The Application Of Lexical Chunks To The Teaching Of English Reading In Senior High School

This study investigates the effectiveness of the application of lexical chunks to the English reading teaching in senior high school and proves that it can improve students'English reading accuracy and reading speed. Lexical chunks can reduce the burden of language processing, speed up the language acquisition, and facilitate language output. In particular, lexical chunks break through the traditional sense of the word and collocation, whose scope has been expanded to sentence or even discourse, which are conducive to discourse comprehension abilities (Lewis, 1993). Lexical chunks theory provides a new idea for English reading teaching in senior high school. It can reform the disadvantages that the traditional grammar-based verbatim approach brings about. The innovation of this study is that on the basis of the study of reading accuracy the author adds the research of the reading speed, which is also in line with fast, efficient reading requirements of current college entrance examination.In order to verify the feasibility of the study, from mid-February to mid-June in 2009, the author conducted a teaching experiment in Zibo Boshan District Experimental Senior High School which the author taught in, lasting for a period of four months, a total of 16 weeks. 112 students in the two parallel classes of senior two served as study subjects in this experiment. Randomly Class 5 was designated as experimental class (EC) while Class 6 controlled class (CC). During the experiment the experimental variable was that in the experimental group where author systematically guided students how to apply lexical chunks to improving their English reading ability, especially how to make use of lexical chunks to grasp the macro-structure of the passage and the semantic links between sentences and sentences or between paragraphs and paragraphs, while the controlled group followed the traditional grammar-based verbatim method. In the three stages of the experiment, all the students in the EC and in the CC were required to take part in the pre-test, mid-test and the post-test. The test materials were separately selected from the Shandong Province 2007, 2008 and 2009 college entrance examination papers. Question types include four articles in the form of individual choice and one article in a new form of reading expression. The quality and quantity of the test subjects were of high credibility. Each test required students to accurately record their completion time and mark it on the paper for statistic analysis of reading speed. After the statistical analysis by SPSS software, it was revealed that students'reading achievement and reading speed in the experimental group ranged far beyond the controlled group. The data proved that the application of lexical chunks to the English reading teaching in senior high school is effective, which can help students improve their English reading accuracy and reading speed.The thesis consists of six parts: Introduction, Chapter One Literature Review, Chapter Two Theoretical Basis of the Research, Chapter Three Experiment, Chapter Four Analysis and Discussion, and Chapter Five Conclusion. Introduction section describes the disadvantages existing in current senior English reading teaching, discourses upon the research significance of application of lexical chunks to English reading teaching in senior high school and the innovation of this study, namely, on the basis of the study of reading accuracy the author adds the research of the reading speed and also outlines the structure of the thesis. Literature Review provides a brief review of lexical chunks researches in foreign countries, in particular, the researches of Michael Lewis, Nattinger and DeCarrico, and domestic researches on the lexical chunks over the last decade as well as the current reading models in Chinese senior high school. Theoretical Basis of the Research section involves definition, classification, functions of lexical chunks and the roles of lexical chunks in the first and second language acquisition. Experiment section includes the introduction of the experimental hypotheses, experimental subjects, experimental design, experimental procedure and the exemplary cases of teaching plans designed for EC and CC. The experiment lasted for about four months, from mid-February to mid-June, 2009, during which 112 students of senior two in Zibo Boshan District Experimental High School served as experimental subjects. Randomly Class 5 was designated as experimental class (EC) and Class 6 controlled class (CC). The independent variable in the experiment was that the author applied the lexical approach to the English reading in EC while continuing the traditional grammar-based translation approach in CC. All the students in the EC and in the CC were required to take part in the pre-test, mid-test and the post-test. Analysis and Discussion section provides data support to confirm the hypotheses put forward before the study. After statistical analysis by SPSS software, it was found that students'reading achievement and reading speed in the experimental class ranged far beyond the controlled class. The data proved that the application of lexical chunks to the English reading teaching in senior high school is effective, which can help students improve their English reading accuracy and reading speed. Conclusion section summarizes the main pedagogical implications of lexical chunks for senior high school English teaching, such as for discourse analysis; also points out some deficiencies and future improvements of this experiment.This study confirms the author's assumptions and achieves intended purpose of the experiment, however, there are still some shortcomings in experimental methods and experimental process, such as experiment time is not long, only lasting for four months; the subjects and scope of the study were limited to two classes which author taught in. These problems may reduce the experiment convincing, so this study should be further improved and enhanced, such as extending the experimental time and expanding the number of experimental subjects and scope.