Lexical Aproach

Taking a lexical approach to teaching: principles and problems



Nigel Harwood
Canterbury Christ Church University College




After briefly reviewing some of the reasons why the traditional grammar/vocabulary distinction is no longer adequate, this article describes two key principles which are claimed to be at the core of teaching according to a lexical approach. There are,however, a number of major difficulties which necessarily co-occur alongside any attempted classroom implementation. Having discussed how these difficulties may be overcome, the article closes by conceding that there is still much work to be done before the approach can hope to become more fully integrated into the mainstream ELT coursebook.



Introduction

‘Lexical approach’ is a termbandied about by many, but, I suspect, understood by few. What does taking a lexical approach to language teaching mean? What are the principles and tenets behind a lexical approach? What problems will teachers have to face if they wish to adopt a lexical approach?
For the present purposes, I will be using the term lexical approach to mean that lexis plays the dominant role in the ELT classroom, or atleast a more dominant role than it has traditionally, which has largely been one of subservience to ‘grammar’ (Sinclair & Renouf 1988). The approach stresses the necessity of using corpora to inform pedagogical materials and the importance of regularly recycling and reviewing the language taught. I should make clear from the start that my understanding of the term lexical approach is notnecessarily the same as Michael Lewis’ (e.g. 1996, 1997, 2000), although I imagine that my take on the principles and problems inherent in implementing a lexical approach probably have a considerable amount in common with Lewis’ own views.
The article begins with a brief outline of what I mean by the term lexis, before briefly outlining two of the tenets which in my view constitute a lexical approach.The same tenets are then problematized at greater length. Finally, while it is argued that there is still much to be done before a lexical approach is accepted by a majority of practitioners and researchers and integrated into mainstream ELT, I close by claiming that the approach can be seen as having many of the same concerns as state-of-the-art applied linguistics.


The concept of lexisLanguage teaching has traditionally viewed grammar and vocabulary as a divide, with the former category consisting of structures (the present perfect, reported speech) and the latter usually consisting of single words. The structures were accorded priority, vocabulary being seen as secondary in importance, merely serving to illustrate the meaning and scope of the grammar (Sinclair & Renouf 1988).However, a number of studies (e.g. Altenberg 1990; Erman & Warren 2000; Kjellmer 1987; Pawley & Syder 1983) have shown that the Chomskyan notion of a native speaker’s output consisting of an infinite number of “creative” utterances is at best a half-truth: in fact prefabricated items form a significant part of a native speaker’s spoken and written output. Only this can account for what Pawley &Syder (1983: 193) call the puzzle of nativelike selection: a native speaker’s utterances are both “grammatical” and “nativelike”, and while only a “small proportion” of grammatically well-formed sentences are nativelike, that is, “readily acceptable to native informants as ordinary, natural forms of expression”, these are the sentences which native speakers produce. It would seem, then, thatspeakers need both a prefabricated, automatized element to draw on as well as a creative, generative one—both “idiom” and “open choice” components (Sinclair 1991).
Once the importance of prefabricated language is acknowledged, the traditional grammar/vocabulary distinction becomes problematic: as the above studies show, native speakers are prone to using much of the same language over and over again...