Lexical Approach Activities - Ken Lackman

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Lexical Approach Activities Grammar vs. Lexis Grammar has been the focus of language teaching for centuries, yet it is vocabulary, or more specifically, lexis, which learners need to negotiate meaning. Consider the two groups of sentences below: Incorrect Grammar Correct Grammar I go to zoo yesterday. I went to the zoo yesterday. I go to zoo now. I am going to the zoo now. I go to zoo tomorrow. I‟ll go to the zoo tomorrow. The first set of sentences is perfectly comprehendible because meaning is carried not by grammar but by lexis. A listener would be able to understand what the speaker meant because of words like “go”, “zoo” and “now”. In reality, we do not have to be grammatically correct to communicate effectively, but we need to be correct with our use of lexis. Consider how drastically the meaning of the above sentences would change if “tomorrow” was used instead of “yesterday” or if “park” was used instead of “zoo”. Correct Lexis Incorrect Lexis I go to zoo yesterday. I go to zoo tomorrow. I go to zoo now. I go to park now. I go to zoo tomorrow. He go to zoo tomorrow. A lexical mistake often causes misunderstanding, while a grammar mistake rarely does. 3 John Sinclair, IATEFL 1996 However unpopular it is with teachers, language which contains grammatical errors is unlikely to be misunderstood in context, but with lexical errors misunderstanding, incomprehension, or in rare cases even offence, are quite likely. Recognizing the lexical nature of language, and the centrality of lexis to the creation of meaning, and consequently to communicative power, demotes grammar – and in particular, the often unnatural, inaccurate grammar of standard EFL – to a subsidiary role. Michael Lewis 1997 Grammar has been the basis of language teaching for so long because there are a limited number of essential structures and they can be quite easily graded and organized into a syllabus. On the other hand, it‟s a daunting, if not impossible task to select vocabulary to focus on from a lexicon that consists of millions of individual words and lexical structures. This is the reason that most coursebooks are based on a grammatical syllabus.
Lexical Approach Activities Most frequent 68 words of spoken English One way that we can determine what vocabulary to focus on with learners is by looking at what words are most frequently used by native speakers. Because of computers, we now have access to data indicating word frequency and lists such as the Academic Word List have become popular. It is interesting to look at the most frequent words of spoken English. The top 200 words represent about 60% of spoken language. The top 2000 words represent about 90% of spoken language. A surprisingly small number of individual words represent a very large part of the spoken lexicon. Most of the words which make up the top words of spoken English are high in frequency because of how often they combine with other words, many of them also on the high frequency list. The following chart of the most frequent words illustrates how these words can combine with each other to produce combinations, or lexical chunks, where the meaning of the individual words can change once they are put together. All of the constructions on the right are made exclusively from the words in the chart. There are many more that could be constructed from this list, and thousands more that could be constructed from the top 200, which is why they represents 60% of spoken language. The top 2000 words would produce hundreds of thousands of combinations. the for she very take to I not this from and but there because be go he thing you well on right it think all people a if them me of at see out to with now my in so come time have there as want that just your an we or up will they would mean take get can when some do no about could what then which make 4 take in take that! take on take up take her out take my time take what you will take what you can get get in get up get out get on get right get one up on get up and go get with it! get what you can Because these constructions, or chunks, often have their own usage and/or meaning, it is essential that we do not focus on individual words when teaching lexically, as so much of the language we commonly use is actually made up of combinations of the most frequent words. To use a simple example, words like “get”, “out”, “back”, etc. combine with each other to produce numerous “lexical chunks” often with their own particular meaning and usage: e.g., “get out”, “out back”, “back out”, “get back”, “get back out”.
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Lexical Approach Activities - Ken Lackman

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