Many researchers and teachers try to find the effective method of vocabulary teaching。 Through years of studying, they have realized that the native speakers had a great number of lexical chunks。 The new phenomenon once aroused great interest of linguists。 They began to endow this language phenomenon with many different terms。 The term “Lexical Chunks” used in this paper is now widely acknowledged and used。 In the study of lexical chunks, the researchers found the reason of native speakers’ fluency, which emphasized the importance of chunks rather than inpidual words。 Therefore, language chunks take the same position in English teaching as grammar teaching。 In China, the idea of lexical chunks is gaining more and more attention among English teachers and researchers。 They have made attempts to investigate the Chinese learners’ competence of lexical chunks。 The studies emphasized the vital role of lexical chunks in second language acquisition and exploration about the relationship between students’ storage of accessible lexical chunks and their fluency in writing and reading。 文献综述

The present study, focusing on the teaching lexical chunks, has offered a new way to teach vocabulary in high school。 The paper aims to analyze the application of lexical chunk theory to English vocabulary teaching in high school。 This paper comprises five parts。 The first part is a brief introduction of this paper。 The second part will be devoted to a survey of the relevant theories to present research。 The definition and the functions of lexical chunks will be discussed in the chapter。 In the third part, the author will talk about the present study on lexical chunks in English vocabulary teaching and learning in high school, which includes the research status of lexical chunks learning in China, and problems of lexical chunks in vocabulary teaching and learning。 The fourth part, the main chapter, will give the application of lexical chunk theory to high school English vocabulary teaching。 In order to fulfil the aims of vocabulary teaching, the writer implements the lexical approach to explore a couple of teaching designs in high school based on the lexical chunk theory。 Pedagogical suggestions will be discussed afterwards。 The fifth part is the conclusion of this paper and the outlook of the lexical chunk theory。

II。 A Retrospection of Lexical Chunk Theory

The lexical chunk theory produced in the early 1990s, its founder Nattinger and DeCarrico think that there were many higher frequency of use of the phrase vocabulary in English。 For example, “at first”, “come on”, and “be used to” and so on。 Those are the chunks。 This chapter will discuss the definition and functions of lexical chunk。

2。1 The Definition of Lexical Chunk

Many scholars have explained the concept of lexical chunks, but there is no widely accepted definition of lexical chunks。 Weinert claims that lexical chunks is too difficult to define, although researchers have basically the same concept in mind。 Lexical chunks have been explained in many ways: They may be called “prefabricated patterns”, “lexicalized stems”, “speech formulae”, “lexical phrases”, “ready made (complex) units”, etc。 来;自]优Y尔E论L文W网www.chuibin.com +QQ752018766-

Among all of the definitions, Nattinger’s and Wray’s definitions of this linguistic phenomenon are the most prestigious。 In Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching, Nattinger and DeCarrico label the lexical chunks as lexical phrases。 They describe lexical phrases as “chunks” of language of varying length, and each is associated with a particular discourse function。 The two researchers also point out that they are “multi-word lexical phenomena that exist somewhere between the traditional poles of lexicon and syntax, conventionalized form/function composites that occur more frequently and have more idiomatically determined meaning than language that is put together each time”。