Research On The Effect Of Chunk-based Teaching On Senior One Students' English Writing Competence

Amongst the four basic language skills,writing,indicating the comprehensive language ability of language learners,is a rather complicated productive skill.However,there exist many defects in English writing in senior high schools,such as errors in diction and collocations,lack of proper cohesive devices between sentences and paragraphs,time-consuming language organization as well as students'low confidence in writing.Worse still,with the further development of the reforms of college entrance examination,a new question type concerning writing requires students in senior high schools of greater writing competence.With such an urgent situation to deal with,much attention has been paid to lexical teaching,little of which,however,relates to empirical research on applying lexical approach to English teaching in high school to sharpen writing competence.With the aim of investigating the effect of chunk-based teaching on senior one students'writing competence and thus adding another effective approach to high school English teaching,this thesis is based on lexical chunk theory of Michael Lewis and the study is carried out in two classes in grade one of Jingzhou Senior High School,which are randomly divided into experimental group(EG)and control group(CG).In the 20-week teaching experiment,EG are cultivated to have a sharp knowledge of lexical chunks,and multiple activities related to lexical chunks are specially designed based on each module in every unit of PEP senior English course books,where students are instructed to have chunk-based language input,review and output.For CG,they are not exposed to the concept of lexical chunks for the moment,but are instructed with skills on writing in regular teaching practice.Research tools include text analysis,tests(pretest and post-tests)and questionnaires,and experiment data such as writing scores are collected and processed with the help of SPSS 19.0.Three tests are implemented in two groups respectively and several types of lexical chunks used in their writing are collected to explore the influence of lexical approach on writing accuracy,coherence and fluency.Besides,to provide supporting evidence of the change in writing competence,writing scores of pretest and the second post test are gathered,and questionnaires are distributed to students in EG before and after the experiment to learn about the change in their confidence in writing,learning strategies concerning chunk-based language input,review and output,as well as fluency.The experiment confirms the positive correlation between the practice of chunk-based teaching and students' writing competence,including the improvement of writing accuracy and appropriateness,coherence,fluency and confidence.Additionally,a chunk-based teaching approach effective on improving writing competence is developed,where students are instructed to raise awareness of chunks,identify,consolidate,apply chunks and practise independent learning under the guidance of lexical chunks.Admittedly,due to the limitation of my research skills and experiment conditions,the research has some defects,such as insufficient sample size and experiment period,which requires further improvement.