An Empirical Study On The Application Of Lexical Chunk Approach To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High Schools

This thesis conducts an empirical research on the application of lexical chunk approach to English vocabulary teaching in senior high schools.There is beyond doubt that vocabulary serves as one of the three elements of language,which consists of vocabulary,grammar and phonetics.However,the reality is that,due to the mechanical learning method,English vocabulary learning has become a most difficult obstacle for language learners and caused a negative effect on learners' interest and motivation.Unlike the vocabulary translation teaching approach,which is very common in English language teaching,the lexical chunk approach,proposed by Lewis in 1993,has been attracting much attention of linguistics and teaching researchers.According to Lewis,there are quite a few relative fixed word-combination,phrase or short sentence in terms of its meaning and structure existing our common language.Learners can store these chunks in their brain as a whole meaning unit like a single word and make use of these units effortlessly.Because of this character,lexical chunks also can be viewed as a basic linguistic unit for acquisition.Based on Krashen's Input Hypothesis Theory and Swain's Output Hypothesis Theory,combined with lexical chunks,this thesis applies the lexical chunk approach to English vocabulary teaching in senior high schools with the purpose of answering the following three questions:(1)What are the effects of lexical chunk approach on students' English learning interest?(2)What are the effects of lexical chunk approach on students' vocabulary memory efficiency?(3)What are the effects of lexical chunk approach on students' lexical chunk competence in writing?In order to answer the above questions,the author conducted a three-months teaching experiment in a senior high school located at Changsha.It included two classes,experimental class and controlled class.The experimental class was instructed by the lexical chunk approach,while the controlled class adopted the vocabulary translation teaching approach,which is very common in middle school.From the beginning to the end,the author adopted the pretest and the post-test to compare the changes between two classes in the process of experiment;and through SPSS21.0,the author made some basic data analysis such as independent sample T-test and paired sample T-test so as to explain the changes between two classes from the gained data.Comparing the experimental class with the controlled class,we found that the lexical chunk approach is effective to English learners,vocabulary learning.This method can not only help students to enhance their vocabulary memory efficiency and lexical chunk competence in writing,but also motivate learners' English learning enthusiasm and interest.This research,oriented by the lexical chunk approach,hopefully can be of some significance to learn English vocabulary.Moreover,the study results demonstrate that the character of lexical chunks,that is,prefabricated structure and high frequency,conform with the model of the Input Hypothesis Theory,i+1.That is,lexical chunks approach is conducive to help English learners to memorize vocabulary efficiently,which is a well practical significance for the Input Hypothesis Theory.However,due to various reasons,this research still has some shortcomings;for example,the research objects were only 80 students,and the study period only 12 weeks,both of which can be extended in the future study.