The Application Of Lexical Chunks To Middle-School English Teaching

It is well known that vocabulary takes a dominant position in language and plays a critical role in language learning and teaching. Without vocabulary, none of the four skills of a language (listening, speaking, reading and writing) can be made possible. Lexical errors seem to be the most serious obstacles to the communication between second or foreign language learners and native speakers. In many cases, native speakers can understand second or foreign language learners'utterances with accurate vocabulary and inaccurate grammar, but they can't understand the expressions with accurate grammar and inaccurate vocabulary.Quite recently, computer analysis of the English language has revealed a widespread occurrence of lexical chunks in language use. Lexical chunks are frequently-occurred, fixed or semi-fixed multi-words or sentences which are beyond users'current linguistic ability and are acquired as wholes in the process of language acquisition. Moreover, they can be recalled and used automatically as wholes rather than generated from grammatical rules. Michael Lewis once said,"Language consists of grammarticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar"( Michael Lewis, 1993: 89) .The traditional language teaching seems to go to two extremes: Structuralism focuses on language analysis but neglects language use; Communicative approach takes language use as the center but neglects language analysis. This thesis is based on Michael Lewis'new theory---Lexical Approach, which lays emphasis on the appropriate language use but doesn't neglect the analysis of regular rules of syntax. This approach, from a new perspective, leads learners to use lexical chunks in order to learn how to produce, comprehend and analyze the new language.This thesis is aimed at attesting the feasibility of lexical chunks in middle-school English teaching. The experiment is carried out in the author's two English classes, each including 30 students. It lasts for about four months, from March 2006 to June 2006. Before the experiment, the final exam of the first semester has just finished. The result of it shows that these two classes are almost at the same level, so one of the classes is appointed as the experimental group, and the other as the control group. The experimental group has got 9 boys and 21 girls, and the control group includes 10 boys and 20 girls. The average age of the experimental...