A Study Of Teaching Lexical Chunks In Senior High School Based On The Theory Of Scaffolding

Teaching lexical chunks is an effective method to improve lexical teaching efficiency.To improve the feasibility of chunk-teaching process,this research is guided by the theory of scaffolding and manages to teach lexical chunks through contexts.The teacher designs appropriate teaching procedures as scaffolding for students and helps students improve their abilities to comprehend and use chunks.The teacher must make sure that the process of learning lexical chunks is propelled by both the teacher and the students,and leads student to recognize chunks in contexts,understand them and apply them to real use.The research lasts one semester.The subjects are 104 students from two classes of the same English competence in Senior One in Hanyang No.2 Senior High School,Caidian District,Wuhan.The teacher has referred to plenty of related literature and carefully designs the teaching procedures.During the research,the data are collected through pre and post questionnaires and tests.A pre-questionnaire and a post-questionnaire are made in the experimental class to see the change on students'lexical learning conceptions and strategies before and after the research.Meanwhile,test scores from the two classes are analyzed and compared to indicate the effectiveness of this lexical teaching method.The study aims to explore:(1)Can the chunk learning process help to develop students' lexical learning conceptions and strategies?(2)Can teaching lexical chunks based on scaffolding theory improve students'chunk mastery?The result shows that with the help of the teachers' appropriate instructions and activity designs,the students can acquire some lexical learning strategies and gain the awareness of language learning strategies rather than just language points.Their eyes are not only fixed on the language,but also the strategies and conceptions that make them learn better.Moreover,teaching lexical chunks can improve students' chunk mastery by improving students' ability of recognizing,understanding,retrieving and applying chunks,thus improving students' English competence.Generally,the learners accept the way the researcher teaches lexis,but further improvements are required mainly in the following two aspects:a)The teaching of lexical learning strategies should be more well-directed and systematical.b)The teacher needs to further optimize chunk-related exercises to meet the needs of learners at different language levels.