EFL Learners’ Use of Lexical Chunks on the GEPT Writing Test

• Main Authors: Sun, CHING-YU, 孫晶昱
• Other Authors: WU, KAI-LIN
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/2ru2kw

碩士 === 東海大學 === 外國語文學系 === 106 === Chunking refers to a phenomenon that human mind tends to store and retrieve the lexical phrases as whole units (Pawley & Syder, 1983). Research has confirmed the chunking phenomenon in language use by native speakers and found a significant amount of lexical chunks existing in native speakers’ verbal expressions. Research has also shown that L2 speakers, compared to L1 speakers, have limited use of lexical chunks in their L2 oral production. Given that a mastery of lexical chunks is an indication of high level of language proficiency, discussions have been made on how to help L2 learners increase use of lexical chunks in order to facilitate fluency and accuracy in speaking. Few studies, however, have been carried out to investigate EFL learners’ use of lexical chunks. The proposed study aims to examine and compare use of lexical chunks by Taiwanese EFL learners who received different ratings in a writing test situation. One hundred and eighty writing samples of the GEPT intermediate level were obtained from the test developer LTTC (The Language Training & Testing Center), with 45 samples from each rating group (two to five). The researcher and another English teacher examined the samples, identified and manually classified the lexical chunks into the following categories: (1) polywords, (2) collocations, (3) institutionalized expressions, (4) phrasal constraints, (5) sentence builders (Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; Michael Lewis, 1993). Comparisons were made among samples that received different ratings from two to five. One-way ANOVA was carried out to examine the difference among Taiwanese EFL learners who received different ratings on the GEPT writing test in terms of their use of lexical chunks. The results showed that firstly, there is a significant difference among Taiwanese EFL learners who received different ratings on the GEPT writing test in terms of the total number and the number of different categories of lexical chunks. Secondly, by looking at each category of lexical chunks, the EFL learners in the 5-point group used more lexical chunks than other groups. Those in the 2-point group, on the other hand, used the fewest lexical chunks. Thirdly, among different ratings, phrasal constraints were the most frequently used category of lexical chunks, followed by collocations, polywords, and sentence builders. Institutionalized expressions were the least used one of the five categories. Lastly, a significant difference was found between the passing groups (4-point and 5-point) and the failing groups (2-point and 3 point). Based on the findings, pedagogical implications were discussed and future research was suggested.