An Empirical Study Of The Lexical Approach To College English Writing

In recent years, more and more scholars have begun to notice the deficiency of the traditional grammar-centered teaching method. Meanwhile, the importance of lexical chunks supported by the corpus linguistic and psycholinguistic analysis has become a centre of interest for researchers and teachers. What's more, the lexical approach proposed by Lewis (1993) argues that language teaching should be lexis-centered and grammar is subordinate to lexis. However, there is still little empirical evidence on the effectiveness of lexical approach in second language classrooms in China.This study tries to explore the effectiveness of the lexical approach to college English writing. It tries to identify the relationship between the application of lexical approach and learners'writing competence; to examine the ways in which lexical approach could affect learners'writing scores and finally to offer pedagogical implications to college English writing. Two classes of second-year English majors from Qingdao University participated in this study as the experimental and control group respectively. The test before the study reveals that there's no significant difference between the two groups'writing competence. During the semester, the experimental group received instructions in the light of lexical approach in writing class. In order to raise participants'awareness of lexical chunks, the teacher explained the concept of lexical approach, used relevant exercises and highlighted chunks in texts. The control group received the traditional approach which focused on grammatical rules and sentence patterns. The other test was conducted to both of the two groups at the end of the semester and SPSS 16.0 was employed as the statistical tool.The results reveal that the application of lexical approach could effectively help improve learners'writing competence. The participants in experimental group employed more lexical chunks and their writing score is much higher on average than in the control group. What's more, the quantity of lexical chunks is positively correlated with writing scores. This study suggests that in college English teaching lexis should be put at the central position, grammar should be adopted as a reference tool and more real language materials should be employed in classroom. It's hoped that this study could shed some light on the application of lexical approach in college English writing.