A Study Of The Application Of Lexical Chunks In English Teaching Of Reading In Junior Middle Schools

Due to the economic globalization,English becomes an international language.For many people,English reading is an important way to get information and understand the world.However,in English classrooms in the middle schools in china,many teachers attach great importance to the instillation of grammar knowledge and neglect the training of junior high school students' reading ability in English,which leads to the dilemma that teachers feel it is hard to teach and students are hard to learn,nevertheless,students' reading ability is not ideal.Therefore,it is urgent to explore an effective way to improve junior high school students' reading ability.Lexical chunks are regarded by many linguists as the most basic unit in English language.It is no longer only the vocabulary and collocation in the traditional sense,but also includes the sentences or discourse,which is helpful to cultivate students 'ability of discourse.Lexical Chunks combine the form and function of language,and embodies the relationship among semantics,syntax and pragmatics,therefore,the acquisition of lexical chunks can promote the generation and development of the language of second language learners.Michael Lewis(1993)believes that language is composed of grammatical words rather than lexical grammar,therefore,the effective learning of chunks can reduce memory baggage,accelerate the speed of language information processing,and facilitate language acquisition and output.Hence,regarding chunks as the basic unit in English reading class may be an effective way to improve junior middle school students ' reading ability.Given the above,this paper guided by the theory of chunks tries to apply the theory to junior English reading class to explore whether it can improve students ' reading speed and accuracy.This study takes Eight Grade(10)class,Eight Grade(11)class of the H city,two parallel classes,as the research objects,adopting the method of questionnaire and SPSS to collect the data.8(11)Class is selected as the Experiment class,8(10)class is chosen as the Control class,both classes are coached by one teacher,and the research last three months.Lexical approach is used in the experimental class,whichfocuses on the knowledge point of the lexical chunks.The Control class follows the traditional reading teaching—Grammar Translation Method,that is,listening first +skimming + scanning + dozen reading.After the experiment,the author analyzes and summarizes the results of the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire,and uses SPSS17.0 to compare and analyze the English reading speeds and scores of pre-test and post-test.The experimental data shows that the reading speed and accuracy of the students in the experimental class have improved significantly and are higher than those in the control class.It is concluded that the application of lexical chunks in English reading can improve students' reading ability.It can be used for reference in the classroom teaching of English reading in junior high schools.