An Experimental Study Of The Effect Of Lexical Chunk’s Approach In High School English Vocabulary Teaching

In language circle it is true to all that among such three main factors aspronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, vocabulary acts as both the carrier of thinkingand the base of language acquisition.Linguist Wilkins (1972) declares that without grammar very little can beconveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. We can only improvestudents’ such language abilities as listening, speaking, reading and writing oncondition that their vocabulary is large enough. Vocabulary teaching plays a big rolein English teaching.However,students always find vocabulary learning a bigheadache in their English learning.There is no doubt that a lot of approaches are applied in vocabulary teaching.Lexical chunk approach has gradually been confirmed and praised highly by moreand more scholars and linguists. Lexical approach is a language teaching approach inEnglish teaching process, which not only emphasizes the grammar structure but alsothe practical application. In vocabulary teaching process, teaching the multi-word asa whole chunk and guiding the students to shift their attention away from individualwords to chunks could make students get an overall lexical chunk’s awareness.Underguidance of lexical chunk’s approach, this study is meant to solve two questions inteaching practice:1) Can application of lexical chunk’s approach in classroomteaching help students to raise their lexical competence?.2) Can application oflexical chunk’s approach in classroom teaching promote students’ interest andstrategies in lexical learning?In study the author adopted SPSS16.0and questionnaires as main means.The subject is students separately in two classes, the experimental group and thecontrol group. Before the study students in two classes held nearly same overalllexical ability according to the exam. However, the experimental group showedbetter academic achievements than the control group after the study in which theexperimental group adopted lexical chunk’s approach while the control groupadopted traditional vocabulary teaching. The questionaries held it that lexical chunk’s approach is effective and efficient in promoting students’ interest andstrategies in lexical learning of high school.After about three months’ study, the comparative statistic analyses of the resultsbetween the pre-test and the post-test and feedback from the teachers and studentsbased on the questionnaires all proved the effectiveness of using lexical chunk’sapproach in high school English vocabulary teaching. In conclusion, lexical chunk’sapproach is beneficial to students’ lexical competence and it’s also of much help tostudents in developing interest and strategies in lexical learning, thus enhancinglexical learning efficiency and English teaching quality..