The lexical approach

The Lexical Approach Michael Lewis, 1993

•Group’s members:

1. Le Thi Thanh Thao2. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Anh3. Nguyen Thi Thanh Hau4. Ly Thi Kim Cuong

The Lexical Approach Michael Lewis, 1993

I. What is “The Lexical Approach”?

II. Types of LexisIII. Principles of LAIV. Considerations on LAV. ProcedureVI. ImplicationsVII. RecommendationVIII. Conclusion

I. What is “The Lexical Approach”?• Concentrating on developing learners’

proficiency with lexis, or words and word combinations.

• Reflecting a belief in the centrality of the lexis to

- language structures- language use- multiword lexical units or “chunks”

Lexical Approach

II. Types of Lexis1 “Lexical chunk” are groups of words that

can be found together in language- Example: "in my opinion," "to make a long story

short,” “by the way,” “at the end of the day,” “Do you mind if I…” “That will never happen to me”

2. Collocation refers to the regular occurrence together of words- Example collocations of verbs with nouns:

Do my hair/ the cooking/ the laundryMake my bed/ a promise/ coffee/ a meal

Lexical Approach

3. Idioms: dead drunk, cost the earth, keep your feet on the ground

4. Similes: as old as the hills, as still as dead, as hungry as a wolf, as easy as A.B.C

5. Connectives: finally, to conclude, whereas, meanwhile, consequently

6. A conversational gambit is an opening used to start a conversation with someone : Guess what! Tell you what, Hello, how are you?

…

Lexical ApproachII. Types of Lexis (Cont)

III. Principles of LA1. Language = Grammar + Vocabulary2. Observe – Hypothesis – Experiment

Circle (Present – Practise - Produce)3. Gramaticalized lexis--not lexicalized

grammar4. Holistic - not atomistic5. Lexicon-is-prime

Lexical Approach

IV. Considerations on designing LA class1. Objectives2. Syllabus3. Roles of teachers 4. Roles of learners5. Materials

1. ObjectivesTo realize a syllabus and accompanying

materials based on lexical rather than grammatical principles.

To cover the most frequent words together with their patterns and uses.

Considerations on designing LA class

2. Syllabus• Subsumes a structural syllabus• Indicates how the structures which

make up syllabus should be exemplified. • Specify the basic meanings of English:

the most common, most important and most basic meanings

• Common topics and related tasks are the backbone.

Considerations on designing LA class

3. The teacher’s roles• Teacher’s talk is the major source

of learner’s input• Organizing the technological

system, providing scaffolding to help learners

• The teacher methodology:–Task–Planning –Report

Considerations on designing LA class

4. The learner’s roles• Replace the idea: the teacher is “

the knower” the learner is “the discoverer”

• Data analyst

Considerations on designing LA class

5. MaterialsTYPE 1

Course packages

TYPE 2Collection of vocabularyteaching activities

TYPE 3“print-out” version of computer corpora

in text format

TYPE 4Computer

concordance Programs

Considerations on designing LA class

Concordancers and Corpora• Corpus : a collection of examples of

texts/utterances of a language

• Concordancer : computer software which analyses corpora. See :

http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html

V. ProcedureProcedural sequences vary depending on

which of the employed materials and activities.

Classroom procedures usually include the use of activities:→ draw Ss’ attention to lexical collocations→ enhance Ss’ retention and use of collocations

Classroom activitiesListening and Reading intensively

and extensively. Repetition and recycling of activities.Guessing the meaning of vocabulary

items from context. Noticing and recording language

patterns and collocations. Working with dictionaries and other

reference tools.

As a suggestion of Woolard (2000):

Reexamine the course books for collocations and adding exercises.

Develop activities that Ss themselves can discover collocations (in and outside of the classroom)

V. Procedure

Another suggestion from Hill (2000):Classroom procedures involve:

a) teaching individual collocationsb) making Ss aware of collocationsc) extending the already-known of Ss

by adding collocation restrictions to known vocabulary

d) storing collocations through encouraging Ss to keep a lexical notebook.

V. Procedure

• Provide input: text and discourse• Provide activities ask sts to work

actively on the chunks• Give sts chance for practicing of

those chunk productively• Repeat and recycle activities with

those expressions

VI. Implications

VII . Recommendations• Important sources

- The COBUILB Bank of English Corpus- The Cambridge International Corpus- The British National Corpus

• Use corpora but be corpus-based, not corpus-bound

• Concentrate on items - no direct translational equivalence

• Text and discourse, rather than sentence-based

• LA is not the lexical syllabus

Refer to only one component of communicative competence.

Lack the full characterization of an approach or method.

Still an idea in search of an approach and a methodology.

• We, Ts, should spend less time explaining English language grammar, more time exposing Ss to useful language and doing awareness arising activities.

• The way we view language affects the way we teach it.

VIII . Conclusion

References

• http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/knowledge-wiki/chunks

• http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/lexical-approach-1-what-does-lexical-approach-look

• http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/chunkterm.htm

• http://www.cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/tesl-ej/ej09/r10.html