Lexical Chunk Approach’s Efficacy On Vocational College Students’ English Listening Comprehension

Listening comprehension is one of the four basic skills of English. It has become more and more important in language teaching. Listening ability is very difficult to improve in practical teaching. Many scholars and teachers have taken steps to discuss and practise how to teach English listening well while they did not have good results. Given this, the author tries to develop the lexical chunk approach in teaching listening comprehension and hopes that this research will be useful for improving students’ listening abilities.Lexical chunks are one kind of language phenomena. They are the integration of semantics, grammar and context. They have characteristics of vocabulary and grammar. Lexical chunks give a new teaching orientation to us. As early as thirty years ago, lexical chunks have been paid attention to by language scholars. It is easier to use chunks than words because of their fixed forms. Lexical chunk is stored into the brain and taken out of if necessary. Many scholars have done a lot of experiments on lexical chunk approach. The result shows its efficacy on English learners. However, though there are many teaching researches on reading, vocabulary and writing abilities of universities’ students, few studies are concerned about vocational college students’ listening and oral abilities. The method of lexical chunks for listening teaching in vocational colleges was neglected.This study tries to probe into the efficacy of lexical chunk approach on listening teaching among vocational college students. It tries to address the following questions:(1) Can input of lexical chunks obviously enhance the learners’abilities of listening comprehension?(2) What are students’attitudes toward lexical chunk approach?(3) What factors may influence the effect of lexical chunk approach?①Does lexical chunk approach have the same effects on students of different listening proficiency levels? ②oes lexical chunk approach have the same effects on students of different characters?In this study,121freshmen from Xuancheng Vocational and Technical College are selected as subjects and they are divided into the experimental class (63students) and the control class (58students). The tests, observation, questionnaire and interview are employed during the17-week study.The major findings of the study are as follows:(1) Lexical chunk approach enhances learners’listening comprehension abilities.(2) Students think that lexical chunk approach plays an important role in their listening comprehension. They approve of employment of lexical chunk approach.(3) Lexical chunk approach works better for high-level group and average-level group than low-level group. And introverted students benefit more from this approach than extroverted students.