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What are the benefits of lexical approach in the classroom?

1. Look at the email I got from my new colleague. We are sharing the same class with
her at the moment.

What is the problem she highlights in the email?

Hi Tania,
How are you doing?
I’m sorry to bother you this morning, but I’m afraid I really need your help.
The thing is, the students keep asking me the same question all the time: is it a chunk?
Could you tell me what exactly they are talking about?
Is a chunk the same as a collocation? What about idioms and phrasal verbs? What exactly is
a chunk? Is it a lexical unit or grammatical structure? Is it a fixed expression? I can’t get my
head around this term.
Would you mind meeting up this week for a little chat about that?
Please let me know when you are available.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Take care,
Val

Could an you answer Val’s questions? Talk to your partner to share your ideas.
How would you define a chunk and a collocation? Is there any difference?

Look at the definitions of a lexical chunk and a collocation. Are they similar to yours?

What other types of chunks can you think of?

'Lexical chunk' is an umbrella term which includes all the other terms. We define a lexical
chunk as any pair or group of words which are commonly found together, or in close
proximity.

'Collocation' is also included in the term 'lexical chunk', but we refer to it separately from
time to time, so we define it as a pair of lexical content words commonly found together.
Following this definition, 'basic' + 'principles' is a collocation, but 'look' + 'at' is not because it
combines a lexical content word and a grammar function word. Identifying chunks and
collocations is often a question of intuition, unless you have access to a corpus.
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Source : https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-1-what-does-lexical-
approach-look

2. Look at the highlighted language in the email. Are all of them lexical chunks?
Could you put them into the following categories suggested by Scott Thornbury?
- Collocations:
- Multi-word verbs:
- Idioms:
- Sentence frames:
- Social formulae:
- Discourse markers:

3. What approach deals with lexical chunks? What is the main idea of the approach?

Read about the concept of the Lexical Approach.

Does it make sense to you? The principles of the Lexical Approach have been around since
Michael Lewis published 'The Lexical Approach' 10 years ago. It seems, however, that many
teachers and researchers do not have a clear idea of what the Lexical Approach actually
looks like in practice.

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach-1-what-does-lexical-approach-
look

The lexical approach is a way of analysing and teaching language based on the idea that it is
made up of lexical units rather than grammatical structures. The units are words, chunks
formed by collocations, and fixed phrases.

Example
The phrase 'Rescue attempts are being hampered by bad weather' is a chunk of language,
and almost a fixed phrase. It is formed by the collocations 'Rescue' + 'attempt', 'rescue
attempt' + 'hampered', 'hampered' + 'by', 'hampered by' + 'bad weather'.

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/lexical-approach

Do you want to know more about the benefits of Lexical approach? What would you like to
learn about it?

4. Can you find any chunks in the text above?

5. What are the principles of the Lexical Approach?

In pairs, could you match the definitions with the principles? Check with another pair.