Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Research

Many students and even teachers view a good command of grammar and a largevocabulary most significant in English learning. However, it turns out that students havenot improved English considerably after many years' learning，although they have agood command of grammar and have a large vocabulary. In the past few years,abundant studies based on corpus have shown that an exclusive rule-based generativemodel cannot sufficiently account for the idiomatic, fluent，and coherent of languageproduction. Writing, as one of the most important skills of English learning, is thoughtdifficult to improve. Just as required of the essays of CET-4 and CET-6, students shouldcomplete a short essay based on a given topic in at least 120-200 words in half an hour.The essay will be judged on the quality of their writing，which includes thedevelopment of their ideas，the organization of their essays, the quality and accuracy ofthe language they use to express their ideas. Thus, apparently if students only focus onthe grammatical rules and use single words, they still cannot meet the requirements ofthe writing task or complete a good composition. The problem exists in their failure tocombine grammar and words well to express and communicate as native speakers do.This is why more and more studies have been made on the prefabricated chunk, whichis the combination of grammar and vocabulary.

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1.2 Aim of the Researc

In recent years, prefabricated chunks have been given more and more attention inChina. For example, there are researches on the main function of chunks in the secondlanguage acquisition (Lian，2001，p.84; Pu, 2003，p.438), on Chinese learners'competence of chunks (Ding & Qi，2001，p.58-65)，and on the relationship betweenlearners' accumulation of effective chunks and the fluency in speaking or writing (Jin &Lian，2002，p.88). Besides, there are studies about the comparison of the chunks appliedin essays of primary learners as well as advanced learners (Fan，2005).However, there are few studies on the relationship between the application ofchunks and the quality of the essays of CET-4 and CET-6. As a college English teacher，the author feels it necessary to carry out this study. And the present study will discussthe relationship between the number of application of chunks and the output effect inthe writing of CET-4 and CET-6. Firstly，since many college students find writing most difficult to improve, thisstudy here will share its findings about the application of prefabricated chunks inwriting practice with readers. The author does hope these findings would give someenlightenment on the writing of College English Test, and provide college students withsome suggestions for them to improve their English writing. It will help raise collegestudents' awareness and understanding of the role played by prefabricated chunks inwriting. To put it another way，if they accumulate a large amount of prefabricatedchunks, students will find it easier for them to employ appropriate words and phrases inwriting, rather than doing word-by-word translation from Chinese into English whilewriting the essays of CET4 and CET6.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Researches on Prefabricated Chunk

A great number of researches have been done on prefabricated chunks fromdifferent perspectives since the first introduction of the notion. The arguments have notbeen settled concerning the definition, categorization, functions of prefabricated chunks. In the 1970s，Becker put forward the notion of prefabricated chunks for the firsttime. He pointed out that the understanding of the whole language should be based onthe understanding of the phrase. In his viewpoint, language chunks are multi-wordlexical phenomena that exist some place between the traditional poles of lexicon andsyntax, conventionalized form-function composites that occur more frequently and havemore idiomatically determined meaning than language that is put together each time. Hesuggested that phrases, such as look after, in my opinion and so as to cannot simply beignored. In his mind, the memory, storage, output and usage of a language do not onlyrely on its separate words, but on those idiosyncratic chunks which axe the smallest unitof human language communication (Becker, 1975).Since then, there has been an enormous variety of terms used to describe much thesame text phenomenon，such as ready-made language, formulas, fixed or semi-fixedexpressions, lexicalized sentence stems, lexical phrase, and so on.

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2.2 Previous Studies on Prefabricated Chunk in Second Language Acquisition

The development of prefabricated chunks has always been important in theresearch of second language acquisition. In this part, the author will have a review ofthe previous researches on prefabricated chunks both in China and in foreign countries.The author hopes the review will shed some light on the present research and providesome enlightenment for further researches. Becker (1975) is the first linguist who puts forward the notion of chunks. He holdsthe view that chunks should not be simply ignored because of their constant occurrences.He suggests that the large number of chunks should be systematically treated. InBecker's viewpoint, people employ “ready-made frameworks on which to hang theexpression of our ideas, so that we do not have to go through the labor of generating anutterance every time we want to say something''1975，p. 121).Hakuta (1976) is the first who suggests that language acquisition is closely relatedto the learning of chunks. He points out that learners may not be able to constructsentences according to grammatical rules，but with chunks they are capable ofexpressing meanings, which are stored within the learners as large lexical items.

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Chapter Three Research Design and Methodology....... 18

3.1 Research Questions ......18

3.2 Research Methods...... 19

3.2.1 Corpus-based Approach...... 19

3.2.2 Instruments ......21

3.3 Materials in Each Part...... 21

3.4 Data Collection ......24

Chapter Four Results and Discussion...... 27

4.1 Chunks Used in Essays of CET-4 and CET-6...... 27

4.2 Chunks Employed by High-score Group ...... 35

4.3 Chunk Use and Writing Achievement...... 39

Chapter Five Conclusion ......43

5.1 Summary of Major Findings...... 43

5.1.1 Features of the Chunks Employed in Essays of CET-4 and CET-6 ......43

5.1.2 Comparison between the Chunks Employed by High-score......44

5.1.3 Relationship between Chunk Use and Writing Achievement...... 44

5.2 Implications of the Research Findings ......44

5.3 Limitations of the Research ......46

5.4 Suggestions for Further Researches...... 47

Chapter Four Results and Discussion

4.1 Chunks Used in Essays ofCET-4 and CET-6

The first research question is concerned with the general situations and features ofchunk use in the essays of CET-4 and CET-6. An overall description is presentedconcerning the use of chunks in the essays of CET-4 and CET-6, and then the focus isshifted to the chunks with high frequencies. More 2-word, 3-word, 4-word, 5-word and 6-word chunks are used in essays ofCET-6 than in CET-4. It appears that the total chunks used in the essays increase withthe elevation of college students of non-English majors' learning stage. In order toprove whether there are any statistic differences in the employment of chunks withdifferent lengths between CET-4 and CET-6 essays，Independent Samples T-test isemployed to make the comparison by adopting SPSS 13.0 software. The results areshown in the following tables.

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Conclusion

It can be found that more chunks are used in essays of CET-6 than in CET-4. Thetotal numbers of chunks used in the essays increase with the elevation of collegestudents' English learning proficiency. But there is no significant difference in theapplication of chunks between CET-4 and CET-6 essays. On the whole，college studentsshow their inadequacy of actively understanding，acquiring and memorizing chunksduring the course of English learning. And the number of chunks that students use inwriting reduces as the length of chunks increases. The numbers of two-word andthree-word chunks used in writing are much more than the numbers of four-word，five-word and six-word chunks. College students of non-English majors tend to overusetwo-word and three-word chunks and show an inadequacy of the command of longerchunks.

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Reference (omitted)