Introduction

Innovations is a coursebook series that was first published in 2000 aiming at

intermediate and higher level language learners. Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley
wrote a second edition of the coursebook five years later to include a
textbookmaterial for lower level learners as well. The two writers claim in the
introduction that the series offers teachers ‘a fresh approach to teaching ... based on
a language-rich, lexical/grammatical syllabus that starts with the kinds of
conversations that learners want to have.’ (Dellar and Walkley 2005, 5). In fact, the
writers pride themselves in calling their publication ‘a course in natural English’.

The series seems to be an attempt to choose lexis as the main strand for syllabus
design and classroom teaching, not a common feature with many contemporary
coursebooks published in the last two or three decades that are still arguably
employing a structural syllabus (Ellis 1993) as the starting point to organise a
language programme. Using a text-based approach to introduce language that is not
often constrained by grammatical rules and patterns, Innovations is one of few
coursebooks that seem to prioritise the presentation and practice of collocations and
formulaic language occurring in spoken and written texts over teaching how words
canbe slotted into previously taught grammatical structures. In other words, the
coursebook is probably one of the closest implementations of arguments proposed
by Willis (1988), Willis (1990 and finally by Lewis (1993, 1997), in which they acted
upon developments from research in corpus linguistics that has proved how highly
predictable language in use can be and, in the case of Lewis, how language ‘chunks’
account for the arbitrary and idiomatic nature of language.

This paper will thus analyse one of the books in the Innovations series. I chose the
second edition pre-intermediate coursebook to study in order to measure how
successfully the writers were able to use a lexically-based syllabus, not just to
provide higher-level learners with lexically and idiomatically chosen patterns, but to
examine whether the teaching methodology advocated by the coursebook writers is
feasible at higher elementary/lower intermediate (A2) level. I will move on to evaluate
the selection and ordering of syllabus elements and finally I will comment on the
challenges of using a lexically-based syllabus for teaching and learning language.

What context can the book be used in? 

Many EFL/ESL language centres round the world tend to market themselves by
claiming to offer ‘speaking only’ or ‘conversation’ courses. In doing so, academic
teams in these centres expect the kind of clientele that come to class to work mainly
or solely on their speaking accuracy and fluency. If the centre was to use a
coursebook as the basis for their speaking syllabus, they may be looking for EFL
material that enables learners to: a) express language functions, e.g. apology or
persuasion, b) talk about general or specific topic-related notions, or c) use language
in communicative situations, e.g. order food in a restaurant. Whatever textbook is
chosen, all three options are bound to be taught in an overwhelmingly rule-
basedtype of syllabus, where learners endlessly study by endlessly analysing
grammatical rules, and only a handful of formulaic language is taught as unanalysed
chunks. The result is that learners, when asked to produce language, have to recall,
in real time, each and every rule they were taught, not to mention how much of what
they have been taught is actually learned, every time they speak. Proponents of a
Lexical Approach (LA) to language teaching/learning argue that this affects learners'
fluency extremely negatively (Lewis 1993, 1997, Willis 1988, 1990). In the context
above, I believe a coursebook that focuses more on formulaic language and less on
rules will be ideal for young adult language learners, who seek to work on producing
everyday social language in the safe environment of an EFL classroom before
travelling to an English-speaking community and be expected to function socially
using some of the language they learned in their language training.

The Innovations series seems to be fitting the bill for teachers and course organisers
who believe that communicative competence, especially one that emphasises
fluency, cannot be worked on by solely focusing on rule-governed sentence making
capacity as suggested by Chomsky’s principle of generative grammar (1957, 1965).
Rather, the series is compatible with linguists believing that language learning entails
“knowing a stock of partially pre-assembledpatterns, formulaic frameworks, and a kit
of rules, so to speak, and being able to apply these rules to make whatever
adjustments are necessary according to contextual demands” (Widdowson 1989,
p.135). In other words, language learning should ideally have input in both grammar
rules and lexical chunks, and it seems that the Innovations series, in theory, contain
both a lexical syllabus that is supplemented by a grammar syllabus. The question
remains: is this enough to develop oral fluency and accuracy for low-level L2
learners?

How useful is Innovations pre-intermediate’s lexically-based syllabus in

developing fluency?

As mentioned above, in developing the case for a lexical chunks view of how
language should be taught and learnt, Lewis (1997) argues that: “The essential idea
is that fluency is based on the acquisition of a large store of fixed and semi-fixed
prefabricated items, which are available as the foundation for any linguistic novelty or
creativity.” (p.15) Although Lewis initially suggested that this view of language entails
“a radically different view of methodology” (1993, p.146), he seems to have retracted
this confident assertion later by saying: “the change in your thinking maybe
considerable, but the change in what you actually do in class is relatively small. Start
with very modest changes, nothing more radical than extending what you usually do
with vocabulary to multi-word items ....gradually modifying what you do, rather than
introducing wholesale changes” (1997, p.203). Hence, it can be said that Lewis’
(1993) is more theory than practice: “The Lexical Approach has less to say about
innovative methods than might be expected. This is because it is explicitly an
approach, not a syllabus or method” (p.13). Consequently, how can the principles of
the LA be as good as they claim to be in Dellar and Walkley’s 2005 LA-based
attempted syllabus?

Innovations pre-intermediate is a package of:

A student textbook: comprising 20 six-page units. Each unit is divided into 3 two-
page spreads, all of which can provide for a self-contained lesson of 70 to 90
minutes. Thus, the whole book can be used for 60 hours of classroom instruction.
Each unit is organised in the same order, and it can be discerned that Dellar and
Walkley attempt to adopt Lewis’ pedagogical paradigm of Observe-Hypothesise-
Experiment sequence for individual lessons (Lewis 1996). (See appendix XXX for an
excerpt of a unit from Innovations pre intermediate student book).

In each unit, the first two-page spread introduces language through an oral
conversation, the second spread through a reading text, and the third through a
listening text. The kind of language studied in each lesson is mainly centred round
understanding the meaning of whole utterances, and not delving into atomistic
examination of structural patterns. The learner is not asked to cognitively study these
patterns as much as ‘Observe’ pre-fabricated chunks as a whole.

What follows in each two-page spread is an attempt by the coursebook writers to

include several activities to get learners to ‘Hypothesise’, establishing
generalisations and deepening their perceptions about language ‘observed’ in the
text. However, what can be found missing in the subsequent exercises in the
textbook is the fact that there is no chance for learners to do controlled types of
practice to focus on accuracy. Again, this is going into Lewis’ orbit that rejects the
usefulness of exercises controlling learners’ output for accuracy (Lewis 1993). I think
this can pose a problem for learners as they are more likely to produce inaccurate
language, as far the target language is concerned, prior to getting them to produce it
freely and for fluency-based purposes.

Learners are often thrown in at the deep end and expected to ‘Experiment’ freely
with the language forms, which as mentioned above, are mainly prefabricated lexical
items, e.g. collocations or sentence frames or heads. However, even those
supposedly freer practice activities merely ask learners to produce short
personalized utterances in order to repeat the new language, which is mainly
chunks, again and again no chance for using these chunks in genuine real-life
extended communicative activities, and presumably in new situations to enable
transfer of knowledge.
A teacher’s photocopiable resource book: This has been designed to accompany
the material in the twenty units of the textbook. It comprises two photocopiable
activities in every unit. The first activity, A, is claimed by the writers to provide
controlled practice for lexical and grammatical items from the textbook. However, I
view it as a form of further oral practice where learners merely keep substituting
‘language items’ into their slots in longer ‘lexical chunks’. The second activity, B, is
supposedly designed to provide students with extended practice of language related
to the corresponding unit in the textbook. Again, it seems limited in scope, and so
artificial and contrived that it merely gets learners to repeat the lexical and structural
chunks, with no room for freer oral practice as claimed by the writers. (See appendix
XXX for an excerpt of a unit from Innovations pre intermediate Resource book.)

A workbook: It is supposedly for self-study for learners to practise the language in

the textbook. It also contains the writing syllabus of the course. The last page of all
the odd units in the workbook contains two exercises that focus on writing skills. The
first of these exercises is called ‘Key words for writing’ aimed at providing learners
with language needed for producing a writing text, which is the focus of the second
exercise. The second exercise provides a writing model for students to study before
being asked to emulate it. Thus, a traditional productwriting approach is used with
minimum teacher support, making the coursebook a bad choice for learners wishing
to work on their process writing skills. (See appendix XXX for an excerpt of a unit
from Innovations pre intermediate workbook.)

All in all, the components of the Innovations pre-intermediate seem to have

succeeded in including activities that focus on language learned as ‘chunks’.
However, it can be argued that the coursebook is left wanting in incorporating
material to help learn language by using it to do things and achieve outcomes.
“Listening and repeating transformation exercises and controlled pattern practice are
activities which involve the production of language but not the use of language.”
(Willis 1990)

Evaluation of selection and ordering of syllabus elements in the book

When Willis (1990) outlined his rationale for choosing the content of a lexical
syllabus, he cited the importance of meaning-driven teaching, and argued that “the
commonest and most important, most basic meanings in English are those
meanings expressed by the most frequent words in English" (p.46), and that "a
relatively small number of English words accounts for a very high proportion of
English text." (p.46). Thus, Willis' COBUILD lexical course selected the most
frequent 2500 words, which constitute 80% of English text, to teach over three
levels. The COBUILD course was text-based, highlighting these 2500 words as they
occurred in the text. The methodology used in the course involves: a pre-task
introduction, exposure to texts, planning, drafting and rehearsal of a task, and finally
a focus on language form (Robinson 2009) for the 2500 lexical items, and how they
appear with their associated syntactical environments. However, Willis was criticised
for the intentional lack of sequence or control of his choice of lexical items within the
three-level course. Robinson 2009 notes: "Course planning and content, hence the
syllabus, is thus largely determined by the choices of texts and tasks –topics about
which the lexical syllabus says nothing." (p. 300).

Although Lewis (1993) seems to be reiterating Willis' arguments about the influential
role that lexis should play in language teaching and learning, the fundamental
departure of his ideas is that, to Lewis, lexis is not just words, rather it is the multi-
word prefabricated lexical chunks. Lewis argues that learners' fluency can be judged
based on how they can recall these chunks from memory. However, while there is a
skeleton for a language syllabus and methodology offered by Willis in the COBUILD
course, Lewis fails to provide the wherewithal with which a language programme can
be outlined based on his theory. Furthermore, "Lewis did not indicate what to learn
and teach first" (Shin and Nation 2008, p339) since as mentioned above Lewis’ LA is
an approach, not a methodology. Although he dismisses PPP outright, there is no
reason why a Lewis OHE-based lesson can still follow a PPP sequence. The
difference between PPP and OHE can be summarised as follows:

In order to present the language to the learners, the 'Observe' and Hypothesise'
always adopt an inductive, conscious-raising methodology, which can but not always
be the case in the Presentation stage of a PPP model.

There is no focus on accuracy, hence, no controlled Practice stage as in the PPP.

Because of all the arguments about implementing Willis and Lewis' theories of the
LA, a lexical syllabus and consequently a lexically-based methodology seems to be
disturbingly intangible, giving coursebook writers such as Dellar and Walkley a free
reign over not only what to choose for a textbook such as the Innovations series, but
how the content of their syllabus in the coursebook series can be graded and
ordered, and finally what sort of activities to include to teach the syllabus content.

Recently the two writers have praised one view of language as the word along with
its collocational and colligational associations (Dellar and Walkley 2016). More than
a decade earlier, the same writers included a 'Grammar introduction' at the back of
the student textbook of Innovations Intermediate 2005, where they addressed the
learner and urged them to “Notice, record and translate whole expressions and
collocations, not single words.......Learn how to use words you know first, learn new
words in context second, do grammar exercises last" (2005, p161).

One look at the content page of the book at the centre of our study: Innovations pre-
intermediate can immediately show how language input in the course prioritises the
teaching of lexical chunks over that of discrete-item grammar. The vocabulary taught
in the book, just like the rest of the Innovations series, explicitly deals with
expressions and collocations both related to the topic of the unit and based on
language appearing in the conversations or readings. The course also includes input
on very common words such as get, die and sort out. Similar to coursebooks
employing a synthetic syllabus, the explicit teaching of grammar is still evident in
Innovations, however, unlike other coursebooks, it is significantly reduced to merely
sentence-level exponents. What is really surprising is that, in a stark departure from
Lewis' ideals and their own disparaging comments about the fallacy of the structural
or grammatical description of language (Dellar and Walkley 2016), all the
Innovations series still include a 'Using Grammar' section. This seems tofly in the
face of a purely lexical view of language, and revives Widdowson (1989) two-fold
coexisting systems mentioned above.

Having said this, the Innovations coursebook clearly downplays "formal grammar
explanation and the so-called controlled practice" (Lewis 1993, p.148). Although in
each unit there is at least one section titled ‘using grammar’, there is not much work
spent on it. The grammar section usually starts by ‘telling’ the learner the general
rule: we often use X structure to talk about X. This is followed by a few isolated
sentence examples of the target structure. Rarely does it ask learners to inductively
find examples of the target language in the preceding texts, and the rules and
example sentences are sometimes followed by practice exercises that emphasise
personalisation when using the target structure. Very oftenthe practice exercisesask
learners to work in pairs to prepare a dialogue containing the target structure.
However, as mentioned above, the practice exercises do not seem to include
activities where learners can freely use the target structure in extended spontaneous
interaction in real time.

As far as the sequence of language choices in the syllabus, the texts in Innovations
pre-intermediate seem to be graded for difficulty round Common European
Framework of Reference levels A1 and A2. sequencing of teaching material does not
seem to follow any logical order. nnovations pre-intermediate includes at least one
section in each unit that deals with a particular grammar point. The writers state that
the grammar syllabus in the book includes more than traditional tense-based
structures; there is input on language constructions that lie at the boundary between
grammar and lexis, which are often less visited in conventional structurally-based
coursebooks. Nonetheless, a careful examination of the 'Using Grammar' section at
the contents page shows that nearly always these so-called less commonly used
structures can be found in more conventional coursebooks too. (See Appendix XXX
for excerpt from the contents page).

Challenges of using Innovations pre-intermediate

As mentioned above, Innovations pre-intermediate can be useful for teachers who

prefer to focus more on formulaic language and less on grammatical rules. For the
type of learners outlined above, material that gets them to learn language as whole
chunks can be immensely valuable to assist the recall of longer stretches of
language in real time. Having observed and hypothesised about these stretches of
language they have heard or seen in spoken or written texts, Innovations gets the
learner to endlessly practice repeating the target lexical phrases in short practice
exchanges.

So, the first issue that seems to challenge teachers using Innovations is that
although repeated encounters with a word and its grammatical, lexical, and semantic
associations explains how priming (Hoey 2005) can help store the word in long term
memory, and arguably improves learners' fluency, I believe that learners need to do
this in 'freer', less predictable types of interactions. In the teaching context outlined at
the beginning of this paper, it might be necessary to supplement the material with
truly communicative activities that involve the choice of language (Johnson and
Morrow 1981) produced on the part of the learner. This language should preferably
be conducted at the 'suprasentential' level, and completed through more fluency-
based and less accuracy-based communicative activities.

Another issue that the coursebook user has to contend with is that despite the fact
that Dellar and Walkley seem to view all language lying within the scope of the 'word
and its associations' and that lexical priming, and not explicit grammar focus, is all
that is needed for learning to happen, they still included an accompanying grammar
syllabus. However, the grammar input in the course is diluted into merely isolated
example sentences bereft of a context for language introduction and/or practice. This
entails, for teachers wishing to focus on the structural content in Innovations, thinking
of ways to create a context for introducing and practising grammar.

Finally and perhaps unfortunately, what seems to be the ultimate challenge for books
using the LA at its core, and given the vague interpretations of how LA can be
implemented, is the purely arbitrary nature of the choice of its syllabus content. For
the sort of learners outlined above, it might be more appropriate to take into account
the learner's needs and views on what language items they need to express. Since
one of the primary concerns for the coursebook writers themselves is "providing
students with plenty of opportunities to use language in personal, creative and
communicative contexts" (Dellar and Walkley 2005, p.4), the starting point should
rather be the language that the learners feel they want to learn, not what we want
them to learn. In other words, I would argue that since the language items in
Innovations pre intermediate are predetermined by the course writers, they might not
exactly reflect the language the learners themselves choose to use.

It is argued that if we are genuinely interested in teaching language that the learners
"want to be able to have in English" (Dellar and Walkley 2005, p.4), we need to
adopt a view that is less reliant on the transmission of language, and more on the
negotiation of syllabus content, for instance, where the students' needs are
continuously revisited. So, for a start, I suggest a Needs Analysis to be conducted
prior to the course programme, where learners are consulted on which units of
Innovations to be covered. More credence might need to be given to the argument
that 'implicit and explicit learning, memory and knowledge are separate processes
and systems, their end products stored in different areas of the brain" (Long 2015,
p.44). The result is that "the emphasis shifts from the traditional interventionist,
proactive, modelling behaviour of synthetic approaches, to a more reactive mode for
teachers – students lead, the teacher follows" (Long, 2015, p. 70). In other words,
the learners' emergent language needs to be attended to as much as possible with
the inclusion of more learner-centred teaching.

Conclusion