The Application Of The Lexical Chunks In College English Listening Instruction

In recent years many researchers have been aware of the formulaic nature of language. And they have believed that lexical chunks can be stored and retrieved quickly. Researchers also have proved that lexical chunks also play great roles in first and second languages acquisition. Therefore, the lexical approach has been explored as a new way to instruct language teaching. The lexical approach rejects the traditional way overemphasizing grammar, and emphasizes the crucial role of chunks in communication and acquisition. Lewis (1993) have suggested that an important part of language acquisition is the ability to comprehend and produce lexical chunks as unanalyzed wholes, or "chunks," and that those chunks consequently become the raw data by which students perceive patterns of language. Therefore, the lexical chunk is the core concept of the lexical approach.Lexical chunks are gradually applied in language teaching, especially in the aspect of writing and speaking proficiency. However, few researches, especially few empirical researches have been conducted on the aspect of lexical chunks to the listening proficiency. Listening is one of the most important skills of language learning. And it also closely linked with lexical chunks. By applying lexical chunks in listening, students may ease the processing burden by the expansion of short-term memory capacity; interpret speaker's intention better; predict some subsequent information of a lexical chunk; and understand a text better by the recognition of lexical chunks as macro/micro-organizers.This paper attempts to investigate the effect of lexical chunks on college listening comprehension. Students of two classes, majored in Music Performance, Grade 2009, from Chongqing Normal University participate this research. At the beginning of this research, the result of pre-test indicates no significant differences between the two classes. Those two classes are randomly chosen as the experiment class and the controlled class. Then, the students of the experiment class are instructed by lexical chunks in a period of 12 weeks, while the students of controlled class are taught by the traditional way of listening teaching. At the end of this project, the post-test result checks that there is a significant difference in listening test scores between the two classes. Questionnaire I and Questionnaire II are handed out to the experiment class at the beginning and at the end of the experiment, respectively, to prove that students'knowledge about lexical chunks and the awareness using lexical chunks in listening are enhanced through lexical chunks instruction.Four research questions are proposed in order to investigate the effect of lexical chunks on listening comprehension.1) Can lexical chunks instruction enhance students'knowledge about lexical chunks?2) Can lexical chunks instruction enhance students'awareness of using lexical chunks in listening comprehension?3) Can lexical chunks instruction facilitate students'listening comprehension?4) What are students'attitudes towards lexical chunks instruction after the experiment?According to the analysis of pre-test, post-test, questionnaires and group discussions, those research questions may be answered as follows.1) Lexical chunks instruction can enhance most students'knowledge about lexical chunks2) Lexical chunks instruction can enhance most students'awareness of using lexical chunks in listening comprehension.3) Lexical chunks instruction can generally facilitate students'listening comprehension.4) Most students are favorable for lexical chunks instruction after the experiment. Those results implicate that teachers may apply lexical chunks in listening instruction. Firstly, teachers may raise students'awareness of the wide existence of the lexical chunks in English. Then the listening may be taught with the help of lexical chunks. Thirdly, the importance of accumulation of lexical chunks should also be emphasized. Finally, the lexical chunks should also be practiced in all kinds of skills. In addition, limitations and suggestions for future research are also discussed at the end of the study.