TEACHING

LEXIS
(VOCABULARY)
Group 1
Deti Permatasari (2101055020)
Maesaro (2101055013)
Shifa Ananda (2101055028)
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Lexis & Skills
01 What is Lexis? 05 Work

Lexis in The Remembering

02 Classroom 06 Lexical Items

Presenting Knowing a
03 Lexis
07 Lexical Items

Lexical Practice
04 Activities & Games
WHAT IS LEXIS?
Lexis refers to the vocabulary or
set of words and expressions that
a person, community, or language
possesses. It encompasses all the
words, phrases, and expressions
that are used in a particular
language or by a particular group
of people. Lexis is a fundamental
aspect of language and plays a
crucial role in communication.
Vocabulary typically refers mainly to single words (eg dog, green, wash) and sometimes to very tightly linked two- or
three-word combinations (eg stock market, compact disc, sky blue, go off). Lexis include:
traditional single-word vocabulary items;
common 'going-together patterns' of words (eg blonde hair, traffic jam). These frequent combinations are known
as collocations;
longer combinations of words that are typically used together as if they were a single item (eg someone you can
talk to, on-the-spot decisions, I'd rather not say). These longer combinations (which a few years ago would
probably not have been considered as anything remotely related to vocabulary) are commonly referred to as
chunks or sometimes as multiword items. (Categories (b) and (c) are both classed as lexical items.)
 LEXIS IN THE CLASSROOM
Lexis is a powerful carrier of meaning. In contrast, a systematic approach might
Beginners often manage to communicate in devote lesson time to helping learners at
English by using the accumulative effect of each of the following stages of learning
individual words. lexis:
The role of lexis in the classroom Meeting new lexical items and
Lexis is important and needs to be dealt with systematically in its own understanding them and their use
right; it is not simply an add-on to grammar or skills lessons.
Practising using them
Our job does not finish as soon as students have first met some new lexis;
we need to help them practise, learn, store, recall and use the items. Memorising them
Training in the use of English-English dictionaries provides students with a
Recalling and using them
vital tool for self-study.
We need to distinguish between lexis for productive use and for receptive
recognition, and adapt our classroom work appropriately.
As we saw in the previous section, we need to deal not only with single-
word lexical items, but also with longer, multiword items.
 PRESENTING LEXIS
The most common technique probably involves a
presentation-practice route:
Present: you first offer some cues, pictures or information
about the target items and elicit the words from students
or model them yourself. You will need to check that
learners have understood how they are formed, what they
mean and how they are used.
Practise: you then get the students to practise, eg by
repeating items, using them in short dialogues, etc.

The list of teaching ideas for swimming can be extended to include some ways of studying
this lexical item beyond a first meeting, for example:
draw a circle with the word swimming in the centre. Add lines leading from this word to a
variety of collocations or phrases:pool, lesson, trunks, Shall we go-, etc. These items
could be elicited from students, searched for in dictionaries, found in texts, etc;
use swimming as starting point and collect a number of connected lexical items, eg
water polo, diving board, deep end, crawl, etc;
collect grammatical variations on swimming, eg swim, swam, swum, swimmer,
swimmers.
 LEXICAL PRACTICE
ACTIVITIES & GAMES
Many simple lexical practice activities
There are many published exercises on lexis. These include:
are based around the following ideas:
matching pictures to lexical items;
discussions, communicative
matching parts of lexical items to other parts, eg beginnings and
activities and role play requiring endings;
use of the lexical items; matching lexical items to others, eg collocations, synonyms, opposites,
making use of the lexis in written sets of related words, etc;
tasks. using prefixes and suffixes to build new lexical items from given
words;
classifying items into lists;
using given lexical items to complete a specific task;
filling in crosswords, grids or diagrams;
filling in gaps in sentences;
memory games.
LEXIS & SKILL WORK
Pre-teaching lexis
Some activities designed to revise, teach, and practice lexis before
moving on work. The aims to help students to recall items they already
know as much as introducing new items and to help ensure that the
following activity will work.

Some common Pre-teaching task

Match the words with the pictures.
Check the meaning of these words in the dictionary.
Match the words with the definitions.
Brainstorm words on a set topic (ie collect as many as you can).
Divide these words into two groups (eg food words and hobby words)
Label the items in a picture with the right names.
Complete gapped sentences with words from a list.
Discuss a topic (that will feature in the text).
Say which words (from a list) you expect to be in a text about ...
DEALING WITH LEXIS DURING WORK

01 02 03 04

deal with an item give brief, to-the-point offer help quietly to sometimes refuse help
when a student explanations or the one or two and tell students to do
specifically asks about translations, rather students who ask, their best without
it; than detailed rather than to the knowing some items
presentations; whole class;
 LESSONS PROCEDURE
Reading to find
01 Pre-teach lexis 04 specific
information
Written practice
02 of lexis 05 Further lexis
work
Oral practice of
03 lexis Communicative
06 activity
REMEMBERING LEXICAL ITEMS

01 02 03 04 05
lexical items lists labelling word/topic web word page: Lexical item page:
collocation and chunck lexical item collector
KNOWING A LEXICAL ITEM
-Teaching lexis is not introducing students to the lexical
items/spelling/pronunciation

-Its teach how to succesfully use words one already know, it

learns how ‘old’ words used in ‘new’ ways.

-More important to explore uses of lexical items they already

know than to learn new things

-What is new is not the words themselves but the new

combinations and patterns they are used in.
 LESSONS PLAN
SOME
1. Record lexical items in useful
ways
2. Revisit lexical items
3. Collect lexical items
4. Sort and classify items
5. Chunk and collocation spotting
6. Redesign your pages
7. When an error comes up,
review a range of collocation
8. Record real language
9. Challenge students to upgrade
language
10. Give collocation rather than
definitiob
11. Quick choices
12. Guess the collocation
13. Chunk watching
THANK
YOU