The Application Of Lexical Chunk Approach In The Teaching Of Junior High School English Writing

Nowadays,with the influence from globalization,English learning emphasizes the integration of instrumentality and humanity.And English learning contains the fields of vocabulary,listening,reading,speaking and writing in the stage of junior high school.Among them,writing proficiency is an important measurement of English ability,which is more difficult to improve compared to the rest linguistic skills.Because writing is an integrated skill which requires both the mastery of the language and the ability of using the language.However,based on her teaching internship experiences,the author found English writing has been the throe throat for junior high school students.Many researchers are trying to find an effective way to help students with their foreign language acquisition especially English writing.Lexical chunks,which set language forms and functions in one,can be easily used in the process of language learning.Mastering a large number of lexical chunks can reduce students' burden of memorizing each word,improve students' ability of word selection,cultivate students'linguistic sense and develop their interest and confidence in writing.And thus the ides of applying lexical chunk approach into teaching was put forward,which offers a new way to solve the problems.Based on the previous study,this paper is aimed at exploring a new method which can improve the junior high school students' writing proficiency by applying the lexical chunk approach into the English writing teaching.Two research questions are addressed:(1)Whether the lexical chunk approach can enhance junior high school students' writing proficiency?And if yes,how?(2)What are the subjects'attitudes towards the lexical chunk approach?In order to answer these two research questions,the study is conducted following an experimental design which involves control and experimental group,pre-test and post-test,the treatment with experimental group and interview.The subjects of the study are two parallel classes of grade 7 chosen from Lihu Junior High School in Shenzhen,with one for the experimental group(EG)and the other for the control group(CG).In order to ensure experiment's objectivity,they are taught by the same teacher and provided with the same teaching contents during the experiment.The only difference is that the plan for teaching writing to the EG is set according to the lexical chunk approach,while the plan for teaching writing to the CG is set according to the currently used method,that is PPP model,namely presentation,practice and production.There are different modules in the Compulsory Education English Textbook published by Shanghai Education Press,so the author makes the teaching plans and guides students to understand,absorb and internalize writing-related lexical chunks to facilitate their writing proficiency in EG with totally six sessions of treatment.At the end of the experiment,the author makes a sharp comparison between the pre-test and the post-test score by using SPSS.Moreover,the interview is conducted to provide a qualitative supplement about subjects' attitudes towards the lexical chunk approach.Data analyses yield the following findings:(1)After the inter-group and intra-group comparison,it shows that the score in experimental group is obviously higher than control group.That is to say,employing the lexical chunk approach in English writing can facilitate junior high school students' writing proficiency effectively.What's more,in terms of Criteria for Writing Quality(Cohen,1994),the application of lexical chunk approach brings notable results in organization,vocabulary,and language domain,while producing very little effect on content and mechanics domain.(2)The interview results also indicates that the application of lexical chunk approach benefits students' writing a lot and most subjects responds positively to this approach.Meanwhile,some of subjects put forward their own suggestions about the application of lexical chunk approach in classroom teaching,which provide guidance for teachers to adapt their teaching in real classroom teaching.