Research on the Application of Lexical Chunk Usage in College Students' Spoken English Communication

Abstract

With the continuing development of corpus linguistics, the ability of foreign language learners to use lexical chunks has attracted more attention from the academic circles. Lexical chunk, a language structure with specific discourse functions, possesses both lexical and grammatical features. As a multi-word unit, lexical chunks are examples of integral acquisition and storage in the human brain's memory. It's a language phenomenon that frequently appears in learners' spoken communication but is easily neglected. The ability to use lexical chunks is an important evaluation criterion for pragmatic competence. Lexical chunk usage plays an important role in learners' oral output. This paper aims to explore the application of lexical chunk usage in college students' English oral communication, and how factors such as learners' characteristics of using lexical chunks affect college students' oral output, thus affecting the proficiency, fluency and idiomaticity of communication.