The Effects of Lexical Chunks on College Students’ Oral English Learning

T he Effects of Lexical Chunks on College Students’ Oral English Learning

宋云华

武昌工学院 国际教育学院 湖北武汉 430065

Abstract: In recent years, scholars at home and abroad have proved that the application of lexical chunks theory has obvious advantages for students to improve their oral English ability. The use of lexical chunks in oral communication can enhance the confidence of the communicators and stimulate their enthusiasm and activeness. Especially for beginners, the use of lexical chunks to a large extent can ease the language coding pressure and anxiety during verbal communication. It is easier for learners to gain a sense of accomplishment and make a virtuous cycle of learning. The English speaking environment and language input have a great influence on the improvement of oral English. The lexical chunk approach theoretically demonstrates that language learning centered on lexical chunks can help learners to improve their oral English proficiency, broaden their horizon and play an important role in oral English learning.

Key words: lexical chunks; oral English competence; effect

1.Introduction

Language is the most important tool of communication, which can express ideas, convey emotions and exchange information. Language activities permeate all the areas of human social life, and the oral language is the most primitive form of language. According to the origin and development of language, oral language plays an important role in language.

Lexical Chunk Theory is of universal significance because it corresponds with the basic law of oral expression. When we speak, we usually required to express the word extraction from stored lexical brain mental lexicon, grammar, and then added rules to generate sentences, then speak it out. Therefore, lexical chunk theory is helpful to improve students’ oral communicative competence and the unity of oral fluency and accuracy. At present, the research on the application of lexical chunks theory still not too much, through this study, which not only makes the theory of lexical chunks further development, but also theoretically demonstrates that language learning centered on lexical chunks can help learners to improve their oral English proficiency, broaden our horizon and play an important role in oral English learning. At the same time, lexical chunks are both lexical and grammatical functions, which are the unity of form and function. Corpus studies show that native oral English is composed of lexical chunks, so lexical chunks play an important role in oral English acquisition. This paper summarizes the theory of predecessors. On the basis of further research, the author finds that lexical chunk theory plays a positive role in English oral communication. And puts forward the effective methods for its existing problems in the spoken language expression process, then improve students’ oral expression ability, which has certain practical significance.

2. Lexical chunks

The definition of lexical chunks is different from the perspective of lexical chunks. From the point of view of grammar, lexical chunk is a kind of fixed or semi-fixed language structure between words and sentences, which is a complete vocabulary grammar unit. From the perspective of psycholinguistics, lexical chunk is a succession of the whole user which can be memorized and used, it can be arranged to stored in the mental lexicon, reduced the difficulty of users of language processing.

By summarizing the definition of lexical chunks from many scholars, which can be defined from six aspects: form, length, frequency, meaning, function and psychological representation. In form, it is a fixed or semi-fixed lexical grammatical combination. Length of at least two words, no fixed length. The frequency is not only high in the corpus, but also the mutual information between components is high. Meaning can be expressed in a certain sense. It can realize the functions of grammar, discourse and pragmatics. Lastly, it is recognized and used as the basic unit of grammar in psychological representation.

To sum up, lexical chunk is a special phenomenon of multi-word and compound word in English; it is the basic unit in language communication; it can be used independently to form a sentence or utterance; it is a complete form of long-term storage or memory in the minds of language learners and can be extracted directly or directly from the mind or memory; it is a fixed and semi fixed phrases from different levels in English language, which is a kind of language that covers the words to the text, and combines the advantages of grammar, semantics and context.

Because of the different definitions and names of lexical chunks, which also brings some difficulties to the classification of lexical chunks. In order to explore the classification of lexical chunks, scholars at home and abroad have made a lot of efforts. In the 1970s, some scholars tried to classify the lexical chunks. However, such classification lacks the support of second language acquisition theory and cognitive theory, which seemed relatively rough. In 1980s, scholars have classified the lexical chunks from different perspectives, which made classification more refined, scientific and maturing.

Firstly, Becker (1975) made his own classification of lexical chunks. From the perspective of structure and function, he pided the lexical chunks into six categories. (1) Poly words: Fixed multi-word combinations. (2) Phrasal constraints: Phrase frame composed of fixed words. (3) Meta-message: A phrase used to replace a given text. (4) Sentence builders: Sentence pattern.

(5)Situational utterances:Short sentence has certain specific pragmatic functions in social situations. (6) Verbatim texts: A phrase used directly from the original language to replace a particular text.

3.Effects of lexical chunks on oral English

The study and application of lexical chunks reduces the time and the burden for students to choosing words and making sentences. After a short period of time, students can quickly apply it to practice, which actively promote the students’ interest and enthusiasm on lexical chunks and oral English learning.

Many students have problems in oral expression, not only because of the memory of the language knowledge is not enough, but also because of their own anxiety, tension, lack of self-confidence. There are a lot of prefabricated, formulaic chunks in English, if the learners can store these words for a long - term memory, on one hand, they can give themselves great comfort and security in the conversation, on the other hand, they can extract at any time to improve languages’ fluency and accuracy. To a certain extent, they strengthened their confidence in learning oral English, and become the driving force for their ability to improve oral English, also help to form a virtuous circle of oral English learning.

Due to the influence of communicative approach, the foreign English teaching in recent years has paid more attention to the function and application of language, though they also showed concern about the communicative competence of students, but this practice is at the expense of ignoring the language form and reducing the accuracy of language. Although it can meet the need of communication for a while, it must affect the improvement of English language quality.

As we know, most of the English used by students is interlanguage, due to lack of the communication opportunities with native English, the students’ oral English may lack of idiomaticity and occasionally use Chinglish. In daily life, students have little chance to communicate in English, most of them just focus on oral English class, however, they only can practice English speaking with other students and each of them are the user of the interlanguage. Although teachers can give students guidance, but also can not fundamentally solve the idiomaticity problem of oral English communication. By learning some English chunks, the application of lexical chunks can reduce the use of Chinglish and ensure the idiomaticity of oral English.

The biggest value of lexical chunks in oral communication is that it can avoid the pragmatic failures caused by cultural differences and improve the appropriateness of oral expression. Because the lexical chunks is a unity of context and meaning, and is frequently used by conventional form, it can make the speaker to say the right thing at the right time and right place. A fluent conversation not only depends on the pragmatic intent of others to make a rapid and accurate determination, but it is more important to make a proper response to the speaker quickly, and communicative idioms play such an important role in the form of lexical chunks.

4.Strategies to improve oral English

4.1 To establish the awareness of lexical chunks

Students and teachers should understand and accept the lexical chunks theory, and change the simple and superficial understanding of vocabulary, to know that language is mainly composed of lexical chunks, and a great number of lexical chunks are exist in spoken and written discourse. When learning lexical chunks, he must pay more attention to the context and the relationship between the words. Language acquisition is the result of conscious attention, in the process of teaching, the teachers can take some exercises about chunks, for example, error correction, blank filling, repeat the dialogue and so on, which can enhance and strengthen the students attention towards lexical chunks. Lexical chunk is an ideal unit for vocabulary teaching and oral communication, which have a great advantage of English teaching and can improve the sensitivity of lexical chunks.

4.2 To explain the lexical chunks

Lexical chunks is a unity of structure and meaning and the explanation of lexical chunks should consist of the two aspects. For one thing, we need to enable students to understand the structure and meaning characteristics of this lexical chunks and enhance the memory effect. For another, the students should have a stronger awareness of meaning and grammar, self-confidence and initiative, which can improve the accuracy and appropriateness of lexical chunks. Also the teachers should fully understand the cognitive structure of students, then to have a visual and vivid description about semantic and structure. It is a essential method for the students to master and apply the lexical chunks.

4.3 To peruse and memorize the lexical chunks

The research shows that the phonological memory is the most primitive, the most basic and the most effective memory method. Students can read the lexical chunks in terms of pronunciation to increase the familiarity of lexical chunks and enhance the language sense. We should give full play to students’ subjective initiative and enhance its confidence, purpose, awareness and strategy of the memory. The students should keep the sound, shape, meaning and structure of the lexical chunks firmly in mind and make it true internalization. As the old saying goes, the palest ink is better than the beats memory.

5.Conclusion

Oral fluency plays an important role in oral English learning, and it is a long process to achieve the aim of oral fluency. Lexical Chunk Theory is helpful to promote the fluency of oral communication, to improve the accuracy of language use, to enhance the flexibility, creativity and practical use of the language, and to stimulate the learners’ self-confidence. Even though there were many scholars who have previously done some researches on lexical chunks and oral fluency, there are still some problems and doubts which require us to explore and discover.

This paper summarizes the theory of predecessors. On the basis of further research, the author find that lexical chunk theory plays a positive role in English oral communication. We can see that there are many factors which can influence the oral fluency especially the lexical chunks have the greatest effect on oral fluency, for example, it can help to improve students’ interest in oral English learning; it can help to improve the accuracy and idiomaticity of oral expression; it also can help to enhance the appropriateness in oral expression. As a result, we should strengthen the study of lexical chunk through some strategies, such as establishing the awareness of lexical chunks; creating a good language environment; perusing and memorizing the lexical chunks; attaching importance to the foreign culture. Last but not least, it is wise for us to apply it to oral communication and then to improve our own oral expression ability so as to achieve the aim of oral fluency.

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