Application Of Phonological Motivation In English Lexical Chunks Teaching In Junior High School

The importance of teaching motivated lexical chunks has been recognized by second language teachers and researchers and in various fields.However,it remained obscure on how to bring about the motivation of lexical chunks to the learners.In addition to the meaning-based semantic motivation,form-based phonological motivation has been proposed as an option,despite the lack of attention and empirical studies.The present study taking alliteration as an example aims: 1)to investigate whether and in what aspects alliterative lexical chunks manifest a stronger mnemonic effect than those that show little or no phonological repetition for Chinese junior high school EFL learners;2)to explore whether these school learners can spontaneously notice or recognize alliteration in everyday lexical chunks learning without explicit guidance,thus,to discover in what aspects teacher intervention to raise students' awareness of alliteration can amplify this mnemonic effect;3)to elaborate on teachers' and students' attitudes towards alliteration-noticing intervention in class,and in further to find out plausible methods which can be used in English Lexical Chunks teaching for junior high school students in light of phonological motivation.An awareness-raising experiment,a sorting task and an interview have been designed to answer the three research questions and testify the three corresponding hypotheses.The participants are second year junior high school students who are EFL learners and several EFL teachers in the same school.Four major findings have been achieved through the present study:Firstly,alliterative lexical chunks have a stronger mnemonic effect than thosethat show little or no phonological repetition for Chinese junior high school students in four aspects: immediate recognition,delayed recognition,immediate reproduction and delayed reproduction.Secondly,most Chinese junior high school students failed to spontaneously notice alliteration in lexical chunks,which clearly suggests that even relatively salient patterns may need to be pointed out to help students to notice them.Thirdly,the mnemonic effect of alliteration can be maximized with teacher's instruction to raise learners' awareness and to notice it.Fourthly,the teachers' and students' attitudes towards alliteration-noticing intervention in class are positive.A few possible methods of teaching English lexical chunks in light of phonological motivation in junior high school have been put forward but the proper methods to apply the said motivation in long-term practical classroom teaching still needs further discussion and researches.