Chapter One Literature Review
The Lexical Approach, appealing and easy to implement, has been putforward for years, yielding a lot of writing models concerning lexical chunksrecognition. Although current writing instructions with distributedrepresentations are initially motivated by a desire to seek a model that ismore plausible than those described previously, it is only in more recenttimes that lexical chunks has been used innovatively as a crucial approach indecoding input and encoding output as well.
1.1 Lexical Chunks
Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999) call lexicalbundles and Scott(1996) refers to as clusters. A model referred as “lexicalchains” is adopted for finding a more organized structure that can representthe image attributes and their semantic meaning more adequately. A lexicalchain can be a trigger for a sequence of occurrence of words related to theimage given by teachers. A lexical chain might contain a few words to somesentences. These lexical chains are categorized as: A Page Title LexicalChain (PLC), an Image Title Lexical Chain (ITLC), an Alternate TextDescription Lexical Chain (ADLC) and finally a Caption Lexical Chainthat includes the whole extracted image caption. Normally, only theCLC may exceed the limit of one sentence, since the image caption in somecases may include a few paragraphs. All the other lexical chains are usuallyconfined to a few words or a single sentence. Palmer (1993) definedcollocation as ‘‘a succession of two or more words that must be learned asan integral whole and not pieced together from its component parts’’. As forthe process of lexical acquisition, the acquisition of L2 lexical items starts ingeneral as an input of unanalyzed wholes, or chunks. Lewis, paying attentionto this nature of chunks, proposes the Lexical Approach. Ellis (1997) arguesthat language rules and lexical information are automatically acquired by therepetition of chunking process in our memory. Since researchers adopteddifferent terms for the same object, this paper refers the most frequently usedterm “lexical chunks”.
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1.2 English Writing Instruction
English Writing instruction has developed for half a century, the mainschools are "result-oriented teaching method", "Process-oriented teaching method", "genre-based teaching method", "content teaching method" and the"task-based teaching method". There are a lot of comments on the teachingmethods of writing, so the following review briefly the focus of theseteaching methods.1) The Product-Based Approach takes the writing result as the guidance,making the student understand and paying attention to the essence of theessay and providing the systematic writing training.2) The Genre-Based Approach emphasizes on the analysis and imitationof the genre characteristics, so that the students have access to differenttypes of reading and writing.3) The content teaching method organizes teaching on different subjects,thematic content and writing skills4) The Task-Based Approach views the student as the center. It ishelpful to improve the students' actual language ability and let the studentrealize “learning through doing”. Teachers are required to be good atdesigning tasks and creating interactive environment.
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Chapter Two Theoretical Basis
Lexical chunks simplify the grammar by reproducing prefabricatedwords. The lexical chunks awareness relies on the multiple occurrences indifferent context, which closely combines knowledge with theory throughpractice. Putative evidence for the phrasal approach from acquisition,psycholinguistics, and statistical distribution supports the lexical approach.In the field of SL teaching, instructors have to take language transfer intoaccount. Chinese and English have different typological features; therefore,lexical approach can be used to reduce the negative transfer of Chinese tothe minimum amount meanwhile share the similar cognition duringprocessing.
2.1 Lexical Approach
The lexical approach to second language teachi
