An Experimental Study Of Lexical Chunks Efficacy On College English Listening Comprehension

In China, more and more attention is paid to the teaching of English listening. Some scholars and teachers have taken many measures and methods to probe into the teaching of English listening. Although the teaching of English listening has been improved, it is not satisfying. The author attempts to use the lexical approach in the teaching of English listening in the hope that this study can be helpful to improve students'listening ability.The lexical approach, a new language teaching theory, is thought to have offered a promising new direction for language teaching. In the past more than thirty years, the study of lexical chunks has attracted the attention of linguists. The lexical approach is brought up on the ground of the fact that foreign language teaching should cultivate and develop students'pragmatic competence. As it avoids the shortcomings of relying too much on either theories of grammar or theories of communicative competence, the lexical approach to second language teaching has attracted people's attention as an alternative to grammar-based approaches. The lexical chunk is a phenomenon of multi words, fixed or semi-fixed. Lexical chunks are also the ready-made memorized combinations in a language. Once acquired and stored in the human brain, they can be retrieved and used automatically as a whole. Many facts show that the lexical approach is of significant use for English learners and the teaching of English.The author applies the theory to the teaching of English listening and conducts the teaching experiment to verify the strengths and feasibility of the lexical approach in the teaching of English listening. The subjects of the experiment are 76 non-English major freshmen from two natural classes in Hunan University of Arts and Science. Their age ranges from 17 to 21. Both classes are taught by the same teacher, the researcher. At random, one is an experimental class(EC, N=38), the other is a control class(CC, N=38).The EC receives guidelines of the lexical approach, that is, the researcher puts emphasis on lexical chunks in the EC while in the CC she follows the traditional way of teaching, without emphasizing lexical chunks. The 16-week experiment is conducted in two classes at the same time. Having analyzed the students'test results, questionnaire, classroom observation and interview, we find that the listening results of the subjects in the EC are apparently better than that of the students in the CC. The subjects in the EC also gain a better sense of lexical chunks, such as recognizing, memorizing and using lexical chunks in listening materials. Most of the students in the EC think that the lexical approach can contribute to improving the speed of listening comprehension, lowering the burden of short-term memory, enlarging the capacity of short-term memory and catching the main points of sentences or texts. Besides, they become more confident in improving their English listening ability. These findings suggest that the students with the knowledge of lexical chunks can get better performance in English listening and the lexical approach is good for cultivating students'sense of lexical chunks learning and lexical chunks using in listening. And it is also good for students'confidence in English listening. Finally, this thesis puts forward some implications for college English teaching. In addition, it points out some limitations of the experiment and some outlook for the future research.The significance of this research is as follows: It provides useful theories and specific method for the teaching of college English listening. It also introduces an empirical research for the previous theoretical research. To the learners, this thesis still can guide them to learn English listening from a new perspective effectively.