论文总字数：29739字

摘 要

词汇的学习一直以来都是中学生英语学习中的重要环节，甚至成为了不少中学生的薄弱环节。由于这样的现状，近年来，词块教学作为一种卓有成效的教学法已经越来越兴盛。本文正是针对目前我国中学生在英语学习中的词汇掌握的薄弱现状，研究了词汇教学方法在中学英语教学中的应用。本文阐释了词块教学的理论来源，词块教学的定义，以及我国中学英语教学中词块教学的现状；概述了词块教学在中学英语写作方面的应用；说明了词块教学法在中学英语教学中的意义，并且结合词块教学法的局限性进行了讨论。

关键词：词块； 中学英语教学； 应用

Contents

1. Introduction 4

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 Definition of Lexical Chunks 3

2.2 Theoretical Origin of Lexical Chunks 4

2.3 Features of Lexical Approach. 5

2.3.1 Alterable Units on a Continuum 5

2.3.2 Pragmatic and Functional 6

2.4 Current Studies on Lexical Chunks in Middle School English teaching 6

3. Applications of Lexical Chunks in Middle School English Teaching of Writing 7

3.1 Pre- test 8

3.2 While- test 8

3.3 Post-test 9

4. Findings and Discussion 9

4.1 Significance of Lexical Chunks in English Teaching. 11

4.1.1 To get a better memory of vocabulary. 11

4.1.2 To improve the accuracy of language usage. 11

4.1.3 To improve the fluency of communication. 12

4.2 Limitation of my experiment. 12

5. Conclusion. 13

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

English vocabulary teaching contains four main problems in current situation: first, students can not find out the proper one in the brain when they need a word; second, students can not use the words correctly; third, students use words in wrong situation; the last but not least, vocabulary usage violates the language usage custom. In addition, there exist many other questions, such as mother tongue may interfere English learning. From the syntactic point of view, the semantic chunk is the formation of strong language ability. Computer-based data analysis found that English language communication is not just the use of a word or a fixed phrase, and 90% are in natural discourse by those who are in the middle of semi-fixed/plate (the chunk) structure.

Studying a word list may be the most popular for middle school students among a wide range of vocabulary learning strategies. But a word list may be dangerous, the word list just tell us the word class, meaning of each word, more or less there are a few derivatives. There is no doubt that it is more difficult to put words together to form collocations, if they are informed of a scientific and effective way of learning vocabulary. This essay will also help to raise students’ chunking awareness.

Middle school students are requested to grasp large numbers of vocabulary. And it even becomes a great pain to recite new words for many middle school students. Stiff ways of just remember one by one to recite new words are not very effective. Students can not acknowledge the words well, as well as the phrases, sentences or grammatical rules, as a result, they fail in tests. Many students have to be underachievers in English. All of these are bad for children’s development.

Recently lexical chunk has gained more and more attention in linguistic area. Researchers find we must consider lexical chunks in vocabulary teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to do some practical research on the application of lexical chunks approach in middle school English teaching. Based on the problems in the current vocabulary teaching and learning in middle schools. This paper probes into the correlation of the lexical chunk instruction and increasing students" integrated language skills.

2. Literature Review

We must mention Lewis if we talk about “chunking” vocabulary teaching and learning approach nowadays, whose controversial ideas have had a great effect on the English language teaching world. In this paper, I do not intend to offer a complete review of his work, but I will involve in some of his contributions that can be properly used in the classroom.

In his work The Lexical Approach, Lewis (1993) argues that it is easy to find that more and more languages consist of large numbers of chunks, in the utterances of native speakers. Advanced computer-based studies have given great support to the views of The Lexical Approach recently. The analysis of the study has brought distensible lexical patterning by confirming that native speakers absorb large numbers of “multi-word unit” when using the language.

The versions of these “ready-to-go” chunks are out of our imagination, for instance, “lexical items”, “multi-word units”, “lexical phrases” and etc. However, no matter how to be marked, these chunks are of great importance not only in language teaching but also in language acquisition.

To make a helpful summary, Lewis worked hard on first language acquisition researches which related to second or foreign language learning：(1) Learning single sounds, structures and combining them can not lead to a better grasp, instead, increasing the ability of providing wholes into parts is an effective method. (2)Grammatical rules can be acquired by observing，presuming and experimenting. (3)Whole phrases can be used without understanding their compositions．(4)Acquisition can be increased by contacting with a resonant partner who has a higher level of competence in the target language．(Lewis, 1993:95)

2.1 Definition of Lexical Chunks

The definition of chunk is always one of research problems for scholars in this field of study. On the one hand, it is difficult to draw the boundary between chunks and non-chunks; on the other hand, a chunk can often be coincident with another chunk or contain another chunk (Hunston, 2002). So there is no certain definition about chunks among scholars.

Since the 1980s, chunks have received more and more attention from many researchers (Natteringer and De Carrico, 1992; Wray, 2002, etc.). However, nobody has given a widely accepted definition about chunks. Different expressions are used by different researchers. Such as lexical patterns or phrases, lexical chunks, lexicalized sentence stems, formulaic sequences and etc. Expressions are different, but these names reflect the integrity on form and the stability on semantic as the same.

From the above views, we can infer that lexical chunks are frequently-occurred, fixed or semi-fixed mufti-words or sentences which are beyond users" current linguistic ability and are acquired as wholes in the process of language acquisition. Moreover, they can be revived and used as wholes rather than generated from grammatical rules.

2.2 Theoretical Origin of Lexical Chunks

Language is traditionally defined as lexical grammar. It has been divided into two categories: grammar and vocabulary. Vocabulary refers to the stock of fixed non-generative words. Grammar, which is considered more fundamental，consists of elements of the generative system of language．That is to say, language is a kind of highly systematic and rule-governed behavior. The learning of language means the mastery of all the language rules and grammar points．However，the above traditional views of language have been challenged by some socio-linguists and applied linguists such as Michael Lewis. James R. Nattinger amp; Jeanette S. De Carrico and etc．They put forward with a new view of language and argue that language is not lexical grammar, but grammatical lexis. “Language consists of chunks which, when combined, produce continuous coherent text(Michael Lewis,1997). They suggest that lexical chunks(or fixed expressions, lexical phrases, ready-made chunks, unanalyzed language, prefabricated routines and patterns and etc.)are quite pervasive in language and are as important as productive rules.

Michael Lewis points out (1993) that “Lexical chunk is an umbrella term which includes all the other terms.” And Lewis (1983) gives the definition that “lexical items are socially sanctioned independent units”. Thus, the term lexical chunk is borrowed after that. Chunking was proposed by American psychologists Miller and Selfridge in 1950. It refers to a procedure in which brain makes a process to a single unit in order to produce a larger unit. This larger unit is chunk. Becker proposed the concept “prefabricated phrase”, it means people put a group of related words that reserved in the brain as a whole, and then people remember them as a chunk according to the futures of this group of words.

2.3 Features of Lexical Approach.

According to the above mentioned concept of lexical chunks, we may summarize the following features:

Firstly, typical chunks are relative integrality in structure. For its structure, chunk is similar to common collocation with a syntax structure, and can be applied to grammatical analysis. However, chunk is ready-made, belonging to "prefabricated chunk" stored in memory as a whole. Secondly, there is irregularity with chunks. Namely, chunks can"t be composed by adding each simple word"s meaning. Thirdly, chunks are variable. Both lexical chunks and idioms belong to the prefabricated language, but idioms are relatively fixed. Variability shows that chunks can be changed according to different tense or different factors. In addition, the variability of lexical chunks leads to generation. Namely, chunks shave large room for change in pragmatics. It offers a vast piece of space for the creative vocabulary usage.

2.3.1 Alterable Units on a Continuum

We are accustomed to regarding idioms and other frozen forms as isolated units. Formerly, most linguists dealt with them after the regular productive units. They worked on assuming the difference between this patterned speech and creative speech in kind. But what a pattern consists of , what it is linked to and whether it is a matter of degree instead of kind, it is possible for one to find a continuum in the amount of variation involved, from more invariable and frozen forms (such as idioms )to less invariable forms. Actually, there is no absolute break between the alterable and the frozen , and there is no absolute division between morphology and syntax．

For example, Wood makes a case that there is no essentially break between prefabricated phrases and creative syntax. In her opinion, these exist only at adverse tips of a unity, divided by limitless shadows of syntactic and semantic transformation. Not only in proposing syntactic and semantic standard for judging frozenness of form. However, most matches use only a semantic standard of whether a combination is wholly “compositional” or not, if the meaning of the match is fully foreseeable from the single meanings of the words that it consists of. Whether the form of a combination is fully productive or not is also studied by Wood. In other words, if a form is unique, if it is fully typical, or if it is somewhere in between these two extreme cases are included.

2.3.2 Pragmatic and Functional

According to Nattinger and De Carrico(1992), the reason why lexical chunks differ from other conventionalized or frozen forms (such as idioms or clichés) is mainly in that lexical chunks are used to realize certain functions. Such as: “It"s raining cats and dogs.” “ kick the bucket”, “powder room”, they are idioms and they do not have particular functions; “How do you do”? “A…ago,” “the …er, the …er,” on the other hand，can be used to perform the certain functions of greeting, expressing time relationships, expressing comparative relationships among ideas and etc.

Thus, beside the idioms, there are also three different sorts of phrasal combinations in the language. They are produced by the general rules of syntax and considered regularly, fleshly created constructions. These have traditionally been the center of most linguistic investigation. In addition, there are another two sorts of phrases that are produced more as prefabricated “chunks” than as newly minted constructions. These have usually been assigned to the periphery of linguistic investigation. “Prefabricated phrases are collocations if they are chunked sets of lexical items with no particular pragmatic functions；they are lexical phrases if they have such pragmatic functions” (Nattinger amp; De Carrico,1992:37).

2.4 Current Studies on Lexical Chunks in Middle School English teaching

According to the viewpoints above, Lexical Approach has become a hot spot on the research of second language acquisition. Some English language educators at home have been using the latest research achievement of modern linguistics to make a deeper study on vocabulary teaching rules. They also try to find out new ways to promote second language acquisition with Lexical Approach, on the base of the experience abroad and the certain language environment at home. In many recent books about English vocabulary teaching methods, there is much related experience. Therefore, Lexical Approach has become a new trend on second language teaching. If we apply the approach to middle school English teaching, it will be beneficial to our students in reading, writing, listening and speaking.

3. Applications of Lexical Chunks in Middle School English Teaching of Writing

Recently though it is re-affirmed that lexical chunks can help predominate the English learning and many researches have been discussed and obtained much success with applying different approaches, writing in middle schools is neglected and little has been done with it. In fact, more and more teachers have already realized the importance of writing both in individual development and in English teaching and learning. However, under the control of teachers, students may be given a topic produce free writing work either in class or after class and turn in their compositions to the teachers for making in typical classes. Due to the large number of attendance in a class and the limited teaching hours, the result of these efforts is not satisfactory to both the teachers and students.

Writing is not a simple cognitive process in which students need to revive and reuse the information or experience that reserved in their mind. From a broad sense, the development of English writing researches in China can be seen clearly that more and more attention are put on finding better ways to teach English writing. Nevertheless, Chinese students still get low marks of writing not only for the college students but also for the senior and middle school students.

Perhaps, students can not write a whole and perfect sentence fluently at a period of short time. In this situation, if students use several chunks to combine a sentence, it will be easier. Simultaneously, empirical studies are experimented on how Lexical Approach could help Chinese students to use formulaic language in writing. It is showed that applying the Lexical Approach to English writing can help learners to improve their writing and fluency of expressions and consistency of meaning. However, most of the researches are mainly focused on the college students. Then studies on whether Lexical Approach fits for the junior middle school writing teaching has become a "necessity".

3.1 Pre- test

During my internship in Kai Ming Middle school in Huaian, in order to choose two classes which are equal in English level to take part in my experiment, I make the students of Class 14 and Class 15, Grade 2 have an writing test, in other words, each of them have to write a composition in a limited period of time. There are 98 students taking part in this experiment totally, 48students in Class 14 and 50 students in Class 15. I gave them a certain title. After that, I evaluate the results from 5 points: spelling, wording, sentence structure, consistency and pertinence. Each of the points is give a score value of 10. I got the average score of each point. In the end, I got the table below after that.

Table(1)

From the results we can see that these two classes are equal in writing level. In other words, both of the classes are weak in English writing. The two classes have no obvious differences in writing. Thus, I could view these two classes as two ideal experimental subjects.

3.2 While- test

Under this circumstance, I carried out the Lexical Approach in Class 14 for about 3 months. On the contrary, Class 15 kept the former teaching methods. The students of Class 14 were asked to follow the following five responsibilities in the classroom using lexical chunks: (1)Learn the new content without requiring the analysis of grammatical structures of the expressions．(2)Take an active role in participating classroom activities．(3)Inform teachers whether they are interested in the activities and whether they call understand the input or not．(4)Finish some writing exercises．(5)Form a close and harmonious relationship with teachers and other learners.

During this process, the teacher changed the concept of teaching vocabulary which is based on lexical chunks. And the students were given a series of idiomatic. The teacher makes the students grasp some basic knowledge and learning strategies of lexical chunks. The students were encouraged to learn chunks in some articles and to keep sensitive to chunks. As well, the teacher used flexible methods to teach vocabulary. In class，teachers tried to be the primary source of comprehensible input in the target language．Class time is devoted primarily to providing input for acquisition．

3.3 Post-test

I carried out lexical approach in Class 14 for about 3 months. In the second test, I let all the participants write freely, that is to say the finish time is free. And the students handed in the paper at different times. In order to investigate whether they could overcome their former negative errors, I recorded not only the errors of spelling, wording, sentence structure, consistency and Pertinence, but also the finish time and perfect expressions. I figured out the average level of each point after I got all the data. At last, I make a detailed analysis about these data.

4. Findings and Discussion

After 3 months, the students of these two classes were given another writing test. Which was different from last test, the time was not limited, and every student’s finish time and the amount of perfect expressions were recorded. I calculated the average scores of both the finish time and perfect expressions amount. After that, I got the following two tables.

Table(2)

Table(3)

The result shows that there is an obvious distinguishes after the experiment. We can see in Table(1) and Table(2), the average score of sentence structure of Class 14, changed from 5.98 to 6.40, but Class 15 is from 5.70 to 5.78. It shows that lexical approach has had a great influence on sentence structure. As the same way for consistency, students get a better acknowledge by being taught chunks approach, especially in sentence structure and consistency. According to the data after the test, lexical approach has less effect on spelling and pertinence. As we can see from Table(1) and Table(2), the difference of spelling and wording is 0.11 and 0.12, the distinguish is not so obvious. Table(3) has shows that Class 14 finished the writing test more quickly after the experiment, as the difference of the finish time is 4.42min. Students’ writing speed has got a great improvement, as well as the expressions acknowledgements.

As we have seen, Lexical Approach is a significantly different method for middle school English teaching. Its methodological implications are as follows: Early emphasis on receptive skills, especially listening, is essential. De-contextualized vocabulary learning is a fully legitimate strategy. The role of grammar as a receptive skill must be recognized. The importance of contrast in language awareness must be recognized. Teachers should employ extensive, comprehensible language for receptive purposes. Nonlinear recording formats (e.g. mind maps, word trees) are intrinsic to the Lexical Approach. Reformulation should be the natural response to student error. Teachers should always react primarily to the content of student language.

4.1 Significance of Lexical Chunks in English Teaching.

Recently, more computer-based research places lexical chunks the formulaic speech at the very core of language acquisition and regards it as essential to the creative and fluent rule-forming processes. According to the survey, Lexical approach can improve learners" interest in English learning, increase learners’ learning efficiency. Context in the correct understanding and use of language is essential. The expression of mistakes made by students and often neglected context. Since a long period, isolated vocabulary learning method, to cause the student with the word as a unit for input, attention is often focused on some difficult words, to understand the effect at a discount. In language expression, students often ignore such as language games, register, purport contextual factor.

4.1.1 To get a better memory of vocabulary.

The survey shows that it will be easier for students to remember most of the phrases and sentences if we use lexical chunks. It breaks the traditional model to remember vocabulary words by words. For example, the phrase “show the traditional culture to sb.” it contains two three new words. If students put them together, it will be easier for them to remember. Students can view them as two small chunks, “show…to…” and “traditional culture”. Only if they carry them into their brain, they will never forget the three new words.

4.1.2 To improve the accuracy of language usage.

Lexical chunks makes students form a certain system of language usage, instead of fixed and unordered series of words. When they need to use some expressions to deliver their opinions, chunks come into their mind first, rather than single words. Once the chunks are grasped, there is no need for students to analyze the structures and relationship between words, students are able to pick the stored phrases directly. So that, incorrect language usage can be avoid. For example, when we make phone calls, we often use “This is …speaking.” “Could I speak to…?” If students come up with them when they need, they will make few mistakes.

4.1.3 To improve the fluency of communication.

In our daily English teaching we may easily find that some students can recite or repeat all the vocabulary well, but they can not communicate with others fluently. According to my experience in teaching middle school students, they can express themselves well if they remember the key phrases or chunks. Students need not know the internal structure of each phrase, they move their attention from single words to longer discourse, thus, they can use language more fluently. For example “Shall we go out to have a picnic?” “Would you like to have a cup of coffee?” This kind of fixed expressions is easier to pick up.

4.2 Limitation of my experiment.

Firstly, the survey scope is limited and it only involved in two classes. If the scope is wider, the data will be more convincing. Secondly, the experimental method of my survey is not very rigorous, I only adopt a writing test and this limited method is not so convincing. Further more, I did not have tests in other aspects such as listening comprehension, reading and etc. except writing.

By experiment on this subject for only three months, it is not long enough, the experimental class and control class size is less, so the representative is not enough, the effect of experiment cycle is short. Moreover, it is part of the students because of the influence of non-intelligence factors, learning attitude, interest is not high, they did not take part in the experiment so well.

Beside to increase students’ chunking awareness, lexical approach is an effective way for middle school students to improve their fluency and accuracy of language usage, and their comprehensive ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing will improve either. The short period of time and small number of participants are the limitations, however, we have got many useful findings that are believed to have effect on further English learning and teaching.

Language should be used in appropriate situation when we need the words. Being a crossing of the structure, function and use, lexical chunks ought to provide some effective units for dealing with linguistic variation. But the effective measurement is considerably difficult to get, because most lexical chunks are used automatically and they are quite beyond conscious recovery.

5. Conclusion.

Current study has shown that, even though great efforts have been made, vocabulary learning and teaching are still far from satisfaction in middle school English teaching. For this reason, this research aims to investigate how to overcome the language learning negative transfer and calls for the introduction of lexical chunks into middle school English teaching and is evolutionary change in the concept of vocabulary learning.

The data of the experiment proved that applying the Lexical Approach in English teaching can raise the students" awareness of using lexical chunks, as well as raise the enthusiasm and enhance the correctness and accurateness in students" daily communication.

Traditionally, the teaching of vocabulary above elementary levels was mostly incidental, limited to resenting new items as they appeared in reading or sometimes listening texts, as if vocabulary can take are of itself .This indirect teaching of vocabulary assumes that vocabulary expansion will happen through the practice of other language skills, which, however, has been proved not enough to ensure vocabulary development .By contrast , explicit and intentional teaching of vocabulary has been given much thought recently, f or it largely attends to noticing.

Lexical Approach is of great importance for middle school students in learning a second language, in improving their learning productivity, and in promoting their communicative competence as well. Substantially, Lexical Approach is in accord with the rules of language usage and human cognition. It plays a crucial and irreplaceable rule in middle school English teaching and learning.

Works Cited

[1] Jingwei Tang . “An Empirical Study on the Effectiveness of the Lexical Approach to Improving Writing in SLA” Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2012, Vol.3 (3), pp.578-583

[2] Lewis, M.1997. Implementing the Lexical Approach : “Putting Theory into Practice”. Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications

[3] Lewis, M.1993. “The Lexical Approach”【M】.London: Language Teaching Publications, 1993

[4] Nattinger J.R﹠Jeanette S De Carrico: “Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching”【M】.London Oxford University Press 1992

[5] Nation, I.S.P. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language 【M】.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001

[6] Wray, A.2002. “Formulaic Language and the Lexicon”【M】.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

[7] 方玲玲 《词块教学对减轻语言僵化的认知研究》 外语界 （2010），4,63-66

[8] 桂诗春 《外语教学的认知基础 外语教学与研究》 （2005），4,243-321

[9] 王碧翔 《词块学习策略与初中英语写作教学》 中小学外语教学（2009），6,33-37

[10] 朱芸芸 《词块教学的优势及其对外语教学的启示》 读与写杂志 （2008），9：152-153

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