The Empirical Research On English Vocabulary Teaching In Grade Seven Based On Lexical-chunk Theory

It is well known that vocabulary is an important part of language and plays acrucial role in language teaching and learning. Four skills of the language (listening,speaking, reading and writing) are on basis of the mastery of vocabulary. Therefore, itis necessary to master a large amount of vocabulary in each period of languagelearning. The vocabulary teaching gains more and more attention. However, manyjunior middle school teachers don’t pay enough attention to vocabulary teaching.Teachers teach students new words according to the word list and then let studentsrecite new words over and over again. Students can’t memorize new words firmly anddon’t have fun in English learning. Meanwhile they have a strong sense of frustration.The vocabulary teaching method based on lexical-chunk approach lets studentslearn new words as a whole not as a single word. This teaching method can not onlyreduce the difficulty of memorizing new words but also make students memorize newwords for a longer time. Based on the lexical-chunk theory, the experiment exploreswhether applying lexical-chunk approach to vocabulary teaching can improvestudents’ vocabulary scores and arouse students’ interest in vocabulary learning.To prove the necessity of the research, the author chose15students in theexperimental group to carry out the interview before the experiment. The analysis ofthe interview showed that students had no idea of lexical chunks and they focusedtheir attention on a single word in the process of vocabulary learning. The authorchose two classes to conduct the experiment which lasted almost one semester. One ofthe classes was appointed as the experimental group, where the lexical-chunkapproach was employed, and the other as the control group, where the traditionalteaching was in use. Data analysis verified that vocabulary teaching based onlexical-chunk theory was feasible. After the experiment, the author asked the samestudents to attend the interview. The result of the interview after the experimentshowed that applying lexical-chunk approach to vocabulary teaching could arousestudents’ interest in vocabulary learning. The experiment and interview verify the feasibility of applying lexical-chunkapproach to vocabulary teaching in Grade Seven. It can not only help students toimprove their vocabulary scores but also stir up students’ interest in vocabularylearning.The thesis also points out that the English teacher should cultivate students’awareness of lexical chunks and automatic-learning ability, help students accumulatelexical chunks with high frequency and explore the effective teaching pattern andteaching method actively.