Application Of Lexical-chunk Approach To English Writing In Senior High School

The importance of lexical chunk has been widely debated by linguists, scholarsand many foreign language teachers. Lexical chunk, as the minimum unit of languageinput, memory, storage and output, refers to a special multi-lexical phenomenon, thefixed or semi-fixed formulaic frames. Lexical chunks can be stored in human’smemory system as a unified whole and be retrieved directly when necessary. Theapplication of lexical chunks to the teaching of second language writing caneffectively ease learners’ pressure and help them overcome negative transfer of theirnative language in the process of writing.In this research, the researcher applies the lexical-chunk approach into the writingteaching in order to explore a new mode to improve learners’ English writing ability,and foster learners’ autonomous learning ability. The major findings of the study areas follows:1） The teaching of lexical chunks can obviously improve senior high school learners’ability of writing. The English writing performance of the experimental group and theamount of lexical chunks used by the experimental group increase obviously thanthose of control class. The students of the experimental class have accumulated largeamounts of lexical chunks and they can retrieve them freely when using, whicheffectively improve their writing speed and their discourse organization ability.2） The teaching of lexical chunks reduce the students’ writing difficulty and theiranxiety in writing as well, which effectively enhances learners’ interest in writing andtheir autonomous learning ability. The pre-test and post-test results prove thatlearners’ learning strategy in acquiring lexical chunks stimulates their desire inlearning English writing and their self-confidence in learning English, increaseslanguage processing efficiency and finally raises learners’ ability of writing morefluently.