The Application Of Lexical Chunks To English Vocabulary Teaching In Higher Vocational College

With the rapid development of the international exchange and cooperation overthe recent years, English is getting more and more popular and important in China’shigher vocational education, and more vocabularies appear in the new words list.However, in China’s English teaching of higher vocational college, the effect ofvocabulary teaching is not satisfactory. The teachers and students always focus onisolated words and only pay attention to the pronunciation, spelling and meaning ofsingle words. The words-focused vocabulary teaching tends to cause many problemsfor learners when they memorize, understand and make use of vocabulary. Therefore,how the learners comprehensively and effectively acquire vocabulary is a problem tobe solved.In recent years, the researches of lexical chunks theory have opened up a newperspective for vocabulary teaching, and also provided a good idea for solving thisproblem. Many researches at home and abroad show that in the acquisition anddevelopment of language lexical chunks play an important role and are the ideal unitsfor language teaching. Therefore, the author takes lexical chunks theory as a basis toexplore the lexical chunks-focused way of vocabulary teaching, intending to guidelearners to effectively learn vocabulary followed by a good vocabulary learninghabits.This thesis first analyses the current situation of English vocabulary teaching inhigher vocational colleges and its problems. Then starting from the theoretical basis ofthis study, it views the domestic and abroad research achievements of lexical chunks.Next it puts the lexical chunks into the practice of specific vocabulary teaching inclass, to explore the impact of lexical chunks-focused teaching on vocabularyacquisition for the students in higher vocational colleges. At last, a comparativeexperiment testifies the effectiveness of this study.The experiment is carried out in the author’s two English classes and lasts forabout four months, from March 2011 to June 2011. Before the experiment, they arerequired to take a pre-test to examine their vocabulary proficiency. The result of it shows that these two classes are almost at the same level in vocabulary, so one of theclasses is appointed as the experimental group, and the other as the control group.There are 11 boys and 27 girls in experimental group and 12 boys and 27 girls incontrol group. The average age of the experimental group is 19.2, while the averageage of the control group is 19.5.The two groups both have four classes each week.The textbook, 21stCentury Practical College English (Book II), is used for bothgroups. The difference is that only the experimental group is given the instruction onlexical chunks in class.After the experiment, a post-test was carried out for the two groups, from whichwe can find a big difference between these two groups. The performance of theexperimental group is much better than that of the control group. This proves thatlexical chunks can effectively help students improve their vocabulary proficiency.Therefore, the experiment proves the feasibility of lexical chunks in Englishvocabulary teaching of higher vocational college.Although some limitations still exist in this study, such as the short period andonly a small number of participants, it has yielded some useful findings andimplications which are believed to have effectiveness to language teaching andlearning in higher vocational colleges.