| Words are the main carrier of meaning in communication. Therefore, the vocabulary size directly influences communication. From this sense, the size of vocabulary represents one’s language proficiency. Years of English teaching experience prove that majority of college low English achievers lack sufficient vocabulary stock and have difficulty in writing. Abundant researches have been done on how to expand the vocabulary size by ESL researchers and teachers, but little concern was paid on how to improve the vocabulary size and writing proficiency of the college low English achievers. Thus, this research subjects are the college low English achievers, task-based lexical approach is proposed and employed to testify the effects on lexical performance of the low English achievers’writing.This experimental study, on the basis of the theories proposed by Michael Lewis and task-based approach, is carried out in order to explore the effectiveness on lexical performance of low English achievers’writing by incorporating the task-based lexical approach into College English lessons, and propose the task-based lexical approach with a hope to better lexical performance of low English achievers’writing.This thesis consists of six parts. Chapter One is an overview of the list of this study so that a general idea as to the reason and the purpose will be presented. Chapter Two provides an overall review of theoretical basis as well as theoretical and empirical findings in the relevant fields. Chapter Three and Chapter Four present the methodology of the study and the research subjects, give a detailed account of how the present study was designed and conducted, and how the data were collected and analyzed.20sophomores from two natural intact classes in Suqian College of Jiangsu Province were chosen as subjects and designated randomly as the experimental group and the control group. The20subjects were sophomores who failed the CET4in the first college year and took classes with same guideline of the two natural classes. With the same College English textbook and under the same consistent guidance of syllabus conducted by the same English teacher, the author carried out an experimental study that lasted32weeks. During the process of the experiment, the task-based lexical approach, was applied to the experimental group, while the traditional approach to the control group. The task-based lexical approach, based on task approach, stresses the identification, acquisition, application and accumulation of lexical chunks, enables students to establish the awareness of lexical chunks and apply them consciously. After the duration of2academic semesters, literally32weeks, the20subjects’related data are sorted out from the natural intact classes. With the help of SPSS20.0, The results of the study showed that in the pretest, all the subjects demonstrates no awareness of using lexical chunks and the writing performance are relatively low, while in the posttest the experimental group dramatically outperformed the control group in the lexical performance and writing proficiency, and also the fluency, accuracy and diversity of writing in the experimental group were far more better the control group. The results give support to the author’s hypothesis that the task-based lexical approach can effectively improve college low English achievers’writing’s lexical performance. Last, the conclusion part proposed the task-based lexical approach derived from the present study for both teachers and students. It endeavors to conclude the thesis, to summarize the major findings of the study, to point out its limitations and to make suggestions for future research.In summary, Language learning is largely lexical learning for language learners. The low vocabulary level is a key factor which affects the language acquisition. Therefore, it is of great significance for English teachers first to focus their attention on vocabulary instruction as well as the insufficient vocabulary stock of the low English achievers, then to adopt appropriate approach to enhance the vocabulary acquisition and writing competence of the low English achievers. The task-based lexical approach is a feasible and effective way to improve college students’writing proficiency and greatly facilitates college English teaching. |
