The Lexical Phrases And Spoken Language Proficiency Of English Majors

Lexical phrases are gradually gaining wide attention from the researchers all over the world. A word is known by its company. The relationship between words is helpful for second language users. The development of corpus research and psychological research help us achieve a more deep understanding of the language features of second language users.The present corpus-based study tries to find out whether there is a significant difference in the use of lexical phrases between the advanced learners and less advanced learners while performing spoken tasks, whether there is significant difference in the use of lexical phrases among 3 different spoken tasks, and further reveal the general characteristics of lexical phrases used by Chinese English majors.The sample corpus used in the present thesis is taken from SECCL (Spoken English Corpus of Chinese Learners), a sub-corpus of SWECCL (Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners). Based on students'ranks, the researcher chose the corpus whose rank is top 10 as the advanced learners'group; while the corpus whose rank is about 25 to 31 as the less advanced learners'group. Further, the researcher divides these 60 sample corpus into 3 groups based on different spoken tasks: Task A (Story-retelling), Task B (Monologue) and Task C (Role play). By referring to the working definition of lexical phrases in the present paper and resorting to the concordance software Antconc, the researcher selects the relevant lexical phrases for each member in each group. In addition, a formula: the use frequency of lexical phrases = (the total number of words—the number of words of lexical phrases) / the number of lexical phrases, is adopted to count in about how many words learners use every 1 lexical phrase.The results indicate that: (1) The more advanced learners are, the more lexical phrases they prefer to use. There is a positive correlation between the use of lexical phrases and spoken English proficiency. (2) English majors tend to use lexical phrases differently while performing different spoken tasks. English majors use lexical phrases more frequently in communicative task as role play. However, they lack the lexical phrases competence while performing highly cognitive demanding task such as monologue. (3) There still exists the overuse of some lexical phrases especially in communicative tasks. The general competence of lexical phrases by English majors still needs improving.The present thesis also finds out the importance of lexical phrases in terms of pedagogical settings. It is very important and useful to integrate lexical phrases in English learning classroom. In addition, some workable classroom activities related to lexical phrases are also suggested for the language teachers'reference, such as, the identification of lexical phrases, the correction of lexical phrases and so on.