chinese EFL students and native students.Based on these two comparisons,the present study aims to answer the following research questions:1)In terms of the types and frequency of lexical chunks used in English writings,what are the characteristics and differences of the C hinese English learners at different proficiency levels?2)In terms of the density and richness of lexical chunks used in English writings,what are the characteristics and differences of the C hinese English learners at different proficiency levels?3)In terms of the types and frequency,density and richness of lexical chunks used in English writings,what are the characteristics and differences of the C hinese English learners in comparison with native English speaking students?Three sub-corpora(St2,St4,and St6)of Chinese Learners' English Corpus(CLEC)and Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays(LOCNESS)were selected as the learner corpus and reference corpus respectively.By resorting to the powerful concordance tool Ant Conc,all the four catego ries of lexical chunks in the adopted corpora were collected and the raw data was processed by SPSS.Major findings of the present study are summarized as follows.First of all,in terms of types and frequency in using lexical chunks,there are striking differences among C hinese EFL learners;there is no significant difference between lower-level and intermediate-level students;however,the differences between lower-level and intermediate-level students,between intermediate-level and advanced-level students are divergent.Besides,there exists great disparity between Chinese EFL students and native students.Secondly,with regard to the density and richness of lexical chunks,there are striking differences among the C hinese English learners with three different language proficiency levels.And significant difference has been found between native students and Chinese EFL students.According to the research results,several related pedagogical implications were put forward.First of all,the concept and importance of lexical chunks should be emphasized in English teaching to help students strengthen their understanding and mastery of English lexical chunks.Secondly,in teaching,teachers can use the corpus as a new type of teaching aid to enhance students' interest in acquiring English,so that students can more deeply understand the differences in the usage of lexical chunks with native language users.Finally,it is important to provide more input of English lexical chunks textbooks or other language learning materials,and to subtly make students understand and master the usage of English lexical chunks.