Assessing The Impact Of An Cpd Workshop On The Lexical Approach

Studying and subsequently implementing Michael Lewis` Lexical Approach had a tremendous impact on my teaching practice. It not only gave me greater confidence and a wider range of activities and techniques to use in the classroom but also a theoretical underpinning as to the nature of language and why this particular approach was valuable. It also had, of course, a very positive effect on my learners, in particular helping to improve their written responses to IELTS questions and their ability to collocate and make greater use of their existing vocabulary, while improving their autonomy outside the classroom through the use of concordance programmes, COBUILD dictionaries and lexical notebooks. Most pleasing of all was the reaction of two non-native English teachers, one from South Korea and one from Oman, who had come to our school to improve their fluency. Both took to the Lexical Approach immediately and asked for copies of `The Lexical Approach`, `Implementing the Lexical Approach` and `Teaching Collocation`. Not long after she left England I received a very nice email from the Omani student / teacher which said:

"I try to read everyday and learn new words by writing them in chunks" and "I will be grateful if u send me the teaching method you mentioned about learning by chunks."

Rationale

A common problem for many ELT teachers once they have completed their pre-service training course (CELTA or Trinity TESOL) is that they lack the time to read up on new approaches and theories such as the Lexical Approach. Had I not been studying for the Trinity diploma, it is highly unlikely that I would have studied Lewis` work. The institution I teach at pays for one or two teachers to attend ELT conferences but there is no investment in training sessions at our place of work. Any Continuous Professional Development is done on the teachers` own initiative and not surprisingly, given the differing timetables, this is difficult to organise. Nonetheless the usefulness of the Lexical Approach appeared so great to me that I decided to introduce it to my colleagues. To begin with, I mentioned in passing during staffroom conversations that I was experimenting with the Lexical Approach and listened for my colleagues` initial reactions. Knowing how opinionated teachers can be I then became interested in how they would react to an approach which had had its detractors (Thornbury, 1998) and which unceremoniously abandons many well-established aspects of ELT practice - aspects which may be ingrained elements of some teachers` work. Finally, I wondered how they would react to one of their peers giving a workshop on this approach and whether they would adopt any aspects of it - and if so, which aspects?

What is the Lexical Approach?

Below I will describe the essential principles of, and typical activities within the Lexical Approach (TLA), alongside the conclusions I drew from my own experimentation with it.

Michael Lewis` Lexical Approach (1998) caused a stir within the EFL world because it represented two things:

- 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

- a new approach to teaching and learning, described here by Nattinger: ``[student comprehension] relies on knowing which of these [lexical] 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).

Both points made instinctive sense to me after my experiences learning Spanish, when I regularly noted down `chunks` (collocations, semi-fixed expressions and fixed expressions).

Principles

Lewis advocates using `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). Other resources include `real-life` texts and audio / visual materials, COBUILD dictionaries and concordance programmes. Within these resources we are to encourage learners to notice commonly occurring patterns of words; highlighting, underlining and noting them down. Rigid rules are abandoned in favour of students forming their own tentative explanations which can be continually updated later (`Observe-Hypothesise-Experiment`).

Error correction plays an important part in TLA but takes a different path from the standard approaches in PPP or Test-Teach-Test lessons. This is because meaning is central to language and so meaning 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`. This can mean rephrasing a learner`s spoken utterance immediately or reformulating written sentences rather than simply writing `grammar` in red ink over the top of a defective clause.

I have assimilated all these aspects of TLA and in actual fact would say that I was employing a intuitively `rough version` of TLA long before I had heard of it i.e. boarding semi-fixed expressions with empty `slots` to be filled by the students.

Activities

Activities for the central elements of noticing and experimenting with lexis include: matching and sorting exercises, labelling pictures, cloze exercises with co-text and sentence heads. By contrast we should abandon completely transformational exercises with decontextualised sentences.

I found cloze exercises with co-text and sentence heads to be of particular use in the classroom and I agree that most decontextualised single sentence transformations should be dispensed with although there are one or two exceptions where the target language is tightly focused, for example, noun-adjective to verb-adverb conversions.

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.

Again, this is another key aspect of TLA which I have made a central part of my teaching practice. It does however require regular effort on the part of the teacher to ensure that students keep their notebooks up to date. Boarding lexis in a principled fashion is also of prime importance and I make heavy use of collocation boxes and occasionally word webs.

Dictionaries as noted above are afforded great importance (`the native speaker on your desk`), particularly from the COBUILD range. Students are also encouraged to use concordance programs to check their lexical experiments against naturally occurring language drawn from the internet.

As with the lexical notebooks there is an element of `learner training` in ensuring that students refer as often as possible to the dictionary when exploring new lexis. It is often tempting to simply define new words or chunks for students but one tries to resist this as much as possible. Using concordancers was very popular but best employed when the students were free to explore lexis as they saw fit.

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 as many times as necessary and work towards greater competency.

I experimented with TLA with an IELTS group which were reluctant to do group writing tasks since they would have no one else to rely on in the exam. I imagine though that it would be very useful with General English classes. `Process writing` was a very good addition to my practice and students really valued being able to improve on essays and not simply file away defective work.

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. And although it has fallen out of fashion with many EFL practitioners, drilling is an accepted and valued activity in TLA.

Drawing out the supra-segmental elements (such as catenation or reduction) is something I do when boarding new lexis and I have found that drilling exercises which use sentence heads which can be completed by the students can be fun, especially when the pitch, tone or manner is varied (angry, whispering, thoughtful etc.).

Statement of research

I have decided then to do a workshop entitled, ``Applying the Lexical Approach in the classroom``, where I will explain the principles and activities outlined above coupled with comments on my personal experience in the classroom. I will then conduct research on the following areas:

1, Feedback from my colleagues as to the efficacy and usefulness of my workshop presentation.

2, My colleagues` impressions of the Lexical Approach.

3, Which elements of TLA are they already using (perhaps intuitively)?

4, Which elements of TLA would they implement or experiment with in their practice after the workshop?

Evaluation

The workshop took place at 2 o`clock in the afternoon on Friday 2nd November and it lasted approximately 45 minutes. It was attended by eight teachers. The first survey, based on qualitative questions, was given to the teachers on Monday 5th November - all of the attendees completed it. The second quantitative survey was given to the workshop attendees on Monday 26th November - seven of the eight teachers in attendance completed it.

I will now evaluate the reaction to the presentation and the responses to the surveys with regard to the five areas in my statement of research.

The efficacy and usefulness of my workshop

The workshop was warmly received and drew particular praise from the Director of Studies and the Senior Teacher who were in attendance. While a number of the teachers had heard of TLA before none had read Lewis` work on it. All but one of the eight attendees found the workshop `very useful` and no one required any further explanation. The interest of seven of the teachers was sufficiently stimulated that they wanted to read the original books by Michael Lewis - this was very pleasing.

My colleagues` impressions of the Lexical Approach

Clearly the last point above illustrates that TLA was well-received. A number of teachers stated that they felt they were intuitively using aspects of TLA already - which I had expected to some degree since that was my experience also. Breaking the dichotomy of grammar versus vocabulary was mentioned as interesting by at least three colleagues along with the usefulness of boarding lexis in its context. A number of teachers referred positively to taking a more principled approach to boarding lexis too - using collocation boxes, word webs and organising the board by collocations, semi-fixed expressions and fixed expressions. Two attendees were intrigued by the idea of using concordance software in the classroom while another was interested in the notion of having students transcribe their speech. I was surprised however that no one queried the resurrection of translation from L1 as a valid activity. I had expected some resistance to this.

Below are the results from the second survey:

already in effect adopted since workshop intend to adopt no interest in using Essential principles Encouraging `noticing` of chunks 4 1 2 - Students` lexical notebook 1 - 5 1 Revisiting & reorganising lexis 2 3 1 1 More principled board-work 1 2 4 - Collocation boxes 0 2 5 - Word webs 4 1 2 - Board new lexis in context 3 4 - - "Roughly tuned" increased teacher talk 2 1 2 2 Sources of lexis COBUILD dictionaries 3 1 3 - Concordance programmes 1 1 4 1 Activities / exercises Transcribing speech 0 - 5 2 Abandoning sentence transformations 1 2 4 - Gap fills with co-text 4 - 3 - Translation from L1 3 1 1 2 Pronunciation Noticing the sounds of chunks 5 1 1 - Drilling chunks 4 1 2 - Error correction Reformulation of student error: - spoken 6 1 - - - written 6 - 1 - Using error as a lexical opportunity 6 - 1 - Writing Process writing 2 1 3 1 Group writing 3 1 3 - 61 24 52 10

Elements of TLA already in use by my colleagues

A quantitative analysis reveals more clearly that many elements and activities from TLA were already in use by my colleagues. Indeed collocation boxes and having the learners transcribe their own speech were the only aspects of TLA which were not used at all by any of the teachers. I was not surprised to see that word webs were a common activity but I wondered if the teachers would be able to get their learners to create them along LA lines - this had been particularly difficult for me as my students expressed a strong preference for collocation boxes instead. Less than half the teachers surveyed were already boarding lexis in context - this was not a surprise because I had noticed lots of whiteboards around our school with single items of vocabulary only.

The high levels of pronunciation work in conjunction with lexical study was interesting - especially since I know that many of my colleagues have had no formal phonological training beyond the limited elements imparted on pre-service training courses. I was also surprised that the majority of the teachers were unmoved by Lewis` thoughts on error correction. I thought TLA showed a lot of original thinking with regard to that - clearly an idea my colleagues did not share.

Elements of TLA implemented or to be adopted in my colleagues` practice as a result of the workshop The low number of teachers boarding lexis in context clearly ties in with the fact that the majority of my colleagues have adopted or intend to adopt a more principled approach to board-work. I take a lot of pride in my board-work - particularly since reading Lewis - so it was pleasing to see this reaction. Similarly two teachers reported that they were employing collocation boxes while a further five said they planned to. The students` lexical notebooks, which I believe are central to TLA, will apparently be adopted by five of the workshop attendees. This is good news but I wonder why they have not done so already. Given my own experiences with maintaining student interest in keeping their notebooks up to date, I wonder how much success my colleagues will have with this key resource.

Perhaps not surprisingly a large proportion of the teachers said they planned to use concordance programs with their students in the classroom. I know many of my colleagues were not even aware of corpus software and I recognise that it can take sometime to plan how to use them effectively in lessons. Another piece of interesting data was the fact that four of the teachers said they would abandon sentence transformations (two having already done so as a result of the workshop). I had expected some resistance to this idea because such exercises are so common in EFL textbooks. I find it encouraging that all my colleagues will no longer be using these confusing activities with their students. Likewise I had not expected that five of the teachers would profess an interest in having their learners transcribe their own speech with a view to correcting defective language and improving what is already in use. I had thought that many of them would find this a time-consuming activity of little value - an idea which I also thought might apply to `process writing` and `group writing`. As such it was pleasing to see that three colleagues intend to adopt these useful activities.

Observations on the research process

I would perhaps have chosen a different time to do the workshop because the after-lunch slot meant that some teachers were tired by the end of the presentation. The difficulty of course was in finding an appropriate time for as many people as possible to attend. This remains a problem at our institution and I am sure at many other ELT centres where paid training time is not allotted. I thought my research plan was effective - I had developed a strong conceptual and practical grasp of TLA ,and designed and presented a professional workshop about which I did not receive any negative feedback. Through the questionnaires I created I was able to obtain a good deal of qualitative and quantitative data for analysis - the only problem being perhaps that I had too much information to evaluate fully in this part of the project. I could also have asked for feedback on elements of the design of the workshop - such as the format (a presentation with little discussion) and the handouts I gave. In terms of other areas that I could have researched, it may have been interesting to look more closely at the parts of TLA that the teachers were not interested in using and why that was.

With regard to my research area, I learned that TLA is a very valuable approach which speaks intuitively to many teachers at the same time as giving them an explicit justification for breaking the vocabulary / grammar dichotomy.

In terms of implications for my future practice, as stated above, I feel confident that I can present workshops on other areas of ELT practice while my belief in the usefulness of the Lexical Approach has been strengthened.

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)