| With the progress and development of the global integration, the people are paying more attention to the role and position of the English in the international communication. Accordingly, the English teaching activities are also paid more attention to in the world of school education. The learning of English is inevitable for most of the undergraduates to look for and seek the advanced works and ideas in order to gain the achievements in the scientific research. This situation puts forward higher requirements for the reading ability of the English-learning students. And therefore, this paper is attempted to make a research of how to improve the English level of the undergraduates, especially how to improve the students' English reading ability. As we know, the English reading of the undergraduates is of great significance for improving their level of the scientific research and working ability. At present, the training and teaching of the college English reading ability pays more attention to the vocabulary and the phrases. It ignores the importance of the teaching of the lexical chunks and the theory of the information processing to improve the English reading ability of the undergraduates. To some extent, the lack of the knowledge and mastery of the lexical chunks makes it difficult for the undergraduates to realize the qualitative leap in the English reading level.It is believed that the adequate knowledge of lexical chunks can obviously prompt the language competence and the reading ability of the undergraduates. There is a significant positive correlation between the lexical chunks and the English reading level of the undergraduates. Therefore, in the teaching of the college English reading, it is important to practice and strengthen the teaching of the lexical chunks. And it is also important to cultivate the ability of the undergraduates to recognize and use the lexical chunks consciously. By doing this we will be able to improve the ability of the English reading of the undergraduates fundamentally. In the college English teaching, if the undergraduates are able to study the lexical chunks as a whole and store them in their memory, they will directly extract the corresponding lexical chunks when they use them. Thus it is able to improve the efficiency of the undergraduates to process the information of the language resources. The teaching of the lexical chunks is appropriate for the basic characteristics and rules of the recognition and learning of the Chinese undergraduates. And it is good to improve the English reading ability of the undergraduates. Therefore, in the college English reading teaching, the teachers should actively deplore the ways to teach the lexical chunks to their students. They should regard the teaching of the lexical chunks as the ligament and cultivate the English reading ability of the undergraduates on the basis of the language environment of the themes. It has the theoretical and practical meaning to the change of the English teaching in China. The teaching of the lexical chunks is a new kind of teaching mode. It has its own advantages and it is able to adapt to the current actuality of paying attention to the vocabulary teaching.This paper is attempted to make an empirical study of whether the teaching of the lexical chunks is able to improve the English reading ability of the undergraduates on the basis of the theory of the teaching of the lexical chunks and the theory of the information processing of the language. The aim of the research is to discuss the feasibility of applying the teaching of the lexical chunks to the college English reading teaching. In the study, the author chose two parallel classes to carry out the experiment. One class is the experimental class. And the other class is the controlled class. The author conducted a pretest for the English reading ability of the undergraduates in these two classes before the experiment. The results of the experiment are not obvious. Then the author implements the teaching of the lexical chunks to the undergraduates in the experimental class. After one semester, the author tested the reading ability of the undergraduates in the two classes. Through the analysis and research of the research data, the author finds that the teaching of the lexical chunks is able to improve the English reading ability of the undergraduates. Therefore, during the process of the college English reading teaching, the teachers should pay more attention to the role of the teaching of the lexical chunks and regard the lexical chunks as the basic unit of the vocabulary. The college English teachers should pay attention to cultivate the consciousness of the lexical chunks and the sensibility of recognizing the lexical chunks of the undergraduates. They should highlight the position of the lexical chunks of in the college English reading and make the undergraduates grasp and take advantage of the lexical chunks skillfully in the college English reading process. And they should also encourage the undergraduates to take advantage of the lexical chunks and the corresponding reading strategies to carry out the reading in order to prompt the improvement of the English reading level of the undergraduates. |
