Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

As an important output skill, writing plays an important role in language learning, andit is also the main way to express feelings and ideas. In 2011, the new curriculum standardwas issued, and it offered some writing requirements for junior middle school students(JMSS). For example, students can use English to express their views or opinions fluentlyand accurately, they can form the normative writing habits. But in fact，students’ writingabilities are far from dissatisfaction. In the course of writing, they feel it hard to write outaccurate, coherent and authentic contents, so they usually form the Chinese meaning atfirst, and then try to find English equivalents for Chinese words in their mind and finallycombine them piece by piece to construct English sentences. Sometimes they have to giveup their original ideas because they fail to find the English equivalents.The questions above show that there are some obstacles between input and output.When students begin to write, they can’t use the vocabulary that they need to express theirideas effectively and immediately. How to overcome these obstacles is still a problem.Experiments conducted by Ding Yanren & Qi Yan (2005) and Li Taizhi (2006) proved thatthe application of Lexical Chunks Approach could build bridge for language input andoutput, which can facilitate English writing.Lexical chunks, as the minimum unit of language input, memory, storage and output,possess both lexical and grammatical characters and have expansive prospect on Englishwriting. They are the unity of grammar rules, semantics meanings and pragmatic contextand have fixed forms. Many psycholinguists discovered that a lot of prefabricated patternshave been stored in memory and these lexical units include more information than isolatedwords, and they are composed of several words and can be stored in human’s memorysystem as a unified whole and be retrieved and extracted directly when necessary. Usinglexical chunks can make students spend little time making sentences with grammaticalrules and reduce their pressure in time-limited writing. Meanwhile, using lexical chunkscan make students’ writing more idiomatical, accurate and genuine.

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1.2 Research Significance and Questions

Lexical Chunks are known as the composites of form and function, which have beencaught more and more attention. Lots of researchers are interested in the functions oflexical chunks in language learning, and they also concern about the important role lexical chunks perform in improving learners’ productive skills. In China, Li Taizhi (2006) saidthat as an effective way of acquiring words and expressions, Lexical Chunks Approachenjoyed its own advantages in improving business English writing. And Ding Yanren & QiYan (2005) made a research on the use of formulaic language as a predictor of secondlanguage oral and written performance and the results showed that the functions of lexicalchunks in writing and speaking are apparent. Recently, some researchers have consideredthe relations between lexical chunks and English writing proficiency and they can facilitatethe foreign language acquisitions and offer insights into the understanding of the role oflexical chunks. However, these researches are almost for the college students and seldomon the JMSS, so the significance of the thesis is to explore and examine the theoreticalfeasibility and detect if it is possible to apply the Lexical Chunks Approach to JMSEwriting teaching.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Related Researches on Lexical Chunks

For a long time, researchers had viewed the vocabulary as single words. As time goeson, this view has been inappropriate, because many researches found that vocabularycovers many units which are larger than individual words. Many linguists paid moreattention to that unit, and named it as chunks, also known as lexical chunks.In 1976, Becker first offered the term “Lexical Chunks”. He said “our expression is touse the prefabricated patterns to express ideas, and we don’t need to use the words to formthe grammar structure.” Pawley and Syden named it “sentence sterms”.Altenberg found that about 70% of daily oral English are formed by prefabricatedpatterns. Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) wrote Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching,referring to the language fluency which is decided by the quantity of lexical chunks inlearners’ brains rather than productive grammar rules. People can express fluently by usingthe lexical chunks and they didn’t consider the lexical chunks as the opposite component ofgrammatical abilities, but the transition between the grammatical competence and languageapplication.The theory of Lewis depends on the Lexical Chunks Approach. As far as he isconcerned, language is made up of grammaticalized lexis, rather than lexicalized grammar.Multi-word chunks make up language, what’s more, the development of languageacquisition and the improvement of communication abilities are achieved by enrichingstudents’ lexical chunks, collocation abilities and mastering the essential vocabulary andlanguage structure effectively. The key to language teaching is to raise students’ perceptionof lexical chunks and train the ability of using lexical chunks.

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2.2 Lexical Chunks in English Writing

To understand the importance of lexical chunks in English writing, at first, peopleshould understand writing. Writing not only exists in the field of literary creation, but also occurs widely in thefield of applied writing, including Economic Writing, Advertising Writing, Legal Writing，Document Writing and so on. American futurist John Naisbitt declared in his book BigTrend：In the society with more and more intensive characters, reading and writing skillsare more important than ever. The “writing skills” here mainly refers to the applied writingrather than the literary creation. Since the 19th century, many universities in America have adopted subject-centeredwriting teaching method. This method emphasizes the rhetoric, logic and language, anduses a lot of model essays in class to guide students to improve inner logic, grammar,sentence patterns, words, usage, and the correctness of the style and expression skills.In the early 20th century, the Product Writing Approach dominates English teaching.This approach determines success or failure according to the writing products, whichmakes most teachers focus on the technical details of writing, such as the format of thearticle, the words spelling and the grammar structures of the sentences, etc.

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Chapter 3 Research Methodology .....26

3.1 Research Subjects ........26

3.2 Purpose of the Research ....26

3.3 Research Hypotheses .........27

3.4 Research Instruments ........27

3.5 Experimental Procedures ........27

3.6 Data Collection.......34

Chapter 4 Data Analysis.........35

4.1 Analysis of Questionnaire Results.......35

4.2 Analysis of Compositions and Lexical Chunks Quantity .....36

Chapter 5 Conclusion .......40

5.1 Main Findings ........40

5.2 Teaching Revelations .........41

5.3 Research Limitations and Recommendations for Further Researches .......42

Chapter 4 Data Analysis

4.1 Analysis of Questionnaire Results

Before answering the questionnaire, the teacher described the papers, emphasized thatstudents should answer the questionnaire truthfully according to the daily learning, so thesurvey results can truly reflect the real situation of the students with high reliability.In order to find out the problems existing in JMSS’ English writing, the researcherconducted a questionnaire survey between the students in CC and EC. The questionnairecontents (see Appendix 1) and the results are as follows:This questionnaire consists of l2 choices and two short-answer questions. QuestionOne and Question Two aim at the importance of English writing. Question Three, QuestionSeven and Question Eight aim at students’ difficulties they met in English writing.Question Four, Question Five, Question Six and Question Nine mainly investigatestudents’ perceptions and attitude on English writing. Question Ten and Question Twelvemainly aim at vocabulary learning. Question Eleven is to understand whether students cangrasp the learning methods of English writing. The purpose of short-answer questions is tolet students put forward some problems they meet in the process of writing English andsome suggestions on the teacher’s writing teaching.

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Conclusion

This thesis is based on the Lexical Chunks Theory, which applies to the Englishwriting teaching, and actively explores a way to improve the writing abilities of JMSS. Theimplementation of the Lexical Chunks Approach is divided into three stages—input stageof lexical chunks by reading; output stage of lexical chunks by writing; consolidation stageof lexical chunks after writing. In every stage of teaching, the researcher use thecorresponding teaching strategies, and actively guide students to enrich the quantity oflexical chunks and master the application methods of lexical chunks. At the same time, theadvantage of process writing guides the students to discuss and learn lexical chunksmutually, improve the output effect. Through the teaching of the three stages, theresearcher successfully construct the bridge—“lexical chunks” between the writing of“input” and “output”, so that the students can get the accurate and idiomatic expressions,coherent organization and structure, and improve the students’ writing abilities. At thesame time, the researcher consciously guide the students to learn lexical chunks strategies,cultivate their autonomous learning abilities to lay a solid foundation for sustainabledevelopment of students.

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Reference (omitted)