The Application Of Lexical-Chunk Approach To English Reading Teaching At Junior Middle School

Lexical chunks are combinations of grammar, semantic and context which can bestored and retrieved as a whole and considered as an ideal unit for teaching language.Altenbergt claimed that80%of language used by adult native speakers is constructed fromlexical chunks (Altenbergt,1998). Therefore, lexical chunks are treated as the basis forlanguage teaching. The lexical-chunk approach is a kind of new teaching theory whichemphasizes both grammar structure and practical application. More and more scholars payattention to the effect of lexical chunks in the English teaching. At present, the researcheson the lexical-chunk approach mainly focus on theories. Most of the empirical researcheson it are in college, few in junior middle schools. In the process of teaching, the teacherstrengthens the students’ awareness of lexical chunks, teaches the lexical chunk as a wholeand guides the students to shift their attention from individual words to lexical chunks.This can make students grasp a clear structure of the text, foster students’ discourseawareness, speed their reading and improve their reading ability.According to the experiment, this thesis aims to demonstrate that the lexical-chunkapproach has a good effect on improving students’ reading in junior middle schools. Thethesis focuses on the following questions:Whether the students have the awareness of lexical chunks in junior middle schools?Can lexical-chunk approach help junior middle school students to improve theirEnglish reading abilities?Does lexical-chunk approach contribute more to improving reading ability comparedwith traditional approach?As to these questions, the author carries out an experiment which lasts one semester inNO.13Junior Middle School in Chao Yang city. The subjects are162students in GradeThree, who are divided into control class (CC) and experimental class (EC) at random,81students in each class. The author takes questionnaire, pre-test, post-test and interview inthis experiment. The students in EC are taught by lexical-chunk approach while thestudents in CC are taught in traditional way. After the experiment, the author collects dataof exams and makes a qualitative analysis by SPSS11.0. Then the author makes aquantitative analysis about the results of questionnaire and interview. From the qualitativeanalysis and quantitative analysis, we can come to the conclusion that lexical-chunkapproach has a positive influence on English reading in junior middle school. It can notonly improve the students’ reading ability, motivate their reading interest, foster a goodhabit of learning, but also strengthen the students’ self-confidence and a sense of success. This thesis includes five chapters. The first chapter describes the situation of Englishreading in junior middle schools, the common problems in students’ reading, the purposeand the organization of this thesis. The second chapter is the overall review of thedefinition, classification and representing study of lexical chunks, which contains thetheoretical basis of the lexical-chunk approach. The third chapter introduces theexperimental procedure and research methods. In the fourth chapter, experimental resultsare obtained and analyzed by SPSS11.0. Comparing the scores of the tests testifies the roleof lexical-chunk approach in teaching. Finally it comes to the fifth chapter concluding thewhole thesis, which lists the advantages and disadvantages of applying lexical-chunkapproach and gives some suggestions for further research.However, because the level of theories and practical teaching is low and there aresome limitations in methods, moreover, the time of study is not permitted and the subjectsonly represent a part of students in junior middle schools in China, the study can developfurther. Generally speaking, lexical-chunk approach is an effective way to improvestudents’ reading ability and it has a prosperous future.