Lexical approach
- principles and implications in ELT in Japan -
# 078203
November 5, 2008
Mutsumi Kawasaki
1. Introduction to the presentation
The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (1993) provides principles for
re-thinking many already existing familiar activities and techniques, and a new
way of looking at the content of courses.
The focus of this approach is to develop learners’ proficiency with lexis including
comprehension and production of lexical phrases as wholes or chunks. This
approach will help learners to acquire language better in a lexical or
lexico-grammatical1 way rather than in traditional grammar-based teaching and
learning that still exist in methodologies used in Japanese classrooms and
course books.
This presentation briefly introduces the key principles of the Lexical Approach in
second or foreign language teaching and learning, and later some implications
are given in terms of contents of language, teacher’s roles, and exercises and
activities textbooks should have.
2. What is the Lexical Approach?
The Lexical Approach: is based on the view that the basic building blocks of teaching and learning
are words and lexical phrases, rather than grammar, functions or other unit
of organization.
 concentrates on developing learners’ proficiency with lexis2
 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”
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Lexico-grammmar (語彙文法):
- The linguistic resources (both grammatical and lexical) which learners draw on in expressing
meaning and communicating in L2.
- The relationship between vocabulary and grammar. These forms of language organization
are normally studied separately but increasingly lexico-grammatical patterns are being seen
as central to language description and language learning.
2
Vocabulary: a stock of individual words of the language with fixed meanings
Lexis (語彙形式):
- a more general word than the common vocabulary that includes single words and word
combinations (multi-word objects) which have the same status in the language as simple
words, the items we stored in individual’s mental lexicon ready for use
- consists of thousands of lexical items
Lexical items:
- the concepts of the individual word extended to the multi-word objects which are the
fundamental units of the language
- word-like objects representing a single sense selection (Brazil, 1995)
e.g. single words, polywords, collocations (word partnerships), institutionalized
utterances, sentence frames and heads, and text frames
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3. Key principles of lexical approach
 Lexis is the basis of all language.
 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.
 Language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar.
= Lexis is central in creating meanings; grammar plays a subservient
managerial role.
 One of the central organizing principles of any meaning-centered syllabus
should be lexis.
4. The importance of chunks
Having learners memorize lexical phrases (multi-word prefabricated chunks
including collocations3, institutionalized utterances, and sentence headings
for example) will help their fluent production of the language because L1
users have a great store of lexical chunks that is useful and important for
fluent production.
 L1 users store vocabulary only as individual words, but also as parts of
phrases and larder chunks, which can be retrieved from memory as a
whole, reducing processing difficulties. Learning individual words will need
a lot more time and effort to allow learners to express themselves.
 Chunks enable automatic retrieval of stretches of language and unitary
meanings.
5. Limitations of the Lexical Approach
 There are no systems (sequences)
 Users of this approach (either teachers or students) do not know what
should come first, second, third and so on.
 No clear definition of what is grammaticalized lexis and lexicalized
grammar.
 Because the distinctions between these terms are very fuzzy, we had
better think them with a scale.
Word
MWUs
collocations
idioms
colligations
fixed expressions
Fuzzy
pure vocabulary
grammar
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pure
Collocation: the phenomenon whereby certain words co-occur in natural text with greater than
random frequency (Lewis, 1997a, p.8)
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6. Implication for ESL/EFL teaching and learning from the Lexical
Approach perspective in Japan (problems and suggestions)
Language dealt in the classes
 A lot of words are learnt de-contextually.
 Natural language that the native speakers will probably produce should
be taught. It is also vital to teach natural combinations of words (chunks)
for natural and fluent production.
 The quantity or length of the chunks
 working memory has limited capacity4
 Learners should not create new language every time but memorize or
acquire grammaticalized lexis or patterns for production.
 Teachers should teach lexis in natural occurring language such as
authentic or contextualized language.
 Teachers should show the learners how words are used in particular
contextualized situations (the depth of the language) rather than just
introducing how they work (form-meaning relationship). It is much more
important to raise the learners’ awareness of their language use and their
self-reliant learning.
Teachers who will teach in the classes
 As the majority of English teachers are non-native in Japan, it seems to be
more difficult to teach ‘real’ or ‘natural’ lexis used by native speakers.
The course books including exercises and activities
 The course books usually contain unusual and low frequency words that
native speakers will rarely use. The teachers should teach words or lexis
according to the frequency, learnability and usefulness.
 There are few taught content words or lexical words (not function words)
are recycled because the course books are topic-based. Lots of words
appear only a few times and are not sufficiently learnt.
 Textbooks and teaching procedures still tend to be grammar-based. The
teachers have to spend much more time helping the learners develop their
store of lexical chunks and less time on teaching grammatical structures.
 It will be more helpful to have learners pick up the words and word
combinations through extensive reading and listening because there are
not enough chances to learn only with the textbooks. To do this, the
learners need to develop their knowledge or sense of noticing which words
will go together in contextualized and meaningful ways.
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Magical number 7±2: working memory is considered to have limitation and the capacity is
equivalent to between 5 and 9 on average
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Possible activities to develop knowledge of chunks (Moudrana, 2001)
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Intensive and extensive listening and reading
First and second language comparisons and translation carried out
chunk-for-chunk, rather than word-for-word aimed at raising
language awareness.
Repetition and recycling of activities, such as summarizing a text
orally one day and again a few days later to keep words and
expressions that have been learned active.
Guessing the meaning of vocabulary items from context.
Noticing and recording language patterns and collocations.
Working with dictionaries and other reference tools.
Working with language corpuses5 created by the teacher for use in
the classroom or accessible on the Internet (such as the British
National Corpus or COBUILD Bank of English) to research word
partnership, preposition usage, style and so on.
7. Conclusion
The Lexical Approach points out the blind spots or the weak points in vocabulary
teaching and learning by offering several new powerful perspectives (Hayashi,
2002) However, it seems to be difficult to accept this challenge of language
teaching or concentration on the lexis because most language teaching and
teachers (and even learners) have treated grammar as the basis of language.
Therefore, implementing the Lexical Approach does not only lead to changes of
methodologies and classrooms, but also involves a teachers’ and learners’’
mindset.
8. Background reading and bibliography
Hayashi, H. (2002). 『英語の語彙指導–理論と実践の統合を目指して』.広島: 渓
水社.
Kadota, S. & Ikemura, D. (2006). 『英語語彙指導ハンドブック』.東京: 大修館.
Lewis, M. (1993). The lexical approach: The state of ELT and the way forward.
Hove, England: English Language Teaching Publications.
Lewis, M. (1997a). Implementing the lexical approach: Putting theory into
practice. Hove, England: English Language Teaching Publications.
Lewis, M. (1997b). “Pedagogical implications of the Lexical Approach” in J.
Coady & T. Huckin. Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: A
Rationale for Pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moudra, O. (2001). “Lexical Approach to Second Language Teaching” in ERIC
digest.
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Corpus: a collection of naturally occurring samples of language
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