An Experimental Study On Lexical Chunk Instruction In English Reading Teaching In Junior High Schools

Vocabulary plays a big role in language and language learning and teaching.Without vocabulary, all of the four skills of languages (listening, speaking, readingand writing) can not be made possible. Lexical errors are a most serious obstacle forcommunicating between second or foreign language learners and native speakers.Therefore, the importance of lexical chunks and the advantages of Lexical ChunkInstruction in foreign language teaching and learning cannot be ignored.Based on a comprehensive literature review, psychological and cognitive theories,this thesis aims to prove that Lexical Chunk Instruction can help Junior High Schoolstudents improve their English reading ability and affect different types of reading indifferent ways——cloze, reading comprehension and task-based reading.The author carried out the experiment that lasted for a semester in Bianma JuniorHigh School in Handan City. The subjects were80students in Grade Nine, who wereput in the control class (CC) and the experimental class (EC) at random, with40students in each class. During the experiment, the author systematically guidedstudents of the experimental class to apply Lexical Chunk Instruction to improvingtheir English reading ability, while the students in CC were taught in the traditionalway. The author took two questionnaires, a pretest and a posttest in this experiment.The test materials were selected from the senior high school entrance examinationpapers of Hebei Province in2011and2012. The quality and quantity of the testsubjects were of high credibility. The data of exams were analyzed with SPSS21.0.Then the author made a qualitative analysis about the results of questionnaires. It wasrevealed that students’ reading achievement in the experimental group was muchbetter than that of the controlled group. The results showed thata. subjects of the control class and the experimental class were at the samereading level at the beginning of the experiment. And during the one-term experiment,they accepted the guidance of different teaching methods and students accepted different forms of classroom activities, classroom exercises and homework. After theexperiment, students of the CC and the EC showed remarkable differences in readingability under the help of SPSS21.0. Thus the conclusion can be drawn that LexicalChunk Instruction has positive effect on improving junior students’ reading ability.b. the improvements in the cloze test and task-based reading were significantwhile the effect that Lexical Chunk Instruction on general reading comprehension wasinconspicuous. Lexical Chunk Instruction affected different kinds of reading activitiesin different degrees: Lexical Chunk Instruction was more helpful in improving juniorstudents’ achievements on cloze test and task-based reading.