THE LEXICAL APPROACH
BACKGROUND
The lexical approach is a method of teaching foreign languages described by Michael Lewis in 1993
when he wrote and published the book with the same title. This was followed, in 1997, by publishing
“Implementing the Lexical Approach”.
A Lexical Approach in language teaching refers to one derived from the belief that the building
blocks of language learning and communication are not grammar, functions, notions, or some other
unit of planning and teaching but lexis, that is, words and word combinations.
Linguistics theory has also recognized a more central role for vocabulary in linguistics description.
Formal transformational/ generative linguistics, which previously took syntax as the primary focus,
now gives more central attention to the lexicon and how the lexicon is formatted, coded, and
organized. Chomsky, the father of contemporary studies in syntax, has recently adopted a “lexiconis-prime” position in his minimalist Linguistic theory.
The role of lexical units has been stressed in both first and second language acquisition research.
These have been referred to by many different labels, including:
-
Holophrases (Corder 1973)
Prefabricated patterns (Hakuta 1974)
Gambits (Keller 1979)
Speech formulae (Peters 1983)
Lexicalised stems (Pawley and Syder 1983)
APPROACH: THE THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND LEARNING
In linguistics, a lexis (from the Greek: λέξις "word") is the total word-stock or lexicon having items of
lexical, rather than grammatical, meaning.
Language teaching has traditionally viewed grammar and vocabulary as a divide, with the former
category consisting of structures and the latter usually consisting of single words. The structures
were accorded priority, vocabulary being seen as secondary in importance, merely serving to
illustrate the meaning and scope of grammar. However, in this approach, it is based on lexical rather
than grammatical principles. Consider the two groups of sentences below:
Incorrect Grammar
I go to zoo yesterday.
I go to zoo now.
I go to zoo tomorrow.
Correct Grammar
I went to the zoo yesterday.
I am going to the zoo now.
I’ll go to the zoo tomorrow.
The first set of sentences is perfectly comprehensible because meaning is carried not by grammar
but by lexis. A listener would be able to understand what the speaker meant because of words like
‘go”, “zoo” and “now”. In reality, we do not have to be grammatically correct to communicate
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effectively, but we need to be correct with our use of lexis. Related to this, Lewis stated that (1997,
2000) native speakers carry a pool of hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of lexical chunks
in their heads ready to draw upon in order to produce fluent, accurate and meaningful language.
Lewis insists that his lexical approach is not simply a shift of emphasis from grammar to vocabulary.
He said that language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary but often of multi-word
prefabricated chunks (strings of word which go together). 'Lexical chunk' is an umbrella term which
includes all the other terms. We define a lexical chunk as any pair or group of words which is
commonly found together, or in close proximity. There are some types of Lexis:
1. Collocations: words of the four main parts of speech which go together, usually, but not always,
two words.
Example collocations of verbs with nouns:
Do
my hair/ the cooking/ the laundry
Make my bed/ a promise/ coffee/ a meal
2. Fixed expressions: expressions which cannot be changed or can only be changed minimally. Most
fixed expressions are idiomatic or are those used in polite speech.
For example:
How’s it going?
It’s not my fault.
3. Semi-fixed expressions: expressions which have at least one slot into which a number of different
words or phrases can be inserted.
For example:
Could you please pass the salt?
Could you please pass the butter?
Could you please pass the bread?
Could you please pass the ketchup?
Many other lexical units also occur in language. For example:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Binomials:
clean and tidy, back to front
Trinomials:
cool, calm, and collected.
Idioms:
dead drunk, to run up a bill, cost the earth, keep your feet on the ground
Similes:
as old as the hills, as still as dead, as hungry as a wolf, as easy as A.B.C
Connectives:
finally, to conclude, whereas, meanwhile, consequently
Conversational gambits:
Guess what! Tell you what, Hello, how are you?
Lists of collocations and some fixed and semi-fixed expressions can be found in the Oxford
Collocations Dictionary. Also, Scott Thornbury’s Natural Grammar has a two-page spread of common
structures for each of the top 100 words of the English Language.
One of the most valuable sources for lexical structures is corpora, huge databases of sampled English
which can be searched for particular patterns and then results can be organized to display the data
in a way that shows the different variations. Three important UK-based corpora are:
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1. COBUILD Bank of English Corpus.
2. The Cambridge International Corpus.
3. The British National Corpus which contain 300 million words.
Concordancer : computer software which analyses corpora. See :
http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx
http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html
http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html
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Concordance printouts (from corpora websites) can confirm that something is a lexical pattern. A
concordance is simply a random sampling of extracts from spoken and written texts based around a
selected word or phrase. The concordance sample above confirms that “is based on the” is indeed
part of a common lexical pattern (or “lexical chunk”). The concordance can also reveal more about
the pattern. For example, it reveals that there is a noun or noun phrase before and after “is based
on” and note the similarity some of the nouns that follow “is based on the”.
There are some principles in Lexical Approach:
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1. The basic principle of the lexical approach is: "Language is grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised
grammar"(Lewis 1993). In other words, lexis is central in creating meaning, grammar plays a
subservient managerial role. If you accept this principle then the logical implication is that we
should spend more time helping learners develop their stock of phrases, and less time on
grammatical structures.
2. Language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary but often of multi-prefabricated
chunks.
3. The paradigm is shifted from Present-Practice-Produce to Observe-Hypothesis-Experiment cycle.
4. The basic concept of this approach is the idea that an important part of learning a language
consists of being able to understand and produce lexical phrases as chunks without reference to
traditional grammatical labels. Therefore, in this approach, lexicon-is-prime.
5. The material should give the holistic nature of language. In other words, the language material
should be text and discourse, rather than sentence-based (holistic not atomistic).
The following are the assumptions about learning theory in the lexical approach:
1. Encountering new learning items in several occasions is a necessary but sufficient condition for
learning to occur.
2. Noticing lexical chunks or collocations is a necessary but not sufficient condition for”input” to
become “intake”
3. Noticing similarities, differences, restrictions and examples contribute taking input into intake,
although formal descriptions of rules does not help.
4. Acquisition is based not on the application of formal rules but on an accumulation of examples
from which learners make provisional generalizations. Language production is the product of
previously met examples, not formal rules.
5. No linear syllabus can adequately reflect the nonlinear nature of acquisition.
DESIGN: OBJECTIVES, SYLLABUS, LEARNING ACTIVITIES, ROLE OF
LEARNERS, TEACHERS, AND MATERIALS.
Objectives
1. To get students to become aware of, use and to eventually master these meaning-filled, multiword “chunks”, collocations and fixed utterances.
2. To help learners to notice for themselves how language is typically used so that they will note the
gaps and 'achieve learning readiness' [as well as independence from the teacher and teaching
materials].
3. Language is learnt by an increasing ability to break down wholes into parts.
4. Grammar is acquired by a process of observation, hypothesis and experiment. Learners are later
encouraged to focus on a particular feature of the text, identify instances of the feature, make
discoveries and articulate generalizations about its use.'
5. We can use whole phrases without understanding their constituent parts.
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SYLLABUS
Lewis devised a syllabus that would specify the basic meanings of English, the meanings which even
the most elementary users of the language would need to encode. Frequency information offered
the key: ‘The commonest and most important, most basic meanings in English are those meanings
expressed by the most frequent words in English’. Accordingly, the 700 most frequent words of
English account for around 70% of all English text. This fact led to the decision that 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 users.
It is interesting to look at the most frequent words of spoken English.
The top 200 words represent about 60% of spoken language.
The top 2000 words represent about 90% of spoken language.
A surprisingly small number of individual words represent a very large part of the spoken lexicon.
Most of the words which make up the top words of spoken English are high in frequency because of
how often they combine with other words, many of them also on the high frequency list. The
following chart of the most frequent words illustrates how these words can combine with each other
to produce combinations, or lexical chunks, where the meaning of the individual words can change
once they are put together.
the
I
and
be
you
it
a
of
to
in
have
that
we
they
get
do
what
for
not
but
go
well
think
if
at
with
so
there
just
or
would
can
no
then
she
this
there
he
on
all
them
see
now
come
as
your
up
mean
when
about
which
very
from
because
thing
right
people
me
out
my
time
want
an
will
take
some
could
make
take to
take in
take that!
take on
take up
take her out
take my time
take what you will
take what you can
get
get in
get up
get out
get on
get right
get one up on
get up and go
get with it!
get what you can
Because these constructions, or chunks, often have their own usage and/or meaning, it is essential
that we do not focus on individual words when teaching lexically, as so much of the language we
commonly use is actually made up of combinations of the most frequent words.
Because of their strong commitment to a task- based methodology and in order to generate the
targeted 700 high-frequency words in fairly natural contexts, the writers selected a series of
common topics and related tasks which formed the backbone of the course.
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TEACHER’S ROLES
Lewis supports Krashen’s natural approach procedures and suggests that teacher talk is a major
source of learner input in demonstrating how lexical phrases are used for different functional
purposes.
Willis proposes that teachers need to understand and manage a classroom methodology based on
stages composed of Task, Planning, and Report.
Willis also views the teacher’s role as one of creating an environment in which learners can operate
effectively and then helping learners manage their own learning. This requires that teachers
“abandon the idea of the teacher as ‘knower’ and concentrate instead on the idea of the learner as
‘discoverer’”.
In addition, teachers have a major responsibility for organizing the technological system and
providing scaffolding to help learners build autonomy in use of the system.
STUDENTS’ ROLES
The learners make use of computers to analyze text data previously collected or made available
“free-form” on the internet. Here the learner assumes the role of data analyst constructing his or
her own linguistics generalizations based on examination of large corpora of language samples taken
from “real life”.
MATERIALS
There are four types of materials and teaching resources to support lexical approaches in language
teaching:
1. Consists of complete course packages including texts, tapes, teacher’s manuals and so on, such as
the Collins COBUILD English Course.
2. It is represented by collections of vocabulary teaching activities such as those appear in Lewis’
Implementing the Lexical Approach.
3. Consists of “printout” versions of computer corpora collections packaged in text format.
4. Computer concordancing programs and attached data sets to allow students to set up and carry
out their own analysis, such as Oxford’s Micro Concord, or can be downloaded from sites on the
internet.
PROCEDURE
Procedural sequences for lexically based language teaching vary depending on which of the four
types of materials and activities outlined in the preceding section are employed.
Classroom procedures typically involve the use of activities that draw students’ attention to lexical
collocations and seek to enhance their retention and use of collocations.
Woolard (2000) suggest that teachers should also develop activities that enable learners to discover
collocations themselves, both in the classroom and in the language they encounter outside of the
classroom.
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Hill (2000) suggests that classroom procedures involve:
1. Teaching individual collocations
2. Making students aware of collocation
3. Extending what students already know by adding knowledge of collocation restrictions to known
vocabulary
4. Storing collocations through encouraging students to keep a lexical notebook.
LEXICAL APPROACH ACTIVITIES
VOCABULARY-LISTENING-READING
Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
Hey where did we go,
Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow,
Playin' a new game,
Laughing and a running hey, hey
Skipping and a jumping
In the misty morning fog with
Our hearts a thumpin' and you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.
Whatever happened
to Tuesday and so slow
Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio
Standing in the sunlight laughing,
Hiding behind a rainbow's wall,
Slipping and sliding
All along the waterfall, with you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.
Find the following collocations and expressions.
1. A question about where you went with someone.
[Where did we go?]
2. A question about what became of something that existed in the past.
[Whatever happened to...?]
3. A collocation to describe someone’s physical appearance.
[brown eyed]
4. An expression for where something is that cannot be seen.
[Hiding behind a... ]
VOCABULARY-WRITING
In this activity, the students are assigned to write a love letter. Below are some chunks that students
could extract to do that task.
You know I love you.
If you want me to…
Whenever we’re together…
I will always feel the same
with all my heart
when we‟re apart
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when we‟re together
Of course, once the students have extracted the language, you should get variable chunks up on the
board and, where possible, elicit other slot-fillers that could be used. This is to give students some
latitude with the chunks when they finally do their productive task.
You know I
love
Like
Adore
Care about
you
PAPER ON WALLS (GAMES)
Each category is written on the top of a sheet of paper and the papers are posted around the
classroom. Students work in teams, usually of two or three, and compete against other teams in an
attempt to add the most items to the sheets.
Do you promise....
Can you imagine....
Have you decided...
Do you miss......
To be a good friend
To pay the bill
To do your homework
To come back
To marry me
To get in touch
Travelling around the
world.
Having an affair
Working in Canada
Living on the moon
Being with me
To be alone
To go to Paris
To save money
To have children
To change home stay
To leave the country
Being with your family
Seeing your friends
Eating Mexican food
Walking in your city
Having a girlfriend
Being with your friends
CONCLUSION

It has lexically based theory of language

It doesn't have any certain learning theory

It is an alternative approach

It focuses on words and word combinations

Grammar and lexis are the heart of learning

It aims to teach vocabulary within grammar

Teachers help learners to discover knowledge instead of giving it directly
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