LEXICAL APPROACH

Prepared by Al Hakan Jazuli

Background
No one argues that the scope of specialized vocabulary in teaching English for
Specific Purposes (ESP) is a primary goal. Equally, there is a commonplace
assumption that the more words a learner knows, the larger the learner's vocabulary
knowledge is. However, there is another dimension to vocabulary knowledge that
should be considered - namely, how far a learner knows the combinatory possibilities
of a word. For any given word, a native speaker also knows a range of other words,
which can occur or collate with it. This is an aspect of vocabulary knowledge that has
until recently been largely ignored.
Quite recently computer analysis of the English language has revealed a
widespread occurrence of lexical patterns in language use. Some researchers call them
lexical phrases' or lexical items', others prefer the term multi-word chunks' or just
chunks' of language. Whatever the term, they are an important feature both in
language use and language acquisition and offer advantages for language teaching,
particularly for teaching ESP.
Michael Lewis (1993) challenged the standard view of dividing language
teaching into grammar and vocabulary by arguing that language consists of lexical
items. He treats them as belonging to four major categories. A relatively small group
of lexical items is the words and polywords. They have usually been considered as
essential vocabulary for learners to memorise.
A second category is collocations. Collocation is understood as the way in which
words typically occur with each other, i.e. combinations of words in natural speech
with a certain frequency. Native speakers intuitively know' which words frequently
combine and which do not. To a native speaker, they just do not sound right. Knowing
frequent collocations is essential for accurate, natural English.
There are specific types of collocations in ESP which cause students' errors due
to a lack of translational equivalence between the first language (L1) and the second
language (L2). Teachers must help the learner become familiar with ESP collocations,
and such familiarity will develop best when the learner is consciously aware of this
tendency of words to go together (Lewis, 1993).
 In Lewis's approach, a third category is fixed expressions, and a fourth, semi-
fixed expressions. Collocations and expressions are thought to be the most important
types of lexical phrases. Native speakers retain many prefabricated lexical items in
their memory. Language fluency and accuracy is achieved largely by retrieving and
combining ready-made chunks of language. The ability to chunk language
successfully is central to understanding of how language works' (Lewis, 1997).

Approach
Theory of language
The principles of the Lexical Approach have been around since Michael Lewis
published his book, more than 10 years age. It seems, however, that many teachers
and researchers do not have a clear idea of what the Lexical Approach looks like in
practice. A lexical chunk is defined as an umbrella term which includes all the other
terms referring to any pair or group of words which is commonly found together or in
close proximity. Collocation is also included in the term 'lexical chunk', but it is
referred to it separately from time to time, so they are defined as a pair of lexical
content words commonly found together. Applying this definition, the "basic
principles", for example is considered as collocation whereas; "look at" is not because
it combines a lexical content word and a grammar functional word.
Here are some examples of (a) the lexical chunks that are not collocations as in:
"by the way, up to now, upside down, if I were you, along way off, out of my mind"
and (b) some other examples of lexical chunks that are collocations as in: "totally
convinced, strong accent, terrible accident, sense of humor, brings good luck".
In recent years, it has been recognized that native speakers have a vast stock of
these lexical chunks and that these lexical chunks are vital for fluent production.
Fluency does not depend so much on having a set of generative grammar rules and a
separate stock of words the 'slot' and filler or open choice principle as on having
access to stock of chunks. The grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalized grammar. This
shows that lexis is more needed to create meaning whereas grammar-control plays a
subsidiary managerial role.
When we want to attain good results for the lexical approach, we have to
concentrate more on helping learners develop their ability in the lexical phrases and
less in the grammatical structures. In the lexical approach, making students familiar
with acceptable collocations is very necessary, so we may find this kind of task as in:
underline the word which does not collocate with 'theme' as, for example, in: "main
theme", "large theme", "important theme", "central theme", "major theme". Each one
of these phrases does not sound wrong, but it may seem a strange combination for the
native speaker's ear.

Theory of Learning
Methodologically, in the lexical approach, lexis plays a dominant role in the
sense that Nattinger (1980) proposes that teaching should be centered on the idea that
language production means the piecing together of ready-made units appropriate for a
particular situation. Understanding of such units depends on knowing the patterns to
predict in different situations. For this reason, teaching should be based on these
patterns and the ways they can be pieced together, along with the ways they differ,
and the linguistic situations in which they occur. Now, the teacher should adopt a
certain teaching strategy. The activities used, here, are: 1. Intensive and extensive
listening and reading in the target language. 2. First and second language comparisons
and translation carried out chunk-for-chunk, rather than word-for-word aimed at
developing language awareness. 3. 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. 4. Guessing the meaning of lexical items
from context. 5. Noticing and recording language patterns and collocations. 6.
Working with dictionaries and other reference means.

Design
Objective
Tomlinson (2003) points out that in a language awareness approach the principal
objective is to help learners notice for themselves how language is typically used so
that they will note the gaps and achieve learning readiness. Conscious processing is
vital in the language learning process. Noticing can enhance a feature, so that it
becomes more noticeable in future input contributing to the students’ psychological
readiness for the acquisition of that feature. Thus, noticing is a necessary condition for
storage and as Schmidt (1990) propounds “subliminal language learning is
impossible, and noticing is the necessary and sufficient condition for converting input
to intake”.
The Syllabus
 Willis (1990), in rationalizing an argument for a lexical syllabus, notes that
“learners do accumulate language forms, often phrases”. He suggests that a lexical
syllabus should be matched with an instructional methodology focused on language
use. According to Moudraia (2001) Sinclair’s (1987) and Willis’s (1990) lexical
syllabi are word based, but lewis’s lexical syllabus is specifically not word based,
because:

[…] it explicitly recognises word patterns for (relatively) de-lexical words,

collocational power for (relatively) semantically powerful words, and longer multi-
word items, particularly institutionalised sentences, as requiring different, and
parallel pedagogical treatment (lewis, 1993:195 cited in Moudraia, 2001).

Types of 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.

Learners Roles
Learners should be encouraged to seek an increasingly large amount of exposure
to both written and spoken language outside the classroom, and noticing collocations
within that material. Following Willis’s thesis (1997), learners should be made to
analyse the components of the clause- the verb group and the noun group, particularly
postmodification in the latter which, in spite of a degree of difficulty, also affords a
great deal of information. in fact, “noticing” collocability has a number of advantages
(a) reduces learners’ stress as it minimises the amount of planning and processing
required within clauses when producing spoken language (b) promotes social
interaction as it motivates learning (c) can be easily memorised because of its
contextualisation and (d) can become models for future analysis.

Teacher Roles
Some types of vocabulary exercises may be enjoyed by some students, but many
are not. More importantly, the task seems to many simply unmanageable, for the road
from the first encounter with a word or chunk through passive knowledge to active
use is long. The learning of vocabulary is slow and incremental. The time spent in the
classroom is by no means enough for accomplishing the lexical task. Most of the time
teachers do not get to see spectacular results in a few months. One only hopes that
students who have been exposed to the lexical approach will leave the language
training program with a whole range of techniques for learning and organizing
vocabulary, and that the larger the lexical repertoire, the easier it will be to increase it
even further outside the formal instructional setting. In that sense Michael Lewis book
is a way forward for English language teaching.

The role of instructional materials

Richards and Rodgers (2001) explain that materials associated with the Lexical
Approach are of several types, including complete course packages with textbooks
and ancillary materials such as the Collins COBUILD course; computer
concordancing programs for use with corpora, or "printout" versions of these corpora;
and collections of vocabulary teaching activities. The latter type of materials is
perhaps the most common.

 Learning activities generally center on helping students notice and practice

collocations. Following are some examples of activities that might be used in
a Lexical Approach classroom:
 When discussing a new vocabulary item such as run out of, brainstorm a list of
collocates (e.g., what types of things can you run out of?).
 From a list of related words such as speak, say, and tell, choose the correct
word to fill in the gaps in a list of sentences.
 Given a noun along with a list of adjectives with which it does and does not
occur, choose the appropriate collocates.
 Given a list of words that collocate with an unknown word, identify the word.
  Working with a printout of collocations of a given word, sort the collocations
into categories according to meaning.
 Examine recorded or printed texts for collocations of common words.
 Do pre-writing activities related to the topic of the writing that raise awareness
of collocations; for example, brainstorm a list of topic-related words and then
list other words with which they collocate.
 Keep a lexical notebook of common words and their collocations.

Procedure

Among consciousness raising activities, meaningful tasks, such as dictogloss,

seem to be the best option for lexis acquisition. Many recommend dictogloss of texts
containing collocations, as it is the bridge to afford automatisation. These tasks
encourage students to analyse and process language more deeply, which facilitates
both the learning and retention of information in long-term memory.

The incorporation of the items learned in the students’ active vocabulary seems to
be the best answer for recycling too, here meaning should be stored using the second
language as much as possible. in the acquisition of lexical competence centred on
fluency, automatisation and attention to formulaic language units are fundamental
elements. inferential skills are also very valuable in reading comprehension courses
through encouraging students to deduce meaning of words or terms within a
contextual approach.

Conclusion

The Lexical Approach can be summarized in a few words: 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.

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WORK CITED
Lewis, M. (1993). "The lexical approach: The state of ELT and the way forward."
Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications.

Lewis, M. (1997a). "Implementing the lexical approach: Putting theory into practice."
Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications.

Moudraia, O. (2001). lexical Approach to Second language Teaching.

www.cal.org/resources/digest/0102lexical.html

Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and methods in language

teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nattinger, J. 1980."A lexical phrase grammar for ESL". TESOL. Quarterly,

Tomlinson, B. (2003). Frameworks for material development. in B. Tomlinson (ed.)

Developing materials for language teaching. (pp. 107-129). london: Continuum.

Willis, D. (1990). The lexical syllabus. Collins ElT.

Willis, D. (1997). Syllabus design and the pedagogic corpus. Vocabulary learning in a
foreign language. Triangle 16. ENS Editions.

Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and methods in language

teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schmidt, R. W. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning.

Applied linguistics, 11, 206-226.