2014 No.01 The Application of Lexical Chunks in college English teaching Juan Gao,Xiaoxia You (Handan Vocational Technology Institute,Handan,Hebei,China 056000) AbstracL Lexical chunks(Lewis,1993)were ifrtsly put forward by Lewis in 1993.Besides 1exica1 chunks,there are many other similr aterms.such as semi ifxed patterns nd laexicalized sentence stems(Pawley&Syder,1 983)1exicalized sentence stems formulaic lfames(Peters,1 983)and so on.Based on these terms and theories,many researchers begin to apply it to lnguagea teaching.And the data collected commonly suggest lexical chunks teaching has an effective influence on language production.The text consists of four parts, introduction,and organization ofthe text,conclusion,and reference. Key words:Lexical chunks,English teaching 1.Introduction 2.Theory of Lexical Chunl‘s According to the study of linguists,lots of prefabricated lan- guage units retaining in learners’memory,which are formed by several items of words and also contain more information than a single word,in other words,they are prefabricated chunks.Difer- ent researchers define these chunks in diferent ways.Through summarizing up theses definitions,we briefly refer to the defini— tion given by Pu Jianzhong.Pu says chunks are abstract and fre・ quently-used prefabricated multiple units with a certain structure to express meaningful content.Lewis speciicalfly classiifes chunks re classifaied into four types:words,polywords,collocation,insti- utitonalized utterance and sentence frames and heads.Other印一 plied linguists have given their own categories.Some representa- tives are shown as follows: Bloomfield and Fries,even Chomsky claim the structural lin— guistics play a leading role in English teaching process.They all consider language learning is to learn a kind of structure but not VOCabulary which is used iust for exercise the structure and gram. mar.But learners’lnguage abiality to use the target lnguage ahasn’t reached to a high level;instead the problems on their fluen. cy curacy,cohesive abiliy atre intending to be serious. attinger nd Decararico 1 992)the research on second lnguagea acquisition becomes more and more concerning about the process of he de- tvelopment of langrage acquisition,that is to say,how is the lan- guage rule learnt.Furthermore,in the latest 20 years,the data from he research suggest 70%of tthe communication is realized by chunks which are in he mitddle between words and fixed phrase. Time 1975 researchers Becker categories Polywords,phrasal constraint,functional linguitisc meta-messages,sentence builders, situational utterances,verbatimtexts 1983 1992 1997 Pawley and Syder Polywords;institutionalized expressions;phrasal constraln ̄sentence builders Nattinger&DeCarrio Polywords;institutionalized expressions;phrasal constraint;sentnce buileders Lewis Single words and polywords;collocations;institutionalized utterances;sentence frames and heads 1998 Howarth Functional expressions;composite units;lexical collocations;grammatical collocations 2002 Moon nomalous Acollocations formulae metaphors 3.Lexical Chunks Compared with rules. Other Related nleories 3.1 Lexieal Chunks and Rule—based System Because the prefabricated chunks are routine language formed in the process of langue studying.The user does not need to know the inside their structure when using them.They just need to recognize them as a whole.For example,“that is to say”,“gen— erally/speciicalfly/normally speaking’ “exchange opinions’ “de- The rule—based system has the feature of being analyzed. 1earners can ereate infinite sentence with limited rules.and it only takes a little Sl:'ace of memory.However.1earners cannot make the current communication fluently or correctly wih itt-that is to say. hey cannott make whole correct sentences immediately.Nattinger and De Carrico believe the fluency extent depends on how many prefabricated chunks stored in 1earners’brain but not the grammar livery milk”and so on.Therefore,learners can save a lot of time when using them during the communication;on the other hand,it also helps language learners to improve the curacy of outputting. 3.2 Lexical Chunks and Memory—based System 一36一 Journal of Zhouyi Research Memory-based sy stem is to help 1earners find out the needed information quickly and correctly.However,learners need to re- member the formulaic language for several times due to the over- lapping.Bollinger believes the timely conversation usually is Ob- se ̄ed,predicated but not creatively.That is why the second lan- guage learner can talk with the native speaker freely with the us- age of lexical chunks. Nattinger and Decarrico believe polywords is a fixed word formation and it is divvied into canonical and non.canonica1.1’he former is of typical English feature,such as“hold you horse(V. +n.),at nay rate(prep.+n.),a piece ofcake(n.+prep.Phrase)’ etc.but the latter is contrary,for example,“by and large’ “once nad for all’ etc.they can be used as an independent word wiht a certain form.The second type is institutionalized expressions;the linguists consider them into sentence-level expressions,including proverbs,sayings,utterance formulaic lnaguage and so on.Most of廿lem have fixed forms.For example:long time no see,,.“a watched dog never boils”,etc.the third one is phrasal constraints. For example:we can fill in the blank “a ago”witl1 day/week/month/very bring time/a long time,etc.and fill wiht ad— iectives in hte blank“the er hte ” such as“sooner…bet. ter”and“busier and happier”.etc.the lsat type is sentence builder,it usually presents a sentence frame,the learners can put hte accordinglywords or clause.for example“Ithinkthat…’’“I’ m agreatbelieverin…’’ 4.Le cal Chunks Teaching in English 4.1 Awareness—raising Recognizing chunks is very important in learning process. Firstly,it is better to give students a flresh insight of lexis by start- ing with diferent expressions,Form example,“exchange ideas’’ or”communicate ideas”:‘‘come to no harm”or‘‘come to no dan. ger’ the comparison could sharpen the student’s intuitions of dif- ferences between the target lnaguage and the mother--tongue lan-- guage.Secondly,an instruction should be given to identify the phrases in the text,including identifies the type and meaning of phrases,especially the fixed parts and variable parts in the phras- es.For example,inthe phrase“asfarasIknow’ “asfar as”isin- variable.but hte 1atter is changeable.both“1 am concerned”and “I can tell’’can take place of“I know”.The author once carried out an experiment on some college student.The students were asked to translate several sentences from Chinese into English.It was not commonly to see that about over ninety percent ofthe stu- dents gave rigid English sentences.For instance,Sample One which reads.“It sounds too good to be true’’was written by many students as“It is heard/listened to be good.but it is not true”: Sample Two,“The world won’t end,ifyou don’t pass one single test”was translated into“Ifyou don’t pass one tesL the sky won’t fall down”.The experiment exposed the students to the impor- tance of natural lnaguage use and inspired their interest in learning lexical chunks. 4.2 Lexical Chunks Input hTere are three processes in lexical phrase teaching.Firstly, teaching lexical phrases as frozen wholes wiht no variation possi— ble fortota1 assimilation.e.g.“bVthe way”“on hte other hand” etc..The idiomatic nature of hte wholes and the de.1exicalized na. ture of the components words is neglected in htis list of archetypi- cal utterances using:I’ll’ such as,I’11 give you a m ’l1 be in touch/I’11 get back to you as soon as I can./I’11 be back in ten minutes./I’11 be all right/It’11 take time. OH’11 be the day!/That’11 happen to me./Nobody will even notice it.Secondly,teaching lexi- ca1 phrases wim variation for further substitution drills.Lewis gives special emphasis to institutionalized utterances,or highly conventionalized locations such as “If 1 were you.I’d ”.Be. cause of their fixedness he considers such sentences to be lexical itemsandarguesthatthey ratherthanframer shouldformthe basis of lnaguage learning programs.Thirdly,teaching lexical phrases by segmentation for further analysis.There are two kinds of collo- cation identiifcation:grammatical collocations and lexical colloca- tions.Students should pay more attentionto them.The former are mostly in the formula:n./adj./v.+prep./to do/clause;such as account for;previous to;convince sb.of(htat…),etc.And they can be easily identiifed with the help of a dictionary and textbooks: hTe 1atter is characterized as a co.occurrence oftwo words:n./v. /adj.+n.;n.+V.;adv.+adj.;v.+ad.,such as window shopping; hold water;minor illness;slam shut,etc.All these help familiarize students with the lexical phrases/chunks which make up a large section of lnaguage. 4.3 The Signiifcance of Lexical Chunks Teaching “Accuracy”and“fluency rae generally used to describe two diferent kinds of exercise in lnaguage teaching(Lewis 1 993:1 8). Wihtout WOrds,students can not students can not make correct sentence and new conversations and neither make themselves un. derstood when communication with others;wihtout grammar and rules,they can not express their ideas freely eihter.“Lexical chunks”is a forill combining words with structure.It is a special kind of grammar and rules because some of them are fixed items nad phrases,and some ofthem are semi-fixed and variable wiht which students can make more new and correct sentences nad ut. terances.Many theoretical researches have proved that lexical chunks have great advantages in language outputting,including reading,writing,speaking and even listening.A few researchers begin to study the function of lexical chunks in prevention of lan- guage fossilization. 5.Conclusion Lexical Approach offers a promising new direction for lna- guage teaching.Though there may be disadvantages in lexical,dp- proach,we can definitely say that lexical phrases are helpful in impr0Ving English ski11s.Therefore it is mOre eff ctive tO teach or leam vocabulary in me fonn of lexica¨tems or chunks men in iso. 】atj0n Reflerences 【1】Lewis,M.1993.The LeXjcal Appr0ach.Hove:Language Teaching PublicatiOns. [2】Lewis,M.1 997.Implememing廿1e Lexical Approach. HoVe:Language Teaching Pub1icatjons. [3】Nalninger,J.R.&J.S.De Cal co.1 992.Lexica1 Pl1raSes and Language Teaching.0xf0rd:Oxflord Univers Press 一37— 2014 NO.O1 [4]Pawley&Syder.Two Puzzels for Linguistic Theory:Na- tive—like Selection and Native-like Fluency.Longman.1 983 【6】Jianzhong,Pu.Learner behavior of verbs:colligation,col- locmion and chunk[MI.Kaifeng:Henan University press,2003. 【5】Peters,A.M.Units of language acquisition(M).Cam- Longman. bridge University Press.1 994. 一38一