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

The National English Curriculum Standards for Common Senior High School have set much higher requirements for English writing teaching since 2017.Moreover,researchers have found that the inefficient vocabulary accumulation before writing and the inefficient writing teaching approach are the important problems that hinder the improvement of English writing teaching in senior high school.The studies on lexical chunks since 1970 s have brought some new inspirations for English teaching.In 1993,Lewis put forward lexical chunk approach in language teaching.Research results have indicated that this approach can accelerate writing by combining isolated words into large meaningful units.Based on the promising beliefs on lexical chunk approach,the author applied this approach to English writing teaching in senior high school,aiming to look into the following two questions:(1)What effects does the application of lexical chunk approach have on students' English writing score?(2)What effects does the application of lexical chunk approach have on the number of lexical chunks used in students' English writing?To answer the above research questions,an experimental teaching from September 1th,2019 to January 1th,2020 was adopted in writing teaching.The research subjects are 104 Grade One students from two parallel classes(Class Two and Class Three)from the No.4 Senior High School in Kaifeng county,Henan province.Before the experiment,all the subjects were required to have a pre-test of writing a composition.The writing results in the pre-test shows that the students in the two classes are almost at the same English writing proficiency which helps to ensure the feasibility and validity of the experiment.Then Class Two was randomly assigned as the experimental class(EC)and Class Three as the control class(CC).Besides,pre-questionnaire was employed in EC and CC to know the students' writing attitude,writing problems and writing teaching expectations before the experiment.In the process of teaching,lexical chunk approach was applied to EC whereas the traditional writing teaching approach was adopted in CC.In EC,the introduction of lexical chunks,lexical chunks input strategies before writing and lexical chunks output strategies in the process of writing were taught step by step.However,in CC,knowledge of lexical chunks did not be introduced.After the experiment,the students in EC and CC were required again to have the post-test of writing a new composition.The writing results in the pre-test suggests that the students in EC have got much greater progress than the students in CC in terms of the writing score and the number of lexical chunks used in writing.Meanwhile,the data drawn from the post-questionnaire in EC and CC as well as the post-interview in EC indicate that the students in EC have developed a positive attitude toward lexical chunk approach and their awareness and ability of using lexical chunks in writing have got improved greatly.In spite of some useful findings in this thesis,the present research also suffers from many limitations.Therefore,research suggestions are recommended for the future research.