An Experimental Study Of The Effects Of The Lexical-chunk-based English Teaching On Primary School Students Proficiency

Lexical chunk is a theory that emphasizes the practical application of language,it is the efficient way to cultivate students’ Lexical chunk awareness and improve their English language proficiency.Michael Lewis regarded chunks as the part of language,and he stated that,chunks are the focus of language teaching and language usage.The author carried out an experimental research,according to the problems caused by the traditional English teaching method,and the problems existing in the listening,speaking,reading and writing areas in primary students’ English learning.With the perspectives of formulaic nature of language and the theories of input and output,the lexical chunk is used in the processing of the areas listening,speaking,reading and writing,in order to discuss the effect of the teaching method on the development of the lexical awareness of the primary students,as well as the influence on their language achievement.Therefore,this study focuses on two research questions:(1)Can the chunk-based teaching improve the primary school students’ overall English language proficiency?(2)Which areas were improved by the chunk-based teaching,speaking,listening,or reading and writing?The author chose two of the grade three classes at Clifford School in Guangzhou to carry out this experiment.The participants are two intact classes with 31 students in each.There are 15 boys and 16 girls in each class who are from 8 to 9 years old.According to the scores in pretest before the experiment,3A is selected randomly as the experimental group(EG),and 3B as the control group(CG).In the teaching experiment,the lexixal-chunk-based teaching is carried out for the EG while traditional approach for the CG.The experiment lasted about one semester,from February in 2016 to June in 2016.The experiment ended up by the post-test.The author collected the data from the teaching experiment,analyzing the data of the pretest and posttest that carried out on EG and CG,and used SPSS 18.0 to analyze the data and found out that applying lexical chunk theory to English teaching in Grade three in primary school is feasible.The lexical-chunk-based English teaching can help students improve their English language proficiency.All in all,the lexical-chunk-based teaching has positive effects on the lower primary students’ English language proficiency.The author hopes the findings and conclusions can provide useful data for the lower primary English teachers.Besides,the present study has an implication of applying lexical chunk to the English beginners’ English teaching,in order to improve the overall of the classroom teaching quality.