The Application Of Lexical Approach In Junior High School English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary is an essential part of a language and plays an important role in language teaching and learning. However, in China’s junior high school, vocabulary teaching has not been emphasized duly. On the contrary, grammar has been the focus of language teaching and learning and this has dominated language teaching for a long time. With the requirement of the increased vocabulary size based on the New Junior English Curriculum Criterion(2011), vocabulary learning becomes an urgent problem to be solved. Thus it is necessary for both teachers and students to find an effective and efficient way for vocabulary teaching and learning.In recent years, the interest of researchers on the multi-word prefabricated chunks has been on the increase. The development of language corpus provides the point that there are a large number of lexical chunks exist in human language. “Language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar”, the famous linguist Lewis pointed out, and this view of language provides a new point of view for language teaching and learning. He also came up with a new approach for language teaching—the Lexical Approach. Lexical chunks are seen as the basic units for language teaching and learning in his Lexical Approach.However, in China, most of the researches concerning the Lexical Approach are on the level of theoretical discussion. Although some experts are concerned with the application of the Lexical Approach to English class, few touch upon the feasibility of implementing the Lexical Approach in junior high school.The aim of this thesis is to explore the feasibility of applying Lexical Approach to vocabulary teaching in junior high school to see whether lexical chunks will promote junior high school students’ vocabulary depth and breadth or not. The research-related experiment in the form of investigation and testing was carried out in Tukouzi junior high school in Fu Shun, Liaoning Province. Two classes of students from junior high school, Grade One were chosen as the subjects of the experiment. Class One under the author’s class instruction was assigned as the experimental class while Class Two taught by the author’s colleague was the control class. The results of the experiment showed that the implementation of the Lexical Approach into English classes in junior high school is feasible and effective, for comparing students’ score in the posttest, the scores in the experimental class is higher than those in the control class. Furthermore, students in the experimental class have better vocabulary knowledge(vocabulary depth and breadth) than those who in the control class.