An Experimental Study Of Lexical Approach To English Practical Writing In A Senior High School

With the reform of college entrance examination and the promulgation of new curriculum standards,students and teachers have realized the important role of writing in foreign English learning.English writing,as one of the four basic skills of English,is a comprehensive ability in language use,playing an important role in English learning.However,English writing,as an output skill in English skills,has always been a weak line owing to the long-standing shackles of old ideas and the neglect of English writing teaching.In addition,students writing confidence and interests are important emotional factors which are usually neglected by teachers,so it is of great necessity for students to have a happy mood in order to express their ideas and improve their writing skills.This is an experimental research.The subjects are two parallel classes in an ordinary high school in Shijiazhuang,Hebei Province.The two classes have the same level of writing ability and they are randomly divided into experimental class and control class.On the basis of analyzing the current situation of high school English writing,the author relies on Lewis’ s Lexical Approach teaching method,and conducted the lexical classifications of Nattinger and DeCarrico to carry out the experiment.The research uses test papers,questionnaires and interviews as research instruments.Before the experiment,the author used the pre-test questionnaire to investigate the current situation of students’ writing obstacles and use of lexical chunks.During the 12-week experiment,the author analyzed the results of pre-test and post-test test papers to explore the combined effect of the Lexical Approach teaching in high school students’ writing learning.Besides,based on the compositions of the two classes,the relationship between the lexical chunk number and students’ writing proficiency were obtained after analyzing the data by SPSS 17.0.After the experiment,an interviewed was carried out to analyze the impact of this modal on students’ mental aspects.This study answers the following three questions:1.What is the current situation of practical writing in high school language learning?2.What is the impact of lexical chunk number on students’ writing proficiency?3.Can the Lexical Approach increase students’ English writing confidence and learning interests?After the 12-week experiment,the following results were obtained after comparing the experimental data by SPSS:(1)The number of chunks in students writing in the experimental group is more than the control group,indicating that the Lexical Approach has played a certain role in the teaching process,and students’ awareness of chunks has been enhanced.(2)There is a correlation between the number of chunks in writing and writing scores.Using Lexical Approach in English writing can increase students’ use of chunks.Thereby,students writing ability has been improved to a certain extent.(3)The Lexical Approach teaching method can not only improve students ’writing scores,but also help increase students’ writing interests and enhance writing confidence.The teaching implications given by this research are:(1)Teachers should recognize the importance of the Lexical Approach and guide students to develop chunk awareness.(2)The second implication is the chunk teaching should be integrated into reading of English teaching so as to gain the goal of Reading-based Writing.(3)The third implication pays attention to giving different guidance to students of different levels in that students of different level need different kinds of guidance.