An Empirical Study Of The Influence Of Chunk Awareness On Chinese Acquisition

Since the introduction of Chunk Theory in China at the end of the 20th century,more and more attention has been paid to it.Research results have been emerging.In the past decade,chunk research has become a hot topic in the field of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages,with more and more achievements.Among them,the role of chunk in SLA has become a focus.This research takes chunk consciousness as an entry point,conducts an empirical study on the influence of chunk consciousness on learners’ Chinese acquisition,and investigates the relationship between chunk learning strategies and chunk consciousness.Consequently,we put forward relevant suggestions on the cultivation of chunk awareness in international Chinese teaching,hoping to promote the further study of chunk teaching and enrich researches of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Language.Based on previous studies,this paper defines "chunk consciousness " as learners’consciousness and attention to chunk,that is,learners’ability to grasp chunk formed by their perception of chunk,and proposes the following three aspects to examine learners’ ability to grasp chunk:chunk recognition ability,chunk extraction ability and chunk application ability.We selected 55 HSK level 4 and above Chinese learners as the research objects,and used the self-designed chunk consciousness test questionnaire to investigate their chunk consciousness and chunk learning strategies,in order to explore the influence of chunk awareness on their Chinese acquisition.As for the influence of chunk awareness on Chinese acquisition,we mainly study it from two aspects:one is the correlation between chunk awareness and learners’ Chinese proficiency;the other is the correlation between chunk awareness and learners’ Chinese progress.The results show that the stronger the chunk awareness is,the higher the level of Chinese is,which proves that chunk awareness has a certain effect on Chinese acquisition;in addition,the stronger the chunk awareness is,the higher the level of Chinese progress is,which fur-ther proves that chunk awareness is helpful for Chinese acquisition.The study of the relationship between chunk learning strategies and chunk awareness shows that the more frequently learners use chunk learning strategies,the stronger their chunk awareness,which shows that chunk learning strategies can help learners improve their chunk awareness.Based on the investigation of the influence of chunk awareness on Chinese acquisition and the questionnaire survey of the first-line Chinese teachers,this paper puts forward some suggestions on the cultivation of chunk awareness.First,the suggestions for compiling the textbook are as follows:Improve the presentation rate of chunks in different parts of the textbook;Pay attention to presenting commonly used chunks with low semantic transparency as a whole;Pay attention to presenting chunks that learners are prone to make errors;Summarize the chunks in the textbook and make a "chunk table".Second,the suggestions for classroom teaching are as follows:Preparing lessons with the help of corpus,sorting out the commonly used chunks;Attaching importance to refining the chunks in the text;Creating diversified chunk exercises;Flexibly developing chunk teaching for students of different types and levels.