Using a Lexical Approach with Advanced Students

Jayne Silva 1995

Michael Lewis maintains that The better employed trying to increase our
Lexical Approach to language teaching students vocabulary?
ensures the maximum communicative
power to the learner. He believes that In attempting to adapt Lewiss ideas to
misunderstanding is much more likely my own classroom situation I decided
to occur as a result of lexical rather to greatly elevate the importance of
than grammatical errors. Take these vocabulary in my advanced classes
examples: which meant teaching far more
a) Ive missed the bus yesterday vocabulary than usual as well as a
(grammatical error) substantial amount of lexical chunks.
b) Ive lost the bus (lexical error). A lexical chunk can be defined as an
Clearly the grammatical error hinders independent semantic unit. For
communication far less than the lexical example:
error. by the way
the day after tomorrow
Taking up the basic premise that we even so..
convey messages through vocabulary I might have known
(we stress content words, not Come again?
grammatical words), I started to So why bother?
consider my experience as a language sort of like
learner. As an advanced learner of
kind of
French I find that what stops me from
Youve got to be joking
being fluent is the fact that I have
My aim was to tackle these lexical
forgotten or am ignorant of vocabulary
items which fall into the category
and lexical expressions. The
neither of vocabulary nor of grammar.
grammatical rules are forever
ingrained in my mind and very easily
Lexical chunks are often functional at
recalled.
advanced level and these, along with a
bank of decontextualised vocabulary,
Working in Hong Kong really brought
can empower advanced learners to
home the realisation that one can
communicate more effectively. I
survive on vocabulary. I got by on
maintain that the majority of advanced
chunks of language and basic
students already have a sound basis in
vocabulary: numbers; prices; basic
grammar. In order to help them to
greetings. The finer details of
communicate on a near native speaker
Cantonese grammar escape me still!
level I believe that they need exposure
to chunks of language in context.
The Lexical Approach to language
teaching advocates an emphasis on
It is not sufficient, however, to simply
fluency over accuracy. Something as
expose advanced learners to lexical
seemingly simple as third person s is
chunks. To enable students to
acquired surprisingly late, so why do
communicate successfully the teacher
we spend so much time and energy
should place emphasis on
trying to make our students produce it
pronunciation, helping them to say the
correctly? Would our time not be
chunk with the appropriate sentence
stress and intonation. I devoted 20% with intonation, focusing particularly
of my advanced general English on sarcasm and tact (unit 9).
classes to intonation, focusing
primarily on pitch as it is easier to It is also appropriate to teach lexical
master than movement (falls, rises, chunks at lower levels. In July I had a
rise-falls etc). class of false beginners and I combined
the teaching of the four skills and
Take this example: You must be grammar with input on simple, useful
joking. Meaning is obviously affected chunks, for example:
by intonation. One could say this in a
sarcastic tone (low pitch), in a shocked 1 a) Would you mind helping me?
(high pitch) or in a sympathetic tone b) No, not at all
(middle pitch). 2 a) Do you fancy going for a drink?
b) Yeah, Id love to.
I spent a considerable amount of time
drilling lexical chunks in different I focused on meaning rather than form
pitches to give the students more and the students used the language
diversity in making their true feelings effectively both inside and outside the
felt. classroom.

The drilling was frequent and The Lexical Approach requires the
systematic resulting almost in a return teacher to expose the students to as
to rote, phrase-book learning. This much decontextualised vocabulary as
proved effective because after only one possible. I would recommend Workout
month I had the strong impression that Advanced as a very lexically friendly
the students had become significantly coursebook.
more fluent, more confident and they
actually sounded more like native The recording and recycling of
speakers. More than one student was vocabulary is essential to this approach
complimented on their very fluent and I ensured that all my students had
English. I felt that due to all the new a separate vocabulary book in which
functional language the students were they recorded new words, idioms and
better able to initiate a conversation chunks in a non-linear format. Lewis
and, more importantly, to keep it going advocates collocation as a way of
without embarrassing moments of increasing vocabulary: See Figure 1.
hesitation and word searching.
The sources of most of the vocabulary
As well as being fluent these students and chunks were tapes and texts.
were also quite accurate (and they had Lewis speaks about the importance of
had very little formal grammar input in receptive skills in teaching lexis.
class grammar was covered in the Every piece of language we produce
correction slots after fluency comes from outside and is therefore
activities). based on receptive (not productive)
skills.
Two valuable sources for teaching of
useful lexical chunks are When teaching writing skills I chose
Conversation Gambits and the tasks which involved the use of chunks
coursebook Workout Advanced. which could also be used when
The latter provides invaluable help speaking for example (with film/book
reviews):
 the most interesting thing about it their scores were way above average,
is. some scoring 19/20!
what I really liked about it was.
Adopting a lexical approach to
This proved particularly effective with teaching advanced students and
my CAE class. They used a lot of witnessing their increased vocabulary
these chunks from their writing tasks and subsequent improvement in
in the oral exam. The mock exam fluency, I am more convinced than
results for the CAE exam bore witness ever that it is more useful to view
to the success of a lexical approach in language as grammaticalized lexis
giving students increased confidence rather than lexicalised grammar.
and fluency. In the mock oral (carried
out by an experienced CAE examiner)

Figure 1

mad
a holiday breakfast
lunch go crazy
a nightmare dinner
have round the bend
a haircut a whisky
a massage a coffee wild