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The
Value of Teaching Lexis in Combination
by Jake Haymes
- 2
Vocabulary in the low surrender
value learning situation
The move towards learner centred
teaching which incorporates an individual's needs, learning
styles and circumstances suggests that the student should
be actively involved in vocabulary selection, personalisation,
storage and retrieval. While course book designers and teachers
can select grammar and, to some extent, functions which are
relevant to all learners, surely vocabulary is an area which
should be most tailored to students' perceptions of need(1),
particularly if, as most experts agree, their acquisition
is highly dependant on this need. In my view, low level business
books often include lexis which would be considered too high
for a general course. However, these text-books are catering
to a specific and urgent need which means that lexical items
are more readily acquired and internalised irrespective of
the grammatical structures behind them.
The traditional presentation
of vocabulary in terms of individual words within a related
word list limits students' ability to produce probable and
meaningful language since it burdens them with the need to
retrieve the disparate elements on one hand and then apply
them to a suitable grammatical structure on the other. In
my view, placing a greater focus on what Lewis describes as
probable language chunks such as fixed expressions, semi-fixed
expressions or common collocations rather than single words,
which are rarely used in isolation, would be an efficient
and perhaps less arduous way of guiding students towards producing
probable communicative English. As Ellis (2)
suggests, the learner who has a store of collocations "minimises
the amount of clause-internal encoding work to be done and
frees himself to attend to other tasks in talk-exchange."
Lewis' (1997) assertion that "the lexicon of the language
is considerably larger than any list of the 'words' of that
language" should certainly be borne in mind when attempting
to deal with vocabulary. What is being highlighted is that
the majority of communication relies on the myriad of combinations
of an otherwise quite limited word bank, indicating that a
lexically competent student would ultimately be one who is
able to combine words to create meanings rather than store
a vast number of individual items.
Furthermore, the nature of language
chunks would also appear to have benefits for pronunciation,
speaking and listening. Presenting these items means that
the analysis of suprasegmental aspects can instantly ensue
as the focus is "not primarily on distinctions such as
sit/seat, but rather on larger scale features, which have
greater communicative value and are more learnable."
(Lewis 1997) Multi-word units naturally lend themselves to
an examination of sounds in combination, weak forms etc. demonstrating
the extent to which ideas are expressed in utterances, and
thereby disabusing learners of the misconception that language
is produced word by word. Thus, the hesitant speaker can build
discourse from larger language blocks and the unconfident
listener will not have to struggle to decode meaning on a
word by word basis.
Despite the importance of teaching
multi-word items or language chunks however, one of the difficulties
I have encountered is disengaging students from the first
meaning they acquired of the component elements of the collocation.
Since so many of these items comprise frequent, de-lexicalised
verbs such as take, get, have and give for example, convincing
learners that take does not only mean catch (pick up) or have
(consume), and that have does not only indicate possession
has proved a major obstacle. Perhaps more attention to these
de-lexicalised verbs or a more frequency-based and flexible
order in their presentation would facilitate the learners'
acquisition of these L2 elements as well as providing them
with a firm basis for greater lexical development in their
subsequent language learning.
An essential aspect of multi-word
items is that they do not often fit into a specific semantic
field which constitutes both a reason for highlighting them
and a difficulty in doing so. Since these items can often
be applied to a wide variety of situations
(3), they will conform to the linguistic needs of most
learners and can be adapted to their own personal experience
of the world (4). This perhaps imbues
this type of lexis with more possibility for personalisation
and in this sense is closer to subjective, emotional items
which can be more difficult to teach. As McCarthy (1990) states,
"words that denote judgements, opinions, or evaluations…are
perhaps less amenable to visual stimuli", reinforcing
the idea that as a result, learners are often not exposed
to abstract concepts and "the vocabulary for communicating
how we really do feel"(5). Another
result is, as Julian (2000) suggests, that "upper intermediate
learners produce very plain utterances which are unable to
convey different emotional loads."
If we assume then that language
chunks are extremely useful and should be addressed in the
classroom, how they are presented becomes the first obstacle
to overcome. Tackling the presentation of new items in context
would appear to have several benefits. Providing a suitable
context means that students are required to engage with the
language immediately in order to infer meaning while also
practising strategy development. Indeed, using a context to
activate the learners' world knowledge or schemata, which
is a common approach to the receptive skills (6),
would be similarly useful in presenting vocabulary especially
when familiar items are being used in unfamiliar collocations.
Contextualised lexis has the
added advantage of usually appearing in its most likely text
type, discourse, tense and aspect. Indeed, contexts can be
used to heighten learners' awareness of text types and thus
develop their appreciation of style and register which are
fundamental aspects of lexical use.
Nattinger (1988) argues that
"it is only after experiencing a word in its many contexts
that one approaches a complete understanding of its meaning"
and Richards (1976) suggests that "knowing a word means
knowing how often it occurs, the company it keeps, its appropriateness
in different situations, its syntactic behaviour, its underlying
forms and derivations, its word associations, and its semantic
features." Contextualised exposure together with noticing
activities can often highlight these essential factors more
effectively than teacher led explanations. Similarly, as there
are no rules governing collocation, except those dictated
by use, exposure would seem to be the best option. Having
learners find collocations which are hidden because of the
use of pronouns, ellipsis and substitution is an excellent
way of maximising the benefit of written discourse which both
Lewis and McCarthy refer to. Once collocates have been identified,
they can be subjected to componential analysis. Having learners
complete the charts themselves is an engaging strategy for
providing them with more encounters with previously noted
frequent combinations, thereby speeding up acquisition. They
can be of value in distinguishing between areas of difficulty
such as the differences between wait, hope, expect and look
forward to for example.
1. "most learners
perceive the relevance of grammatical structures whatever
the field of interest….the same cannot be said of vocabulary
which is much more content specific" Gairns and Redman
(1986)
2. Ellis citing Pawley and Syder op.cit., 192.
3. "Learners need Expressions which are appropriate in
as wide a range of situations as possible both linguistically
and socially." Lewis, (1997)
4. I have chosen to focus on items such as change your mind,
make your mind up, feel down, etc. which can be adapted to
the different life experience and needs of students since
all of them do these things, whereas only some might do the
ironing or meet deadlines.
5. Lewis (1997) quoting Moskowitz (1978) in Caring and Sharing
in the Foreign Language Class
6. "It is equally important to activate existing knowledge
to make the encounter with the new words more meaningful"
McCarthy (1990)
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