The Application of Lexical Chunks in English Writing Teaching in Chinese Senior High School

Among the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, writing is a complex output skill, which can demonstrate the comprehensive linguistic competence of language learners. For second language learners, the main problem in writing is how to use native language and accurate expressions in order to reduce the influence of their mother tongue on their English expressions so as to make their compositions more coherent and authentic. Probably the application of lexical chunks to the teaching of English writing could solve these problems in some way. In language acquisition, a large number of lexical chunks exist in natural language, they have both grammatical features and pragmatic functions, they can speed up language processing and have great significance for the accuracy and fluency of language input and output, and thus they are considered as the ideal unit for language teaching. By means of literature review, this paper firstly summarizes the definition and classification of lexical chunks by different scholars, and then reviews the current research status of the application of lexical chunks theory in English teaching. It is found that numerous studies showed that the application of lexical chunks in writing improved high school students’ interest in English writing and their independent writing ability. Students’ writing accuracy and appropriateness, coherence and fluency are all improved. Finally, this paper discusses the advantages and functions of lexical chunks in English writing, and gives some suggestions on the application of lexical chunks in English writing teaching in Chinese senior high school.