An Action Research On The Application Of Lexical Chunk Approach In English Writing Teaching From The Perspective Of Noticing Hypothesis

English writing measures the proficiency of students to use the English language comprehensively.The English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011)proposes that the basic English vocabulary knowledge that students should learn and master during compulsory education consists of idioms and fixed collocations,and students appropriately use relevant language expressions in a specific topic context.However,it is found that in English writing,most junior high school students have several writing problems such as phrase collocation errors,expressions that do not conform to English language habits,simple sentence structures or forms,and verbatim,resulting in a lack of fluency and authenticity in writing.To solve writing problems,action research was adopted to explore how to use the noticing hypothesis as a theoretical framework to design a teaching plan based on the lexical chunk approach for junior high school English writing.The following questions are proposed in the action research: 1)Can lexical chunks based instructional designs that emphasize “noticing” raise students’ awareness of lexical chunks? 2)Can lexical chunks based instructional designs that emphasize “noticing”enhance students’ writing proficiency?A class of 55 students of grade 8 from Junior Middle School attached to Guangxi Minzu University as participants took part in the action research,which lasted for 12 weeks.Besides,4 writing lessons were included in each round of action research.The first round of action research lasted for 7 weeks.During the first round of action research,the questionnaire was analyzed to find out the current situation of students’ writing.Additionally,guided by the noticing hypothesis,an English writing plan was designed based on lexical chunk approach that emphasizes “noticing” for junior high school students.Then the writing plan conducted in the first round of research was revised in accordance with the students’ mid-test scores,interviews,and teacher journals.And a new writing teaching plan was carried out in the second round of action research,which lasted for 5 weeks and the four weeks were used to implement English writing teaching then the last one week was to collect and analyze writing texts and interview and so on.The research results indicate that(1)the number of lexical chunks identified by students is gradually increasing,and it is concluded that students can consciously underline lexical chunks and learn how to identify while reading;(2)the scores of students’ writing are raising;the number of students with low grades has decreased,and the number of students with middle and high grades has increased significantly;the number of lexical chunks employed in writing gets a substantial improvement.Therefore,an English writing plan based on lexical chunk approach that emphasizes “noticing” can not only help raise students’ awareness of lexical chunks and English writing proficiency but provide references for junior high school English writing teaching.