The lexical approach

The Lexical Approach: 

The Lexical Approach

Slide2: 

Traditional view of language : grammar first, lexis second. Chomsky: language as creative, rule governed behaviour – knowledge of the rules of the language allow you to “slot in” the lexis in appropriate places and “build up” grammatical strings of words.

Pawley and Syder : Two puzzles for linguistic theory : nativelike selection and nativelike fluency in Richards and Schmidt (eds) Language and communication (Longman 1983): 

“fluent and idiomatic control of a language rests to a considerable extent on knowledge of a body of “sentence stems” which are “institutionalized” or “lexicalized”. A lexicalized sentence stem is a unit of clause length or longer whose grammatical form is wholly or largely fixed; its fixed elements form a standard label for a culturally recognized concept … Pawley and Syder : Two puzzles for linguistic theory : nativelike selection and nativelike fluency in Richards and Schmidt (eds) Language and communication (Longman 1983)

Pawley and Syder – op.cit.: 

“… most such units are not true idioms but rather are regular form meaning pairings.” Can I come in? What did you say? Would you like some more? It’s none of your business. I see what you mean Do what you’re told! Pawley and Syder – op.cit.

Slide5: 

A native speaker will not use all of the potentially grammatical versions of an utterance but only those which are commonly used – eg It’s twenty to six but not … It’s forty past five Is it OK if I go now? but not Is permission for my immediate exit granted?

Types of lexical chunk: 

Types of lexical chunk Diferent terminology and categorisation used by different people. Eg : collocation – just co-occurrence of lexical items (heavy rain) or also co-occurence with grammatical items – eg verb + preposition

Collocation: 

Collocation The end was nigh. The end of an era is nigh. the well-nigh hysterical championing of Bombay for well-nigh three months making observation nigh on impossible. Is the revolution nigh. … for nigh on 2000 years, To grab it back in the heat of the race is nigh impossible He could have well nigh sworn, that .. nigh = 6/32 of which: 4 = X is nigh; 2 + adjective (including 1 impossible) nigh on = 7/32, of which : 5 + number; 2 + impossible well-nigh = 18/32 of which : 15 + adj (including 5 impossible); 2 + verb; 1 + number

Concordancers and Corpora: 

Concordancers and Corpora Corpus : a collection of examples of texts/utterances of a language Concordancer : computer software which analyse corpora. See : http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html

Other types of lexical chunk: 

Other types of lexical chunk Idiom – not in a month of Sundays Sentence heads – Do you mind if I … Sentence tails – and so on Sentence stems – It can’t be helped Polywords - of course, as well as Binomials odds and ends and trinomials lock stock and barrel Multiword verbs – look after, run out of Compounds – cash flow, check-in

Lexical chunks can be …: 

Lexical chunks can be … Fixed – middle of the road Semi fixed – take a dim view of “Frames” – spend/waste (time) V+ing

Lexical chunks and fluency: 

Lexical chunks and fluency The ability to retrieve ready-made chunks of language cuts down on planning time : the speaker is using long-term memory rather than processing capacity. “Speakers show a high degree of fluency when describing familiar experiences or activities in familiar phrases. It is notorious that speakers are at their most hesitant when describing the unfamiliar.” Pawley and Syder op.cit.

And the same for listening…: 

And the same for listening… What’s the missing word ? It’s been pouring with …… for the last three days. Being able to predict a word means that you have to spend less effort in processing it

So …: 

So … Language learners are liable to be dysfluent because they don’t have these “familiar phrases” available. They have to “build up” each utterance anew, from its individual comstituents

Grammaticalised lexis: 

Grammaticalised lexis Word formation : happy, unhappy, unhappily, unhappiness etc Pattern grammar eg spend/waste (time) Ving Grammatical manipulation of chunks to give alternatives : make a loss He made an enormous loss But also… An attempt to free grammatical words from structural constraints – eg would, any

Example activity from Powell, New Business Matters, Thomson Heinle 2004, p81: 

Example activity from Powell, New Business Matters, Thomson Heinle 2004, p81 Exercise – Match what you think with what you say. What you think What you say We want a guarantee We would need some sort of guarantee What is the effect of using would in sentences a,e and k. What is the difference between That’s a problem and That would be a problem ?

Problems of the Lexical Approach: 

Problems of the Lexical Approach Is it true? Possible to take both strong and weak positions Downplaying of ability to manipulate items grammatically may lead to danger of fossilisation. But : Even if items learnt as chunks first, doesn’t mean they can’t later be understood more fully - eg have got. Mirrors the natural language acquisition process.

Problems of the Lexical Approach: 

Problems of the Lexical Approach The sheer quantity of expressions – “The stock of lexicalized sentence stems known to the ordinary mature speaker of English amounts to hundreds of thousands.” Pawley and Syder op.cit

Lexical chunks in one article from the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/7870823.stm : 

Lexical chunks in one article from the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/7870823.stm At least 25 chunks in 25 sentences? Including … V/N collocations : make a profit, strike a deal, raise concerns, face a challenge, go back on an agreement Fixed expressions : That’s bad enough but … yet again last in, first out Idioms : The factory’s days are numbered Binomial : doom and gloom

The problem of quantity …: 

The problem of quantity … Time How should they be learnt – danger of overload - need for selection - need for recycling

Selection Criteria : 

Selection Criteria Frequency ? Usefulness ? “The language of business is informationally dense, and word partnerships, which are really concentrated packets of meaning, play a much more central role in business English than they do in general English, which tends to be more lexically diffuse” Powell, Business Matters Teachers’ Resource Book, LTP 1996

One answer to the problem of quantity …: 

One answer to the problem of quantity … “The articles and many of the exercises in Business Matters have been specially written to contain a large part of the target language of the course. They are not simplified but lexically enhanced with a disproportionately high number of word partnerships and/or fixed expressions (and little of the redundant or colloquial language found in many authentic texts). And this makes them eminently exploitable in the classroom as the main source of input as well as fuel for discussion. Your learners would have to read an enormous number of newspaper and magazine articles to be sure of covering anything like the same range of content language.” Powell, Business Matters Teachers’ Resource Book, LTP 1996

How useful are these expressions ?: 

How useful are these expressions ? If it’s true that these expressions aid fluency (both productively and receptively), then they’re obviously useful. But … Learners may not need them all productively – eg : sheer quantity vs. a large number If they are talking to other non-native speakers, such “native-speaker like” expressions might even reduce the listeners’ level of comprehension (and therefore the speaker’s communicative effectiveness)

Slide23: 

However, if the learners are going to have contact with NSs (including reading, films, TV, Internet etc) then they will need to understand a far higher number of these expressions receptively

So what are the implications?: 

So what are the implications? If we want to incorporate insights from the Lexical Approach into our teaching we will need to : maximise input : text based approach – possibly “lexically enhanced” texts maximise “noticing” activities – learners need to realise the items in the chunks are connected; eg use corpora examples provide copious activities which ask learners to work actively on the chunks allow for productive practice of those chunks that we want students to use productively recycle – in follow-ups reformulate Ss’ utterances to include those chunks recycle – reuse the same text in future with different activities recycle – “lexically enhance” future texts to include chunks previously taught as well as new ones recycle – recycle - recycle