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Date Posted: 14:41:15 07/09/03 Wed
Author: Myla Fonseca
Subject: task 10

Communicative Approach On line Class
Learner: Mylene Fonseca Garcia
Task Ten

Describe what the lexical approach is.


Linguistic Michael Lewis coined the term lexical approach. It has influenced second language teaching because it has given this field a new direction such as redefinition of grammar and vocabulary, emphasis on collocation and new implications for methodologies. In general words, lexical approach states that a language “consists of grammaticalised lexis – not lexicalised grammar”. That is, it emphasizes on developing learner’s lexical competence which is learner’s ability to recognize, comprehend and produce lexical phrases “as unanalyzed wholes”, or chunks. This approach believes that language is formed by these relatively fixed expressions which occur in everyday language. Some examples would be I’m sorry, what time is it now?, I’ll be back, what day is today and the like.
So, it proposes that learners would be able to learn these chunks rather than to learn isolated or separated grammar points. Enthusiastic teachers argue that “language consists of meaningful chunks that, when combined, produce continuous coherent text, and only a minority of spoken sentences are entirely novel creations”. Therefore, this sounds like a nice advantage for the SLT beginners, as they would learn whole units of contextualized applications. I mean, instead of facing an isolated term, they would deal with contextualized chunks that are already very common in the language. As Olga Moudraia points out “rather than trying to break things into ever smaller pieces, there is a conscious effort to see things in larger, more holistic ways.” Thus, this is why lexical approach focuses so emphatically on collocations, words and the use of vocabulary. In other words, these are the language’s constituents. It’s responsible for noticing and recording language patters (phrases and sentence frames) and collocations. So, it proposes a different syllabus content to the class which is based on lexical rather than grammatical principles.
To conclude, still according to Moudraia, the use of lexical approach does not lead to radical methodological changes. It involves a change of perception, first towards the teacher, then, towards the learners. It should deal with authentic examples of language as naturally as possible, raising learner’s awareness of the lexical attributes of language.

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