An Empirical Study On The Application Of Lexical Chunks To English Writing In Senior High School

The four basic skills of English are listening,speaking,reading and writing,among which “writing” is the most important way of language output.Students are required to master a certain vocabulary and use vocabulary skillfully in writing.These years,high school English writing has been concerned by everyone,but the English writing level of high school students is not ideal.Common problems in writing are lack of vocabulary,chinglish flooding and inappropriate use of vocabulary.Therefore,scholars have been exploring new composition teaching methods to strengthen the English writing level of senior school students in an effective way.In 1993,Michael Lewis put forward the teaching method of lexical chunks,and believed that lexical chunks were the focus of language learning.Lexical chunks are a special kind of vocabulary,which can not only effectively reduce the burden on students,but also greatly improve the fluency of English writing.The purpose of this paper is to apply chunk teaching method to high school English teaching and explore the influence of chunk teaching method on high school English writing ability.In this thesis,the author conducted an empirical study to verify the application of chunks to English writing.Therefore,the research questions were listed below:Question1: How can lexical chunks be used to improve students' English writing competence in senior high school?Question2: What effects will application of the lexical chunks bring about in English writing in senior high school?This experiment took 98 high school students as the research object and lasted for about five months.Before the experiment,we learned about students' current writing status through questionnaire survey.During the experiment,the control class continued the previous English teaching without any change,and the experimental class used the lexical block teaching method.After the experiment,the authoranalyzed the score of the students' pre-test and post-test compositions and the number of word blocks,and summarized the experimental results by combining the questionnaire and interview of the students in the experimental class.The experimental results confirmed the hypothesis that the teaching method of lexical chunks could improve high school English writing ability.The number of lexical chunks that the students in the EC used in their compositions and the score of the post-test composition were significantly higher than those in the CC.In addition,the author found that the teaching method of lexical chunks improved students' interest and confidence in writing,and helped to improve students' fluency,accuracy and coherence in English writing.