Applying The Lexical Approach In The Classroom

Introduction

Michael Lewis` book The Lexical Approach, first published in 1998, caused a stir within the EFL world. It represented two things: firstly, it was part of a new theory of language - that, ``the building blocks of language are not grammar, functions, notions... but lexis, that is words and word combinations`` (Richards and Rogers, 2001). And secondly it was a new approach to teaching and learning. The emphasis on these combinations is said to be so central that Nattinger wrote, ``[student comprehension] relies on knowing which of these patterns to predict... our teaching, therefore, would center on these patterns and the ways they can be pieced together, along with the ways they vary and the situations in which they occur`` (Richards and Rogers, 2001).

Lewis` impact was such that Noam Chomsky, the father of contemporary syntax studies, adopted a ``lexicon-is-prime`` position. Lewis even won over initial detractors like Scott Thornbury, who had said in 1998 that the Lexical Approach represented ``little more than an eclectic mix of procedures aimed at raising awareness of...`chunks``, with the latter giving great credit to Lewis` work in the foreword to Natural Grammar.

It seems essential that I explore this paradigm changing approach.

Rationale

I first became aware of the Lexical Approach when researching the development of communicative language teaching. Aside from noting the impact it had had on the leading lights of the linguistics and EFL worlds, the Lexical Approach also made intuitive sense to me.

I had noticed when learning Spanish that simply studying the grammar and memorising individual words was insufficient and that I was continually trying to translate word for word from English, with the result that I was often misunderstood by native Spanish speakers. I found myself instinctively noting down `chunks` of Spanish so I could remember the gender of nouns (`ciudad pequena`) or the preposition used with a verb in a given situation (`estoy cerca de la plaza`). I also recorded phrases which I did not expect to use regularly but which could be useful if I wanted to amuse or impress a Spanish speaker (`estas cachondeando de me?`). Consequently Lewis` focus on collocations, semi-fixed expressions and fixed expressions made perfect sense to me.

I am also interested in other aspects of Lewis` approach, some which we might describe as principles and others as activities.

Principles

Lewis advocates `input rich resources` - the most useful of which he believes is increased teacher talk time, roughly tuned to the students` level but always seeking to extend it further (Krashen`s L+1). Within these resources we encourage learners to notice commonly occurring patterns. Rigid rules are abandoned in favour of students forming their own tentative explanations which can be continually updated later (`Observe-Hypothesise-Experiment`).

Error correction. Meaning is central to language and so takes precedence over accuracy. Lewis encourages teachers to build the confidence of learners and asks us to consider reformulating students` utterances rather than `reconstructing` them, focusing on their `supra-sentential` meaning rather than just on `surface errors`.

Activities

Activities for noticing and experimenting with lexis include: matching, sorting, labeling pictures, cloze exercises and sentence heads. By contrast we should abandon completely transformational exercises with decontextualised sentences.

Recording the new lexis is of prime importance and students are strongly encouraged to have a lexical notebook. They should return to it to add new uses of the same words or new collocations from a particular lexical set. Revisiting and reorganising the notebook is also part of the memorisation process.

Dictionaries are afforded great importance (`the native speaker on your desk`) so I have purchased a number from the Collins COBUILD range. Students are also encouraged to use concordance programmes to test their lexical experiments against naturally occurring language drawn from the internet.

Lewis recommends writing be done in groups to take advantage of differing knowledge and cognitive styles, and because it is a communicative activity in itself. `Process writing` meanwhile is one approach to error correction which allows students to redraft their responses and work towards greater competency.

Noticing the sounds of the chunks is as important as identifying them visually, so we need to practice pronunciation features such as stress, intonation and supra-segmental elements.

My Objective

I will experiment with these activities and principles with the objective that my students can increase the generative power of their existing vocabulary, expand their knowledge of English collocation, increase their autonomy and produce writing of a higher standard. Because the Lexical Approach is a holistic teaching approach, I will experiment with many of Lewis` recommendations in the same lessons. I hope this will enable me to significantly increase the range of my teaching practice.

Applying my Objective

Appendix 1 contains my typed-up original hand-written lesson plans (Lexical Approach activities and exercises are in bold). The originals are also attached and include my notes on the students` reactions to the activities and my perceptions of the success of the lessons. I have also included photographs taken during these lessons, mainly of board work which demonstrates more clearly what we were doing, and examples of students` work.

Classes Taught

Owing to timetabling, my experimentation with the Lexical Approach has been restricted to an IELTS class. The group, roughly Upper Intermediate in level, is mainly Arabic speaking although there is one Korean student and the make-up of the class could change due to continuous enrollment at my school. Nonetheless an IELTS class represents a very useful research cohort because `Lexical Resource` is one of the four assessed areas in both the speaking and writing parts of the test. The reading papers contain high concentrations of collocation and parts of the listening test require the students to exactly reproduce short `chunks`.

Developmental Records

For a more detailed view of what I taught in each class see the lesson procedure notes in Appendix 1.

Evaluation and Conclusion

This has been a very useful process to go through and I have found much of value in the Lexical Approach. My objectives during this process were to increase the generative power of my students` existing vocabulary, expand their knowledge of English collocation, increase their autonomy and produce writing of a higher standard.

By the end of this process the learners were using collocation much more in their written and spoken responses and they were able to offer lots of alternatives when I asked them to `fill in` the `slots` in semi-fixed expressions. Occasionally this would mean that they offered inappropriate collocations but that meant that there was an opportunity to explore probable versus possible language using COBUILD dictionaries and concordances. Inappropriate fillers or collocations at least showed they recognised the process at work. A number of the learners informed me that they had bought COBUILD dictionaries and many had mentioned that they had found lexis on the British National Corpus. I was of course very pleased to hear these examples of independent investigation - which was important because I felt that their use of the lexical notebook was less than I would have wanted. I noticed that only the Korean student was keeping her notebook up to date independently. It could be that this simply does not fit with the learning styles of the other students, who being Arabic speaking, may be reluctant to write often in a scri pt which is very different to their own. Note-making can be tiring so if there is no immediate compulsion in the form of classroom note-taking or writing questions to be answered then they may not want to do it. That seemed a more plausible explanation than just assuming that they were indisposed to a visual learning style because they did take regular notes in class.

The quality of the students` writing definitely improved during this experimentation. They very much appeared to appreciate `process writing` because they could improve upon a piece of work and not just file it away. Their writing task one responses (describing a graph, process or diagram) in particular showed signs of significant improvement and expressions of greater confidence in attempting them. `Chunking` the question`s topic sentence and paraphrasing it in their introductory paragraph was a very useful technique to learn as were the specific chunks which could be used to describe a chart or flow diagram. Using Microsoft Word as part of process writing activities alongside concordances and COBUILD dictionaries also produced better responses for both task one and task two (the essay question).

Summary of the changes made to my teaching and implications for my future teaching

I have adopted all the principles outlined in the rationale section of this project. In the past I had been concerned to limit teacher talk time and on occasion to speak only when giving instructions. I now employ increased teacher talk time, roughly tuned to the students` level and I am not afraid to join in with students` discussions and I often use open debates to board emergent lexis and add my own ideas. With increased teacher-student exchanges there are more opportunities to reformulate student errors - if a student makes a spoken mistake I will reply with the correct version. This does not seem to affect the students` confidence because they continue to offer comment and they usually correct themselves with the reformulated language and often write it down after speaking.

For written tasks I rewrite students` mistakes based on my perception of their intended meanings rather than reconstructing faulty grammar and then ask learners to rewrite the piece taking notice of the reformulations. I also let the students write questions on their written responses so that there is a more interactive process at work. Having the learners compare their work with that which I have produced or with a sample answer is something I regularly employ now - and I would get them to underline (i.e. notice) collocations in their own work as well as in texts and sample answers so that their importance is kept uppermost in their minds. Writing in groups is useful but not something I employ all the time because students often want to work alone. Working alongside concordances is also useful but best left for the students to experiment with themselves.

With non-exam classes I would place much less emphasis on written work because I share Lewis` contention that speaking is much more important than writing for most students. I would though ask students to transcribe their own speech more often and investigate its successes and deficiencies and compare it to examples of native speech.

Because I noticed that many of the students were not using their lexical notebook much outside the classroom I make a great effort to make my board work as effective as possible. I never board single words and I often invite the students to reorganise or sort what I have written according to whether it is a collocation, a semi-fixed expression or a fixed expression (see photographs). I will occasionally create a word web but I will leave it up to the discretion of the student as to whether they will imitate them or not because I have yet to see a student who values them. Collocation boxes appear to be more useful for the students.

It has been good to learn the value of cloze exercises with full surrounding co-text and these can be useful when introducing the British National Corpus. I do endeavor to avoid decontextualised single sentences but I do not believe that all transformation exercises are wrong because sometimes they are useful for learning how to avoid repetitive writing (e.g practicing noun-adjective to verb-adverb conversions). When introducing or boarding new lexis I try to remember to draw out features of its pronunciation such as catenation or reduction at the same time, and I drill sentence heads and fixed expressions before asking the learners to make their own changes. As Lewis recommends I drill in a light hearted manner and ask the students to vary the pace, pitch and manner (angry, whispering, thoughtful etc.)

Bibliography / References

The Lexical Approach, Michael Lewis (LTP, 1993)

Implementing the Lexical Approach, Michael Lewis (LTP, 1997)

Teaching Collocation, (Editor) Michael Lewis (LTP, 2000)

Lexical Approach Activities, Ken Lackman (www.kenlackman.com)

Learning Teaching [3rd Edition], Jim Scrivener (Macmillan Education, 2011)

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching [2nd Edition], Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rogers (CUP, 2001)

The Lexical Approach: A Journey without Maps?, Scott Thornbury (Modern English Teacher 7, 1998)