Effects Of Narrow Reading On Senior High School Students’ Incidental Acquisition Of English Verb-noun Collocations

Collocations are ubiquitous in English reading,among which verb-noun collocations are important but challenging for English learners.However,due to the limited time and energy,neither can English teachers teach all the verb-noun collocations in class nor can students learn innumerable verb-noun collocations by rote learning after class.In this case,it is vital to seek an efficient approach to help EFL learners in senior high school to learn the verb-noun collocations.On the basis of schema theory,this thesis seeks to investigate the effects of narrow reading on the incidental acquisition and retention of verb-noun collocations from the perspectives of receptive and productive knowledge.It also attempts to provide some theoretical and practical suggestions for English instruction and learning.This research is conducted based on two research questions:1.What are the effects of narrow reading on senior high school students’ incidental acquisition of receptive and productive knowledge of verb-noun collocations?2.What are the effects of narrow reading on senior high school students’ retention of receptive and productive knowledge of verbal collocations?In this study,101 sophomores from Dongting School,Wugang city,Hunan Province were split into two groups: an experimental group(narrow reading group)and a control group(regular reading group).In each group,four articles were assigned to them.In the first phase of the experiment,both groups read the same passage.Then in the second stage,they read three different articles.The three passages the experimental group read were related to the theme of the first article,while the three passages of the control group were irrelevant.In the next phase,the two groups finished an immediate post-test in order to have their acquisition of the target verb-noun collocations evaluated.Both groups,a week later,completed a delayed post-test as the final step of the experiment.By analyzing the results of the immediate post-test and delayed post-test,the thesis answers the research questions above and summarizes the following findings:first,narrow reading has a positive effect on the incidental acquisition of both receptive and productive knowledge of verb-noun collocations,and students acquire more receptive knowledge than productive knowledge.Second,though sufficient retention of verb-noun collocations is not achieved by narrow reading,it is still more effective than that through regular reading.This research obtains both theoretical and practical significance.For one thing,it deepens the studies of both narrow reading and collocation acquisition based on schema theory,which provides new empirical evidence for related research.For another,this study presents some pedagogical implications to help senior high school teachers and students to use narrow reading in learning verb-noun collocations.