An Empirical Research Of Lexical Chunks In English Teaching Of Preparatory College

As an important part of English teaching, vocabulary teaching has played a vital role in the process of language teaching. All the time, many scholars are exploring effective method of vocabulary teaching.Michael Lewis’lexical approach has gained wide recognition and vital status in the field of English teaching. Lexical chunk is fixed or semi-fixed structure which incorporates the grammar, semantics and linguistic context. Studies were conducted to find that most native speakers stored lexis in the form of chunks. This research is designed to apply lexical approach to college preparatory English class of ethnic minority students. The experimental time is16weeks.In light of the research purpose described above, this thesis puts forward the following research questions:(1) Is the lexical-chunk approach effective to improve the consciousness of lexical chunk for ethnic minority preparatory college students?(2) Is the lexical-chunk approach helpful to improve ethnic minority preparatory college students’written expression?In order to prove the two questions, an experimental research will be carried out. So the writer takes two classes of110EMPCS from Nanchang Institute of Science and Technology as subjects, one is an experimental class, the other class as control class.In this experiment, the students in control class is generally taught in the traditional way. Whereas lexical-chunk approach is applied to the experimental class. During the experiment, the students are asked to identify, accumulate and practice lexical chunks, all of which are effective to improve their consciousness of chunks.This study first uses the literature to analyze the feasibility theoretically, then it makes the quantitative and qualitative analysis through case study, interviews and writing tests. I collect the data from two composition tests before and after the experimental semester and conduct the independent sample t-test, paired sample t-test in order to find out the chunk is effective to improve preparatory students’ written expression.On the basis of a detailed experimental design and a scientific data analysis, I arrive at the following conclusions:Firstly, the approach of lexical chunk can effectively improve the consciousness of lexical chunks for ethic minority preparatory college students.Secondly, by comparison with the writing scores between the experimental class and control class, the experimental class students’writing scores were higher than those of the control class. Besides, the students in the experimental class used more chunks in writing than in the control class.In fact, chunk itself has the property of semantics, pragmatics, and grammar which makes learners greatly improve the efficiency of their competence of English, so the students store enough chunks, they can quickly extract and use them in the actual communication. For they don’t need too much time, it also greatly reduces the stress of students, improves the accuracy and fluency of language. According to the results of the experiment, I suggest that lexical chunk approach should be placed as the center of vocabulary teaching. There’re a number of useful chunks in the textbooks which are being used in college preparatory class. By identifying, accumulating and practicing chunks in exercises both in and out of class, the students can improve their consciousness and competence of chunks.This paper is divided into five chapters altogether.Chapter One introduces the research background, significance and purpose, the overall framework of the paper.Chapter Two is the literature review. Firstly, it introduces the definition and classification of lexical chunk from the studies of some well-known scholars; secondly, it analyzes the feasibility of lexical chunk approach in theory from three aspects:corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition; then it explains the functions of lexical chunk; besides, the findings and achievements of related studies are presented.Chapter Three simply states the design process of this study:including research questions, the research subjects, research methods, research instruments and the research process. In the chapter three, it mainly describes the writer’s teaching practice and experimental research. Firstly, the writer raises the research questions, and then set up an experimental class and a control class to complete the experimental study. At last, the writer uses the statistics software SPSS19.0to make the independent sample T-test and paired sample T-test, whose purposes are to test the effects of chunk teaching method:it is effective to preparatory students’written expression.Chapter Four is results and discussion. It mainly adopts the qualitative method and the quantitative method as a supplement in order to demonstrate the research questions from the three aspect:a case study presents the process of chunks teaching and learning; the interview is also used to answer the first question; for the writing tests, the writer adopts the quantitative method to strength students’consciousness and competence of chunks. At the same time, it will enhance students’written expression.Chapter Five is the conclusion. This study makes a brief summary for the main findings of the feasibility and effectiveness in English preparatory teaching. Therefore, it is helpful to cultivate the consciousness of lexical chunks and promote the written expression of English for preparatory students. At last, the author points out the limitations of this study and the prospect for future research.As a new research direction, it has certain advantages. To a certain extent, it can prove that the lexical approach will impact on college preparatory student’s English learning. I believe that the research results have certain effect on English teaching. However, it can not be ignored that some limitations still exist in the current study.