Lexical approach

The lexical approach is a method of teaching foreign provide such a theoretical justication.
languages described by Michael Lewis in the early 1990s.
The basic concept on which this approach rests is the idea
that an important part of learning a language consists of 2 References
being able to understand and produce lexical phrases as
chunks. Students are thought to be able to perceive pat-
Boers, Frank (2006) Formulaic sequences and per-
terns of language (grammar) as well as have meaningful
ceived oral prociency: putting a Lexical Approach
set uses of words at their disposal when they are taught in
to the test, Language Teaching Research, Vol. 10,
this way.
No. 3, 245-261 doi:10.1191/1362168806lr195oa.
In the lexical approach, instruction focuses on xed ex-
pressions that occur frequently in dialogues, which Lewis Faucet, L., West, M., Palmer, H. & Thorndike, E.L.
claims make up a larger part of discourse than unique (1936). The Interim Report on Vocabulary Selec-
phrases and sentences. Vocabulary is prized over gram- tion for the Teaching of English as a Foreign Lan-
mar per se in this approach. The teaching of chunks and guage. London: P.S. King.
set phrases has become common in English as a foreign or Lewis, Michael, ed. (1997). Implementing the
second language, though this is not necessarily primarily Lexical Approach, Language Teaching Publications,
due to the Lexical Approach. Hove, England.

Lewis, Michael (1993) The Lexical Approach.

1 Syllabus Ogden, C.K. (1930). Basic English: An Introduc-
tion with Rules and Grammar. London: Kegan Paul,
The lexical syllabus is a form of the propositional Trench & Trubner.
paradigm that takes 'word' as the unit of analysis and
content for syllabus design. Various vocabulary selec- Sinclair, B. (1996). Materials design for the promo-
tion studies can be traced back to the 1920s and 1930s tion of learner autonomy: how explicit is explicit? In
(West 1926; Ogden 1930; Faucet et al. 1936), and re- R. Pemberton, S.L. Edward, W.W.F. Or, and H.D.
cent advances in techniques for the computer analysis of Pierson (Eds.). Taking Control: Autonomy in Lan-
large databases of authentic text have helped to resusci- guage Learning. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univer-
tate this line of work. The modern lexical syllabus is dis- sity Press. 149-165.
cussed in Sinclair & Renouf (1988), who state that the West, M. (1926). Bilingualism (With Special Ref-
main benet of a lexical syllabus is that it emphasises erence to Bengal). Calcutta: Bureau of Education,
utility - the student learns that which is most valuable be- India.
cause it is most frequent. Related work on collocation
is reported by Sinclair (1987) and Kennedy (1989), and Willis, J. & Willis, D. (Eds.) (1996). Challenge and
the Collins COBUILD English Course (Willis & Willis Change in Language Teaching. Oxford: Heinemann
1988) is cited as an exemplary pedagogic implementa-
tion of the work, though in fact, however, the COBUILD Willis, D. (1990). The Lexical Syllabus. London:
textbooks utilise one of the more complex hybrid syllabi Collins.
in current ESL texts (Long & Crookes 1993:23).
Sinclair & Renouf (1988:155) nd that (as with other syn-
thetic syllabi), claims made for the lexical syllabus are
not supported by evidence, and the assertion that the lex-
ical syllabus is an independent syllabus, unrelated by any
principles to any methodology (Sinclair et al. 1988:155)
is subject to the criticism levelled by Brumt against no-
tional functional syllabi, i.e. that it (in this case, deliber-
ately) takes no cognisance of how a second language is
learned. Since these observations were made, however,
Willis (1990) and Lewis (1993) have gone some way to

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