The Application Of The Theory Of Lexical Chunks To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

Writing,as one of the language skills,has been catching more and more attention in junior high school English classes.By analyzing the direction of Senior High School Entrance Examination(SHSEE),we know that the degree of length and difficulty in WRITING SECTION of SHSEE papers has been raised significantly.This is a big challenge for junior high school English teachers.Currently,in junior high school students' writing,there are a lot of problems such as ungrammatical expressions,improper words choice,and even Chinglish and illogical structures.Although some students have acquired the knowledge of grammar rules and a number of words,they cannot apply them properly and effectively in their writing.The above-mentioned long-standing problems made it necessary and urgent to study how to cultivate English writing competence among junior high school students.The.educators abroad and in China have been probing and made a lot of meaningful trials,expecting to find solution from teaching methods.The theory of lexical chunks is becoming one of the focuses of the research in this field,which is like a milestone in a certain sense.A lexical chunk is the minimum unit of both language input and output.Such units constitute fundamental elements of English writing through integrating grammar rules and words.According to the theory of lexical chunks,individual words are not the units of language learning which includes memorization,reservation,output and application;the minimum unit of language communication is those set or semi-set chunks.Theoretically,applying chunks in English writing teaching will be helpful to raise learners' writing competence.A chunk is the unity of function and form,so it can be regarded as a ready-made language structure.Comparing with the traditional methods of language learning,including the sheer memorization of individual words and sentence patterns,teaching chunks is more effective for students to work out high quality composition in relative short period.What's more,teaching chunks is able to raise language learners' interest and motivate them to work autonomously.In the existing literature,few in the countryside junior high school as the research object,the author's school is a rural school,left-behind children in the majority,the author hopes to be able to improve English writing ability finding the effective way to find effective teaching model for teachers.The subjects of my experiment are from two classes of Grade 8 which were selected at random.The period of experiment was set 16 weeks.In order to ensure the scientificalness of experiment procedure and the accuracy of data,I named one class Experimental Class(EC)and the other Contrast Class(CC).There are 48 students with nearly equal number of the genders in each class.Both classes were taught with the same textbooks by the same teacher,however,the teaching methods were quite different.In pre-test and post-test,we were scoring all students' papers with the same criteria.As for the teaching method,I applied the theory of lexical chunks in EC,guiding students to recognize,comprehend,solidify and use chunks,while I adopted traditional method as usual in CC.The design of pre-test and post-test was used to check the effect of different teaching methods.Besides,I designed questionnaire and interview in order to gain the information of the learners,subjective feelings about the teaching methods the received.Finally,we analyzed the experiment data with the software of SPSS 16.0.The results of my experiment are as the following:(1)The data analysis of pre-tests showed that there were no significant differences of writing marks between EC and CC.(2)The data analysis of post-tests showed that there were certain differences of writing marks between EC and CC.The average marks in EC were much higher than those in CC.(3)Chunk-based teaching can effectively cultivate junior high school students' interest in English writing.The analysis of anonymous questionnaire survey and interviews showed that the students”interest and self-confidence of English writing was raised greatly in EC,and these students expressed their willingness to practice writing autonomously.Through the teaching,the author proves the practical value of chunk-based teaching in the teaching of English written expression in rural junior middle school,which can significantly improve the teaching quality of junior high school.Refine teaching method,the process will be divided into four stages,the author constructed in written form between the language "input" and "output" bridge "chunk",the author consciously guide the students to learn words related to learning strategies,cultivation of students' autonomous learning ability,for the chunk teaching provides reference used in the actual teaching cases.