Implementing the lexical approach michael lewis pdf download

Putting Theory into Practice. With Classroom reports. Empirically validated techniques to accelerate learners' uptake of 'chunks' demonstrate that pathways for insightful chunk-learning become available if one is willing to question the assumption that lexis is arbitrary.

Care is taken to ensure that the pedagogical proposals are in accordance with insights from vocabulary research generally. This book represents a study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of an English for Science and Technology EST program based on the Lexical Approach in learning and using lexical chunks and technical terms by students of the Technology Department in the Workers University, Egypt.

This program was based mainly on the students' technical and linguistic needs. The study adopted the one-group experimental design. Consequently, a group of 37 first-year students were randomly selected, and they received training through the suggested program. This process involves intricate relationships of understanding, storage, retrieval and output.

Collocations or formulaic language units are also powerful and long lasting connections. Sinclair finds the connection between lexis and meaning according to syntagmatic chain as well as paradigmatic choice relations. Willis coined the groups of this kind as lexical phrases. The production of language, especially in real time, carries the stringing together of pre-packaged units or phrases. This means that words of one part of speech may be tightly grouped together.

A growing body of literature on l2 acquisition, on the other hand, has shown that fluency is an observable aspect of speech that can be linked with cognitive processing and is frequently used to describe language performance. Fluency is featured by a great number of patterned or ritualised sequences. Nattinger and de Carrico, , inter alia. Such units are fundamental in understanding how oral fluency occurs in real-life discourse through interpersonal communication. Bearing the above in mind, it is clear that spontaneous spoken language includes phrases that have been stored as entities.

Miller and Weinert , p. Fluency may be based on the combination of both prefabricated chunks and newly constructed stretches of language. These units help in both sentence construction and speed of speech. On this matter, Chambers , p. What appears to enable learners to produce longer speech units is the increasing use of automatised chunks or clusters of words combined with newly assembled strings of words.

These productive lexical and syntactic phrases are of particular value to foreign language learners and can enhance their fluency by providing a frame to build a sentence as well as approaching the characteristics of native-like speech. Automatised repertoires of such chunks and clusters seem to be central to fluent speech.

This knowledge can take us far in the direction of teaching fluency. Cited in Wood, , p. Wood holds that a string or frame is needed which links to the concept or part of the concept to be expressed.

These prefabricated pieces must be strung together according to the communicative situation. Under our teaching experience, we coincide with Cortina in that collocations are both stored and retrieved in memory mechanically, possess a pragmatic function and are established by the context.

These formulaic units become prefabricated chunks, which facilitate spoken fluency. We are referring to the so-called noun compounds or noun strings which are composed of two or more nouns and, more seldom, adjectives that together form a single concept or idea. At first sight, they do not involve problems of understanding, especially those composed of two or three elements, but long compounds can become obscure. Most of them are generally formed from prepositional phrases, relative clauses, or the combination of both, but others do not respond to any logical formation.

However, it should be noted that those who use these kinds of nominalisations are scientists, not linguists, so there must be a reason for using this lexical characteristic so frequently. From the terminological perspective, a possible explanation is the proper characteristic of the scientific and technical discourse of condensing information, which means that the density of the use of noun compounds could establish the text classification according to the specialisation levels.

Many of these collocations are used in an abbreviated form in the discourse and become very common in use: central processing unit, data processing department organisation, exception principle system, senior system analyst, data manipulation language, control transfer instruction… Within teaching practice, the degree of difficulty in the interpretative process of these noun strings mostly depends on their length.

After practising the composition of the short groups, we recommend the extension of the pedagogical practice and the introduction of more complex groups within a communicative approach. Film optical sensing device: a device which converts data recorded on film into a for acceptable to a computer by optical scanning of the film.

The last example is composed of eleven elements and we suggest that this is the longest of which we are aware. But, it should be taken into account that when decomposing or translating them those that are very complex do not permit a lineal translation, that is, in the same order as they appear in English. To put it differently, all words have their own collocational field. He proved that words only had compatibility to a certain tolerance.

But for l2 learners this can be quite complex. An example might be in classifying a term such as applications software into an extension of the range computer hardware. Collocations must be acquired both through direct study and large amounts of quality input. Students usually have difficulties with lexical and grammatical relationships and, undoubtedly, the most common problems they face when trying to study collocations are in the areas of recognition, understanding and production, particularly in the cases of those complex and very complex units.

Conscious processing is vital in the language learning process. Thus, noticing is a necessary condition for storage and as Schmidt , p. For lewis , noticing collocations is a necessary but not sufficient condition for input to become intake.

This is also reaffirmed by Thornbury when adds that there is no acquisition without noticing. The most useful role of the teacher in consciousness raising is to encourage noticing by providing students with strategies to use outside the classroom and familiarity with as much appropriate, quality language as possible. Some advanced students often lack motivation due to the fact that they feel they know English grammar. They usually possess a good command of active vocabulary and do not see the necessity for acquiring more new items.

According to lewis most students will in fact remain stuck on the intermediate plateau and tend to continue producing both spoken and written language containing unnatural- sounding elements.

As formulaic language units can themselves be stored as automatised units in memory, learning these new items involves storing them first in our short-term memory prior to transferring to long-term memory.

Although this is not consciously controlled some important points must be taken into account. First, unlike long-term memory that can hold any amount of information, in short-term memory the retention process may not be effective if the number of constituents exceeds seven.

Another point that affects storage is word frequency as the easiest items to notice and retrieve are those more frequently used. This information facilitates the acquisition process by grouping items of vocabulary in semantic fields.

Wray is in favour of the automatic repetition of these units for their acquisition and argues that the storage of these sequences is produced holistically, as if they were single units. This process facilitates acquisition because, as was detailed above, learners do not need to analyse morphologically or syntactically such units for comprehension. We agree with Cortina on her recommendation of three graded steps in the process of acquiring formulaic sequences: automatisation, contextualisation and production.

The first is related to guided activities, while the second and third are related to semi-guided and free production activities. This pedagogical approach allows learners to work independently during the first two steps, whilst the teacher can indulge the practice of oral skills.

Among consciousness raising activities, meaningful tasks, such as dictogloss, seem to be the best option for lexis acquisition. We recommend dictogloss of texts containing collocations, as it is the bridge to afford automatisation. These tasks encourage students to analyse and process language more deeply, which facilitates both the learning and retention of information in long-term memory.

We suggest that there is also an inherent creative and motivational element involved. The tasks should be selected to allow the input to become intake and thus, to produce automatic retrieval. Some recommendations to develop collocations in the classroom are given below: Handling with general and specific dictionaries and other reference tools. Making vocabulary learning enjoyable and stimulating.

Guessing the meaning of lexical items from context. Physical therapy exercises. Citation Type. Has PDF. Publication Type. More Filters. The lexical approach : An emphasis on collocations. View 1 excerpt. This research paper brings forward a general overview of the Lexical Approach proposed by Michael Lewis as an alternative to grammar based methods.

Moreover, it also includes some theories … Expand. Highly Influenced. View 3 excerpts, cites background. Using Lexical Approach to teach vocabulary. Vocabulary acquisition is very important in the English language learning, and there are various ways of teaching and learning vocabulary. But students still have many difficulties in achieving high … Expand.

We could not talk about vocabulary teaching nowadays without mentioning Michael Lewis , whose controversial, thought-provoking ideas have been shaking the ELT world since the publication of his … Expand.