Analyses On Passive Voice Teaching In SEC Textbooks

The research based on language corpus seems to be in a dramatic pullulation thanks to the daily updating technology in computer science. Growing with the corpus trunk, interest in language research has been increasingly accumulated on the aspect of lexical chunk. Among the various sound for the definition of chunk, Wray's (2002) point of view has gradually drawn the public's attention since the term has reached a new level where the denotation is magnified to the kingdom of any language unit which could be wholly retrieved from the human mind. Soon as in the early years of last decade, the potential within this research was declaimed by Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) that language chunk is the most ideal unit in language teaching according to the analysis result of computation of text and language acquisition. Language chunk is also considered to be the ladder leading to the fluent and accurate usage of second language (Pawley & Syder, 1983).It has been a long time since passive voice was involved in the instruction of English as a foreign language. In recent years, the functional status of passive voice is being continuously discovered in the native language research partially because of a rapid progress of functional linguistics. The PV structure has been considered significant in various contexts, at least of science and technology, journalism and law (Qu 2009, Xu 2008). Still, fresh research in China argues that there are significant differences in the usage of PV structure between Chinese students and the native speakers (Wen, Wang, and Liang 2005). It is in the period of middle school that PV structure is mainly taught to the students in China where the textbook stands for a lot in the overall design and practice of language teaching. It should make sense to check the method of PV teaching in the textbooks to evaluate the teaching of target structure.It is not a topic wholly new to the Chinese researchers, since PV is within the minds for quite a long time. Somehow, the present deeds are mainly on the contrastive analysis and language corpus in certain fields (Cao 2009, Xu 2008, and Tian 2007). When it comes to the instruction of PV structure, major researches are landed in the field of traditional grammar teaching in which the abstract rules are highlighted (Yang&Yang 2008, Gao&Li 2007), leaving the condition, contexts and semantic as well as pragmatic differences referred to active voice beyond consideration.Nevertheless, PV structure featured as the relatively fixed and independent sentence structure could be sorted into the category of sentence frames and heads which together with polywords, collocates and institutionalized utterances shape the overall definition of lexical chunks according to Lewis (1997). The lexical chunk theory hence could lead the PV instruction into a fresh region as lexical teaching to solve the general difficulties in grammar acquisition. After a thorough investigation upon the present authorized textbooks used in the senior middle schools of China, the author may label the present teaching model as mechanical grammar drills which neglects the condition, frequency and contexts for the real usage. Consequently, several attempts including classroom activity and exercises are suggested in this dissertation aiming at a better and more efficient teaching of English language.There are five chapters in this dissertation.Chapter One introduces the concept of lexis, lexis teaching and the traditional teaching of passive voice. Information about teaching materials is also referred to sweep the floor for the next parts.Chapter Two is literature review. Lexical chunks and the related teaching method are introduced here. Passive voice is introduced here for the definition, significance and traditional teaching. Chapter Three analyzes the textbooks. This is to go in three levels, namely the text, the exercises and the vocabulary.Chapter Four gives the suggestion of sample activities which are designed in a lexical way to enhance the effect and efficiency of PV structure.Chapter Five concludes the findings. Insufficiency is drawn and future research is discussed thereafter.