学段：高中
学科：英语
学校：江门市第一中学
题目： Lexical Approach Helps English Teaching A Lot
作者： 麦剑平
联系方式：13326808669
0750-8065308
Email: joanmjp@yahoo.com.cn
Lexical Approach Helps English Teaching A Lot
江门市第一中学
麦剑平
Introduction
As I am teaching English as a foreign language, I encounter many difficulties
in improving the students` abilities in writing, listening, speaking and reading. I have
tried every means, hoping that I can solve the problems for the students. Then I find
that the problem originates that they need to improve the lexis. No matter how good
they are at the listening, writing, speaking or reading skills, if they don’t grasp lexis,
they will misunderstand it or just makes people feel that it is not native enough. More
and more educators realize that lexis is at the heart of English education.
What is lexical approach?
The lexical approach concentrates on developing learners' proficiency with lexis,
or words and word combinations. It is based on the idea that an important part of
language acquisition is the ability to comprehend and produce lexical phrases as
unanalyzed wholes, or "chunks." Michael Lewis also gave a very good definition of
lexical approach as follows:
1.Lexis is the basis of language.
2.Lexis is misunderstood in language teaching because of the assumption that
grammar is the basis of language and that mastery of the grammatical system is a
prerequisite for effective communication.
3.The key principle of a lexical approach is that "language consists of
grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar.
4.One of the central organizing principles of any meaning-centered syllabus
should be lexis.
As we all know, language is not learnt by learning individual sounds and
structures and then combining them, but by an increasing ability to break down
wholes into parts. Cowie believes that the widespread "fusion of such expressions,
which appear to satisfy the students’ communicative needs at a given moment and are
later reused, is one means by which the public stock of formulae and composites is
continuously enriched". I completely agree to that. Also, we need to expose our
students to as much natural language as possible .Therefore, when we teach English
as a foreign language in this way, we must find as many authentic materials as we can
for the students.
Why do more and more teachers teach English as a foreign
language with lexical approach?
(a) The new syllabus’ requirement.
I think we are lucky because the new syllabus is based on lexical and culture
rather than grammatical principles. The new syllabus encourages teachers to teach
students in Lexical Approach and expose them to the language. It is quite practical
and focuses on our environment, science, education, music, sports, living abroad and
so on. They are so related to our actual life that students are interested in them. They
long for knowing more and improving their lexis so as to communicate with each
other on these topics in English.
Now, we are using the book New Senior English for China in senior high school.
Through the OHE way together with the lexis, my students have improved more and
more quickly. The OHE is observe, hypothesis, experiment. For example, when I
taught students Unit 5 Travelling abroad (module 8), according to the arrangement of
the unit, I put up some questions for them to discuss and asked them to share the
materials that they found after class. During the time they carried out the task, they
were required to take notes of the useful words including the phrases and collocations
that were important or maybe useful for this topic. Another task was that they
needed to work together to guess the usage of the phrases they had collected. We used
and practised many of them when we learned the text. At the end of the unit, some of
them could give a speech fluently to make a conclusion of traveling abroad and others
wrote compositions about it, using the lexis they grasped in this unit. The reason that
they had a lot to say is that after studying, they knew enough lexis to express their
opinions.
The lexical syllabus not only subsumes a structural syllabus, it also describes how
the "structures" that make up the syllabus are used in natural language. A good lexical
syllabus can give the teachers and students a good guide. And the present syllabus
used in Guangdong does make it.
(b) Teachers hope to help improve students’ lexis and students want to know
more.
What we teachers need badly is how to help the students grasp the lexis.
Encouraging learners to notice language, specifically lexical chunks and collocations,
is central to any methodology connected to a lexical view of language. We just 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.
In my view, it is not possible, or even desirable, to attempt to 'teach' an unlimited
number of lexical chunks. But, it is beneficial for language learners to gain exposure
to lexical chunks and to gain experience in analyzing those chunks in order to begin
the process of internalisation. Thus, good teaching procedures for every lesson seem
typically important for students.
We can help to give students opportunities to practise new lexical items in spoken
communication, reading materials and also writing tasks. During the course, good
pronunciation might be encouraged getting the sounds and the stress right. The focus
on lexis may occur before, while or after the students read or listen to teaching
materials.
As for pre-reading, I will select some activities specifically designed to revise,
teach and practice lexis, which will be most needed for completion. For example,
before I taught Unit 3 Healthy Eating (Module 3), I showed them pictures of different
kinds of fruit as follows: pineapple, lemon, strawberry, peach, cherries, melon,
banana, orange, plum, raspberry. Then, I encouraged students to name them in
English. Some of the fruits were familiar to them and easy to tell, which aroused their
interests, and others were quite difficult for them, which were some names of the fruit
that I wanted them to grasp.
As to vegetables, I put up two groups. One had pictures of vegetables on it and
the other had the names of them. Their task was to match the two groups. By this
means, the students knew some vegetables in English like potato, green, bears, peas,
onions, garlic, carrot, mushrooms, pepper, cabbage, broccoli, celery, cauliflower and
so on.
Then we came to meat and fish. In this activity, I encouraged students to write
down as many as they could on their paper, such as lobster, crab, salmon, prawn,
oyster, mussels, beef, pork, lamb, chicken and so on. .
Since our text was about a restaurant “Come and Eat here.” Then, I gave them a
topic, “How to make a salad?” They discussed and found out the materials to make
salads and the way to make them.
While students were working on reading the text or listening to it, I was less likely
to spend time on lexis. I just gave brief explanations or translations rather than details.
After the first phase of listening or reading, the students became comfortable with
the text. Then I could focus attention on lexical items and how they are used.
In paragraph one, a lot of dishes were mentioned. So, I asked them to find the
dishes out and stress the different ways to make food. They were able to get answers
very quickly: raw, boiled, roast, fried, baked. I also offered the chance for them to
work out what food often went together with the different ways. Then, the whole class
learn something as follows: raw fish, raw spinach, raw beef; fried swam, fried rice,
fried chicken, fried pork; boiled eggs, boiled water; roast beef, roast peppers; baked
bananas, baked bread, baked potatoes, baked cake; grilled cheese, grilled rice, grilled
chicken, grilled cheese and so on.
After reading, I designed an oral practice for them. It was a discussion on “What
is healthy eating? ” It worked like this; I gave them a menu to discuss whether it was a
good menu and then made a conclusion what we should have everyday to eat healthily.
They tried using the items they learned. That was a heated discussion. They made
excellent speeches, expressing their opinions freely. Since at that time they had
known something about fruit, vegetables, meat and fish and also the ways to cook
food, they were confident of themselves and dare communicate with others.
I also offered another follow-up writing exercise for them, that is, how can you
persuade people to follow your healthy diet? From their performance, I can see how
Lexical Approach helps them.
(c)What we need to consider as we make teaching plans:
Nevertheless, implementing a lexical approach in the classroom does not lead to
radical methodological changes. Rather, it involves a change in the teacher's mindset.
Above all, the language activities consistent with a lexical approach must be directed
toward naturally occurring language and toward raising learners' awareness of the
lexical nature of language.
Students learn the language, hoping that they can communicate, read or write
something. So, every time we design the activities in class, we need to take the
followings into account: (a) the desire to communicate (b)the purpose (c) the language
needed (d) the likely degree of success that learners will enjoy. For example, as I
teach the students through reading, I will choose the materials. Materials are an
important component within the curriculum, and are often the most tangible and
"visible" component of pedagogy. Meanwhile, we must consider the following Goals:
General Goals:
To develop students’ reading skills
To increase students’ store of lexical chunks
More Specific Goals :
To motivate students to read by providing texts with universally engaging
themes; by providing activities that allow students to personalize texts; by
encouraging meaningful and authentic initial reactions to texts.
To raise student awareness of the idea of lexical chunking by directing students’
attention to specific lexical chunks already encountered in the text, helping students
analyze these chunks directing students to different means of analyzing lexical
chunks.
To help students develop skills for independent learning by providing
opportunities to experience lexical chunks in authentic texts encouraging students to
analyse, generalise, research and experiment with lexical chunks providing students
with opportunities to discover chunks for themselves.
Besides reading, there are also many ways that we can use as we teach students in
lexical approach. Such as, guessing the meaning of vocabulary items from context;
repetition and recycling of activities; noticing and recording language patterns and
collocations and so on. No matter what activities we choose to use, we need to choose
the right materials and consider our goals.
Conclusion
For a number of years, the teaching of lexis was neglected in language
classrooms, especially in the foreign language classroom, despite the importance that
learners attach to the task of building and maintaining an adequate lexis. It could be
argued that in a foreign language context, the initial stages of language learning
should be devoted almost entirely to lexical work. Theoretical and empirical issues
currently being investigated include work on word lists and frequency counts, the
importance of context to lexical acquisition, lexicography and the role of the
dictionary, semantic networks and features, and cognitive processes, particularly
lexical search processes and memorization. The value of the lexical approach can be
demonstrated beautifully and convincingly by juxtaposing English and native
language expressions. In fact, when we present idiomatic phrases, standard
expressions, social and spoken language chunks in lexical approach, they just get the
feeling: "That's the way native speakers typically say things". That is the best way
for students to get the authentic language.
Now, in China, it is believed that we get more ideas about teaching English as a
foreign language with the help of lexical approach. My students as well as many
others are benefiting from it. Why not use it in English teaching?
References
Cowie, A. P. (Eds.). (1988). Stable and creative aspects of vocabulary use. In R.
Carter & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary and language teaching (pp. 126-137).
Harlow: Longman.
Keller, E. (1979). Gambits: Conversational strategy signals. Journal of Pragmatics,
3, 219-237.
Lewis, M. (1993). The lexical approach: The state of ELT and the way forward.
Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications.
David Nunan (1991) Language teaching methodology : a textbook for teachers
Wasyl Cajkler and Ron Addelman (1997) The Practice of foreign language
teaching: Second Edition
Jim Scrivener Learning Teaching(2005) : A guidebook for English language
teachers : Second Edition . Macmillan