Lexis
Possible assignment topics:
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Understanding and using collocations / lexical phrases / chunks
Understanding and using multi-word verbs
Understanding and using affixation
Understanding and using a particular class of words e.g. adjectives, compounds, adverbs etc,
Understanding and using countable and uncountable nouns
Understanding and using (a specified number of) sense relations between words (e.g.
hyponymy, antonomy, etc.)
Note that choosing ‘learner-training’ or ‘ways of storing and retrieving lexis’ would not be a
suitable topic as this provides no scope for the language analysis section. Instead these aspects
can be covered under the teaching strategies section of whichever topic you choose.
Discourse
Possible assignment topics:
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Understanding and using specified aspects of cohesion in texts
e.g. Understanding and using cohesive devices in written English
Understanding and using adjacency pairs in spoken English
Understanding and using discourse patterns in written English
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Focussing on discourse features of a particular genre - spoken or written. Such features
would include: discourse patterns, typical ordering and organisation, discourse markers,
cohesive devices, lexical phrases, grammar, intonation etc. as relevant. .
e.g. News articles
academic articles
reports
narratives
business presentations
meetings
telephoning
A couple of notes:
For assignments on collocation you need to include an analysis of ‘form’, namely how fixed
collocations are and the different grammatical elements which can form collocations. You
won’t need to discuss meaning or phonology as there is no generalisable point to be made.
For assignments on written discourse, you don’t need to discuss pronunciation issues.
Further reading on lexis:
Lexis BOOKS
Teaching Chunks of Language
Boers + Lindstromberg
2008
Helbling
English Collocations in Use
McCarthy + Dell
2005
CUP
Rules, Patterns and Words
Willis, D
2003
CUP
The Lexical Approach
Lewis, M
1993
LTP
Implementing the Lexical Approach
Lewis, M
1997
LTP
Teaching Collocation
Ed. Lewis, M
2000
Thompson
How to teach vocabulary
Thornbury, S
2002
Longman
2nd Language Vocabulary Acquisition
ed. Coady + Huckin
1997
CUP
Working with words
Gairns + Redman
1986
CUP
Vocabulary
Morgan + Rinvolucri
CUP
Lexis ARTICLES
Lexical collocations: a contrastive view
Bahn, J
ELTJ 47/1
1993
The lexical approach: a journey without maps?
Thornbury, S
MET 7/4
1998
Teaching in chunks: integrating a lexical approach
Baigent, M
MET 8/2
1999
2 Puzzles for linguistic theory: nativelike selection
and nativelike fluency
Pawley + Syder
in Language + 1983
communication
Collocational competence
Hill, J
ETP 11
1999
What's in a word?
Hoey, M
ETP 27
2003
What is the British National Corpus?
website material
Implications of a lexical view of language
Lewis, M
in Challenge + 1996
Change
Learning, Lexis and Business English
Hamilton, N
IH Journal
2002
Why 'Chunking' is important in young learners'
classes
England, D
IH Journal
2003
Big words, small grammar
Thornbury
ETP 31
2004
Teaching by numbers (corpora)
Rundell, M
ETP 31
2004
Vocabulary essentials
Felicity O'Dell
ETP 31
2004
2004