An Action Research On English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High Based On Chunking Theory

Pronunciation,vocabulary and grammar are the three main factors of language,moreover,vocabulary is the most basic material of language.Linguist Wilkins says: “ if there's no grammar,we cannot express too much;if there's no vocabulary then we just express nothing”(Wilkins,D.(1972: 27).Therefore,vocabulary is the central task of language acquisition;vocabulary is the root of language learning;vocabulary is the basis to develop basic language skills including listening,speaking,reading,writing and interpretation.In language learning,the quantity and quality of vocabulary is the foundation of learner's language competence.Moreover,the lack of vocabulary can indirectly influence learner's interest in language learning.Meanwhile,students also have some problems in vocabulary learning,such as improper learning strategy,the lack of time on vocabulary learning.What's more,after curriculum revolution,new curriculum standards propose higher requirements for vocabulary learning in senior high school.One of them is that students can select proper vocabulary to communicate or express according to the talking topic,talking occasion and interpersonal relationship.(Regular Senior High School“English Curriculum Standards”(Experimental,2003).” This shows that,comparing with junior high school,the quantity of vocabulary,vocabulary meaning and usage are much more complex in senior high school.This also shows new curriculum propose higher requirement for the quantity and quality of vocabulary.Therefore,both teacher and students are required to attach more importance to vocabulary teaching and learning from the perspective of vocabulary use in order to deal with the problem of time costing and low efficiency in vocabulary teaching and learning.Many researchers have done much research on such issue to prove the validity and applicability of different vocabulary teaching methods with different research method,from different perspective and different theoretical basis.Regarding of research method,many researches are primarily non-empirical research and empirical research & descriptive research based on data statistics.Regarding of research perspective,many are carried out based on cognitive psychology,cognitive linguistics and semantics & stylistics and pragmatics,etc.While regarding of theoretical basis,some applied schema theory,some applied lexical chunks theory,while some applied constructivism theory,etc.However,there are fewer research carried out based on chunking theory and by using the research method of action research and case analysis to prove the validity of chunks in vocabulary teaching,moreover,fewer research pay attention to students' true feeling and thought,therefore,these are the differences from those researches mentioned above.This research is expounded with the vocabulary chunking theory,applied the method of case analysis,action research and interviewing.Vocabulary chunking theory is based on chunks theory which is proposed in 1956 by American psychologist Miller,G.A.in his famous essay.He proved that people can greatly enlarge the capacity of short-term memory by using chunks.Afterwards,linguist Becker proposed the concept of lexical chunks on the basis of chunks which drew people's attention in English teaching and also made efficiency to some extent.However,“lexical chunks” aims to deal with the relationship between word and word that can be called outer relationship while vocabulary chunking not only aims to deal with outer relationship but also deal with inner relationship which aims to deal with the following aspects,including pronunciation,spelling,meaning and application of a independent word.Therefore,this research will be discussed based on chunking theory and apply it in English vocabulary teaching,which is called vocabulary chunking,including phonetic chunks,spelling chunks,semantic chunks and prefabricated chunks.And then it forms relevant teaching strategies according to this category.The action research method will be carried out in this research.The first step is to confirm the the adviser teacher and the students object.Secondly,I take class observation for one month in order to know the basic situation of vocabulary teaching and also know the students' response to the vocabulary learning,and then case analysis is conducted.One month later,action research is conducted by carrying out the teaching scheme,after that,case analysis is also conducted.Then I interviewed the students from the two classes and I obtained the direct information about their true feeling and evaluation for this teaching scheme.Finally,I got the overall evaluation for that teaching scheme,which shows most contents of the teaching scheme refresh students' understanding to the vocabulary learning and have effectively facilitated students' vocabulary learning.Therefore,this action research shows the teaching strategy of the vocabulary chunking based on chunking theory,to some large extent,obviously helps senior students do a better job in English vocabulary learning.