The Application Of Lexical-chunk Approach In English Writing Teaching In Polytechnic Institutes

Nowadays, linguists and English teachers have paid much attention to English pedagogy inorder to improve students’English writing proficiency in China. Although many approacheshave been used to improve their English writing level, it is still a difficult task for most studentsto write good compositions.On the basis of the theory of lexical chunks proposed by Michael Lewis, this experimentalstudy is carried out in order to explore the effectiveness of facilitating students’writingproficiency by incorporating the lexical-chunk approach into English lessons and then the authorproposes some pedagogical implications to provide a new insight into English writing teaching.In the experiment, 96 sophomores from two natural intact classes in Rizhao Polytechnicwere chosen as subjects and designated randomly as the experimental group and the controlledgroup. They were taught the same textbook by the same teacher under the same consistentguidance of syllabus. During the process of the experiment, the lexical-chunk approach wasapplied to the experimental group and the traditional teaching approach to the controlled group.The students of the controlled group were instructed without any reference to the concept and theknowledge of lexical chunks. They were asked to write a composition respectively at thebeginning and the end of the third semester as the contents of the pretest and the posttest toexplore whether the lexical-chunk approach is greatly helpful to improve the students’writingmarks. The statistical analysis in the pretest and posttest were obtained with the help of SPSS 13.The results of the tests showed that the students of the experimental group got higher scores andused more lexical chunks in writings than the students of the controlled group did. Thecompositions of the students of the experimental group were more fluent and proficient. What ismore, the author made questionnaires and interviews towards the students of the experimentalgroup. The findings showed that the students’chunk awareness had been raised and they couldapply the lexical chunks they had learned into their writings effectively. Their ability of Englishwritings had been improved to some extent.The results give support to the author’s hypothesis that the lexical-chunk approach caneffectively improve students’writing proficiency as well as their chunk competence in the process of writing. Therefore, the lexical-chunk approach, based on the teaching of lexicalchunks, is a feasible and effective way to facilitate students’writing proficiency and at the sametime the author points out a new direction of development for English writing teaching inpolytechnic institutes.