An Empirical Study Of The Application Of Lexical Chunk Theory To The Oral English Teaching In Senior High Schools

This paper is an empirical study of the application of Lexical Chunk Theory to the oral English teaching in senior high schools. The experiment aims to investigate the effect of the application of Lexical Chunk Theory on senior high school students’ oral English ability. To be more specific, the effect on the fluency, diversity and accuracy of leaners’ oral English. Currently, the research about lexical chunk is mainly concentrated on the effect of its application to English learners’ writing proficiency and their vocabulary, while as to its effect on learners’ oral English development, the number of research is relatively small. Secondly, most of the participants of the researched mentioned above are college students. However, the research focused on senior high school students is rare. Learners’ oral English ability, which has great influence on learners’ confidence of learning English, is one of the indicators of learners’ overall English proficiency. The related research about lexical chunks has proved that lexical chunks have the edges in grammar, semantic and pragmatic; additionally, they are in high frequency in authentic communication and have relatively fixed order; what’s more, they are retrieved from memory as a whole while in use, which is time-saving and accurate in real time communication. This study is intended to investigate the effect of the application of Lexical Chunk Theory on senior high school students’ oral English ability, improve their confidence in learning English and explore an effective and efficient way for senior high school oral English teaching. Based on Lexical Chunk Theory and constructivism, this paper is intended to examine the following questions:(1)What is the impact of the oral English teaching based on the theory of lexical chunk on learners’ interest, attitude and confidence towards oral English learning?(2)What is the impact of the oral English teaching based on the theory of lexical chunk on learners’ oral proficiency, specifically in terms of fluency, word diversity and accuracy of learners’ oral English?The teaching experiment is targeted at two parallel classes of senior two in Changjun High School. The experimental class adopted the Lexical Chunk Theory into oral teaching while the control class took the traditional way of oral English teaching.The empirical study finds out that after the experiment, students in the experimental group have outgrown the students in the control group in the aspects of interest, attitude and confidence towards oral English learning. Secondly, after the experiment, students in the experimental group performed better than students in the control group in terms of the overall oral English proficiency as well as the fluency, word diversity and the accuracy.The experimental results prove that the application of lexical chunks is an effective and efficient way to improve senior high students’ oral English proficiency.Due to the limitation of time and place, there are two main limitations in terms of experimental duration time and the sample size. The experiment, which lasts only eight weeks, is relatively short and the sample size is 40, which is not big enough to support a more representable result. To seek for a more precise conclusion, the future research can last longer and have a larger capacity. However, the author still thinks that the experiment has its value theoretically and practically, which can offer some implications to senior high school oral English teaching in China.