An Empirical Study On The Effects Of The Lexical Chunk Approach On Vocational College Students’ English Reading Competence

In recent years, researchers and scholars are paying more and more attention to lexical chunks. Whether from the perspective of semantics or syntax, lexical chunks have great language generative power (Moon 1997:43). Based on this idea which formed lexical chunks approach, (LC in short form), LC is a new notion in English teaching and research:it emphasize on learning and grasping LC, which would have great importance to foster learners’ language ability. Through amount of studies and researches, those linguists found that 90% of natural speeches are actually the result of semi-fixed ’chunk’ structure which lies between words and fixed phrases. With more and more linguists studying LC, they found out that LC have a significant influence upon second language teaching, in terms of enlarging learners’ vocabulary, enhancing learners’ language proficiency and fluency, increasing learners’ motivation and at the same time facilitating learners’ language production and language performance. Therefore, the importance of lexical chunks approach should not be overlooked. Presently, our Vocational College students, English majors especially, their English reading competence is low. Based on that, this paper raises two questions: (1) What effects does the lexical chunks approach have on Vocational College students’ English reading ability in regular teaching environment? (2) In order to improve Vocational College students’ English reading ability; can we put the lexical chunks approach into actual use?With the reference to LC related articles at home and abroad, based on Vocational College students’ reading ability, the author tries to tie LC with English reading teaching class and raises two hypotheses:(1) Lexical chunks approach has positive effects on Vocational College students’ English reading ability in regular teaching environment. (2) We can put the lexical chunks approach into actual use to improve Vocational College students’ English reading ability.According to these two hypotheses, the author conducted a detailed experiment to prove these two hypotheses. In this experiment, the author randomly selected two classes from Hunan Communication Polytechnic as the subjects of this experiment. And this experiment lasted one semester. Class A applied the lexical chunks approach in their English reading teaching class, while class B followed their usual routine. After this semester, the two classes have under through three reading comprehension tests to see the results, and the scores have been collected to go through further research. Through analysis of the results, it can be concluded that the scores of class A, which applied lexical chunks approach are higher than that of class B, which used traditional English teaching method. It proves the fact that the application of lexical chunks approach can improve Vocational College students’reading competence.