Application Of Lexical Chunk Approach In English Vocabulary Teaching Of Senior High School

Vocabulary is regarded as one of the three factors of language.It is both the carrier of thinking and the base of language acquisition.Vocabulary teaching plays an important role in English teaching.There are a lot of vocabulary teaching methods,among which Lexical Chunk Approach has been concerned by more and more teachers and linguists.The researchers find that there are plenty of fixed or semi-fixed expressions in English.These expressions are stored as units in the language learners` brains to be used freely.Besides,these lexical chunks play an important role in language acquisition.So to master the chunks can effectively promote the vocabulary learning.In 1993,Michael Lewis first put forward the Lexical Chunk Approach in his book The Lexical Approach.The Lexical Chunk Approach advocates that language is made up of grammaticalized lexis,rather than lexicalized grammar.And vocabulary is the core and heart of language.It is multi-word prefabricated chunks rather the traditional grammar and vocabulary that make up the language.In the past decade,there are an increasing number of researches on lexical chunk approach.But most of these studies on lexical chunk approach are based on theoretical discussion and many practical problems are also needed to be explored,particularly the research on application of lexical chunk approach for senior high school students in ethnic minority areas.Therefore,this study is based on the Lexical Chunk Approach put forward by Michael Lewis.The objects are one hundred students of Diebu Senior High School,Gannan autonomous prefecture,Gansu province.The research lasted for sixteen weeks.The results are showed as follows:(1)Through questionnaires,the author found that the application of Lexical Chunk Approach can increase the lexical chunk awareness of senior high school students.(2)The test scores of experiment class are better than those of control class.This proves Lexical Chunk Approach can effectively improve the students` English vocabulary learning.There are six chapters in this thesis.Chapter One are research background,research significance,research aims and the main structure of the present research.The second chapter is the literature review.Here it includes researches on lexical chunks,researches on Lexical Chunk Approach and the advantages of Lexical Chunk Approach.Chapter Three is theoretical framework,which includes Lexical Chunk Approach,The short-term memory capacity theory,and Input Hypothesis Theory.Chapter four includes research questions,research subjects,research instruments,research procedures,data collection and analysis.Chapter Five is on the results and discussion of the questionnaires and tests.The sixth chapter gives a summary of this study.There are the present research`s limitations and implications,and the research`s suggestions for further research.