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Date Posted: 06:04:26 07/11/03 Fri
Author: Aparecida dos Santos Silva
Subject: TASK 10

UFMG 2003-07-10
COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH
Teacher: Vera Menezes
Student: Aparecida dos Santos Silva

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

The Lexical approach was first examined by Dave Willians (1990) and then popularised by Michael Lewis (1992,1997). It consists of studying chunks of words, such as collocations, idioms, fixed and semi-fixed phrases, instead of studying traditional grammar. According to Lewis fluency occurs when a student has stored these chunks of words, so he suggests the following:

Ø Lexis is the basis of language.
Ø 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 commnunication.
Ø The key principle of a Lexical Approach is that “language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar”.
Ø One of the central organizing principles of any meaning centered syllabus should be lexis.

There are many ways of implementing Lexical Approach, and Nattinger (l980 p.341) suggests:

Ø Intensive and extensive listening and reading in the target language.
Ø First second language comparisons with translations.
Ø Summarizing text, repetition of recycling activities guessing the meaning from the context.
Ø Noticing and recording language patterns, working with dictionaries and other reference tools.
Ø Working with language corpuses.

Oponents to the idea of implementing Lexical Approach say that it is not explained how the learning of fixed and semi-fixed phrases can be incorporated into the understanding of a language system. There is a danger of we have to memorize endeless succession of phrase-book utterances (Hammer – chaper 6).

I believe it is really important that we implement Lexical Approach in our teaching, but I has do be done in a context. I do not believe in exercises which students have to memorize collocation, o repeat combined sentences. They will soon forget it. Luckly the new textbooks contain much of Lexical Approach and they introduce it in a very natural way and soon students are saying “what do you have for breakfast”, “do the dishes” etc...

If we pay attention to these patterns we are teaching our students the USE of language that means real communication.

References:
http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej09/r10.html
http://www.cal.org/eric11/digest/0102lexical.html
Hamer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching, Essex: Longman, 2001

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