The Application Of Topic-Based Lexical Chunk Approach To The Teaching Of English Writing In Junior High School

Writing is a form of language output,which is a comprehensive reflection of the learner's language level.It accounts for a large proportion of scores in Middle school English test.At the same time,writing teaching is also an important part of English teaching.However,the current situation of junior high school English writing teaching is not optimistic,ignoring the vocabulary teaching,which leads to the low level of students' English writing,and the misuse vocabulary or miscollocation often occur in writing.Therefore,it is a very urgent task to explore and improve the teaching method of English writing and promote the improvement of students' English writing level.Michael Lewis(1993)proposed the lexical chunk approach in his book The Lexical Approach,he believes that language is composed of grammaticalized lexis rather than lexicalized grammar.The lexical chunks combine the characteristics of grammar,context and semantics.The learners can easily and accurately extract the required lexical chunks when applying,which plays a great role in improving students' writing level.Language teaching is to cultivate students' language use ability in different contexts,and the topic-based lexical chunk approach can provide learners with real and rich topic vocabulary and context for vocabulary use.The lexical chunk approach has received wide concern among researchers.At present,there are many studies on the application of lexical theory to writing teaching.However,topic-based lexical chunk approach is extremely limited in writing teaching.In this study,two parallel classes in the eighth grade of junior high school in Xingxian Country were selected as research subjects.The topic and lexical chunk approach were combined and applied to the teaching of English writing.The topic-based lexical chunk approach experiment was conducted in EC for a semester mainly through three steps:pre-prepare and recognize lexical chunks,input and use lexical chunks in class,accumulate and consolidate lexical chunks after class.The traditional teaching method was adopted in CC.At the same time,the experimental data were collected using questionnaire,writing test and interview,and statistical analysis was performed using Excel and SPSS20.0.The aim is to answer the following three research questions:(1)What are the impacts of topic-based lexical chunk approach on junior high school students' interest and confidence in English writing ?(2)What are the impacts of topic-based lexical chunk approach on the lexical chunkawareness and use ability of junior high school students?(3)What are the impacts of topic-based lexical chunk approach on junior high school students' English writing scores?The study found that: Firstly,through the results of questionnaire and interview,it can be seen that after the experiment,some students' interest and confidence in English writing has been improved and they no longer have fears of English writing.They learn to accumulate language materials for English writing and practice writing on their own initiative;Secondly,after the topic-based lexical chunk approach,some students' awareness of the accumulation,consolidation,use of lexical chunks and their lexical chunk use ability have been improved.They learn to accumulate and consolidate the lexical chunks in their English learning,and can consciously use the lexical chunks they have learned in writing.And the number of lexical chunks in writing is significantly increased;Thirdly,the post-test scores of EC were significantly higher than the pre-test,which indicates that the topic-based lexical chunk approach can significantly improve the students' English writing scores.