Lexical approach

Lexical approach

Beatriz Rodríguez Rivera

Background


Lexical approaches in language teaching reflect a belief in the centrality of the lexicon to language structure, second language learning, and language use, and in particular to multiword lexical units or “chunks"


The role of lexical units has been emphasized in both first and secondlanguage acquisition research. These have been referred to by manydifferent labels

“holophrases” (Corder 1973)

“prefabricated patterns” (Hakuta 1974),

“gambits” (Keller 1979)

“speech formulae” (Peters 1983)

“lexicalized stems” (Pawley and Syder 1983)


Advances in computer-based studies of language (referred to as corpus linguistics) have also provided a huge, classroom-accessible database for lexically based inquiry and instruction.

These studies have focused on collocations of lexical items and multiple word units.

Three important UK-based corpora are:

• The COBUILD bank.

• The Cambridge International Corpus.

• The British National Corpus (which contains more than 300 million words)


Theory of language and learning

The lexical view holds that only a minority of spoken sentences are entirely novel creations and that multiword units functioning as “chunks” or memorized patterns form a high proportion of the fluent stretches of speech heard in everyday conversation (Pawley and Syder 1983).



Collocation: refers to the regular occurrence together of words.

Domy hair.the laundry.my work.

Binomials: A binomial pair or binomial is a sequence of two or more words belonging to the same grammatical category, having some semantic relationship and joined by some syntactic device.

• Back to front• Clean and tidy• More or less



Trinomials: is a sequence of three words belonging to the same grammatical category, having some semantic relationship. • blood, sweat, and tears

• left, right, and center

Idioms: is a semantic unit whose meaning cannot be deduced from the meanings of its constituents.

• Eats one’s word.• run up a bill.



Similes: An expression that describes something by comparing it with something else, using the words 'as' or 'like'. • White as snow.

• old as the hills.

Connectives: A connective, in its most common usage, is an expression having a function similar to that of a conjunction.

• and• or• but• finally



Conversational gambits: A conversational gambit is a opening used to start a conversation with.

• Guess what!• So, what do you do?

These types of lexical units play a central role in communicating.



Corpora are important sources of information about collocations and other multiword units in English.

However, if as Pawley and Syder estimate, native speakers have hundreds of thousands of prepackaged phrases in their lexical inventory, the implications for second language learning are uncertain.


Syllabus

The syllabus and accompanying materials are based on lexical rather than grammatical principles.

“word frequency would determine the contents of our course. Level 1 would aim to cover the most frequent 700 words together with their common patterns and uses” (Willis 1990: vi).


Teacher’s roles.

• Source of input • Understand and manage a classroom

methodology based on stages composed of task, planning and report.

• Create an environment which learners operate effectively.

• Help learners to manage their own learning.• Abandon the idea of the “knower”.


Learner’s roles.

• Discover• Data analyst


Materials

Type 1: course packages including texts, tapes, teacher’s manuals, and so on, such as the Collins COBUILD English Course (Willis and Willis 1989).

Type 2 : collections of vocabulary teaching activities such asthose that appear in Lewis’s Implementing the Lexical Approach (Lewis1997).

Type 3 : “printout” versions of computer corpora collectionspackaged in text format.

Type 4 : computer concordancing programs andattached data sets to allow students to set up and carry out their ownanalyses.


Procedure

• Materials will vary depending on which of the four types of materials are employed.

• The learner must take on the role of “discourse analyst,” with the discourse being either packaged data or data “found” via one of the text search computer programs

• Draw students’ attention to lexical collocations.

• Woolard (2000) suggests that teachers should reexamine their course books for collocations, adding exercises that focus explicitly on lexical phrases.

Education

Lexical approach