Lexical Approach 2 - What does the lexical approach look like?

| TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC 23/01/17, 22:21

Help Log in Sign Up for a Free Account LearnEnglish Kids LearnEnglish LearnEnglish Teens

EnglishAgenda

Lexical Approach 2 - What does the lexical approach look

like?
1 33 4 2737

Submitted 13 years 7 months ago by admin.

This is the second part of an article looking at the theories of

language which form the foundations of the lexical approach
to teaching English.

Introduction
The theory of learning
Noticing
Language awareness
About the authors

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-2-what-does-lexical-approach-look Pgina 1 de 8
Lexical Approach 2 - What does the lexical approach look like? | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC 23/01/17, 22:21

Further Reading

Introduction
The principles of the Lexical Approach have been around since Michael
Lewis published 'The Lexical Approach' 10 years ago. It seems,
however, that many teachers and researchers do not have a clear idea
of what the Lexical Approach actually looks like in practice.

In the first of our two THINK articles - Lexical approach 1

(/think/articles/lexical-approach-1-what-does-lexical-
approach-look) - we looked at how advocates of the Lexical
Approach view language. In this, our second THINK article, we apply
theories of language learning to a Lexical Approach and describe what
lexical lessons could look like.

We have also produced teaching materials (/try/activities/lexical-

approach-classroom-activities) for you to try out in your own
classrooms. Your feedback, opinions, comments and suggestions
would be more than welcome and used to form the basis of a future
article.

A theory of learning
In our first article, Lexical Approach 1 (/articles/lexical-approach-1-
what-does-lexical-approach-look), we spoke about the vast
number of chunks and collocations native speakers store. According to
Lewis (1997, 2000) native speakers carry a pool of hundreds of
thousands, and possibly millions, of lexical chunks in their heads ready
to draw upon in order to produce fluent, accurate and meaningful
language. Too many items for teachers and materials to present to
learners, ask learners to practise and then produce even if you
believed that a PPP methodology - which has been denigrated in
recent years - would lead to the acquisition of these language items.

How then are the learners going to learn the lexical items they need?
One of the criticisms levelled at the Lexical Approach is its lack of a
detailed learning theory. It is worth noting, however, that Lewis (1993)
argues the Lexical Approach is not a break with the Communicative
Approach, but a development of it. He makes a helpful summary of the
findings from first language acquisition research which he thinks are
relevant to second language acquisition:

Language is not learnt by learning individual sounds and structures

and then combining them, but by an increasing ability to break down
wholes into parts.
Grammar is acquired by a process of observation, hypothesis and

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-2-what-does-lexical-approach-look Pgina 2 de 8
Lexical Approach 2 - What does the lexical approach look like? | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC 23/01/17, 22:21

experiment.
We can use whole phrases without understanding their constituent
parts.
Acquisition is accelerated by contact with a sympathetic interlocutor
with a higher level of competence in the target language.

Schmitt (2000) makes a significant contribution to a learning theory for

the Lexical Approach by adding that 'the mind stores and processes
these [lexical] chunks as individual wholes.' The mind is able to store
large amounts of information in long-term memory but its short-term
capacity is much more limited, when producing language in speech for
example, so it is much more efficient for the brain to recall a chunk of
language as if it were one piece of information. 'Figment of his
imagination' is, therefore, recalled as one piece of information rather
than four separate words.

In our view it is not possible, or even desirable, to attempt to 'teach' an

unlimited number of lexical chunks. But, it is beneficial for language
learners to gain exposure to lexical chunks and to gain experience in
analyzing those chunks in order to begin the process of internalisation.
We believe, like Lewis, that encouraging learners to notice language,
specifically lexical chunks and collocations, is central to any
methodology connected to a lexical view of language.

Noticing
Batstone (1996) describes noticing as 'a complex process: it involves
the intake both of meaning and form, and it takes time for learners to
progress from initial recognition to the point where they can internalize
the underlying rule'. At the same time Lewis (2000) argues that
noticing chunks and collocations is a necessary but not sufficient
condition for input to become intake. If learners are not directed to
notice language in a text there exists a danger that they will 'see
through the text' and therefore fail to achieve intake.

Looking back at the tasks and activities (/try/activities/lexical-

approach-classroom-activities), you can see they are designed to
promote noticing. Sometimes the noticing is guided by the teacher i.e.
the teacher directs the students' attention to lexical features thought
to be useful; sometimes the noticing is 'self-directed', i.e. the students
themselves select features they think will be useful for them.
Sometimes the noticing is explicit, e.g. when items in a text are
highlighted; sometimes it is implicit e.g. when the teacher reformulates
a student's text (see Thornbury 1997 for an explanation of how
reconstruction and reformulation can enhance noticing and practical
suggestions for reformulating).

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-2-what-does-lexical-approach-look Pgina 3 de 8
Lexical Approach 2 - What does the lexical approach look like? | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC 23/01/17, 22:21

Language Awareness
It is our assertion that learning materials and teachers can best help
learners achieve noticing of lexical chunks by combining a Language
Awareness approach to learning with a Lexical Approach to describing
language.

Tomlinson (2003) sums up the principles, objectives and procedures of

a language awareness approach as:

'Paying deliberate attention to features of language in use can help

learners to notice the gap between their own performance in the
target language and the performance of proficient users of the
language.
Noticing can give salience to a feature, so that it becomes more
noticeable in future input, so contributing to the learner's
psychological readiness to acquire that feature.
The main objective is to help learners to notice for themselves how
language is typically used so that they will note the gaps and
'achieve learning readiness' [as well as independence from the
teacher and teaching materials].
The first procedures are usually experiential rather than analytical
and aim to involve the learners in affective interaction with a
potentially engaging text. [That is, learners read a text, and respond
with their own views and opinions before studying the language in
the text or answering comprehension type questions.]
Learners are later encouraged to focus on a particular feature of the
text, identify instances of the feature, make discoveries and
articulate generalizations about its use.'

In a small research project at The University of Maine, groups of

students were exposed to materials (see the first activity here
(/try/activities/lexical-approach-classroom-activities)) based on
the principles and procedures Tomlinson outlines. The noticing
activities asked students to identify, analyse and make generalisations
about lexical chunks and collocations.

The students involved in the research were surveyed after using these
materials and asked how useful and enjoyable they found the materials.

All but one of the students said the materials were very useful and all
the students reported the class was either very useful or useful.
All the students said the materials would help them learn
independently.

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-2-what-does-lexical-approach-look Pgina 4 de 8
Lexical Approach 2 - What does the lexical approach look like? | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC 23/01/17, 22:21

Over half the students thought the materials were useful for learning
vocabulary.
All the students said they enjoyed the stories.
The teachers said that the readings were 'great', the students
understood and could appreciate the materials' relevance for
developing reading as well a productive skills.
One teacher said he was not sure if making the distinction between
different types of lexical chunks was necessary.

We hope these articles and activities shine some light on what a

Lexical Approach could look like in teaching materials and provide
ideas of how it might appear in the classroom.

About the authors

Carlos Islam teaches ESL and Applied Linguistics at the University of
Maine. He is also involved in materials writing projects, editing Folio
(the journal of the Materials Development Association
www.matsda.org.uk ) and language acquisition research.

Ivor Timmis is Lecturer in Language Teaching and Learning at Leeds

Beckett University. He teaches on the MA in Materials Development for
Language Teachers, works on materials development consultancies
and is also involved in corpus linguistic research.

References
Batstone, Rob (1996). Key Concepts in ELT: Noticing. ELT Journal
50(3)273.
Bolitho, R, Carter, R, Hughes, R, Ivanic, R, Masuhara, H, and Tomlinson,
B (2003) Ten Questions about Language Awareness. ELT Journal 57/3.
Lewis, Michael (1993), The Lexical Approach, Hove: Language Teaching
Publications.
Lewis, Michael (1997). Implementing the Lexical Approach: Putting
Theory Into Practice. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.
Lewis, Michael (2000). Language in the lexical approach. In Teaching
Collocation: Further Developments In The Lexical Approach, Michael
Lewis (ed.), 126-154.Hove: Language Teaching Publications.
Schmitt, Norbert (2000). Key Concepts in ELT: Lexical Chunks. ELT
Journal 54(4): 400-401.
Thornbury, Scott (1997). Reformulation and reconstruction: tasks that
promote 'noticing'. ELT Journal 51(4): 326-334.

Carlos Islam, The University of Maine Ivor Timmis, Leeds Beckett

University

Tags
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-2-what-does-lexical-approach-look Pgina 5 de 8
Lexical Approach 2 - What does the lexical approach look like? | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC 23/01/17, 22:21

Tags

Vocabulary (/category/articles-site-
structure/articles/vocabulary)

Need a little more help with your professional development?

Find a training course for your needs. (/training-courses?
WT.ac=in-page-promo)

Comments
joe replied on 26 March, 2008 - 10:54 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/292#COMMENT-292)
ELISABETH BOECK,
(/COMMENT/292#COMMENT-292)
Elisabeth Boeck, Germany
From the lexical approach activities in the TRY section I
especially found the piece MY BEST FRIEND KYLE a
treasure trove of lexical items. The suggestion to
highlight texts for lexical chunks when presenting them
in class as a means to sensitize students to the
phenomena is, to my mind, particularly effective; and I
could imagine, when it comes to reproduction, perhaps
it might be useful for the teacher to gap-read the text
not in one go but paragraph by paragraph for better
retention on the part of the students.

Also, in my experience, the value of the lexical approach

is demonstrated beautifully and convincingly by
juxtaposing English and native language expressions. In
that way students realize that in most cases a word-for-
word translation won't help, when previously they
perhaps thought that it might do to sling together a few
words picked up from the dictionary. I like to say, when
presenting idiomatic phrases, standard expressions,
social and spoken language chunks etc. "That's the way
native speakers typically say things."

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-2-what-does-lexical-approach-look Pgina 6 de 8
Lexical Approach 2 - What does the lexical approach look like? | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC 23/01/17, 22:21

And I remember Michael Lewis, in the course of a

presentation which he gave here in Germany some
years ago, saying this: "Whenever someone asks me
"why is that?" - with reference to the structure of some
language item - I will answer: "That's how it is in English."
- Period!"

shelterisland replied on 6 August, 2011 - 21:50 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/16622#COMMENT-16622)
TRY MATERIALS
(/COMMENT/16622#COMMENT-16622)
Where are the TRY materials?

Rob Lewis replied on 8 August, 2011 - 09:45 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/16628#COMMENT-16628)
LEXICAL APPROACH ACTIVITIES
(/COMMENT/16628#COMMENT-16628)
Hi thereI've just updated the article with links to the
activities, so you should be able to see everthing
now.Thanks for pointing this out.Rob

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-2-what-does-lexical-approach-look Pgina 7 de 8
Lexical Approach 2 - What does the lexical approach look like? | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC 23/01/17, 22:21

Add new comment

Log in (/user/login?
destination=comment/reply/400%23comment-form) or
register (/user/register?
destination=comment/reply/400%23comment-form) to
post comments

Terms of Use Privacy Freedom of information Frequently asked questions Accessibility Cookie policy Site map
Contact us
British Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1A 2BN, UK
BBC World Service, Bush House, Strand, London WC2B 4PH, UK

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-2-what-does-lexical-approach-look Pgina 8 de 8