A Study On The Application Of Lexical Chunk Approach In English Vocabulary Teaching

As one of the three major elements of language,vocabulary is the building material of language.Vocabulary plays an essential role in language learning.However,the result of traditional English vocabulary teaching indicated that the teacher and students paid more attention to teaching and memorizing some vocabularies,but students still can’t use it properly.Since Becker first proposed the concept of prefabricated chunks in the 1970 s,researchers focused on the theory of lexical chunks and had achieved fruitful results.Meanwhile,Lexical Chunk Approach was written by Lewis which emphasis on cultivating learners’ ability in learning vocabulary.Learners need to master the phrases,collocations and sentence structures in order to integrate the acquisition of vocabulary,grammar and communication skills.Lexical chunk approach provides an interactive and communicative platform for listening,speaking,reading and writing of teachers and students in English teaching.However,a large number of studies focused on applying lexical chunk approach into English teaching in senior high school and were less involved in English vocabulary teaching in senior high school.Based on previous studies,through studying the relationship and influence between the lexical chunk teaching and English grades,the author combines the lexical chunk approach with English vocabulary learning in senior high school to find a new way to teach English vocabulary effectively.The paper mainly studied three questions: 1.What about the general situation of applying the lexical chunk approach into English vocabulary learning for senior high school students?2.Can the application of the lexical chunk approach improve students’ English grades?3.What influences does the lexical chunk approach have on the middle level students’ vocabulary learning?Based on questions mentioned above,78 students from two parallel classes of Grade one in Chang Xingdao Senior High School in Dalian were selected as research objects.Class 2 is the control class and class 7 is the experimental class.At first,the author conducts questionnaire of all research objects in pretest;English tests in both pretest and post-test and individual interview in post-test,then collects data,finally has the qualitative and quantitative analysis by using SPSS 19.0 software.By the experimental study,the following conclusionsare drawn:the general situation in applying the lexical chunk approach for senior high school students in English vocabulary is not optimistic;Applying the lexical chunk approach into English vocabulary teaching can improve students’ English grades;Students at middle level can improve significantly and they are more interested in learning lexical chunks in their study.Therefore,it is feasible for teachers to apply the lexical chunk approach into English vocabulary teaching in senior high school.