An Empirical Study Of Lexical Approach To Non-english Major’s Writing From The Perspective Of Corpus Linguistics

There is no doubt that writing as a productive language skill plays a significant role in English learning and teaching; however, the writing competence of Chinese non-English majors is far from satisfactory and needs to be improved. Therefore, it is imperative to enhance students’ English writing skill.Recently, along with the rapid development of corpus linguistics, many scholars observe the fact and put forward the concept of “lexical chunks” that consists of traditional grammar, semantic meanings and language context. Lexical chunks as a teaching unit of English writing are likely to greatly boost the efficiency of language competence and to raise the fluency and accuracy of language expression. However, at present, the majority of the researches of the lexical approach still focus on theoretical discussions while the empirical studies are not quite popular, and research subjects are mostly English-majors instead of non-English majors. Furthermore, the lexical chunk approach and English writing are rarely seen to be put in the same frame with this new researching method. Therefore, assisted by the textbook corpus of “New Horizon College English”, this study intends to explore, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the influence of writing of the lexical approach on non-English majors from the perspective of corpus linguistics through empirical research based on the “Input Hypothesis” and “Affective Filter Hypothesis” of second language acquisition theories and the theory of cognitive psychology.The study first discusses some aspects of lexical chunks, such as definition, classification and characteristics as well as analyses the related research achievement at home and aboard. The advantages and disadvantages of English writing methods are explored as a basement to designs the six steps of the writing process—prewriting, draft, peer review, revise, teacher assessment, final draft. Meanwhile a platform is established which includes five major modules: the related corpus, teacher-student interaction, information announcement, writing training feedback and writing assessment, in an effort to find out a possible way to effectively improve English writing competence of non-English majors.Taking the experiment as the core and supplemented by questionnaires and individual interviews, the research subjects of this study involve two parallel classes majoring in Chinese and Literature at a university in Fujian Province. Such hypotheses are proposed as if the lexical chunk approach from the perspective of corpus linguistics improve English writing competence of the learners; in what aspects of can the learners acquire their chunk knowledge if the improvement of the competence of the application of lexical chunks can be achieved; in what aspects can the learners improve their English writing competence if the improvement achieved. The traditional teaching method is performed for the control class and learners improve writing competence with drilling exercises after each unit. The lexical approach is emphasized for the experimental class in writing practice so that it is possible for the learners to query, identify and construct rich meanings of lexical chunks, to cultivate their consciousness in writing and develop their interest and autonomous learning ability. Data originate from three sources: statistical test of English comprehensive competence and writing competence for the two classes before and after experiment; percentages of questionnaires from the experimental class; and text data of personal interviews.Four main points are revealed by empirical research. Firstly, the writing competence of the experimental class has gained greater improvement than that of the control class by horizontal comparison of the two classed after experiment. Secondly, the experimental class grew stronger lexical consciousness and became more reasonable in textual organization by contrasting their competence of writing before and after experiment. Thirdly, the experimental class was superior to the control class in the poly-words and collocations by analyzing their lexical chunks competence before and after experiment, but the advantage in the institutionalized expression and sentence builders are not obvious. Fourthly, there were significant differences in lexical chunks features and syntactic structures while significant changes were not found in task completion and structure layout between the experimental class and the control class by comparing each item of English writing after experiment. In addition, it was found that nearly 80% of the learners were satisfied with the usage of corpus, teaching plans of lexical chunk and the platform of English writing by the questionnaire. The related data of five volunteer interviewers also showed that learners were willing to strengthen their learning and training in lexical chunks and writing. The final conclusions could be drawn: the lexical approach could effectively improve the writing competence of non-English majors from the perspective of corpus linguistics.In addition, some deficiencies are found in the empirical study: firstly, only the explicit teaching method is employed because of the vast number of English lexical chunks; secondly, it is a new challenge for learners to master the corpus related search and analysis skills; thirdly, limitations not only lies in the small samples, short experimental period but the regional and major constraints as well.The purpose of this study is to further enhance learners’ lexical consciousness, cultivate learners’ autonomous learning ability, promote the teaching reform of English language and develop more and fuller multi-mode teaching corpus. The lexical approach from the perspective of corpus linguistics provides a new research method and gradually evolves into one of the research trends of the language teaching in the future.