The Lexical-chunk Approach To The Production Of Lexical Chunks In College English Learners

With the fast development of Corpus Linguistics, more and more linguists seem to agree that there are tremendous fixed or semi-fixed multi-word units in language. A large number of them argue that when it comes to output, it is not that single words are combined one by one according to the syntactic rules, but it is that fixed or semi-fixed units are retrieved as wholes. Based on this theory, the term "lexical chunks" comes out and attracts more and more attention, and learning and teaching approaches related to lexical chunks come into being accordingly.At the same time, along with students'confusion in their language learning, traditional teaching approach is receiving more and more challenges. Therefore, the present author decides to conduct this research on the basis of lexical-chunk approach and designs many lexical classroom activities in order to arouse students'notice of lexical chunks and develop their chunking ability.The study is designed to explore the effect of lexical-chunk approach on speaking and writing, aiming at answering the following four questions:1) Can lexical-chunk approach help English learners to fasten their response to lexical chunks in speaking? 2) Can lexical-chunk approach help English learners to improve their English oral fluency? 3) Can lexical-chunk approach help English learners to increase the number of lexical chunks in writing? 4) Can lexical-chunk approach help English learners to improve their writing proficiency?To answer the above questions, qualitative methods and questionnaires were adopted. Firstly, two classes whose English proficiency were considered at the same level were chosen as CG (Control Group) and EG (Experimental Group) respectively. CG was taught in a traditional way, while EG received the lexical-chunk approach with so many elaborately designed classroom activities on the basis of "notice-chunk" principles. In the second place, some related data was collected and the software SPSS was used to process and analyze the data. The results from the data analysis helped to answer question three and question four, which indicated that lexical-chunk approach had positive effect on students'writing proficiency. However, owing to many factors, question one and question two could not be answered positively in this experiment, therefore, some possible reasons were discussed and analyzed for reference for further research.Finally, a questionnaire was carried out about lexical chunks in terms of students' attitude, acceptance, current conditions, difficulties and their hopes for teachers' guidance. Along with the experiment and the interview with the EG, the feasibility and ways of implementation were discussed and some summaries were made. The research indicates that lexical-chunk approach will be a trend in learning and teaching in the future.