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◆Why do we need to teach vocabulary?

A linguist once said that in communication without grammar little can be conveyed but without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.

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◆The necessity to improve the efficiency of teaching vocabulary:

1. From the big environment:

1). The new curriculum sets a higher requirement for senior school students’ English vocabulary learning and using

2). the present vocabulary teaching method in high school is obsolete and inefficient.

◆The necessity to improve the efficiency of teaching vocabulary:

2. From the personal factors: (inefficient teaching)

1). Though I know it’s difficult for students to memorize the difficult and abstract vocabulary, I still ask them to remember the words and expressions and do some dictation the next day.

2). Though I have taught them how to use a dictionary to facilitate their language study, they still don’t understand the exact meaning of part of the words they’ve learned, which not only affects their reading speed but also comprehension.

3). Though they’ve been tested repeatedly on some commonly used words and expressions, their writing and translation are still full of mistakes.

An effective solution Chunking and collocation

Definition of collocation:

It refers to a group of words that belong together, either because they commonly occur together like take a chance, or because the meaning of the group is not obvious from the meaning of the parts, as with by the way or to take someone in.

◆The reasons for giving attention to the word groups:

1 ） Language knowledge is collocational knowledge.

2) All fluent and appropriate language use requires collocational knowledge.

3) Many words are used in a limited set of collocations and knowing these is part of what is involved in knowing the words.

◆What is chunking? N.Ellis (2001) sees the learning of collocation as one level of chunking, that is, the long-term storing of associative connections. This chunking occurs at all levels of language, and in both spoken and written forms.

Examples of chunking at different levels of written language

Level Type of chunking Examples

Letters Each morpheme is processed as a unit not as a set of separate stokes.

p is processed as a unit, not as a small circle and a descending stroke on the left hand side.

Morphemes Each morpheme is processed as a unit rather than a set of letters.

play is processed as a unit not as a combination of p, l, a, y

Words Complex words are processed as a unit rather than several morphemes.

player is processed as a unit not as a combination of two units play and -er

Collocations Collocations are processed as a unit not as a group of two or more words.

a player with promise is processed as a unit

◆Chunks can be classified into:

1. poly words 聚合词语 as it were, by and large2. institutionalized expressions 约定俗成的表达方式 Each

coin has two sides. / How do you do? 3. phrasal constraints 限制性结构短语 a ____ago, the

___er, the ___er a day/ year / week ago, the sooner the better/ the busier

the happier4. sentence builders 句子构造型短语 not only…but also…

◆The role it plays in language learning:

Word chunks occupy a crucial role in facilitating language production, being the key to fluency and nativelike selection.

◆The main advantage of chunking

It can reduce processing time.

◆The main disadvantage of chunking

Learners may have difficulty in the storage of chunks

advantages disadvantagesoutweighs

Fluent and appropriate language use requires collocational knowledge.

How much time and effort should be spent on an item? (two criteria)

1. If the frequency of a collocation is high,

2. If it occurs in many different uses of the language, It deserves attention.

◆Collocation and teaching:

Pawley and Syder (1983) consider that the best explanation of how language users can choose the most appropriate ways to say things from a large range of possible options (nativelike selection), and can produce language fluently (nativelike fluency) is that units of language of clause length or longer are stored as chunks in the memory. So we have every reason to experiment with this new fantastic idea in vocabulary teaching.

Different approaches to the use of word chunking: Chunking through fluency-development activities:

1. 4/3/ 2 techniques 2. Listening corner

3. Listening to stories 4. Best recording

5. Rehearsed talks 6. Speed reading and Extensive reading

7. Repeated reading 8. Continuous writing

Chunking through language-focused attention:

1. Dividing up texts 2. Read-and-look-up

3. Delayed copying 4. Delayed repetition

5. Seeing the patterns in chunks 6. Deliberately learning new collocates

we should develop innovative ways to incorporate lexical chunks into vocabulary teaching. Different teaching strategies should be invited into our classroom and be used in an attempt to raise students’ awareness of using collocation and chunking, which will eventually be beneficial to their life-long English study.

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