The Application Of Lexical Approach To High School English Teaching And Learning

Vocabulary teaching and learning in high school is the most decisive and important part, so teachers and students should pay enough attention to it. While in fact, both teachers and students are worrying about its inefficiency but time-consuming and are eager to find an effective and efficient way. Language has traditionally been taken as a system of lexical grammar, which has dominated the language teaching for a long time. However, recently, this view is being challenged by some linguists and applied linguists, like, Michael Lewis, James Nattinger, etc. They think that language is not a system of lexical grammar, but a system of grammatical lexis. Then, what's the most important is not grammar, but formulaic expressions (grammatical lexis), which pervade in language.Lexical approach is now a growing field in ESL studies in the western countries, especially in the UK, yet there has been a lack of research in China in terms of its feasibility in application and understanding of theoretical and experimental base. My thesis is intended to fill the gap in this area. Based on the investigation of the students'perception on lexical teaching and the experiment carried out in Senior High School in Liaoning Province, the writer points out that lexical approach is surely a feasible teaching approach in the Chinese context; however, careful consideration has to be taken especially in terms of its syllabus in classrooms. Thus suggestions are made based on theories of relevant resources. The research is designed to elicit answers from students in order to see how lexical approach is carried out in the Chinese context. The objective of the research is to give language educators concrete and practical ideas for implementing lexical approach. Through both qualitative and quantitative analysis, the research found out that successes and problems coexist in the process of using lexical approach in the Chinese context. Possible solutions to the problems will be given and appropriate methods to compensate the shortcomings will be presented.The research is carried out in Classes 19 and 20 in Grade Three in Jianping Senior High School in Liaoning Province where lexical approach has just been recognized and used in vocabulary teaching classes whose purposes are to help students acquire English vocabulary. Questionnaires and experiments prove that lexical approach is one of the appropriate ways to prompt learner's language ability and vocabulary ability. However there are still many problems we have to conquer before we finally reach the goal of what lexical approach is supposed to do. Thus advantages and limitations of the lexical approach in high school are analyzed and discussed in the paper.