A Study On English Major Students' Use Of Lexical Chunks In Writing

For many years,structural approach and communicative approach take up an important position in the field of foreign language teaching in China.The emphasis of structural approach has been on the learning of language structures and the grasping of grammar,neglecting the development of communicative ability.Communicative approach overemphasizes the ability of communication,and this kind of tendency would lead to a lack of necessary grammatical knowledge.Widdowson argues that "the structural approach accounts for one aspect of competence by concentrating on analysis but does so at the expense of access,whereas communicative approach concentrates on access to the relative neglect of analysis "(Widdowson,1989:132).In such a situation,a "middle way" is needed to overcome the disadvantages of these two approaches.And lexical chunk approach,which to some degree stands on the middle ground,comes to the fore.This approach which was put forward by Michael Lewis,Nattinger and DeCarrico and so on not only emphasizes the grammatical rules and syntactic structures,but also pays attention to the appropriate use of language in specific context.Based on Nattinger and DeCarrico's classification of four types of lexical chunks (polywords;institutionalized expressions;phrasal constraints;sentence builders),the thesis studies English major students' writing from the perspective of lexical chunks which are widely applied in language learning but have not get its position yet.The research aims to answer the following four questions:1) Are there more lexical chunks in high-grade compositions than in low-grade compositions? 2) What are the proportional distributions of four structural categories of lexical chunks in high-grade and low-grade compositions? 3) Is there a significant difference of the same structural category of lexical chunks between high-grade and low-grade compositions? 4) What kind of lexical chunks contribute most to the grades of the compositions?To find the answers to these questions,48 students from Zhuhai College of Jinan University and the College of Foreign Studies of Jinan University were asked to finish a composition of more than 200 words.After given scores,these compositions were divided into high-grade and low-grade groups and statistic software SPSS was used to analyze the data collected from the research.Research results show that there are more chunks in high-grade compositions than in low-grade compositions.Among the four types of chunks,sentence builders are most frequently used in both groups,and they have the strongest positive correlation with scores.Besides,there is a significant difference in two structural categories (phrasal constraints and sentence builders) between high-grade and low-grade compositions.It is hoped that the study of this thesis can draw the attention of teachers and learners and provide some pedagogical implications for language teaching and learning.It is necessary that teachers modify the traditional way of teaching and help to build up students' awareness of lexical chunks.The teaching of grammatical rules and syntactic structures and the development of communicative ability should be combined together and students would develop their English ability in an all-round way.