Comparative Study of Word Chunks in English Writing between Chinese Secondary School Students and Native Speakers

By using corpuses of Chinese secondary school learners' and native speakers' writing, this paper compares and analyzes the top twenty three-word chunks in Chinese secondary school learners' and native speakers' English writing. The results show that: 1) the most frequently used word chunks in the English writing of both Chinese secondary school learners and native speakers are prepositional phrases; 2) the type of word chunks with the highest frequency in the English writing of Chinese learners is “other prepositional phrase” fragments, while the type of word chunks with the highest frequency of use in the English writing of native speakers is “noun phrases + of phrase” fragments. Based on the results of the analysis, this study gives suggestions for teaching English writing in terms of vocabulary and phrases, emphasizing that writing teaching should focus on the attention to writing context and the accumulation of writing vocabulary and writing phrases.