A Study Of The Current Situation Of The Use Of Lexical Chunks In The Writing Of Senior High School Students

Lexical chunk,as a special form of language that combines vocabulary,meaning and grammar together,it has huge influence on English learning and is of great importance.In recently years,great attention has been paid to lexical chunk and chunk approach by the scholars and the researchers gradually,which covers the aspects of listening,speaking,reading and writing.However,of all the researches about lexical chunk and writing,most of them are related to the impacts of lexical chunks on English writing or the relationship between lexical chunks and writing.The researches on the analysis of the use of lexical chunk in English writing are relatively few,and they mainly aim to investigate the students in college or the students of higher levels.Therefore,the students in middle school are neglected to some extent.This research chooses the students in senior high school as the research subjects,aiming to analyze the present situation of the use of lexical chunks in the writing of senior high school students and to try exploring the possible factors that influence the use of lexical chunks in compositions.Also,some practical suggestions are provided for English teaching practice.The research methodologies like literature research approach,textual analysis and review approach are adopted,and SPSS is used to analyze the data.The data is collected from the mid-term examination of the students in grade two in WuHai No.10 Middle School,including the compositions of 240 students from 6 classes.Then,the interviews of 12 students and 6 teachers are conducted based on the analysis of textual analysis.Finally,four research questions are answered,and they are:(1)What is the distribution of four types of lexical chunks in the compositions of high school students?(2)Is there any difference in the use of lexical chunks between liberal arts and science classes? If yes,what’s the difference?(3)Is there any difference in the use of lexical chunks between high score group and low score group? If yes,what’s the difference?(4)What are the possible factors influencing the use of lexical chunks of high school students?After the data collected has been analyzed,four conclusions are drawn and they are:(1)Of all the four types of lexical chunks,collocation is used most in the students’ compositions,followed by sentence frame,poly word and institutional utterance;(2)There is siginificant difference of the use of lexical chunks in writing between the students in liberal art classes and science classes,which exists in the use of the use of poly word,collocation and sentence frame;(3)There is siginificant difference of the use of lexical chunks in writing between the students in high score group and low score group,which exists in the use of the use of poly word,collocation,institutionalized utterance and sentence frame;(4)The factors that have a influence on the use of lexical chunks in senior high school students’ writings mainly include the learners’ previous learning experience,the features of lexical chunks,ways of learning,learning motivation,learning attitude,awareness,language input and language competence of students and teachers’ teaching.The research makes some supplements to the previous studies on lexical chunks and writing,and also provides some feasible advice for the teaching practice.Through the findings and implications of the study,the writer hopes that the teachers’ attention of lexical chunks can be aroused,thus making the students enhance the awareness of learning and using lexical chunks.