An Empirical Study Of L2Prefabricated Chunks Translation Approach From The Neuro-Psychological Linguistic Perspective

Second language chunks teaching has received interest in recent years as alternative to grammar-based approaches, laying the foundation for the proposal of Second Language Prefabricated Chunks Translation Approach (L2PCTA). Based on relevant literature review, this thesis begins with the theoretical analysis on the three stages of Chinese-English transcoding from the neuro-psychological linguistic perspective. In the second place, a teaching experiment of L2PCTA is conducted, with two non-English major classes as its subjects for a semester. Quantitative and qualitative research methods, involving questionnaire survey, training, interview and test etc., are adopted to investigate whether this approach has advantages over traditional teaching in chunk awareness, language production and memory. Lastly, the advantages are explained and evaluated based on relevant theories and other research findings in the area of neruo-psychological linguistics. The major findings of this study include:1) L2PCTA is effective in improving students’ chunk awareness. They not only gain deeper understanding of this language phenomenon, but also start to take notice of their identification and memorization.2) Owing to L2PCTA, students in the experimental class enjoy greater improvements in language output and self-confidence compared to those in the controlled class. Meanwhile, the optimization is achieved to vary degree in their working memory and long-term memory.3) Four types of chunks’ advantages are responsible for the changes and influences caused by L2PCTA. They are retrieval advantages, syntactic advantages, affective advantages and memory advantages. And the retrieval advantages cover three sub-categories, namely frequency effect advantage, semanticality effect advantage and chunking effect advantage.On account of the above findings, the author suggests teachers introduce chunks into the English teaching and make better use of students’ dependence on the mother tongue with more tolerance. It is desirable to cultivate their chunk awareness and guide them to obtain effective input and fluent output through chunks. L2PCTA may not be a mature and comprehensive teaching approach, but it is a beneficial attempt.