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Date Posted: 18:16:15 07/10/03 Thu
Author: Ronaldo GM Rosa
Subject: Task 10

TENTH CLASS July 7th to 11th

Explain what a lexical approach is. Describe its main characteristics.



TASK 10 - LEXICAL APPROACH


--- Lexical Approach - Definition

The term and concept of 'lexical approach' was established by Michael Lewis in his book "The lexical approach: The state of ELT and the way forward", 1993.

According to the Lexical Approach, "language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks"
"Teachers using the Lexical Approach will not analyse the target language in the classroom, but will be more inclined to concentrate learners' attention upon these chunks. This new approach is understood as a serious attempt at revaluation for the individual teacher and the profession as it develops many of the fundamental principles advanced by proponents of Communicative Approaches. The most important difference is the increased understanding of the nature of lexis in naturally occurring language, and its potential contribution to language pedagogy."
(http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej09/r10.html)

Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) define lexical phrases as "collocations...that have been assigned pragmatic functions." They define collocations as "strings of specific lexical items... that co-occur with a mutual expectancy greater than chance." (p. 36) The writings of Michael Lewis (1993, 1997) have subsequently focused on putting these concepts to better use in second language learning and acquisition in what he has called the "Lexical Approach".
(http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/3472/lexapproach.html)

Lexical approach tries to keep language in larger chunks, rather than dissecting language into its constituents.
At a basic level an exchange such as 'How are you? Fine thanks. and you?' would be taught. Other items taught would be collocations, phrases and sentence frames.

(http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/talk/questions/lexical_approach.shtml)



--- Principles of The Lexical Approach


The principles of The Lexical Approach include:

- The grammar/vocabulary dichotomy is invalid
- Collocation is used as an organising principle
- Successful language is a wider concept than accurate language
- The Observe-Hypothesise-Experiment cycle replaces the - Present-Practice-produce paradigm
- Most importantly, language consists of grammaticalised lexis - not lexicalised grammar



--- Types of Lexical Units

(Extracted and adapted from "Lexical Approach to Second Language Teaching", by Olga Moudraia)

The lexical approach makes a distinction between vocabulary - traditionally understood as a stock of individual words with fixed meanings - and lexis, which includes not only the single words but also the word combinations that we store in our mental lexicons. Lexical approach advocates 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.

Lewis (1997b) suggests the following taxonomy of lexical items:

- words (e.g., book, pen)

- polywords (e.g., by the way, upside down)

- collocations, or word partnerships (e.g., community service, absolutely convinced)

- institutionalized utterances (e.g., I'll get it; We'll see; That'll do; If I were you . . .; Would you like a cup of coffee?)

- sentence frames and heads (e.g., That is not as . . . as you think; The fact/suggestion/problem/danger was . . .) and even text frames (e.g., In this paper we explore . . .; Firstly . . .; Secondly . . .; Finally . . .)



--- Lexis in Language Teaching and Learning - Activities


Activities used to develop learners' knowledge of lexical chains include the following:

- Intensive and extensive listening and reading in the target language.

- 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 corpuses created by the teacher for use in the classroom or accessible on the Internet - such as the British National Corpus (http://thetis.bl.uk/BNCbib) or COBUILD Bank of English (http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk) - to research word partnerships, preposition usage, style, and so on.

(http://www.cal.org/ericcll/digest/0102lexical.html)


--- Conclusion

The Lexical Approach does not necessarily mean a radical change in the methodologies of teaching a language, but it brings a special concern on the lexis as basic element of communication.

As Moudraia states, the lexical approach conveys the notion that "language production is not a syntactic rule-governed process but is instead the retrieval of larger phrasal units from memory".



--- Bibliography and references


The lexical approach http://www.ltpwebsite.com/lexicalapproach.htm

Implementing the lexical approach http://www.ltpwebsite.com/implementing.htm

http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej09/r10.html

Moudraia, Olga. Lexical approach to second language teaching http://www.cal.org/ericcll/digest/0102lexical.html

Principles and implications of the lexical approach http://www.nspeak.com/lexical.htm

The lexical approach http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/talk/questions/lexical_approach.shtml

Lexical phrases resources http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/3472/lexapproach.html



Ronaldo G.M. Rosa
July/2003

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