Chapter 8 Teaching lexis

Students often approach the learning of vocabulary in a fairly random way. 'Ibis
chapter looks at how to encourage them to be more systematic. lt presents a
number of ways to present and praccise vocabulary as weil as exploring what

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aspects of meaning it takes to reaily know a word.

1 What is lexis? 1
Teacher attitudes to vocabulary have changed a lot over recent years. Tue use of
the word lexis (rather than the more familiar vocabulary) reflects a fundamental ' - _'
shift in understanding, attitude and approach. Tue increasing availability of '1
corpora (large computerised databases of analysable real conversations and ,'
other text), and dictionaries, grammar books and other resources based on them
have revealed many surprising features of language that bad been previously
unrealised. An influential book, The LexicalApproach by Michael Lewis publishcd
in 1993, had a,significant impact on the profession in raising awareness of the
importance of lexis and of the weaknesses of much dassroom vocabulary work.
So what is lexis? Is it more than just a fancy word for vocabulary? How does lexis
relate to grammar? I'll give some definitions on the next page, but first it may be
useful to see why there is a need for these different words.
Lexis compared wlth grammar
Which of the followirig items would you consider appropriate for inclusion in a lexis /
vocabulary lesson (as opposed to, for example, a grammar lesson)?
computer, watet, stock market, go off, pass the exam, swim against the tide, it's up
toyou

When teaching, should we consider every set of letters that is bordered by spaces
as a separate entity? Or does it make more sense to take some combinations of
words as a single grouping, a single meaning, a single lexi�al item?
Computer and water are familiar one�word vocabulary items, but what about stock
market? These two words are regularly found together with a fixed meaning; this
surely counts as a single item of vocabulary (it has its own entry in the dictionary).
How useful would it be to only teach stock and market separately and hope that the
learners will somehow find a way of combining them to make a new meaning?
Stock market is an example of a single lexical itein, in this case with two words
rather than one.
One possible meaning of go offis explode (as in The bomb went off). Here (in
contrast to stock market), the meaning is not guessable, even if a student knows the
meaning of both go and offon their own. 'Ibis two-word lexical itcm quite dearly
has an individual idcntity that is more than the sum of its parts - and it also has
variant forms (go off, going ofj, went off, etc). In dass, we need to deal with go offas a
piece of vocabulary in its own right.

Scrivener, Jim_2011_Learning Teaching

The essential Guide to English Language Teaching
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B Teaching lexis

something. For example, if a student says Thefood has a not interesting taste, then
the meaning is clear, but the Student doesn't know the best food collocations (dull
bland ) to express her meaning. Help students by not enthusiastically celebrating
inadequate language; give feedback that helps force learners to take their language
up a grade.

Give collocations rather than definitions

When a student wants to know what the difference is between late and delayed, it's
often hard to give a clear distinction of meaning. But there are clearly certain
collocations and chunks that one is more lik.ely to fit into than the other.Wben you
want to make a sentence, knowing the typical collocations - and learning them,
phrasebook-lik.e - is probably going to be of more use than trying to select
between two very similar meanings.
There are many games and activities specifically aiming to work on collocational
understanding. Here are three of my favourites.
Quick choices
Choose two or three nouns, egfood, cooking and meal, that have a number of
(possibly confusable) collocations. In this case, the list might include baby,fast,
slow, health, dog, home, evening, delicious, light, balanced, three-course, French,
vegetarian,jrozen, cat. Tell the students that you will read out the list item by item
and they must indicate which of the two (or three) words is the best collocate, or if
the item goes with more than one word. Decide on how students will indicate their
choices.You could go for quiet ways, eg students write their answers in a list; noisy
ways, eg students call out their choice of words; physical ways, eg students point at
the words written on wall notices; action ways, eg designate different parts of the
room for different words and students run to the right part of the room (or
between parts).
Guess the collocation
Divide the dass into three or more teams. In each team, students are given a
common word (eg town) and have to prepare a list of five common collocations
(eg planning, hall, home, market, centre). Each team has a different starter word.
Wben everyone is ready, students read their lists out one item at a time and the
other teams try to guess the original word. If the word is guessed immediately on
the first clue, both teams (list-makers and word-guessers) get ten points; for each
extra word, the points go down by one. This scoring scheine encourages list­
makers to find the most lik.ely and distinctive collocations.
Chunk watching
Students work in groups of three, two of whom face each other. The teacher gives
them a topic to talk about and they simply chat naturally for a few minutes.Tue
third person sits out of their line of sight and takes no part in the conversation but
listens carefully and takes notes of as many 'chunks' as she can catch. At the e�d of
the time, the listener shows her list to the speakers and they go through and
discuss the items.

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