A Study Of Application Of Lexical Chunk Theory To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

English writing is an important output skill in second language acquisition,and writing has become a great challenge for students in junior high school.However,writing teaching is a difficult part in junior high school English teaching.Lexical chunks are the smallest units of language input,memory,storage,and output.They combine vocabulary and grammfar in a relatively fixed form,which can effectively reduce students’ memory burden.The application of lexical chunks in English writing can make students’ compositions more standardized and accurate.Hence the paper applies lexical chunk theory to English writing teaching in junior high school,which aims to improve students’ writing performance and prove that writing teaching based on lexical chunk theory has a positive impact on students’ attitudes towards English writing.The paper mainly addresses the following four questions:(1)How to apply lexical chunk theory to the English writing teaching through input,application and output in junior high school?(2)What are the influences of English writing teaching based on lexical chunk theory on students’ writing performance?(3)What are the influences of English writing teaching based on lexical chunk theory on the frequency of lexical chunks used in students’ writings?(4)What are the influences of English writing teaching based on lexical chunk theory on students’ attitude towards English writing?64 students from two parallel classes in grade 7 of Minhang No.3 Middle School affiliated to Shanghai Normal University participate in the study.The teaching experiment lasts for one semester.The PPP model is applied to the controlled class,which involves lead-in,presentation,practice and production.While the writing teaching in the experimental class is based on lexical chunk theory,including the introduction of lexical chunk concepts,input and application of lexical chunks and the output of lexical chunks.Before and after the experiment,writing pre-test and writing post-test were conducted in the experimental class and the control class respectively.And the experimental class was asked to complete a questionnaire survey to know whether students’ interest and confidence in English writing has increased.The research shows that through the process of input,application and output of lexical chunks,the students in the experimental class have greatly enhanced the lexical chunks.They can apply lexical chunks as units in English writing and their scores of the compositions have been obviously improved.The results indicate that writing teaching based on lexical chunk theory can promote students’ writing performance and increase the frequency of using lexical chunks in the compositions.In addition,the results of the questionnaire survey,involving students’ interest and confidence in English writing,show that writing teaching based on lexical chunk theory has positive impact on students’ attitude towards writing.Based on the above findings,this paper finally gives some pedagogical implications:focus on cultivating students’ accumulation and input of lexical chunks;put emphasis on training students’awareness in output of lexical chunks;develop students’ autonomous learning ability in English writing.