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

The reform of new curriculum standard not only refers that one ofthe objective of senior English curriculum is to pay attention to students’ability of using English to think and express, but also put forward newrequirements for language skills and writing. Because of the acceleration ofglobalization process, it becomes more and more important for students tostudy English very well. As one of the four important abilities of English,writing is not only a path for further learning and communicating, but alsocan fully demonstrate English comprehensive ability. Additionally, the scoreof writing in the NMET occupies a large proportion. However, there aresome problems existing in students’ compositions, such as: theircompositions have mistakes in collocations and their compositions arelacking in coherence and accuracy. They are not interested in Englishwriting and haven’t enough confidence in writing a composition. Therefore,the author attempts to identify whether the new teaching-method can helpimprove their writing score and develop their interest to writing.Lexical chunks approach, based on Michael Lewis theory: Languageconsists of grammatical lexis-not lexicalized grammar, advocate making theLC the core of teaching. These Lexical chunks are semi-fixed and fixedmulti-word or sentences which are frequently occur. They are the unity ofgrammatical rules, semantic meanings and pragmatic contexts. Chunks canenhance students writing performance, which contributes to the fluency,appropriateness of language and coherence of their text.The author applied LC to English writing teaching and put forwardthree hypotheses:1this method can improve students writing score andnumber of LC;2this method can increase their awareness of LC input andoutput;3this method can develop their interest and confidence towardwriting. This experiment was carried out in a senior middle school, in Taiyuan.Two classes of senior one were chosen, with one as control group and one asexperimental group. The author acted as the teacher in both classes. Theexperiment lasted for about one term, with the control group being taught intraditional way and the experimental group being taught in the new teachingapproach. Before the experiment, a pre-test was carried out in both groupsand a pre-questionnaire was conducted in experimental group. After theexperiment, a post-test was taken in both groups and post-questionnaire wasconducted only in experimental group. The author also had an interviewwith students in experimental group.All the data were collected and analyzed. The results show that: Afterthe experiment, students of experimental group not only use more LC andtheir writing score have great improvement, but also develop the interest inEnglish writing and increase the awareness of LC input and output.