Research On Application Of Lexical Chunk Acquisition In Translation Teaching In Senior High School

Students in senior high school are affected by the bottleneck constraints in term ofvocabulary output. Particularly, in the translation class, most students still by all means try tocircumvent grammar errors. Some students even regard the grammar as syntax, for the simplereason that they believe they can create every sentence they intend to express once theycommand English grammar. In fact, the correction of the “saying” is more important than thatof the grammar. Lexical chunks are correspondence combination of form and function. Thelexical chunks have language-generating ability, relatively stable pragmatic function and quitestrong restriction of context. The following strategies are always applied in the translationclass: practice of how to parse a sentence and to part it, of how to integrate different parts intoa new sentence and then finding the appropriate collocation, namely partition, word order andcollocation respectively. Thus, translation comes down to lexical chunks, which is not acomplex and complicated method to learn the translation, but a most simple and effective oneto learn it. If the students assume that commanding the grammar is enough to cope with thetranslation, it is hard for them to improve the speed of translation since they just review thegrammar that they have known before. Therefore, lexical chunks acquisition will enhance theefficiency of translation in term of correctness and quickness.In English teaching, transfer ability is often regarded as one of fundamental skills astudent should get hold of. In terms of linguistics, communication, pragmatics, and culturalexchanges, this thesis summarizes some certain guiding lines by comparison of severaldifferent translation tests: there exist by no means synonyms and there are different meaningsin a same word in many cases; read the English interpretation and learn the collocation whenyou refer to a dictionary; select different words according to the varying feelings,commendatory or derogatory senses, tones and styles of translation materials; attachimportance to specialized vocabulary. Hence, commanding vocabulary in huge volume andhigh quality is essential to each language learner.In the traditional English courses, however, vocabulary has not taught systematically in the method of lexical chunks. With the development of corpus linguistics, scholars discoverthat there are some fixed and semi-fixed language structures with duel characteristics ofsyntax and lexicon in natural English language. Then language learners can sum up thesemodeled language structures (lexical chunks). By learning the lexical chunks, the speed ofchunks access and inter-language switching can be accelerated. Accordingly, the lexicalchunks acquisition plays an increasingly important role in English classes.Translation is a practice-oriented subject, which means the practice method and thinkingway are very significant. It is in the way of mixing together with grammar, semantic andcontext that lexical acquisition ensures target language fluency and authenticity withmaximum. Thus, the lexical chunk is a basic unit in the translation teaching class. Thelanguage input, shown in complete lexical chunks, is just the imitation corpus of languageacquisition. With the grammar system, students can rapidly translate the original languagebased on the input of lexical chunks and they can regulate the target language so promptly tomake sure the correctness and accuracy of the translation.Based on the lexical chunk acquisition theory, the author conducted an experimentalteaching research in No.5senior high school in Nanyang city. Two classes were chosen asresearch samples, one class is chosen as an experimental class and another as a control class.The two classes are same in number and have the similar English learning experience andEnglish proficiency. In the experimental class, the author taught English translation based onlexical chunk acquisition theory and designed course, while the control class was taught withtraditional method. The experiment was conducted through instruments as questionnaires,interviews and tests. At the end of the experiment, the author found that the students in theexperimental class improved faster in translation than the students in the control class. So thisresearch explores the relevant influence between the lexical chunk acquisition and translationteaching, which, to some extent, reveals the relation between the lexical chunks and Englishtranslation teaching.