A Study On The Status Of Senior One School Students’ Using Lexical Chunks In English Writing

Corpus linguists’ research on lexical chunks can date back to the 1970 s.After the 1970 s,lexical chunks have gradually become the focus in language teaching,second language acquisition,corpus linguistics and other fields.Lexical chunks are also called pre-set and semi-pre-set words.Second language learners can store these prefabricated and semi-prefabricated chunks as stable structures in memory,which can be extracted and used anytime and anywhere so as to improve the effectiveness,accuracy and consistency of language processing.Much research indicates that the use of lexical chunks is helpful to cultivate learners’ English composition competence.However,current research on lexical chunks and writing mainly focuses on native language learners,college English majors or non-English undergraduate students,and higher vocational students.The investigation on the application of lexical chunks in the tenth grade students’ composition is relatively lacking.Taking the Lewis lexical chunks theory as the theoretical basis,this thesis adopted qualitative,quantitative and comparative research methods to conduct a thorough and meticulous investigation in two classes of senior high school in Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture.Students were from literal arts and science classes.40 composition samples were from literal arts class,including 20 high-grade and 20 low-grade compositions;40 composition samples were from science class,including 20 high-grade and 20 low-grade compositions.A total of 80 composition samples were used as research data to examine the basic status of the use of lexical chunks in English compositions in two classes.Totally 120 questionnaires were sent out to investigate the usage of lexical chunks by two classes in English compositions and 112 valid ones were collected.12 students were interviewed to examine the English writing status and the use of lexical chunks in the two classes.The results of data analyses indicate:(1)In comparison of low-grade group compositions statistically,the total and frequency of lexical chunks utilized in high-grade group composition are intuitively higher.The above differences illustrate that the English compositions written by high-grade group students is not only longer,but also more proficient in the use of lexical chunks.(2)The proportion ofcompositions used by students is sorted in order as: collocation phrase,sentence frames and heads,poly-words and institutionalized utterances.(3)Compared with low-grade group,the overall total of multiple categories of lexical chunks in high-grade group compositions is on the high side,which indicates that the use of multiple lexical chunks is helpful to improve the overall quality of students’ English compositions.(4)The grade of English compositions was directly affected by the total of lexical chunks in writing.(5)The author finds that almost every subject totally agrees with lexical chunks teaching and thinks that lexical chunks memory is more effective than lexical memory.On the Basis of the findings,this study reaches the following conclusions :(1)Application of lexical chunks is conductive to advance senior one students’ composition performance.Given the vital function of lexical chunks in child language acquisition and second language acquisition,teachers’ primary task is to instruct students to comprehend the definition of lexical chunks and to distinguish the categories of lexical chunks.(2)The categories and total of lexical chunks applied by students are still in disequilibrium,and teachers ought to integrate teaching materials in composition teaching to guide students to recognize lexical chunks and to accumulate them.The study indicates that the four categories of lexical chunks are conducive to promoting the consistency and logicality of English written performance.(3)The improvement of students’ writing competence depends on the teaching modes used by teachers in the classroom to a great extent,so teachers should strive to explore efficient and appropriate teaching modes in the classroom.(4)Through correlation analysis between the total of lexical chunks and the composition scores,there appears intuitively a linear correlation coefficient between the total of lexical chunks in senior one students and the performance of English composition.(5)The lexical chunks teaching mode has been generally recognized by most students,which can strengthen their English writing competence.Therefore,teachers should constantly utilize this down-to-earth teaching mode in the actual teaching classroom to improve the teaching quality.