Using a Lexical Approach with Advanced Students
Jayne Silva 1995
Michael Lewis maintains that The
Lexical Approach to language teaching
ensures the maximum communicative
power to the learner. He believes that
misunderstanding is much more likely
to occur as a result of lexical rather
than grammatical errors. Take these
examples:
a) Ive missed the bus yesterday
(grammatical error)
b) Ive lost the bus (lexical error).
Clearly the grammatical error hinders
communication far less than the lexical
error.
Taking up the basic premise that we
convey messages through vocabulary
(we stress content words, not
grammatical words), I started to
consider my experience as a language
learner. As an advanced learner of
French I find that what stops me from
being fluent is the fact that I have
forgotten or am ignorant of vocabulary
and lexical expressions. The
grammatical rules are forever
ingrained in my mind and very easily
recalled.
Working in Hong Kong really brought
home the realisation that one can
survive on vocabulary. I got by on
chunks of language and basic
vocabulary: numbers; prices; basic
greetings. The finer details of
Cantonese grammar escape me still!
The Lexical Approach to language
teaching advocates an emphasis on
fluency over accuracy. Something as
seemingly simple as third person s is
acquired surprisingly late, so why do
we spend so much time and energy
trying to make our students produce it
correctly? Would our time not be
better employed trying to increase our
students vocabulary?
In attempting to adapt Lewiss ideas to
my own classroom situation I decided
to greatly elevate the importance of
vocabulary in my advanced classes
which meant teaching far more
vocabulary than usual as well as a
substantial amount of lexical chunks.
A lexical chunk can be defined as an
independent semantic unit. For
example:
by the way
the day after tomorrow
even so..
I might have known
Come again?
So why bother?
sort of like
kind of
Youve got to be joking
My aim was to tackle these lexical
items which fall into the category
neither of vocabulary nor of grammar.
Lexical chunks are often functional at
advanced level and these, along with a
bank of decontextualised vocabulary,
can empower advanced learners to
communicate more effectively. I
maintain that the majority of advanced
students already have a sound basis in
grammar. In order to help them to
communicate on a near native speaker
level I believe that they need exposure
to chunks of language in context.
It is not sufficient, however, to simply
expose advanced learners to lexical
chunks. To enable students to
communicate successfully the teacher
should place emphasis on
pronunciation, helping them to say the
chunk with the appropriate sentence
stress and intonation. I devoted 20%
of my advanced general English
classes to intonation, focusing
primarily on pitch as it is easier to
master than movement (falls, rises,
rise-falls etc).
Take this example: You must be
joking. Meaning is obviously affected
by intonation. One could say this in a
sarcastic tone (low pitch), in a shocked
(high pitch) or in a sympathetic tone
(middle pitch).
I spent a considerable amount of time
drilling lexical chunks in different
pitches to give the students more
diversity in making their true feelings
felt.
The drilling was frequent and
systematic resulting almost in a return
to rote, phrase-book learning. This
proved effective because after only one
month I had the strong impression that
the students had become significantly
more fluent, more confident and they
actually sounded more like native
speakers. More than one student was
complimented on their very fluent
English. I felt that due to all the new
functional language the students were
better able to initiate a conversation
and, more importantly, to keep it going
without embarrassing moments of
hesitation and word searching.
As well as being fluent these students
were also quite accurate (and they had
had very little formal grammar input in
class grammar was covered in the
correction slots after fluency
activities).
Two valuable sources for teaching of
useful lexical chunks are
Conversation Gambits and the
coursebook Workout Advanced.
The latter provides invaluable help
with intonation, focusing particularly
on sarcasm and tact (unit 9).
It is also appropriate to teach lexical
chunks at lower levels. In July I had a
class of false beginners and I combined
the teaching of the four skills and
grammar with input on simple, useful
chunks, for example:
1 a) Would you mind helping me?
b) No, not at all
2 a) Do you fancy going for a drink?
b) Yeah, Id love to.
I focused on meaning rather than form
and the students used the language
effectively both inside and outside the
classroom.
The Lexical Approach requires the
teacher to expose the students to as
much decontextualised vocabulary as
possible. I would recommend Workout
Advanced as a very lexically friendly
coursebook.
The recording and recycling of
vocabulary is essential to this approach
and I ensured that all my students had
a separate vocabulary book in which
they recorded new words, idioms and
chunks in a non-linear format. Lewis
advocates collocation as a way of
increasing vocabulary: See Figure 1.
The sources of most of the vocabulary
and chunks were tapes and texts.
Lewis speaks about the importance of
receptive skills in teaching lexis.
Every piece of language we produce
comes from outside and is therefore
based on receptive (not productive)
skills.
When teaching writing skills I chose
tasks which involved the use of chunks
which could also be used when
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