A Study On The Application Of Lexical Chunk Teaching Method To English Continuation Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Continuation writing,as a new question type,was first used in the college entrance examination in 2016.This type of question places higher demands on students’ ability to comprehensively use language knowledge.Nevertheless,the traditional teaching methods are no longer applicable to the continuation writing teaching;therefore,it’s urgent to discover a suitable and efficient teaching method of writing.Lexical chunk teaching method has received a lot of attention since its emergence.Lexical chunks are usually stored in the brain as a whole,with stable meaning and form,and can be directly extracted and applied when needed without grammatical analysis and generation,which can improve the authenticity,coherence and fluency of writing.So far the lexical chunk teaching method has been extensively employed in the teaching of listening,speaking,reading and writing,but relatively little research has been conducted on its application to a specific question type.Therefore,in the light of the Input Hypothesis,Output Hypothesis and Interactive Alignment Model,the author applies lexical chunk teaching method to the continuation writing teaching in senior high school,intending to explore the following two questions.(1)Can the application of lexical chunk teaching method improve students’ scores of continuation writing?(2)Can the application of lexical chunk teaching method improve students’ confidence and interest in continuation writing?Two parallel classes in Senior Two of Quanzhou Peiyuan Senior High School were chosen by the author as the research participants to solve the above problems.The two classes with a total of 80 students are divided into at random an experimental class and a control class.Lexical chunk teaching method was implemented in the experimental class for fifteen weeks,whereas the control class followed the traditional teaching method.SPSS 20.0 was used to analyze the results of the experiment and the use of lexical chunks in three continuation writing of the two classes after the experiment.Also,the results of the questionnaires in the two classes were compared before and after the experiment and the students in the experimental class were separated into three groups based on the post-test scores,with two students from each group being randomly selected for interviews.The following are the main results of the study.First and foremost,the application of lexical chunk teaching method can improve students’ achievements of continuation writing,which is mainly reflected in two aspects:Firstly,students in the experimental class have dramatically improved their grades in continuation writing compared with students in the control class.Secondly,the overall number of lexical chunks used by students in the experimental class has increased,and there are fewer Chinese expressions,collocation errors and grammatical errors,etc.Students are more likely to connect context with lexical chunks,which makes their articles more fluent,accurate and elegant.Furthermore,Students’ interest and confidence in continuation writing can be inspired by the lexical chunk teaching method,which changes students’ negative attitudes towards continuation writing and lessens their fear and resistance to writing.Learners are more willing to accept the feedback and advice from their peers and teachers,and have more confidence in future writing.To sum up,this study verifies to a certain extent that the application of lexical chunk teaching method has a positive impact on the teaching of continuation writing in senior high school,and its results have certain theoretical and practical significance.Of course there are certain limitations in this study,due to the constraints of the author’s research level and objective factors,and the author hopes that there will be further explorations in the future.