Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 The Background of the Study
It is a great challenging and reform. Students don’t completely master vocabulary and thus it prevents the development learners’ abilities. More importantly,through empirical study ,there commonly exist some problems in senior vocabulary teaching ,detailed problems are made good arrangements below:
①The amount of the vocabulary mastered is a little small(2500) in ,the data can’t enable the students to read and write freely.
②It is difficult for the students to remember all the words learned in class,and the speed of forgetting these words is even faster ,commonly which makes the learners easily lose interest and their confidence in English.
③Because of the influence from the mother language Chinese on learning English,their learning vocabulary is not properly mastered and basic strategy is not appropriately used by the learners.
④Many teachers are attaching less importance to the vocabulary study ,and always using old teaching means.This makes the ability to apply these words limited ,such as phonetic symbol,shape, speech,collocation etc.
⑤The vocabulary teaching is often separated from the context,only explaining the useof each vocabulary in isolation.Like that,day by day ,learners still can’t master the spirit of the language .Let’s take the word(cover) and water for example :
A1:The reporter covered the news yesterday .(报道)
A2:The reporter covered the cost.(足够支付...的费用)
B1:As we know ,without water ,we wouldn’t live.(水，名词)
B2:In the dry weather ,these flowers need to be watered.(浇水，名作动)
Some patterns like that are endless ,and from the above two groups ,we can see how important it is to understand the context of the vocabulary .
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1.2 The Significance and subjects of the Study
According to all referred to above ,it is absolutely imperative for teachers and learners to adopt the new vocabulary teaching method and fully apply it to English vocabulary teaching . It is a key for teachers that application of English vocabulary teaching under the Lexical Chunk Theories in Senior School should be widely used, and the study will be carried out theoretically. Consequently,there is an urgent demand for a good deal of teacher-led instruction. The payoff can be significantly higher rates of remembering, and therefore, we should more notice the application of Lexical- Chunks in English vocabulary teaching.
The subjects involved in the teaching experiments consisted of 104 in Senior Grade Two of Wu Dang Middle School of Guiyang City ,Guizhou Province.They are from two parallel classes introduced by a teacher. 52 students from one class were elected to be the Experimental Class(E.C) ,while the other 52 students from the other class were elected as Controlled Class(C.C) .According to the scores of general final-term examination of last term independent samples average difference test indicated that there was no evident difference in the two classes(In average ,E.C 85.25,C.C86.54; In SD,E.C 12.84,C.C14.28 .revealed in Table 4.Even their average age is 16.2.The main reason for selecting them is that all the testees are native speakers,and their English abilities and study background are almost equal to each other .In view to this ,the writer decided to use them the intended subjects .The two classes are designed to separately be trained for eighteen weeks . One is traditional vocabulary teaching method ,the other is English chunk teaching .What will be learned is the same books the High school English Curriculum Standard Experimental Textbook published by the People's Education Press(simplified as the PEP Textbooks))and the same teaching content.In the experiment,the students of E.C were asked to recite the text,underlined lexical chunks ,and remember its application ,while the controlled class were only required to recite words after reading the text .The questionnaire before the experiment did not take up their much time .So such requirement did not have an effect on normal teaching and learning. And thus, inthe paper ,the author elected the students of Senior Two,because these students are educated one year of the same school and they have got the same standard English study.The research lasted four months from September .2017 to December .2017.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Research on Lexical chunks
To learn more about chunk theory in teaching English vocabulary ,it is essential to introduce the origin of it .In this section,the conception of the theory at abroad and home will be presented,too.
2.1.1 Research on Lexical Chunks at home
Compared to overseas development,Chinese lexical study and applications are new,in which we can find it currently related to this aspect of training and research conditions is not enough,and harder to find academic papers on lexical chunks ,which are less involved any works about it,and a lot of people are just exploring the study on vocabulary teaching.
From the perspective and different theories,Scholars have done extensive research and discussion on English chunk teaching.Yang Yuchen (1999) analyzed language chunks’ structure by using the pragmatic function and classification, presen- ting English lexical chunks to students in the learning process ,so they can not only avoid improper language errors,yet make students increase the self-confidence of earning the language,and their language fluency.Anxious (2000) argues that the word-formation is a collocation, a phrase,or a chunk.He proposed that English vocabulary teaching by using a pattern approach could enhance students ' motivation,strengthen the learners' inspiration and enthusiasm about attending school.
Wu Jing,and Wang RuiDong (2002) thought that the lexical teaching is appropriate for the Chinese students’ characteristics about learning language,since the word block is an ideal memory mode.Pu Jianzhong (2003) suggested that learners should often meet trouble with the collection and collocation ,the reason is that there are some problems if the learners have not understood lexical -chunk ,and one of the key methods of English vocabulary teaching should strengthen Lexical Chunk teaching.Yan WeiHua pointed out (2003) the vocabulary teaching in chunks could avoid the rule and communicative approach to the extreme.Diao Linlin (2004)conducted a study on Lexical Chunks,finding that in the two blocks of words and the second language skills, some important correlation also exist there.
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2.2 Research on Vocabulary Teaching
In our present vocabulary teaching , though it has got some progress , some questions also exist and learners’ abilities are still limited. Firstly ,teachers often balance all the contents but ignore what is most important and what is less important ,and this shows that when the teachers are conducting a lesson ,they always explain all the learning materials to the students; putting more burden on the students .Secondly ,Explain the deep vocabulary use in isolation, and ignore the context’ production ;The same words own various intention with different contexts,and this will make the students lose interest in reciting word repeatedly. More notice their original ideas ，neglect cultural meanings ，backgrounds ,especially western cultures ;Explain more western cultural background to the students while having vocabulary class, and doing like this will widen their eyes ,even arouse learners’ study of interest .(From Xia Wenjing)
As language is growing,linguistics(Psychology, logic and Anthropology),the study of the long history of English Lexicology calls for new opportunities and broad prospects.There is a booming tendency that the development of cognitive linguistics and the people’ close attention to foreign language, so the Applied Cognitive Linguistics slowly are formed, and its important aspects about vocabulary teaching lie in as follows:
1.The teaching of phrasal verbs.
2. The guiding saying. Understanding idioms can assist us master and learn them by heart .
3. The teaching of prepositions and prepositional phrases.Verspoor&Loewi(2003) explored that word frequency and similarity influence the acquisition of second language.
4. The teaching about polysemous words ,it can make teaching not limited to rote learning.linguistics Cs a Bi(2004)argued that the understanding of the conception,met- taphor and conceptual metonymy can promote the development of foreign language vocabulary and make teachers know that our vocabulary teaching is not limited to rote learning(from Lu Zhi).
The writer are trying to make the readers fully understand English word learning ,especially for teachers ,so it is important to show its origin ,definition ,its improvement of teaching English vocabulary .In this part ,the different aspects of teaching words in our country and foreign countries will be presented ,too. I believe after reading and discussing learners will get many benefits in the process.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework ……….......15
3.1 Chunk Theory……………........15
3.1.1 The Origin and Definition of Lexical Chunks…….....15
3.1.2 Application of Chunks……………....16
Chapter 4 Research Design and Methodology……………......24
4.1 The Background of Research Design …………………24
4.2 The Purpose of Research Design …………..........24
Chapter 5 Data Collection and Analyses ……….....................41
5.1 The Collection and Analyses of the Interview...........41
5.1.1 The Data Collection of the Interview............................41
5.1.2 The Data Analyses of each Option….............................43
Chapter 5 Data Collection and Analyses
5.1 The Collection and Analyses of the Interview
After the interview for the all the professional English teachers of Wudang Middle School,the writer carefully analyzes ,classifies these data and at last concludes. The data analyses is made a list below.（The questionnaire is adopted from Zhangyong qin from Shandong University）
5.1.1 The Data Collection of the Interview
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Chapter 6 Conclusions
6.1 Major findings
Through research,the writer conducts students’ vocabulary learning tactics and their chunks strategy by means of survey .Based on the data ,the writer has learned what memory tactics in their learning vocabulary .Memory tactics usually used are as follows：reciting words,phonetic rule tactics,context tactics，making cards tactics.By comparing these tactics,it is believed that learners have got different learning strategi- es according to their own habits .However,learners learn little about the efficient Lexical-chunk method,they can’t even know the idea of Lexical-chunk theory .
During the research, lexical chunk and a lesson design on vocabulary teaching are adopted in the experimental class.At the same time,the teacher emphasizes chunks appearing in their text by the means of reciting and making sentences;Two tests have been conducted to check the efficiency and excellent students' improvement is obviously seen from their grades. So it is clear that lexical-chunk theory has been effectively employed in English vocabulary teaching.
After the application on lexical-chunk theory in the experimental class, as for the improvement,it is obvious that the theory has improved the students' grades,especially after research,in excellent group,it gets more progress than good group.Next, The unexpected progress and more interest of needing hard -work group and low-level group have greatly astonished us;Also, we can know that the average grades before research and after research has got different improvement to the degree.Especially in learning poor group,the students‘ scores and study interest has increased according to the listed data .
reference(omitted)