An Empirical Study On Chinese College Students’ Acquisition Of Lexical Chunks In Oral English

With development of linguistics, a great deal of studies has illustrated that fixed and semi-fixed pattern formed by words exists in language, which is also called chunks. Due to stability of the structure and variability of use, lexical chunks teaching can improve the efficiency of students’ language learning, which is widely accepted by scholars. This study is based on the acquisition of lexical chunks in spoken language of college English learners to prove the correlation between acquisition of lexical chunks and learners’ English proficiency.Through the lexical chunks approach to 30 non-English major students, we take students’ oral test results for samples. The main purpose is to explore whether lexical chunks approach can help college students with their oral proficiency. Testees attend two tests. The result illustrates:(1)The chunk proficiency of college English learners is on the low side. In addition, the number of chunks used in the tests is lacking and there are testees repeating their words. Some grammatical mistakes and inappropriate expressions are also presented.(2) The quantity of chunks used by students is proportional to their scores, which prove the close correlation between acquisition of lexical chunks and language proficiency.(3) The frequency of acquisition of lexical chunks in the tests improves with increasing frequency of language. It indicts acquisition of lexical chunks influence the language proficiency.This research reveals that the acquisition of lexical chunks has positive correlation with college students’ oral proficiency. The lexical approach is supposed to be emphasized in college oral English teaching.