A Case Study Of The Correlation Between The Use Of Lexical Chunks And College English Writing

Many linguistic researches indicate there are multi-word lexical phenomena that exist somewhere between the traditional poles of lexicon and syntax, conventionalized form/function composites that occur more frequently and have more idiomatically determined meaning than language that is put together each time (Nattinger,1992). These composites can be extracted and processes as a whole. Linguists apply different terminologies such as prefabricated chunks, ready-make language, formulas, lexical phrases, or lexical chunks, etc. However, Weinert (1995) points out:while the labels vary, it seems that researchers have very much the same phenomenon in mind. In this paper, we adopt "lexical chunks" according to the theories of Lewis and Nattinger and divide them into four categories:institutionalized phrases, phrasal constraints, sentence structure and discourse devices. Many linguists propose that lexical chunks can speed language processing significantly and help native-like language production and support social interaction.Recently teaching and learning of vocabulary has aroused wide concern. The emphasis of traditional teaching and learning of vocabulary is to enlarge learners' vocabulary. Yet vocabulary knowledge is a multi-faceted complex. The depth of knowledge is key to quality language development; however, it has been neglected in traditional teaching and learning, which results in language output problems, especially writing problems, such as non-native-like English, unclear expressions, non-coherence of discourse, etc. So being a major factor in the depth of vocabulary knowledge, lexical chunks have come to linguistic attention in language teaching and learning in recent years.Based on the previous study, the purpose of the present paper, which combines the latest theory of lexical chunks with the problems in college English writing, is to explore the use of lexical chunks and the influence on college English writing. The author borrowed the classification of lexical chunks into four groups in terms of Lewis and Nattinger (1992), collected 169 writing samples from Freshmen and sophomores in Yanbian University and analyzed them by using SPSS.This paper tries to address the following three research questions:1. With the accumulation of in-depth English knowledge, is there any upward trend of the use of lexical chunks?2. Is the use of lexical chunks positively correlated with college English writing?3. Which categories of lexical chunks are most correlated with college English writing?The results show that with the accumulation of in-depth English knowledge, there is the upward trend of the use of lexical chunks. But the number of the use of different categories is uneven and collocation errors are universal.Lexical chunks and writing are closely related. The total number of and the correct number of lexical chunks between higher group and lower group are significantly different. That means there is positive correlation between the use of lexical chunks and college English writing.Among these four categories of lexical chunks, the use of phrasal constraints and discourse devices are the closest to college English writing.