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Date Posted: 15:19:51 10/13/05 Thu
Author: Ana Teresa Vieira e Meirelles
Subject: Lexis and Second Language Classroom - Final draft

Lexis and Second Language Classroom


Vocabulary has been considered to play a major role on second language acquisition, even though there are many who discredit being “lexis” and “lexicalized” expressions as the basis for second language learning, as proposed, for instance, by Michael Lewis (1993, apud Richard and Rogers, 2001). The way vocabulary is introduced to a second language classroom often times fail on presenting the necessary information about it, and its connection to real English. As a consequence, researchers of the Linguistic field have begun to take into consideration a second language classroom which integrates focus-on-form and focus-on-communication, thus leading to a more lexicalized approach to teaching English. This may hold the answers to researchers' concern about having students producing a more fluent and native-like second language.

The introduction to learners of English as a second language of new lexis and its applicability is responsible to determine how accurate and native-like their production will be. A brief and simple explanation of a word's meaning will eventually fail on presenting it in its range within the language. Thus, vocabulary should be presented to students in a multitude of tasks, that involve the nexus of new and already known lexis and lexicalized expressions, as used in native speakers discourses. Examples of such tasks are given by Souza (2005:60), which suggests the study of Key words through a series of exercises whose aim is the student's analysis of these words in a variety of contexts. The result of such a practice will be of paramount importance on further assisting students on the use of some particularities of the language, for instance, collocations.

Authors such as Nattinger (1992) and Lewis (1993) (cited in Richards & Rodgers 2001) have taken into consideration the use of vocabulary as a mainstream of English teaching. Moreover, the later supports the idea that "building blocks of language learning and communication are not grammar, functions, notions, or some other unit of planning and teaching, but lexis, that is, word and word combinations." Those combinations are, then, to be presented to students in such a way that native-like language will be produced as a result, disregard the use of grammar and syntactical structures.

Although somehow contradictory to the core proposal of the Lexical Approach, the use of grammar along with a more lexicalized method has been object of study and proven useful by some authors cited by Harwood (2002) in his work "Taking a lexical approach to teaching: principles and problems". Nevertheless, Harwood (2002) presents harsh critique to Lexical Approach implementation in an ESL classroom. He pinpoints problems such as how much corpora can be used without presenting "culturally inappropriate items", or how adjustable these corpora could be to an ESL classroom . He also mentions that not only are teaching materials not available for teachers, but also that corpora is not freely accessed. According to that author's view, only English native teachers or granted schools would be favored with such an approach. As for students, Harwood mentions that not all students have the urge to learn expressions and words that he refers to as "impolite, irrelevant and outlandish".

Whereas the critiques, the importance of vocabulary in the second language acquisition cannot be neglected. Wilkins (1972, apud Paiva 2005) remarked the importance of vocabulary: "The fact that while without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. What we normally think of as 'vocabulary items' - nouns, verbs and adjectives - do indeed contain more information that is carried by grammatical elements..." . Gil (2005) proposes that focus on form and focus on communication are not to be seen as "antagonic", but as "complementary" focuses that should be part of a second language classroom.

All the controversy on the use of a more lexicalized approach to teaching English has been responsible for a great deal of analysis and propositions in the Linguistic field. Thornbury (1998, apud Hardwood, 2002) mentions that the concept of taking a lexical approach to teaching is "work in progress". Even though that same author has his own critique on the approach, the idea that a lexicalized approach can be applied on an ESL classroom for the sake of students remains as a real possibility and necessary pedagogical decision to be taken by teachers.

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