A Study On The Application Of Lexical Chunks To English Reading Teaching In Senior High Schools

As a crucial way of obtaining information,reading is one of four basic skills of learning English.Reading's significance is evident.At the same time,no matter what English exam,the reading comprehension takes up a considerable proportion.It is said that people who are good at reading can get good grades in the English exams.Therefore,teachers and students all have attached great importance to English reading.However,students' reading practice in the class is limited and teachers' teaching method is old.Although lots of time is spent on English reading,the results are far from satisfactory.Becker is the first person who comes up with the concept of lexical chunks in 1975.Lexical chunk,which has drawn many experts and scholars' attention since it was put forward,has become a hot topic of linguistics research in the 1990s.Lexical chunks contain the features of syntax,semantics and context.Lexical chunk can be seen as a whole part to encode and memorize by students.When they need using,lexical chunks can be decoded and extracted as a whole part from the brain.In this way,students can take advantages of lexical chunks to decrease their memory burden and make their reading quicker and more accurate so that their English reading ability can be promoted.This paper mainly explores the lexical chunk teaching approach's application into the English reading teaching in the senior high school and tries to answer whether the lexical chunk teaching approach is good for the English reading teaching in the senior high school.Based on this,the three research questions are as follow:(1)In what ways can the lexical chunk teaching approach influence students' English reading skill?(2)In what ways can the lexical chunk teaching approach influence students' attitudes towards English reading?(3)Can the lexical chunk teaching approach influence students' understanding of high cognitive level "wh-questions" during English reading?Why?The research subjects are the two classes of 103 students who were from Grade One of a senior high school of Panjin in Liaoning Province.The teaching experiment lasts for one semester.The Class B is the control class;the Class A is the experimental class.The traditional Grammar-Translation Method is still used during the English reading teaching in the control class.However,the lexical chunk teaching approach is used during the English reading teaching in the experimental class.The research instruments are questionnaires,pre-test,post-test and interview.The study shows that there is a significant change of students' attitude toward the English reading after the teaching experiment.Students' interest and confidence in the English reading are stimulated significantly.According to the comparison between pre-test and post-test,students' English reading skill is promoted obviously.At the same time,there is no bad effect on students' understanding of high cognitive level wh-question.As a result,lexical chunk teaching approach is feasible to be applied to English reading teaching in the senior high school.