The Empirical Study of Lexical Approach in College English Classroom Teaching and its Effects on Art Major’s Writing

Jianwei Wang

doi:10.5539/elt.v14n12p227

Abstract

Lexical approach has been believed to be an ideal way for language teaching and learning, but few empirical studies are concerned with the effects that lexical approach has on art major students&rsquo; English writing. This study aims to explore the effects the lexical has on writing through an experiment in which the lexical approach was applied in an English class for art majors. All of them attended the pre-test before the experiment and the post-test after the experiment. Through analyzing the data of composition scores and the number of lexical chunks used in compositions by paired sample t tests, this study finds that the lexical approach has positive effect on art majors&rsquo; writing proficiency and it is quite feasible and effective to apply the lexical approach to college English teaching, especially in English writing teaching.&nbsp; &nbsp;

Highlights

Writing is one of the four basic skills of language
Statistics in CET-4 and 6 (CET is short for College English Test, which is a very popular and reliable test to measure college students’ English proficiency in China) show that college students’ writing proficiency stagnates and remains at the same level while their overall performance manifests a tendency of improvement (Qi, 2005)
The present study aims to answer the following questions through applying the lexical approach to college English reading and writing course for art-major students: 1) What differences do students show in the use of lexical chunks in writing after the application of lexical approach in their English classroom? 2) Is there elt.ccsenet.org

Summary

Introduction

Writing is one of the four basic skills of language. The teachers and students in China have devoted much time and energy to improving their writing proficiency. Statistics in CET-4 and 6 (CET is short for College English Test, which is a very popular and reliable test to measure college students’ English proficiency in China) show that college students’ writing proficiency stagnates and remains at the same level while their overall performance manifests a tendency of improvement (Qi, 2005). This is even worse for art major students whose English proficiency is much lower than non-art majors. It is really needed to find a way to better art major students’ writing

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Conclusion