An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Mind Mapping-based Lexical Chunk Approach On Students’ Writing Performance In The Continuation Task For Senior High Schools

As a new type of written expression in the NMET(National Matriculation English Test),the continuation task has received considerable attention recently.Students’ writing performance in the continuation task has also become the focus of related research.By analyzing the teaching situation,the author takes the three perspectives of language,content,and structure as the starting point to explore students’ writing performance in the continuation task.Based on that,this thesis attempts to apply the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach to the continuation task,aiming to improve students’ writing performance in the continuation task and provide some constructive inspiration for the continuation task teaching.Grounded in the schema theory,the constructivism theory,and the input hypothesis,this thesis employs the test,questionnaire,and interview as the research instruments to investigate the following three research questions:The first question is,what is the effect of the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach on students’ overall writing performance in the continuation task?The second question is,what is the effect of the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach on students’ writing performance in language,content,and structure in the continuation task?The third question is,what is the effect of the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach on students’ interest in the continuation task?This research conducts a ten-week teaching experiment,and the subjects are the second(24)and second(18)classes of a senior high school in Heyuan City,divided into experimental and control classes.The experimental class employs the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach,while the control class uses the conventional teaching approach.Both groups of subjects are given a pre-test and a prequestionnaire before the experiment and a post-test and a post-questionnaire after the experiment.In addition,at the end of the experiment,the author randomly selects three students from each of the experimental class’ s high,middle,and low levels to conduct the corresponding interview.From the analysis of the continuation task test results,the questionnaire results,and the interviews,this thesis comes to the following conclusions: compared to the control class,1)the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach leads to a significant improvement in the experimental class students’ overall writing performance in the continuation task;2)the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach results in a significant enhancement in the experimental class students’ writing performance in the three areas of language,content,and structure in the continuation task at the same time;3)The use of the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach stimulates experimental class students’ interest in in the continuation task to a certain extent,which can also reflect the positive side impact of this approach on students’ writing performance in the continuation task.This research verifies the effectiveness of the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach in the continuation task and provides some insights into the continuation task teaching.It is clearly stated in The English Curriculum Criteria for Regular High School(2017 edition,revised in 2020)that teachers should strengthen the presentation of the lexical chunks in the classroom and develop students’ awareness of lexical chunks in context.Therefore,teachers can try to apply the mind mapping-based lexical chunk approach to the continuation task teaching,guiding students to increase their awareness of the related lexical chunks and helping them to analyze the relevant scoring rubric to enhance their writing performance in the continuation task in a targeted manner.