Lexical Chunk Teaching Approach And Its Effects On College EFL Learners' Vocabulary Learning-An Experimental Study

Recently the study of lexical chunks in foreign language learning has brought wide concern among linguists and foreign-language teachers. Being important prefabricated patterns and form-function units in language acquisition and language use, lexical chunks serve as effective bases for foreign language teaching (Nattinger & DeCarrico,2000). They help internalize grammatical rules, promote language idiomaticity and save effort in language processing. Resting on lexical-chunk notion, Lewis, a famous linguist, states that "language consists of grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalized grammar" (1993:vi), based on which Lewis offers a promising new direction for language teaching:lexical-chunk approach, suggesting that language teaching needs to develop students'awareness of and ability to "chunks". Many researches home and abroad have proved the significance of learning lexical chunks to the improvement of oral communication and writing ability. While there are studies focusing on the effect of chunk learning on the lexical competence, research is needed to stretch the area by further scrutinizing whether lexical-chunk approach can help EFL learners improve their competence in the vocabulary depth knowledge and in the vocabulary productive competence.The present study investigates the impact of both the Lexical Chunk Teaching Approach (LCTA) and individual words learning (IWL) on EFL learners'learning of new vocabulary items in theme-based teaching, and whether LCTA can help learners improve their competence in the depth knowledge of vocabulary as well as in the integrated use of English vocabulary. Specifically, the study intends to look into the following research questions:1) Are there any differences in EFL learners'learning of English new words by way of LCTA and by way of IWL? 2) Comparing with IWL, does LCTA improve EFL learners'vocabulary depth knowledge (VDK)? 3) Can LCTA help EFL learners promote their vocabulary-productive-competence (VPC) in the use of English words? 4) After taking the LCTA, do EFL learners have any changes in their vocabulary-learning-strategies?To answer the above research questions, the researcher conducts a quasi-experiment lasting one semester in SWJTU coupled with questionnaire before and after the experiment. The subjects are the non-English major students from two natural classes taught by the researcher herself. One class, as an experimental class (EC), receives LCTA; the other is a control class (CC), in which new words learning is handled in the traditional way, that is IWL. The data collected is analyzed by SPSS (16.0) to testify the hypothesis.Based on the statistic data analysis, the two classes have no significant difference in Word Associates Test (WAT) and guided writing before the experiment; while after the experiment the students in EC score higher both in WAT and guided writing. So the conclusion can be drawn that LCTA is an effective way of learning vocabulary. Moreover, data of the questionnaire on the vocabulary strategies shows that after the experiment the students in EC use quite different strategies from the ones used by the students in CC. Comparing with the strategies they use before the experiment, the students in EC have changed a lot in their strategy uses after the experiment. Thus the conclusion can be drawn that LCTA has a positive influence on the form of good vocabulary learning strategies.