The Application Of Lexical Chunk Approach In English Reading Teaching Of Senior High School

Reading is an essential part of English learning and teaching in senior high schools,and it is important to cultivate students’ reading competence and stimulate their reading interest.Because of the higher demands for the Criterion of New English Curriculum issued by the Ministry of Education in 2017,more and more researchers try their best to find out a suitable way to improve students’ reading level.By reading quite a number of document literatures,the author finds that students have difficulty in learning English reading in senior high schools.For example,students cannot grasp the gist of the passage after reading,which means in the process of English learning,reading has always been in a weak position.Lexical Chunk Approach,put forward by Michael Lewis in 1993,aims to combine vocabulary and grammar,trying to break the traditional dichotomy between them.According to the features and teaching principles of Lexical Chunk Approach,it divides while-reading into five parts,which are finding out lexical chunks from reading passage,classifying these lexical chunks,analyzing important lexical chunks,doing relevant exercises and comprehending the passage.From collecting relevant studies,the author finds that applied researches on the application of Lexical Chunk Approach of English reading teaching mostly focus on college English teaching,yet researches that regard senior high schools as experimental subjects are very few.Besides,many relevant studies mainly focus on reading speed,grade and reading competence instead of involving in solving specific reading questions.This thesis tries to apply Lexical Chunk Approach in English reading teaching of senior high school to explore the theoretical significance and practical value of the implementation.In the process of the research,the author puts forward two questions:(1)In what aspects does Lexical Chunk Approach affect students’ reading level?(2)How can teachers apply Lexical Chunk Approach in English reading teaching of senior high schools more effectively?In order to prove the effectiveness and feasibility of Lexical Chunk Approach in English reading teaching of senior high school,this thesis adopts experimentation,questionnaire method and literature analysis method to conduct this empirical research.The author treats 130 students who are from two parallel classes in Grade 1 of No.7 Middle School,in Kaifeng,Henan province as experimental subjects.Class 6(65 students)is regarded as experimental class(EC),adopting Lexical Chunk Approach in English reading teaching lectures.Class 7(65 students)is viewed as control class(CC),adopting the traditional teaching procedure.Through the four-month teaching practice,the research shows that:(1)Lexical Chunk Approach has a positive effect on students’ reading level in senior high schools,especially in the aspects of solving lexical questions and syntactic questions.And there is not notable significance in students’ reading level in the aspect of solving discoursive structure questions.(2)According to questionnaires for teachers and students,it can be seen that in the future application of Lexical Chunk Approach in English reading teaching of senior high schools,teachers should pay attention to the exercises of lexical chunks and the analysis of the function of lexical chunks and improve the proficiency of the classification of lexical chunks.Besides,English teachers should study more relevant researches and apply them into teaching practice.And grammar analysis should not be ignored in the teaching practice.More importantly,Lexical Chunk Approach should combine other teaching methods to apply to teaching practice.