Lexical Chunks Teaching Method In English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

As one of the three basic components (pronunciation, vocabulary,grammar) of a language, vocabulary is the base of language acquisition andcarrier of thinking. Wilkins (1972) declares that without grammar very littlecan be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. We can onlyimprove students’ ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing oncondition that their vocabulary is large enough. Vocabulary teaching isconducted throughout English teaching in Senior High School and as a resultit’s an enduring task for students and teachers. However, students alwayshave much difficulty in vocabulary learning. Vocabulary learning has becomethe common problem of teachers and students. The traditional vocabularylearning is to memorize words and expressions mechanically. And teachersteach vocabulary out of context. In recent years, the Lexical chunks theorydraws the attention of foreign language teachers and linguists both at homeand abroad. But there are few researches which are combined with vocabularyteaching. I try to apply the lexical theory to the high school vocabularyteaching on the basis of previous study in the second language acquisition inthe real environment. I will enlarge the students’ vocabulary and improve thequality of teaching by a variety of strategies and methods.There are many approaches to vocabulary teaching. Scholars have beendoing a lot of research on lexical chunks in language learning since the1990s.Lexical chunks approach is fully confirmed and praised highly by more andmore linguists and scholars. This study is to describe how to apply the lexicalchunks approach to vocabulary teaching in Senior High School, aiming athelping students strengthen awareness of lexical chunks and learn to use themin the context so as to improve the efficiency of vocabulary learning and comprehensive English ability.This thesis adopts literature review, questionnaire, and experimentalteaching as main methods to make the study. The results of the experimentthe comparative analyses of the results of the pre-test and the post-test andthe feedback from the teachers and students based on the questionnaire provethe effectiveness of using lexical chunk approach in vocabulary acquisition.This paper contains five chapters. The first chapter is theintroduction part. The second chapter is the literature review related to lexicalchunks. The third chapter is the method of empirical research. The fourthchapter is the collection and analysis of data. The fifth chapter is theconclusion part.In conclusion, lexical chunks approach is beneficial to students’vocabulary learning and it’s also of much help to students in developing theirEnglish pragmatic competence.