A Research On Applying Lexical Approach To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

Teaching of reading is an important part in EFL teaching. A good reader can understand the written wordsand respond to them in proper ways instead of only recognizing the written words in a text. He will also be anactive reader with the abilities of guessing, prediction, checking and asking himself questions. There are also alot of reading strategies involved in EFL reading teaching, such as Skimming, Scanning, Inferring, RecognizingRhetorical Structures...etc. We can also find different reading models, such as Top-down, Bottom-up,Interaction...etc. Different teaching approaches can also be applied in reading teaching, which includeGrammar-translated Approach, Communicative Approach, Task-based Language Teaching Approach and so on.B’ut theres little about the application of Lexical Approach in EFL reading teaching. This research investigatesthe appliance of Lexical Approach to English reading teaching in senior high school. It tries to find out the seniorhi’gh students awareness of lexical chunks while reading and verify if Lexical Approach can help improve’students reading competence, reading accuracy and reading speed included. The innovation of the research isthat it takes the reading speed into account besides the reading accuracy, which is in line with fast, efficientreading requirements of current National College Entrance Examination.In order to verify the feasibility of the research, from mid-September to November in2013, the researcherconducted a teaching experiment in Lanzhou No.5High School, where she works, lasting for a period of tenweeks.80students in the two parallel classes of Senior One served as study subjects in this experiment. Thesetwo classes were both taught by the researcher. The students used the same teaching material: New SeniorEnglish For China (Book1). Randomly Class6was designated as experimental class (EC) while Class3controlled class (CC). The experimental variable was that in the e^erimental group where the researcher guidedstudents how to apply Lexical Approach to improving their English reading ability, while the controlled groupdid’nt follow Lexical Approach. In the three stages of the experiment, all the students in the EC and CC wererequired to take part in the pre-test and the post-test. The test materials were separately selected from the MET.Question types include four articles in the form of individual choice and one article in a new form of readingegression. The quality and the quantity of the test subjects were of high credibility. The difficulty degree will bedecreased by providing the meaning of some new words. The amount of new words in pre-test will be less than3percent. In each test, students are required to accurately record their completion time and mark it on the paper forstatistic analysis of reading speed. After the statistical analysis by SPSS19.0software, it was revealed thatstudent’s reading achievement and reading speed in the experimental group ranged beyond the controlled group.The data proved that the application of Lexical Approach to the English reading teaching in senior high school is effective, which can help students improve their English reading accuracy and reading speed.The thesis consists of six parts: Chapter One Introduction, Chapter Two Literature Review, Chapter ThreeTheoretical Framework, Chapter Four Research Methodology, Chapter Five Data Collection and Analysis, andChapter Six Conclusion. Inttoduction section describes the general background of EFL teaching and learning insenior high schools in China, the present situation of senior high school English reading teaching in China aswell as the present situation of the application of Lexical Approach in senior high school in China. This partshows the significance and the purpose of the research. Literature Review provides a brief review of foreign anddomestic researches on Lexical Approach. Theoretical Framework shows what reading teaching in EFL is andthe definition and the classification of lexical chunks. Research Methodology section includes the purpose of thee冲eriment, e冲eriment subjects, e冲eriment design, experiment procedures and the exemplary cases of teachingplans designed for EC and CC. Data Collection and Analysis section provides data support to confirm thehypotheses put forward before the study. After statistical analysis by SPSS19.0software, it was found that’students reading competence, including the reading accuracy and reading speed in EC ranged beyond thecontrolled class. The data proved that the application of lexical chunks to the English reading teaching in seniorhigh school is effective, which can help students improve their reading abilities. Conclusion section summarizesthe main pedagogical implications of lexical chunks for senior high school English teaching, such as some directinfluence on English reading teaching and learning. It also provides some suggestions on applying LexicalApproach in senior high school English reading teaching.The stud’y confirms the researchers hypothesis and achieves intended purpose of the e冲eriment. Even so,there are still some weaknesses in this research. The e^eriment time is not long, only lasting for ten weeks; thesubjects and scope of the study were limited to two classes which the researcher teaches in. These problems mayreduce the experiment convincing, so this study should be further improved and enhanced.