The Application Of Lexical Chunks To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Recently, theories of Lexical Approach have been adopted as a new pedagogical perspective into researches of language teaching. Lexical chunks, as the minimum unit of language input, memory, storage and output, possess both lexic'al and grammatical character. They can be stored in human's memory system as a unified whole and be retrieved directly when necessary. The application of lexical chunks to second language writing can effectively ease learners' pressure in time-limited writing, help them overcome negative transfer from their first language, increase language processing efficiency and finally raise learners' ability of writing more fluent, accurate and native-like compositions.In this research, the researcher adopts teaching of lexical chunks into process writing through teacher-learner and learner-learner interaction, while guiding the learners to identify, internalize and accumulate writing-related lexical chunks, in order to explore a new method of raising learners' ability of English writing through the bridge of "lexical chunks" between input and output of language of writing. In addition, the researcher pays extra attention to cultivating learners' learning strategy of lexical chunks in the hope of promoting learners' autonomous learning ability in English writing.The results of the research show that:1) The teaching of lexical chunks can obviously raise senior high learners' ability of writing. The amount of lexical chunks in the writing of experimental group increases saliently, with the scores surpassing those of control group a lot.2) The teaching of lexical chunks can effectively level up learners' interest in writing and their autonomous learning ability in English writing. Compared with pre-test period, learners' learning strategy in acquiring lexical chunks stimulates their desire in learning English writing and their self-confidence in learning English.