Research On Application Of Lexical Chunk Approach To English Reading Teaching In Junior Middle School

Reading is regarded as the most important of the four language skills(listening, speaking, reading and writing) in junior middle school English teaching. Meanwhile, it is a difficult skill for students to acquire. When having a reading lesson, the teacher pays more attention to the meaning of the word, but ignores the reading skills and methods. And students think that as long as they know the meaning of the word and grasp the grammar, they will have a better understanding of the passage. This model of reading doesn’t stimulate the students’ reading interest. Therefore, it is time to explore a new reading method to improve their reading abilities and to cultivate their reading interest.Linguists have begun to come up with the lexical chunks for recent years. In 1993, Lewis proposed lexical chunk approach. He thinks that language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar. Lexical chunk is composed of a few words or more. It can accelerate the speed of the language processing, promote the understanding of discourse, and stimulate the studying interest. Based on this, the lexical chunks can be applied to the junior middle school English reading teaching.This thesis mainly focuses on the following two questions:1. Can lexical chunk approach improve junior middle school students’ English reading interest?2. Can lexical chunk approach improve junior middle school students’ achievements in reading comprehension?The participants are 80 students of two parallel classes in Xima Junior Middle School of Dengta City and each class has 40 students. The experiment is carried out for four months. In the experimental class, the teacher adopts the lexical chunk approach. While in the control class, the teacher applies the traditional teaching approach. The students in experimental class and control class are taught by the same teacher. Research instruments include questionnaires, tests and interviews. The data were analyzed by using quantitative technique, qualitative technique and SPSS. According to results from the experiment, the following conclusions can be drawn: Firstly, the lexical chunk approach can improve junior middle school students’ English reading interest. Secondly, the lexical chunk approach can improve junior middle school students’ achievements in reading comprehension.