Focus On Lexical Chunks

Although lexis has conventionally been conceptualized as individual words, it has now become clear that much of lexis consists of sequences of words which operate as single units. In applied linguistic studies of recent years, many linguists believe that language is composed of large quantities of such prefabricated chunks. These lexical chunks play a very important role not only in the acquisition of language but also in fluency of language production and use. Language learners cannot achieve proficiency until they have had enough "chunks" in their mental lexicon. The significance of lexical chunks in language teaching and learning is widely recognized by many linguists (Pawley & Syder, 1983; Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; Cowie, 1998; Lewis, 1993, 1997, 2000). Thus, a new kind of teaching approach was put forward by Lewis (1993) — the Lexical Approach, which concentrates on developing learners' proficiency with lexis or word combinations.According to Lewis (1997), lexical chunks can be categorized into polywords; collocates or word partnerships; institutionalized utterances; sentence frames and heads and even text frames. Within the lexical approach, special attention is directed tocollocations and expressions that include institutionalized utterances and sentence frames and heads.The teaching of vocabulary has been given due weight during the last two decades in China, while it seems that the focus is only on individual words, not enough attention has been paid to lexical chunks, which are essential to the fluency of language use. The problem is that students may already know a lot of individual words but do not know the ways those words combine in simple but effective units of meanings.Since lexical elements are infinite and it is impossible to teach all that learners need, teachers should conduct activities that can raise learners' consciousness of the important lexical items. So conducting consciousness-raising activities versus practice is the most effective way to teach lexical chunks.Textbooks have far-reaching effects on the teaching and learning of a foreign language in Chinese classrooms. The objectives of the dissertation are twofold. One is to examine current English teaching in China through the analyses of exercises from authorized textbooks — SEC (Senior English for China by People's Education Press published in 2003, ), especially in terms of lexical elements, and to clarify the shortcomings which underlie the learners' lack of ability to use English. The other is to propose activities which could improve the situation. The activities may be created on the basis of existing textbooks so as to raise learners' consciousness of the importance of lexical features, and to develop learners' competence to use the language in authentic situations.After analyzing the exercises from authorized textbooks, it is found that, firstly, the exercises need improvement in terms of the knowledge they require of learners. It seems that the textbooks place too much emphasis on features of single words, and do not put enough focus on lexical collocations. Secondly, the exercises appear to be unsatisfactorily created with regard to the ways they are conducted. Although some textbooks lay stress on the lexical elements which are essential for accurate and fluent use of the language, such as fixed expressions and lexical patterns, the ways the exercises are conducted do not appear to raise learners' consciousness of the significance of the lexical elements.