The Lexical Approach

The Lexical Approach in language teaching refers to one derived from the belief that the building blocks of language learning and communication are not grammar, functions, notions, or some other unit of planning and teaching but lexis, that is words and word combinations. Lexical approaches in language teaching reflect a belief in the centrality of the lexicon to language structure, second language learning, and language use, and in particular to multiword lexical units or “chunks”that are learned and used as single items. Linguistic theory has also recognized a more central role for vocabulary in linguistic description. Formal transformational/generative linguistics, which previously took syntax as the primary focus, now gives more central attention to the lexicon and how the lexicon is formatted, coded, and organized.

The role of lexical units has been stressed in both first and second language acquisition research. Several approaches to language learning have been proposed that view vocabulary and lexical units as central in learning and teaching. These include the lexical syllabus (Willis, 1990), lexical phrases and language teaching (Nattinger & Decarrico, 1992) and the Lexical Approach (Lewis, 1993). Advances in computer-based studies of language (referred to as corpus linguistics) have also provided a huge, classroom-accessible database for lexical based inquiry and instruction. These studies have focused on collocations of lexical items and multipleword units. A number of lexical based texts and computer resources have become available to assist in organizing and teaching the lexicon.

The Lexical Approach in language teaching seeks to develop proposals for syllabus design and language teaching founded on a view of language in which lexis plays the central role.

The theory of the language and learning is reflected by the following explanation.

The lexical view holds that only a minority of spoken sentences is entirely novel creations and that multiword units functioning as “chunks” or memorized patterns form a high proportion of the fluent stretches of speech heard in everyday conversation (Pawley & Syder, 1983).

Studies based on large-scale computer databases of language corpora have examined patterns of phrase and clause sequences as they appear in samples of various kinds of texts, including spoken samples. Three important UK-based corpora are the COBUILD Bank of English Corpus, the Cambridge International Corpus, and the British National Corpus, the last of which contains more than 300 million words.

Lexis is also believed to play a central role in language learning.

Krahsen suggests that massive amounts of language input, “especially through reading, is the only effective approach to such learning. Others propose making the language class a laboratory in which learners can explore, via computer concordance databases, the contexts of lexical use that occur in different kinds of texts and language data. A third approach to learning lexical chunks has been contrastive”: some applied linguists have suggested that for a number of languages there is an appreciable degree of overlap in the form and meaning of lexical collocations. Bahns (1993: 58) suggests that “the teaching of lexical collocations in EFL should concentrate on items for which there is no direct translational equivalence in English and in the learners’ respective mother tongues.”

Lewis (2000) acknowledges that the Lexical Approach has lacked a coherent learning theory and attempts to rectify this with the following assumptions about learning theory in the Lexical Approach (Lewis, 2000: 184):

Encountering new learning items on several occasions is a necessary but sufficient condition for learning to occur.

Noticing lexical chunks or collocations is a necessary but not sufficient condition for “input” to become “intake”.

Noticing similarities, differences, restrictions, and examples contributes to turning input into intake, although formal description of rules probably does not help.

Acquisition is based not on the application of formal rules but on an accumulation of examples from which learners make provisional generalizations. Language production is the product of previously met examples, not formal rules.

No linear syllabus can adequately reflect the nonlinear nature of acquisition.

The rationale and design for lexical based language teaching described in the lexical syllabus (Willis, 1990) and the application of it in the Collins COBUILD English Course represent the most ambitious attempt to realize a syllabus and accompanying materials based on lexical rather than grammatical principles. Willis notes that the COBUILD computer analyses of texts indicate that “the 700 most frequent words of English account for around 70% of all English text”. This “fact” led to the decision that “word frequency would determine the contents of our course”. Willis stresses that “the lexical syllabus not only subsumes a structural syllabus; it also indicates how the structures which make up syllabus should be exemplified” since the computer corpus revels commonest structural patterns in which words are used (Willis, 1990: vi).

Specific roles for teachers and learners are also assumed in the Lexical Approach. Lewis supports Krashen’s Natural Approach procedures and suggests that teacher talk is a major source of learner input in demonstrating how lexical phrases are used for different functional purposes. Willis proposes that teachers need to understand and manage a classroom methodology based on stages composed of task, planning, and report. In general terms, Willis views the teacher’s role as one of creating an environment in which learners can operate effectively and then helping learners manage their own learning. This require that teachers “abandon the idea of the teacher as ‘knower’ and concentrate instead on the idea of the learner as ‘discoverer’’’(Willis, 1990: 131).

Others propose that learners make use of computers to analyze text data previously collected or made available “free-form” on the Internet. Here the learner assumes the role of data analyst constructing his or her own linguistic generalizationsbased on examination of large corpora of language samples taken from “real life”. In such schemes, teachers have a major responsibility for organizing the technological system and providing scaffolding to help learners build autonomy in use of the system. The most popular computer-based applications using corpora are built on the presentation of concordance lines to the learner that illustrates the contexts of use of some words or structures. Teaching assistance will be necessary in leading the learner through the different stages of lexical analysis such as observation, classification, and generalization.

The status of lexis in language teaching has been considerably enhanced by developments in lexical and linguistic theory, by work in corpus analysis, and by recognition of the role of multiword units in language learning and communication. However, lexis still refers to only one component of communicative competence. Lewis and others have coined the term “Lexical Approach” to characterize their proposals for a lexis-based approach to language teaching. However, such proposals lack the full characterization of an approach or method as described in this book. It remains to be convincingly demonstrated how a lexical based theory of language and language learning can be applied at the levels of design and procedure in language teaching, suggesting that it is still an idea in search of an approach and a methodology.