1.- TAKING
A LEXICAL APPROACH TO TEACHING: PRINCIPLES AND PROBLEMS
Taking a lexical approach to
teaching: principles and problems
Nigel Harwood
Department of Language Studies
Canterbury Christ Church University College
After briefly reviewing some of the reasons why the traditional
grammar/vocabulary distinction is no longer adequate, this article describes
two key principles which are claimed to be at the core of teaching according to
a lexical approach. There are, however, a number of major difficulties which
necessarily co-occur alongside any attempted classroom implementation. Having
discussed how these difficulties may be overcome, the article closes by
conceding that there is still much work to be done before the approach can hope
to become more fully integrated into the mainstream ELT coursebook.
Introduction
‘Lexical approach’ is a term bandied about by many, but, I suspect,
understood by few. What does taking a lexical approach to language teaching
mean? What are the principles and tenets behind a lexical approach? What
problems will teachers have to face if they wish to adopt a lexical approach?
For the present
purposes, I will be using the term lexical
approach to mean that lexis plays
the dominant role in the ELT classroom, or at least a more dominant role than
it has traditionally, which has largely been one of subservience to ‘grammar’
(Sinclair & Renouf 1988). The approach stresses the necessity of using
corpora to inform pedagogical materials and the importance of regularly recycling
and reviewing the language taught. I should make clear from the start that my
understanding of the term lexical
approach is not necessarily the same as Michael Lewis’ (e.g. 1996, 1997,
2000), although I imagine that my take on the principles and problems inherent
in implementing a lexical approach probably have a considerable amount in
common with Lewis’ own views.
The article begins
with a brief outline of what I mean by the term lexis, before briefly outlining two of the tenets which in my view
constitute a lexical approach. The same tenets are then problematized at
greater length. Finally, while it is argued that there is still much to be done
before a lexical approach is accepted by a majority of practitioners and
researchers and integrated into mainstream ELT, I close by claiming that the
approach can be seen as having many of the same concerns as state-of-the-art
applied linguistics.
The concept of lexis
Language teaching has traditionally viewed grammar and vocabulary as a
divide, with the former category consisting of structures (the present perfect,
reported speech) and the latter usually consisting of single words. The
structures were accorded priority, vocabulary being seen as secondary in
importance, merely serving to illustrate the meaning and scope of the grammar
(Sinclair & Renouf 1988).
However, a number
of studies (e.g. Altenberg 1990; Erman & Warren 2000; Kjellmer 1987; Pawley
& Syder 1983) have shown that the Chomskyan notion of a native speaker’s
output consisting of an infinite number of “creative” utterances is at best a
half-truth: in fact prefabricated items form a significant part of a native
speaker’s spoken and written output. Only this can account for what Pawley
& Syder (1983: 193) call the puzzle of nativelike selection: a native
speaker’s utterances are both “grammatical” and “nativelike”, and while only a
“small proportion” of grammatically well-formed sentences are nativelike, that
is, “readily acceptable to native informants as ordinary, natural forms of
expression”, these are the sentences which native speakers produce. It would
seem, then, that speakers need both a prefabricated, automatized element to
draw on as well as a creative, generative one—both “idiom” and “open choice”
components (Sinclair 1991).
Once the importance
of prefabricated language is acknowledged, the traditional grammar/vocabulary
distinction becomes problematic: as the above studies show, native speakers are
prone to using much of the same language over and over again rather than
starting from scratch each time they speak/write. For the purposes of this
article, therefore, when I use the term lexis
I have in mind strings of words which go
together (i.e. prefabs and collocations) as opposed to the single words language teaching
traditionally called ‘vocabulary’: rather than consisting of a repository of
content words, lexis is not easily distinguishable from the concept
traditionally labelled as ‘grammar’ (e.g. Singleton 1997). This fuzziness
suggests that lexis is more powerful than was once thought, and hence deserves
a higher priority in syllabuses.
Principles of taking a lexical approach
principle 1: teach real language, not ‘teflese’; use computer corpora
but be corpus-based, not corpus-bound
At the centre of a lexical approach is the insistence on teaching
‘real’ English and a rejection of the ersatz
language found in the average ELT coursebook; and indeed a number of
corpus-based studies (e.g. Holmes 1988; Hyland 1994; Mindt 1996; Williams 1988)
confirm that the language coursebooks teach is “not what people really say”
(Lewis 1997: 10), it is “TEFLese” (Willis 1990: vii). Hence it can be argued
that the only way to avoid distorting the language with this TEFLese English is
for the coursebook writer to access the authentic language via corpora, as
opposed to relying on their intuition. It is well documented that intuition
(even native-speaker intuition) often fails to accurately reflect actual
language in use (e.g. Biber, Conrad & Reppen 1994); in contrast, corpora
can instantly provide us with the relative frequencies, collocations, and
prevalent grammatical patterns of the lexis in question across a range of
genres. In addition, light is shed on lexical
variation (cf. Fernando 1996; Moon 1998). To illustrate the point, I draw
on data from an earlier study (Harwood 2000) comparing the language found in a
native-speaker corpus (the British National Corpus) with the language in a
selection of coursebooks. In Bell & Gower’s coursebook (1992: 150), for
instance, no variation of the phrase You
must be joking is included, giving the learner the impression the form is
frozen. However, the BNC includes the following variations:
I says [sic] you’re joking You’re flipping joking!
You are joking me? You’re
joking
You are joking, aren’t you? You’re joking, aren’t you?
You gotta be joking! You’re
joking, of course
You have got to be joking You’re not joking?
You have got to be joking me You’ve got to be fucking joking
You have to be joking You’ve
got to be joking!
You must be bloody joking! You’ve gotta be joking mate
You must be fucking joking! You’ve gotta be joking!
You must be joking You’ve
just got to be joking
and while it is relatively simple to use native-speaker intuition to
point to the fact that You have got to be
joking me, for instance, or I says
[sic] you’re joking are relatively
untypical examples of variation on this phrase, and hence not worth teaching
(especially since, if the learner is familiar with more common variations, they
would understand and be able to respond to this variant in any case); and while
it is similarly straightforward to determine that variations such as You’ve got to be fucking joking cannot
be included in international teaching materials because of their potential to
offend, we are nevertheless left with a number of typical, ‘polite’ variations
which Bell & Gower’s material fails to cover—and which corpus data has
brought to the fore (Harwood 2000: 14-16). However, by dismissing some of the
variations as inappropriate and hence not being necessarily constrained by corpora, we are being what Summers
(1996: 262) calls “corpus-based but not corpus-bound”.
principle 2: recycle and revisit
Nation (1990: 44-45) concludes that coursebooks’ lack of recycling
“provide[s] considerable cause for alarm”, before claiming that lexis should be
recycled between 10 and 12 times for higher-level learners, and warning that
teaching vocabulary without incorporating the necessary recycling is wasted
effort. Similarly, Kojic-Sabo & Lightbown (1999) stress that an EFL
learner’s need for recycling/reviewing is perhaps more acute than a non-native
speaker who is surrounded by the L1 (i.e. an ESL learner): since EFL learners
are not continually surrounded by the target language they cannot be said to
benefit from any spontaneous reviewing which may result. Regardless of the
amount of ‘practice’ material which accompanies the initial presentation, what
is needed is repeated exposure over a given period, as opposed to exposing the
learner to the lexis once, ‘practising’ it, and never recycling it again
(Harwood 2000; Lewis 1997).
Problems of taking a lexical approach
problem 1: corpora and teaching ‘real’ english
Real English, corpora,
and ‘learner overload’
The case of you must be joking
discussed previously illustrated that corpus data requires adjustment before it
can be allowed to serve pedagogical ends: for instance, untypical or culturally
inappropriate items will need to be removed from the handout which is given to
the learners. However, it is likely that further adjustments will still be
required, due to teachability and learnability factors: that is, since
anecdotal evidence (and common sense) suggests there is a limit to the number
of items learners can learn at any one time (i.e. in a single lesson),
including every lexical variant at every opportunity will complicate the issue
unnecessarily.
Learners will be overwhelmed and will fail to learn any—or at least
learn fewer—lexical strings less well than if they had been presented with a
smaller, more manageable list in the first place. So implementing a lexical
approach requires a delicate balancing act: on the one hand, the teacher will
wish to consult the appropriate corpora to avoid the ersatz English of the textbooks which reflects little of the
language’s lexical variations and predominant patterns. On the other hand,
however, teachers will be anxious to ensure learners are not “overloaded” with
too much lexis which would result from exposing the class to as many lexical
strings as the corpus describes (cf. Cook 1998). We should be aware of the
dangers of teaching learners unusual or deviant variations when, since we have
neither the time (as teachers) or the space (as materials writers) to include
more than some variations in our
lessons or coursebooks, we should ensure these are the variations which will be
most useful to the learners. Hence
intuition regarding both linguistic and pedagogical matters needs to be
exercised: in addition to asking ourselves whether any of the attested corpus
examples are untypical in the skill/genre we are attempting to teach (e.g.
academic writing: the research paper), pedagogical judgements such as the
accessibility/difficulty/volume of material also require reflection, since,
while corpora can tell us much, pedagogical concerns such as these are clearly
not addressed by the data (Cook 1998).
Some additional
limitations of corpora
Although corpora are no pedagogical panacea (e.g. Cook 1998; Widdowson
2000), I do not believe that corpora in themselves necessarily make the
implementation of a lexical approach problematic. The key issue is rather how
corpus data is selected and manipulated. To take one example of the potential
misuse of data, there is a popular but mistaken belief that the frequency with which lexis occurs in a
corpus will determine its priority in our syllabus. In fact, I would suggest
that the more advanced the learners’ level, the more apparent it becomes that
something more than frequency counts is required. Although much has been made
of Willis’ (1990) assertion that the most frequent 700 words of English
constitute 70% of text, the problem of what one should teach subsequently
remains. As Willis’ figures show, this is much less easily prescribable:
The 700 most frequent words cover 70% of text, but coverage begins to
drop rapidly thereafter. The next 800 words cover a further 6% of text and the
next 1000 words cover 4%…It is true that general frequency is not the sole
criterion [for identifying the appropriate lexis for a syllabus]. (Willis 1990:
47)
Hence, while the frequency factor should not be ignored in our
attempts to mirror real English in the classroom, it is clear that frequency
should not be the only, or even the principal, factor in determining the lexis
to teach. Relevant also is work on text type (e.g. Biber et al. 1994) and genre
analysis (e.g. Bhatia 1993; Swales 1990), showing that a research article, for
instance, will feature different types of structures and phrases when compared
with a business letter; and that to a certain extent such features are predictable.
So we would do well to bear in mind learners’ wants and needs (cf. Biber et al.
1994): it is evident that the materials designer will have to consult very
different corpora when designing materials for pre-sessional postgraduate
learners enrolled in English-medium universities who need to develop their
academic writing skills, for instance, compared to an intermediate-level
general English group who wish to explore some of the most common ways native
speakers open a conversation with their peers.
In summary,
corpora in no way constitute a pedagogical “quick fix”: while corpora
should undoubtedly stand at the centre of a lexical approach, the
teacher and materials designer will need to be aware of the many variables
which will influence corpus selection and data manipulation.
From printout to
handout
The materials designer needs to acknowledge that there is likely to be a degree
of learner (and teacher) resistance to corpus-based materials if the data is
handled insensitively, due to the fact such materials are untraditional and
also because, more generally, some perceive computers (and therefore
computer-based learning) negatively. Such resistance will, of course, only
increase should an impenetrable amount of corpus data be simply reproduced
straight onto the textbook page (Cook 1998; Leech 1998; Widdowson 2000).
Hence the
requirement for the designer and/or teacher to “do” something with the data.
One example of what should be done, if communicative language teaching is to be
believed, is to ensure the learner feels involved, investing something of
themselves in the material (e.g. cf. Allwright 1981; Coady 1997; Sökmen 1997).
The materials designer will need to present the (potentially impersonal) corpus
printouts in such a way as to stimulate the learners’ personal involvement (cf.
Aston 1995); and while various researchers have been developing Johns’ (1991)
practical ideas for exploiting corpus printouts in the classroom for some time
(e.g. Fox 1998; Lewis 1997; Milton 1998; Thurston & Candlin 1998; Willis
1998) the same ideas are crucially lacking in published commercial materials
(Harwood 2000; Moon 1997). Although this may have been more excusable in the
past, when corpus-based descriptions were harder to come by, these days
designers’ over-dependence on introspection and intuition is less and less
justifiable (Harwood 2000).
Existing published
materials are not corpus-based
Since there is evidence that designers are failing to exploit corpus
data to shape coursebooks’ lexical syllabuses, the teacher who wishes to push
lexis up the agenda on their course is obliged to produce their own
corpus-based materials. This constitutes a serious difficulty for the spread of
a lexical approach: however willing the individual teacher may be to teach
lexically, their institution may well prevent them from doing so (Baigent
1999). In addition, of course, time restraints and an excessive workload result
in many teachers introducing only a minimum of their own material onto a
course. All of this suggests that the influence of a lexical approach will be
negligible while there continues to be a dearth of available published material
which abides by its tenets.2
Corpus access
I close this section on corpora and a lexical approach by supposing
that, in spite of the difficulties described above, a teacher wishes to consult
the appropriate corpora to design lexically based materials. Assuming the
teacher has access to the necessary computing technology (a considerable
assumption—most teachers around the world do not have such access), they will
still be faced with the fact that ELT publishers refuse to grant them access to
consult many corpora. Other corpora, such as the British National Corpus,
require access fees that the teachers’ institutions may be less than willing to
provide. And while it is true that there are now cheap corpora available such
as the BNC Sampler, teachers of EAP who require soft and hard science
sub-corpora to help students write across the disciplinary spectrum will
continue to be denied access because of publishers’ commercial interests.
problem 2: teaching and learning real English
Whatever the problems involved in accessing the appropriate corpus
data, a more fundamental concern is whether it is desirable to even choose to
teach “real” (i.e. nativelike) English. The question is obviously enormously
complex, and I limit myself to sketching out four related issues.
Respecting learners’
wishes
There is evidence to suggest that many learners have no wish to learn real lexis and sound like an L1
(e.g. Anglo-American) user: despite the fact that many teachers (consciously or
unconsciously) hold the nativelike model up as the “ideal”, the learners’
non-native variety can constitute a separate cultural identity, marking the L2
speaker out from the native community (cf. Beneke 1981; Carter 1998; Dellar
2000; Hinnenkamp 1980; Kasper & Blum-Kulka 1993; Littlewood 1983; Prodromou
1996; Wray 1999). Meanwhile the Anglocentric coursebook continues to
predominate, which presumes a degree of integrative motivation on the part of
the learner and implicitly denies or devalues local Englishes (Beneke 1981;
Prodromou 1988). (Such problems, of course, necessarily involve questioning the
“global” strategy of the major ELT publishers: if local varieties of English,
which differ considerably, are to be the target, then perhaps publishers should
be more concerned with marketing local, rather than international, “one product
fits all” coursebooks. This is discussed further below.)
In sum, however
“real” the lexis is, teachers cannot assume that learners will be prepared to
learn lexis simply because “native speakers say it” or “it’s in the
coursebook”.
Perceptions of ‘real
lexis’
Perhaps some of the objections to teaching real language arise from
our perceptions of what exactly real lexis is: I suspect that to many teachers
it consists of what Leech (1998) tactfully calls the “less admirable features”
of language, which we may not wish our learners to reproduce.3
Alternatively, other teachers may bring to mind the various idioms and
idiomatic phrases course and resource books periodically dig up which could be
described as parochial and of limited relevance to the class: Hobson’s choice; to send someone to Coventry
(Harwood 2000). Yet I would claim that such language, however “real” it may
be, is not the kind of lexis which a teacher would be contemplating teaching by
following a lexical approach: if learners’ needs remain to the fore, real lexis
does not have to be impolite, irrelevant or outlandish. As we saw above when
discussing corpus data, to identify a piece of lexis as authentic is not
sufficient justification for including it in the syllabus: what is essential,
then, is to prioritize (real) lexis according to need.
Non-native teachers
One of the objections to emphasizing real lexis is due to the fact
that the majority of English teachers worldwide are non-natives. How
well-equipped are non-natives to teach “real” current British slang? In any
case, prioritizing this kind of language would reinforce the alleged supremacy
of the native speaker teacher as “expert” (Prodromou 1996). However, take what
is perhaps a more common example: the non-native speaker teaching an EAP class.
In this case, the real lexis in question should present little problem for the
non-native teacher who is well-versed in the conventions of academia and is
therefore no less expert than a native speaker.
Varieties of real
English
Another key question is what we mean by real English and real lexis:
do we mean American, Australian, British, Caribbean, Indian, or South African
English, to name but a few varieties? Are we striving to perpetuate an educated
or less educated model? Where does the English of the millions of speakers of
English as a second or foreign language fit in (Hyde 1998; Leech 1998;
Prodromou 1996)? Again, I would suggest such questions are best answered by
attempting to address the learners’ needs and wants, although it is well for
the teacher to bear in mind that issues like world Englishes and intercultural
pragmatics are complex: being acutely aware that real lexis will vary immensely
depending on the user should help ensure the classroom atmosphere is not one of
small-minded prescriptivism.4
problem 3: recycling in practice
Coursebooks fail to
recycle lexis systematically
A recent study of 12 upper intermediate and advanced coursebooks found
that none of the prefabricated
language or metadiscourse examined was systematically recycled (Harwood 2000).
As Littlejohn (1992) claims, ELT materials are failing to keep pace with
applied linguistics research, which in this case would suggest that recycling
should be a standard feature of the coursebook. And while it should be conceded
that recent studies of lexis (e.g. Sanaoui 1995) have emphasized the importance
of the learners managing their own vocabulary learning by means of skills the
teacher has helped them develop, I do not believe this exonerates materials (or
those who design them) from responsibility for recycling. Rather, I would
contend that many teachers in fact underestimate the part recycling plays in
language learning, and that the coursebook should engage in recycling to
underline its benefits to learners but also to remind teachers to incorporate
recycling into their lessons regularly.5
Coursebooks have a
role to play in encouraging teachers to recycle
However highly teachers rate the importance of recycling, in many
classrooms they have little power to ensure it features regularly. Since many
institutions worldwide oblige their teachers to follow the coursebook slavishly
(cf. Baigent 1999; Dubin & Olshtain 1986), how can the teacher be expected
to recycle if recycling activities are left to their whim and are not included
in the material?
Recycling needs to
consist of more than “doing the same thing twice”
A possible explanation for the apparent reluctance of materials
designers (and teachers?) to recycle sufficiently can be found in Lewis’ (1997:
51) assertion that “ “Doing the same thing twice” is still widely considered
time-wasting and potentially boring”. As Lewis implies, while a
recycling/revisiting strategy should be at the heart of a lexical approach, it
is also vital that teachers and material writers ensure recycling is done in an
interesting and refreshing way, so that the learners’ interest is still
engaged. Variety and novelty, rather than rote learning and staid
predictability, should be the cornerstones of the recycling component in a
coursebook.
problem 4: face validity for teachers and learners
Learners’ and
teachers’ perceptions
I wish to reiterate that it is essential that a lexical approach is
implemented with sensitivity by the teacher: it is not a case of throwing out
all established pedagogy. With this in mind, I now turn to the question of face validity. Although the term is
normally associated with the field of language testing, where it is used to
examine how acceptable and credible a test is to users (e.g. Alderson, Clapham
& Wall 1995), for this article I take it to mean what learners and teachers expect to devote time to in the language
classroom. I will now attempt to illustrate the importance that face
validity has when utilizing a lexical approach, and potential difficulties
which may arise which can be traced to worries about face validity.
While material
which takes a lexical approach can be built around many ‘conventional’ design
principles which feature in more traditional ‘grammar-based’ exercises, where
there is material which is not
conventional, not the stuff of the
standard ELT coursebook, the question of face validity is likely to arise,
since teachers and learners will not be used to the materials and may well
therefore question their validity. Because all materials feature a “hidden
agenda” (Nunan 1989), with what the writer sees as being the essential things
to be learned coming to the fore, by its very prominence, lexis is implicitly
ascribed an unprecedented degree of importance. But will the class accept this?
Might they not demand ‘grammar’ in the sense in which it is normally presented?
While we have seen that the Chomskyan generative paradigm cannot be claimed to
describe language adequately and that the realms of grammar and lexis are
neither readily definable nor even necessarily discrete (and hence in teaching
lexis one can simultaneously be teaching grammar), this is not to say that
many, or even the majority, of teachers and learners would accept this and be
prepared to attach a higher priority to the acquisition of lexis. The prudent
course of action, then, is not to abandon grammar teaching in the traditional
sense, but to ensure that syllabuses and materials include both lexis and grammar (cf. Wray 2000). We should
remember that there is a type of ELT which predominates
in many parts of the world which is radically different in its
underlying assumptions (i.e. it values traditional grammar instruction more
highly) when compared with the state-of-the-art Anglo-American type (cf.
Anderson forthcoming).6 Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of
these more traditional approaches, and however sound the case for a more
lexically-oriented approach to teaching may appear, we must proceed carefully
if those teachers and learners who see structural grammar teaching as key are
to be at all persuaded of the merits of a lexical approach. Cook’s (1998: 60)
insistence that a preoccupation with lexis will “inevitably” lead to “a
bewildering refusal to teach grammar” on the part of the teacher must be proved
mistaken if face validity is to be maintained. Perhaps one of the reasons the COBUILD course was not particularly successful
was that teachers and learners had never seen anything like it before, and face
validity became an issue. In contrast, the most recent coursebook associated
with the lexical approach (Dellar & Hocking 2000) contains a traditional
“grammar” component and does not appear unduly different to the standard
coursebook. In sum, then, the way to assuage teachers’ and learners’ fears of a
lexical approach is to avoid an iconoclastic call to abandon all grammar
activities. We should instead simply call for the teaching of lexis to come
higher up the agenda.
Implementation
Some of the difficulties I have raised concerning the practical
implementation of a lexical approach can be connected to face validity. As
Thornbury (1998) has pointed out, teachers are unlikely to be interested in a
set of pedagogical principles per se:
it is only when the same principles can be applied to classroom situations that
their worth is evident. Given the lack of guidance available in the literature
at present as to how a lexical approach should be implemented, then, the
approach is unlikely to be adopted until it is seen by teachers as
operationalizable. So although Lewis (1993) gives us an insight into the kind
of syllabuses he does not favour and
a range of classroom activities which bring lexis to the fore (Lewis 1997), we
are never presented with a comprehensive syllabus based around a lexical
approach that Lewis does approve of
(Thornbury 1998). Difficulties such as these which hinder the implementation of
a lexical approach necessarily involve face validity: it may seem that either
(i) the lack of available commercial materials means the approach is misguided,
and that lexis is not so important after all; or (ii) that however legitimate
teachers and learners believe the approach might be, the lack of materials
makes implementation impossible.
The lack of
lexically based materials is now discussed further.
problem 5: the world of ELT publishing
The lack of available pedagogical material claiming to take a lexical
approach can be used to critique the ELT publishing world. The conservatism of
the industry is well documented: ELT publishers fail to respond to findings in
applied linguistics research quickly, and indeed often never apply these
findings (Littlejohn 1992; Thornbury 1998). In order to maximize profits,
materials are developed for the global market, despite the fact that the many
varieties of international English being spoken suggests that products should
cater for individual local markets instead (Prodromou 1988). All of this helps
to explain why at the time of writing, with the exception of Dellar &
Hocking (2000), Powell (1996), and the COBUILD
series, coursebooks purportedly built around any sort of lexical approach are
conspicuous by their absence.
Conclusion: a lexical approach and the state of the art
While I have tried to outline what I see as a number of difficulties
regarding the implementation of a lexical approach in this article, I wish to
emphasize that I am in no way inimical to the approach per se. Hence I close by pointing out that in many ways a lexical
approach shares the concerns of the most current research in a number of areas
of applied linguistics.
Take, for
instance, a lexical approach’s insistence on abandoning the misleading
grammar/vocabulary dichotomy which has continued to inform ELT materials. The
fuzziness of the grammar/lexis distinction is also currently being underlined
by studies in phraseology (e.g. Altenberg 1998; Gläser 1998; Howarth 1996);
while the emphasis on the importance of prefabs in a lexical approach is
confirmed by work on formulaic language (e.g. Aijmer 1996; DeCock 1996, 1998;
DeCock et al. 1998; Granger 1998; House 1996; Moon 1997, 1998; Wray 1999, 2000;
Wray & Perkins 2000) and metadiscourse (e.g. Crismore, Markkanen &
Steffensen 1993; Hyland 1998a,b, 1999; Intaraprawat & Steffensen 1995;
Mauranen 1993a,b). If a lexical approach is implemented appropriately, learners
will acquire lexis suitable for their
needs, a priority which accords with the recognition of the importance of
genre analysis (e.g. Bhatia 1993; Swales 1990), in that research in this area
shows clearly that the lexis which is suitable for EAP groups, say, may not be
so suitable for conversation classes. Hence a lexical approach recognizes that,
in order to design material for an EAP class, it is necessary to consult an
academic, rather than a general English, corpus.
As it stands at
present, the concept of taking a lexical approach to teaching is work in
progress (Thornbury 1998), since there are two main areas connected with the
approach which are in need of clarification: while some researchers (e.g. Cook
1998; Thornbury 1998) have critiqued the approach’s purported lack of principled foundation, there is also
concern about the practicalities of the approach’s implementation (e.g. Baigent 1999; Lewis 1997; Thornbury 1998). It
is hoped that this article has made a contribution to the discussions on both
these issues.
Notes
1. This
article is a version of a talk given at the 35th IATEFL conference.
I am grateful to Ron Carter, Alan Cunningsworth, and Gregory Hadley for their
helpful comments on earlier versions, and to two anonymous reviewers for their
insightful and constructive feedback.
2. Apart
from the COBUILD course, a recent exception is Dellar & Hocking (2000).
3. Leech
(1998: xix-xx) has various ‘vagueness tags’ in mind here: and things, and stuff like that, or something, which are, as he
says, “less admirable” inasmuch as such language tends to be stigmatized, since
it is seen as devoid of “real meaning” (see Schourup 1985). However, such
formulaic chunks do serve a number of
functions: for instance, since they are automatized, they afford the speaker
additional processing time (e.g. Dechert 1984; Pawley & Syder 1983; Weinert
1995; Wray 2000; Wray & Perkins 2000). In addition, they serve to manage
discourse (Aijmer 1996; Edmondson & House 1981; Keller 1979; Wray &
Perkins 2000) and maintain social harmony (Aijmer 1996; Coulmas 1979; Cowie
1994; Moon 1992; Nattinger & DeCarrico 1992; Wildner-Bassett 1984; Yorio
1980). Hence the issue of whether we should teach stigmatized language to
learners when it may be useful to them in a number of ways is a sensitive one
which I obviously cannot do justice to here. Nevertheless, I suggest it is less
straightforward than Leech seems to be implying.
4. Focusing
on learners’ wants and needs rather than all-round (nativelike) proficiency has
the added advantage of ensuring that much time is not wasted in attempting to instil
proficiency in, say, colloquial spoken British English when the learner does
not wish it. Hence Rampton’s (1990) preferred term of expert, rather than native
speaker, which more accurately reflects the fact that a learner may be
proficient (‘expert’) in their chosen field, rather than being obliged to be
proficient in all fields (‘native’).
5. I
am well aware there is much ‘behind’ the material which the designer intends
teachers to exploit (cf. Cunningsworth 1995; Cunningsworth & Kusel 1991;
Littlejohn & Windeatt 1989). So if a recycling activity has not been
included in the students’ edition of
the material, this is not to say that the designer did not envisage the need
for it. Indeed, perhaps notes on a recycling stage are included in the teachers’ edition. There therefore
remains at least the possibility that we are being too precipitous in our
condemnation if we have not consulted teachers’ books. The argument could, of
course, be taken even further: there is much behind the material which designers do not even include in
teachers’ editions, whereby designers rely on teachers’ experience and
intuition to tailor the activity to suit the group’s individual needs and
tastes. However, if this reasoning is followed to its logical conclusion, we
would never condemn material as being
inadequate: we might decide, for instance, that the designer was perfectly
aware of the need for the teacher to expand on/extend the activities in the
students’ edition, but chose not to record this in the teachers’ notes, as they
believed teachers would rapidly identify the need for further consolidation
without requiring explicit instructions to this effect in the teachers’ notes.
My feeling is that a line must be drawn somewhere: the fact, for example, that none of the data barring a single
self-access exercise in the material surveyed in my previous study (Harwood
2000) is recycled as a matter of course elsewhere surely deserves comment and
(qualified) condemnation.
6. One
of the reviewers also pointed out that there are classrooms which have become
so ‘communicative’ that any grammar teaching at all has become taboo. In any
case, the message for coursebook writers remains the same: proceed cautiously
so as to prevent alienating teachers and learners who favour a more
structuralist, or a more ‘communicative’ pedagogy.
References
Aijmer, K. (1996) Conversational
routines in English: convention and creativity. London: Longman.
Alderson, J.C., C. Clapham & D. Wall (1995) Language test construction and evaluation. Cambridge University
Press.
Allwright, R.L. (1981) What do we want teaching materials for? ELT Journal 36.1: 5–18.
Altenberg, B. (1990) Speech as linear composition. In G.D. Caie, Proceedings from the fourth Nordic
conference for English studies. Department of English, University of
Copenhagen. 133–45.
— (1998) On the
phraseology of spoken English: the evidence of recurrent word combinations. In
A.P. Cowie, Phraseology: theory,
analysis, and applications. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 101–22.
Anderson, C. (forthcoming) Deconstructing “teaching English as a
foreign language”: problematising a professional discourse. PhD Thesis,
Canterbury Christ Church University College.
Aston, G. (1995) Corpora in language pedagogy: matching theory and
practice. In G. Cook & B. Seidlhofer, Principle
and practice in applied linguistics: studies in honour of HG Widdowson.
Oxford University Press. 257–70.
Baigent, M. (1999) Teaching in chunks: integrating a lexical approach.
Modern English Teacher 8.2: 51–4.
Bell, J. & R. Gower (1992) Upper
intermediate matters students’ book. Harlow: Longman.
Beneke, J. (1981) Cultural monsters, mimicry and English as an
international language. In R. Freudenstein, J. Beneke & H. Pönisch, Language incorporated: teaching foreign
languages in industry. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 73–94.
Bhatia, V.K. (1993) Analysing
genre. London: Longman.
Biber, D., S. Conrad & R. Reppen (1994) Corpus-based approaches to
issues in applied linguistics. Applied
Linguistics 15.2: 169–89.
Carter, R. (1998) Orders of reality: CANCODE, communication, and
culture. ELT Journal 52.1: 43–56.
Coady, J. (1997) L2 vocabulary acquisition: a synthesis of the
research. In J. Coady & T.N. Huckin, Second
language vocabulary acquisition: a rationale for pedagogy. Cambridge
University Press. 273–90.
Cook, G. (1998) The uses of reality: a reply to Ronald Carter. ELT Journal 52.1: 57–63.
Coulmas, F. (1979) On the sociolinguistic relevance of routine
formulae. Journal of Pragmatics 3:
239–66.
Cowie, A.P. (1994) Phraseology. In R.E. Asher, The encyclopedia of language and linguistics vol. 6. Oxford: Pergamon
Press. 3168–71.
Crismore, A., R. Markkanen & M.S. Steffensen (1993) Metadiscourse
in persuasive writing: a study of texts written by American and Finnish
university students. Written
Communication 10.1: 39–71.
Cunningsworth, A. (1995) Choosing
your coursebook. Oxford: Heinemann.
— & P. Kusel (1991)
Evaluating teachers’ guides. ELT Journal
45.2: 128–39.
Dechert, H.W. (1984) Second language production: six hypotheses. In
H.W. Dechert, D. Möhle & M. Raupach,
Second language productions. Tübingen: Narr. 211–30.
DeCock, S. (1996) Formulaic expressions in the speech of native and
non-native speakers of English. Unpublished MA dissertation, Lancaster
University.
— (1998) A recurrent
word combination approach to the study of formulae in the speech of native and
non-native speakers of English. International
Journal Of Corpus Linguistics 3.1: 59–80.
— , S. Granger, G.
Leech & T. McEnery (1998) An automated approach to the phrasicon of EFL
learners. In S. Granger, Learner English
on computer. London: Longman. 67–79.
Dellar, H. (2000) Making general English more general. Paper presented
at Canterbury Christ Church University College, Canterbury.
— & D. Hocking
(2000) Innovations: an intermediate/upper
intermediate course. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.
Dubin, F. & E. Olshtain (1986) Course
design: developing programs and materials for language learning. Cambridge
University Press.
Edmondson, W. & J. House (1981) Let’s talk and talk about it: a pedagogic interactional grammar of
English. Munich: Urban & Schwarzenberg.
Erman, B. & B. Warren (2000) The idiom principle and the open
choice principle. Text 20.1: 29–62.
Fernando, C. (1996) Idioms and
idiomaticity. Oxford University Press.
Fox, G. (1998) Using corpus data in the classroom. In B. Tomlinson, Materials development in language teaching.
Cambridge University Press. 25–43.
Gläser, R. (1998) The stylistic potential of phraseological units in
the light of genre analysis. In A.P. Cowie, Phraseology:
theory, analysis, and applications. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 125–43.
Granger, S. (1998) Prefabricated patterns in advanced EFL writing:
collocations and formulae. In A.P. Cowie, Phraseology:
theory, analysis, and applications. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 145–60.
Harwood, N. (2000) “At the end of the day they don’t tally”: what
researchers tell us about gambits and how materials writers teach gambits.
Unpublished MA dissertation, Lancaster University.
Hinnenkamp, V. (1980) The refusal of second language learning in
interethnic context. In H. Giles, W. P. Robinson & P.M. Smith, Language: social psychological perspectives.
Oxford: Pergamon. 179–84.
Holmes, J. (1988) Doubt and certainty in ESL textbooks. Applied Linguistics 9.1: 21–44.
House, J. (1996) Developing pragmatic fluency in English as a foreign
language: routines and metapragmatic awareness. Studies In Second Language Acquisition 18: 225–52.
Howarth, P.A. (1996) Phraseology
in English academic writing: some implications for language learning and
dictionary-making. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Hyde, M. (1998) Intercultural competence in English language
education. Modern English Teacher
7.2: 7–11.
Hyland, K. (1994) Hedging in academic writing and EAP textbooks. English for Specific Purposes 13.3:
239–56.
— (1998a) Talking to
students: metadiscourse in introductory coursebooks. English for Specific Purposes 18.1: 3–26.
— (1998b) Persuasion
and context: the pragmatics of academic metadiscourse. Journal of Pragmatics 30: 437–55.
— (1999) Disciplinary
discourses: writer stance in research articles. In C.N. Candlin & K.
Hyland, Writing: texts, processes and
practices. Harlow: Longman. 99–121.
Intaraprawat, P. & M.S. Steffensen (1995) The use of metadiscourse
in good and poor ESL essays. Journal of
Second Language Writing 4.3: 253–72.
Johns, T. (1991) From printout to handout: grammar and vocabulary
teaching in the context of data-driven learning. In T. Johns & P. King, Classroom concordancing 4. English language
research journal. Birmingham University. 27–45.
Kasper, G. & S. Blum-Kulka, (1993) Interlanguage pragmatics: an
introduction. In G. Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka, Interlanguage pragmatics. Oxford University Press. 3–18.
Keller, E. (1979) Gambits: conversational strategy signals. Journal of Pragmatics 3: 219–38.
Kjellmer, G. (1987) Aspects of English collocations. In W. Meijs, Corpus linguistics and beyond.
Amsterdam: Rodopi. 133–40.
Kojic-Sabo, I. & P.M. Lightbown (1999) Students’ approaches to
vocabulary learning and their relationship to success. Modern Language Journal 83.2: 176–92.
Leech, G. (1998) Preface. In S. Granger, Learner English on computer. London: Longman. xiv–xx.
Lewis, M. (1993) The lexical
approach: the state of ELT and a way forward. Hove: Language Teaching
Publications.
— (1996) Implications
of a lexical view of language. In J. Willis & D. Willis, Challenge and change in language teaching.
Oxford: Heinemann. 10–16.
— (1997) Implementing the lexical approach: putting
theory into practice. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.
— (2000) Language in
the lexical approach. In M. Lewis, Teaching
collocation: further developments in the lexical approach. Hove: Language
Teaching Publications. 126–54.
Littlejohn, A. (1992) Why are English language teaching materials the
way they are? Unpublished PhD Thesis, Lancaster University.
— & Windeatt, S.
(1989) Beyond language learning: Perspectives on materials design. In R.K.
Johnson, The second language curriculum.
Cambridge University Press. 155–75.
Littlewood, W. (1983) Contrastive pragmatics and the foreign language
learner’s personality. Applied
Linguistics 4.3: 200–6.
Mauranen, A. (1993a) Cultural
differences in academic rhetoric: a textlinguistic study. Frankfurt: Peter
Lang.
— (1993b) Contrastive
ESP rhetoric: metatext in Finnish-English economics texts. English for Specific Purposes 12.1: 3–22.
Milton, J. (1998) Exploiting L1 and interlanguage corpora in the
design of an electronic language learning and production environment. In S.
Granger, Learner English on computer.
London: Longman. 186–98.
Mindt, D. (1996) English corpus linguistics and the foreign language
teaching syllabus. In J. Thomas & M. Short, Using corpora for language research: studies in the honour of Geoffrey
Leech. London: Longman. 232–47.
Moon, R. (1992) Textual aspects of fixed expressions in learners’
dictionaries. In P.J.L. Arnaud & H. Béjoint, Vocabulary and applied linguistics. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 13–27.
— (1997) Vocabulary
connections: Multi-word items in English. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy, Vocabulary: description, acquisition and
pedagogy. Cambridge University Press. 40–63.
— (1998) Fixed expressions and idioms in English: a
corpus-based approach. Oxford University Press.
Nation, I.S.P. (1990) Teaching
and learning vocabulary. New York: Newbury House.
Nattinger, J.R. & J.S. DeCarrico (1992) Lexical phrases and language teaching. Oxford University Press.
Nunan, D. (1989) Hidden agendas: The role of the learner in programme
implementation. In R.K. Johnson, The
second language curriculum. Cambridge University Press. 176–86.
Pawley, A. & Syder, F.H. (1983) Two puzzles for linguistic theory:
nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In J.C. Richards & R.W.
Schmidt, Language and communication.
London: Longman. 191–225.
Powell, M. (1996) Business
matters: the business course with a lexical approach. Hove: Language
Teaching Publications.
Prodromou, L. (1988) English as cultural action. ELT Journal 42.2: 73–83.
— (1996)
Correspondence. ELT Journal 50.1:
88–9.
Rampton, M.B.H. (1990) Displacing the “native speaker”: expertise,
affiliation, and inheritance. ELT Journal
44.2: 97–101.
Sanaoui, R. (1995) Adult learners’ approaches to learning vocabulary
in second languages. The Modern Language
Journal 79.1: 15–28.
Schourup, L.C. (1985) Common
discourse particles in English conversation. New York: Garland Publishing.
Sinclair, J.McH. (1991) Corpus,
concordance, collocation. Oxford University Press.
— & A. Renouf
(1988) A lexical syllabus for language learning. In R. Carter & M.
McCarthy, Vocabulary and language
teaching. London: Longman. 140–58.
Singleton, D. (1997) Learning and processing L2 vocabulary. Language Teaching 30: 213–25.
Sökmen, A.J. (1997) Current trends in teaching second language
vocabulary. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy, Vocabulary: description, acquisition and pedagogy. Cambridge
University Press. 237–57.
Summers, D. (1996) Computer lexicography: The importance of
representativeness in relation to frequency. In J. Thomas & M. Short, Using corpora for language research: studies
in the honour of Geoffrey Leech, London: Longman. 260–66.
Swales, J.M. (1990) Genre
analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University
Press.
Thomas, J. (1983) Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 4.2: 91–112.
Thornbury, S. (1998) The lexical approach: a journey without maps? Modern English Teacher 7.4: 7–13.
Thurston, J. & Candlin, C.N. (1998) Concordancing and the teaching
of the vocabulary of academic English. English
For Specific Purposes 17.3: 267–80.
Weinert, R. (1995) The role of formulaic language in second language
acquisition: A review. Applied
Linguistics 16.2: 180–205.
Widdowson, H. (2000) On the limitations of linguistics applied. Applied Linguistics 21.1: 3–25.
Wildner-Bassett, M.E. (1984) Improving
pragmatic aspects of learners’ interlanguage: a comparison of methodological
approaches for teaching gambits to advanced adult learners of English in
industry. Tübingen: Narr.
Williams, M (1988) Language taught for meetings and language used in
meetings: is there anything in common? Applied
Linguistics 9.1: 45–58.
Willis, D. (1990) The lexical
syllabus: a new approach to language learning. London: Collins ELT.
Willis, J. (1998) Concordances in the classroom without a computer:
Assembling and exploiting concordances of common words. In B. Tomlinson, Materials
development in language teaching. Cambridge University Press. 44–66.
Wray, A. (1999) Formulaic language in learners and native speakers. Language Teaching 32.4: 213–31.
— (2000) Formulaic
sequences in second language teaching: principle and practice. Applied Linguistics 21.4: 463–89.
— & Perkins M.R.
(2000) The functions of formulaic language: an integrated model. Language and Communication 20.1: 1–28.
Yorio, C.A. (1980) Conventionalized language forms and the development
of communicative competence. TESOL
Quarterly 14.4: 433–42.
Source: International
Journal of Applied Linguistics, Volume 12, Number 2, December
2002 , pp. 139-155(17)
© by Nigel
Harwood
------------------------------------------------------------------------