A Research On The Application Of Lexical Chunks To The Teaching Of English Vocabulary In Junior High Schools

Vocabulary is one of the three ingredients(Phonetics, Vocabulary, and Grammar) that constitute language. To master certain amount of vocabulary is essential to language communication and is the basis for learning English well(Brown, 1987). Ninety percent of people’s natural communicative discourse is made up of fixed or semi-fixed chunks between words and phrases(Yang Yuchen, 1999). Lexical chunks are some fixed or semi-fixed phrases, collocations and sentence structures. In recent years, a growing number of linguists have attached more importance to the lexical approach, firstly proposed by Michael Lewis(Shen Minyu, 1999). If lexical chunks are viewed as the minimum units of input in learning English vocabulary, it will not only help students to understand new words, improve their memorizing efficiency, but also help them to grasp the grammatical structure. Thus, students can master vocabulary and grammar at the same time, and improve their communicative skills.However, in the current vocabulary teaching classes in many junior high schools, students mainly receive vocabulary passively, and recite vocabulary mechanically, which is time-consuming and inefficient. This method can’t stimulate students’ interest in learning English vocabulary and is not helpful to increase students’ ability to use English vocabulary. How to help junior high school students to understand, memorize and use vocabulary becomes an important issue.This thesis aims to conduct an action research on the application of lexical chunks in Class One, Grade Seven in Luohe Foreign Language Middle School. According to the psychological and cognitive characteristics, and the actual English level of the seventh grade students, the author first conducted a vocabulary pre-test to acknowledge the students’ English vocabulary level, and then used questionnaires and interviews to observe students’ attitude, interest and confidence and learning strategies used in the learning of English vocabulary. Based on this, the author began to conduct a five-month lexical chunks action research. After the research, the author carried out the second vocabulary test, questionnaire and interview. The results demonstrated that the application of lexical chunks helped to enhance students’ awareness of the importance of vocabulary, to improve students’ interest and confidence in learning vocabulary, to change students’ learning strategies in memorizing vocabulary and to improve students’ vocabulary scores. But the influence of the application of lexical chunks varied a lot to students’ of different academic levels. For students of high and low scores, this approach had little effect. But for students of middle scores, this approach had a very significant promoting effect.This thesis consists of five parts. The first chapter starts with the importance of English vocabulary learning and the current situation of vocabulary teaching in junior high schools in China, and presents the research motivation and significance. The second chapter reviews the related studies on lexical chunks and on the application of lexical chunks at home and abroad. This chapter also demonstrates the related studies on the teaching of English vocabulary and theoretical basis of the research. The third chapter mainly introduces the research design, including research questions and objectives, research subjects, research procedure and instruments and data collection. Chapter Four describes data analysis of the questionnaires, interviews and vocabulary tests. The last chapter shows the major findings, pedagogical implications, limitations of this research and prospection for further research.