A Study On The Application Of The Lexical Approach In Junior Middle School Students' Vocabulary Acquisition

Language is composed of a large number of words,and it is essential to learn and accumulate a variety of words in the process of language learning.The depth and the size of the vocabulary extremely affect the quality and efficiency of the second language output.The solid vocabulary knowledge can promote the learning of the second language.But for a long time,the language learners hold that grammar plays a dominant role in language learning and vocabulary is a subsidiary of grammar.In the process of language learning and teaching,the grammar learning is separated from the vocabulary learning.However,many researchers have found that there are a large number of fixed and semi-fixed structures in the language with both grammatical and lexical features,appearing in the language with high frequency.Lewis,the famous linguists,named the fixed and semi-fixed structures as lexical chunks,and put forward the famous thesis “language is grammaticalized lexis,not lexicalized grammar”,(Lewis,1993,89)which affirmed the statue of words in language learning.At the same time.He put forward the teaching method---lexical approach,which emphasizes that lexical chunks should be the basic units of language teaching.One essential part of language acquisition is to acquire the ability to understand and put out the lexical chunks,and the process of language output is more like a process of distilling lexical chunks than analyzing the syntax rules.Besides,vocabulary proficiency would directly affect the fluency and accuracy of language output.This language phenomenon has aroused the attention of the scholars both at home and abroad,and the traditional concepts of language and teaching methods have been challenged.In this paper,the author applied the lexical approach in the vocabulary teaching in junior middle school,exploring the lexical approach in term of the its influences on improving the students' vocabulary proficiency,vocabulary learning strategies and memory.This study was carried out in two classes of Grade Eight in Chengguan middle school,one is experimental class and the other is control class.The time-span of the study is a winter semester.In the control class,the traditional teaching method was adopted.While in the experimental class,the lexical approach was applied.During the experimental process,the author enables students to establish the awareness of lexical chunks and cultivates students' ability of recognizing lexical chunks,as well as pay attention to the cultivation of students' independent learning ability.In addition,a variety of activities were designed in order to consolidate lexical learning,and students were encouraged to review timely.The results of the study show that the lexical approach is conducive to improving students' vocabulary proficiency and memorizing and students' awareness of lexical chunks,and that students tend to use the strategy of lexical chunks in the process of vocabulary learning.In the end,the author provides some teaching implications based on the results of the study,hoping that the study is helpful to the vocabulary teaching in the junior middle school.