Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Present Study
Nowadays English learning is playing a very important role in the society. Most of thejobs require the employees to use English as their second language. In order to face the needof the society, college students have to find an effective way to improve their English. It isuniversally acknowledged that English writing is a central part in English acquisition.Among the speaking skill，reading skill，listening skill and writing skill，writing skill is themost complicated one. It shows learners' abilities of using the language， the ability ofhandling the language rules and the ability of arranging the words. If only the learners getthe strong ability of writing，can they use English freely and logically.Most of the college students can make a good performance on English speaking andlistening. But the English writing is their shortcoming. It is because students may improvetheir listening and speaking abilities not only in the class，but also through the movie or themusic. However students cannot get the effective way to improve their writing abilities. Sothe traditional teaching approach of English writing should be improved. The presentsituation is most of the college students fail to write a satisfactory composition in accordancewith the writing standard of CET4. Though few of them can pass CET4，their writing scoresare low. They are good at using the words and the grammar. The traditional teachingapproach puts the emphasis on the grasp of the vocabulary and grammar. Teachers tell thestudents that the grammar is the utmost important and the students also have to recite a largenumber of vocabularies. But the truth is vocabulary and grammar are just the foundation ofthe writing skill. The unlucky thing is their writing ability does not improve as they expected.They can just write some key words and make the grammar correct. The students can justuse the isolated word repeatedly. They always fail to satisfy the requirement. Their essaysare not coherent and fluent. The students do not consider about the context. They need toaccept an effective training to help them.
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1.2 The Significance of the Present Study
Most of the teachers choose to put the emphasis on the abstract rules of language to facethe test. But the more important the teachers should let the student to master how to use thelanguage successfully in appropriate contexts. The college students' writing situation is veryserious. Their essays can be seen as the combination of the words，which is not coherent andfluent. The problem even appears at their translation. They can just write out some keywords，but unable to make them into a meaningful and coherent discourse according to thecontext. In fact，writing is a very important part of the process of English study. If the studentis good at writing，their oral English would be improved, too. Because writing needs thepeople construct a logical structure in their mind. If they can write logically and fluently,they can speak it out，too. Writing also helps the learner to enhance their ability of readingcomprehension. If they know about the style of the writing, they can judge the readingmaterials easily and they can get the main idea of the passage.Above to all, it seems that writing is an isolated part of English learning. In fact，it isnot. Writing skill gets a complicated relationship between the other kills. It helps to improvethe other skills at the same time. But most of the students do not pay attention to it. So it isurgent to apply an appropriate approach to solve the problem.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 The Review of Conventional English Writing Teaching Approach
The Result Approach and the Process Approach are the most common approacheswhich are used in English writing teaching. The Result Approach is a widely used Englishwriting approach at present. Most of the English books are designed according to thisapproach. The Result Approach puts the emphasis on the coherence between vocabulariesand sentences. The final work is the most important. They pay attention to the correctness inthe composition. Teachers will give an introduction about the writing knowledge and thewriting skill firstly, then give the students some excellent compositions and let the studentsimitate them. The students will write a composition by imitating the given pattern. Thirdly,the teacher will give scores to their compositions. The common patterns are: thedevelopment process, contrast and comparison, the cause and result, classification anddefinition. The result approach can be divided into four steps. The first step is familiarization.The teacher will chose a sample, and the teacher and the students will analyze it together.The students need to leam the pattern and structure of the composition and the figure of thespeech. The second step is controlled writing. In this stage，the students' work is to substitutethe common sentences in the writing. With the teacher's guiding，the students will finish acomplete work. The third step is guided writing. In this step, students will write acomposition according to the sample writing and use the training sentences to write acomposition. The last step is free writing.
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2.2 The English Writing Teaching Approach Abroad
This kind of teaching approach pays attention to the rhetoric andthe logic of the language. The teacher will present numbers of sample compositions to guidethe students. The purpose of the teaching is let the students use the vocabularies andgrammar correctly. They can write a logical and fluent composition. A new kind ofover-subject writing approach is put forward base on the subject-centered approach. Itincludes two kind of teaching forms: The first one is to mix the writing teaching content intothe specific course. The second form is to set up an over-subject writing course in theEnglish major classes.In 2()th century, many scholars start to do the research on new teaching approaches ofwriting. Most of them do not pay attention to the rules of writing. So the writing approachgoes back to the classical rhetoric. Then the rhetoric method based on the traditional rhetoricput forward. The writing teaching approach does not pay attention to the process of writing.The final work is the most important. This kind of teaching method is the predecessor of theResult Approach.
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Chapter Three Theoretiacal Foundation........ 13
3.1 Lexical Chunks....... 13
3.2 A General Description of the Lexical Approach....... 18
3.3 The Lexical Approach and English writing....... 19
Chapter Four Experimental Procedures and Result Analysis....... 22
4.1 Research Questions....... 22
4.2 Subjects .......22
4.3 The Procedure of the Experiment .......23
4.4 Classroom Experiment in the Experimental Class....... 25
4.5 Data Collection....... 33
4.6 Results and Analysis of the Pre-questionnaire .......33
4.7 An Analysis on Writing Scores .......35
4.8 Analysisof Post-questionnaire....... 40
Chapter Five Conclusion....... 43
5.1 Major Findings.......43
5.2 Limitation of the Study .......44
5.3 Suggestion for the Future Research....... 45
Chapter Four Experimental Procedures and Results Analysis
4.1 Research Questions
There are many researchers' who are carrying out the research on the positive effect ofLexical Approach on reciting. Writing is the most difficult to master skill, because it is aprocess of output. It needs the language user to process the knowledge in their mind andexpress it out. To develop the college student's writing ability has become a major concernfor teachers. Whether the new teaching approach can produce positive effects on collegestudent's writing or not? This thesis will hypothesize the Lexical Approach can producepositive effects on college student's English writing performance. What's more，the thesisalso aimed to find out the courses of the effects. The following are the research questions:
1. According to the test data, is there any markedly improvement in the writing scoresof experimental class than the control class?
2, Does Lexical Approach have positive effect on fluency, accuracy and idiomaticityof experimental class's composition?
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Conclusion
The result of the experiment shows the scores of the experiment class are higher thanthe control class's. What's more，the number of the lexical chunk using in experiment class islarger. The experiment class can use the lexical chunk correctly. The experimental class'scompositions are fluent and coherent. The lexical chunks make the composition more nativespeak like. All of the results can improve the students' English writing skill. The result of theexperiment indicates the Lexical Approach can produce positive effects on the studentEnglish writing. The experiment gives us these major findings:Firstly, because the students store numbers of lexical chunks in their mind，the timewhich they spend on writing is less. All of the students in the experimental class can writethe argumentation within the requiring time in the post-test.Secondly，the students can write the argumentation in an idiomatic way. After the studyof lexical chunks, the students can use more institutionalized phrases. For example, do notlet the cat out of the bag. That means do not reveal the secret.Thirdly, the students can write coherently and make the argumentation organized. Sincethe students can use more sentence builders and phrasal constrains, they just need to put insome phrases or words. The structure of the sentence or the test is fixed. Their writings looksmore coherent and organized than before. The main idea and the support details are veryclear to catch.
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Reference (omitted)