Lexical Syllabus and

Corpus LinguisticsSajjad TalebiSheikhbahaee University, Fall, 2016talebisajjad@gmail.com

Defining the Terms:

o Lexical Syllabus?o Corpus Analysis?

What is lexical syllabus?

The lexical syllabus is a form of the propositional paradigm that takes 'word' as the unit of analysis and content for syllabus design.

A lexical syllabus for language learners sees lexis as central to syllabus design, aiming tocover the most frequent words and phrases of the target language, together with theirmost frequent meanings and uses and the combinations and patterns in which theytypically occur.

Lexical syllabuses start with the most frequent words, arguing that an analysis of these words and their associated patterns will identify the phrases learners are likely to need.

Sinclair & Renouf (1988), state that the main benefit of a lexical syllabus is that it emphasizes utility - the student learns that which is most valuable because it is most frequent. Widdowson, on the other hand, believes that mere learning whatever given by corpus analysis is not valuable. Learners need to be “able to apply the rules to make whatever adjustments are necessary according to contextual demands.”

Different Viewpoints

The arguments for a lexical syllabus rest on the findings of corpus linguistics and were initially put forward by West (1953), who laboriously drew up A General Service List of English Words (GSL) by hand.

History?

Application? There are many linguistics issues that can be applied to the lexical syllabus.

For example:• Vocabulary related to topics• Word formation (suffixes, morphemes, etc)• Compound items • Connotations • Denotations

Role of Corpus Analysis in lexical SyllabusAn appropriate research corpus can help us identify the words, phrases, and patterns that learners are most likely to need.

Given this, corpus analysis can contribute to syllabus design in three ways:

Contributions:

1) by analyzing word frequency.

In English, the most frequent 700 words account for around 70% of text. So 70% of all we hear, speak, read, or write is made up of a mere 700 different words. The most frequent 1,500 words account for 80% of text and the most frequent 2,500 for 86%.

Contributions:2) by identifying the most frequent meanings and uses of the most frequent words. These can be surprising. The word point, for example, is one of the 20 most frequent nouns. Once we look at the phrases in which the word occurs (the point is, that’s a good point, etc.) we realize the important function it serves in organizing discourse. It is this use that accounts for its surprisingly high frequency, rather than its more obvious meaning:the thin sharp end of something.

3) by highlighting typical phrases and word combinations.Prepositions combine with frequently occurring verbs to create new meanings (get up, get over, get out of, etc.). Frequent adjectives collocate with a wide range of nouns: strong is found with nouns as disparate as case, currency, drink, and possibility. Many common verbs have a range of delexical uses; give, for example, is frequent with its basic meaning of present or donate but is more often found in phrases such as give a talk, a smile, some advice, and so on.

Contributions:

Your Questions and Reflections