Tcaching Lexica Chunks To Improve Learners’Oral Communication

Stated in the latest version of College English Curriculum Requirements (For Trial Implementation,2004), the objective of College English is set up to develop students’ability to use English in an all-round way, especially in listening and speaking, so that in their future work and social interactions they will be able to exchange information effectively through both spoken and written channels... so as to meet the needs of China’s social development and international exchanges.". Accordingly, this paper, which is based upon a research study, attempts to seek an effective way to help those students, especially the3rd batch enrollment students of non-English majors, who remain helplessly poor in terms of English communication, to acquire an ideal ability of oral communication.As is indicated in many corpus researches, lexical chunks, which are found to commonly occur together in fixed phrases and can be drawn as a whole, are widely used in English communication. It manifests the cognitive law of human beings, that is, chunking can enlarge the working capacity of short-term memory and thus increase the efficiency of its information processing. Therefore, this research paper, with its understanding of the relationship between lexical chunks and oral communication, attempts to employ lexical chunk teaching approach to English so as to improve students’English oral communication.An experimental research of lexical chunking teaching is conducted in two classes of the economics major in Jiaxing College, one of which is assigned as control group and the other experimental group. The experimental group is arranged in an interactive teaching process which places much emphasis on chunk identification and chunk application, while the control group adopts communicative approach in which meaning conveying, instead of lexical chunks learning, is stressed. The experiment lasts for16weeks, during which enough related data have been collected and analyzed through a series of oral tests and interviews.Communicative performance (CP) and communicative competence (CC) are two aspects involved in oral communication. As the visible aspect, CP, to a great extent, is determined by the invisible aspect, CC, and in turn reflects it in real time communication. Therefore, the two aspects are separately assessed in the English oral communication tests. CP is assessed from three perspectives:fluency, accuracy and expression complexity, while CC, based on Canale and Swain’division, is assessed from four perspectives:grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. The data are analyzed by SPSS12.0.The result reveals that, statistically, the experimental group improves all aspects of CP and CC, while the control group makes progress merely in fluency, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence. As such, the experimental group outperforms the control group in accuracy and expression complexity of CP, and shows better grammatical competence and discourse competence of CC than their counterparts. Therefore, it can be concluded that lexical chunk teaching contributes to the improvement of CP and CC in an overall way; and it outweighs the communicative approach in terms of accuracy and expression complexity, including words choosing, patterns employing, and discourse arranging.In addition, the researcher makes a further qualitative study by analyzing the oral test record, and finds4aspects of benefits brought by lexical chunks learning:1) effectively reduce the negative transfer of one’s native language;2) promote the appropriateness of utterances;3) develop discourse in a more cohesive and coherent way;4) improve communicative strategies. At last, interviews are conducted to find out students’feedback on lexical chunk teaching. They all confirm that lexical chunk teaching is of much help to their English learning and oral communication.Finally, the paper concludes the effects of lexical chunk teaching on English oral communication, especially its unique advantage:promote thinking in English. It is pointed out that lexical chunk teaching can be adopted as an effective way to improve English oral communication for non-English majors of the3rd batch enrollment. And meanwhile, a further research development has been proposed as well.