Lexical approach is one of many ways of analysing and teaching a language. What we know about the lexical approach is:

  • it is organized around vocabulary rather than grammar;
  • it involves a lot of recycling of previously used language;
  • it is aimed at developing students’ ability to notice language and ‘chunk’ it successfully.

It can be implemented successfully with students of most ages and levels. Teenagers are not an exception. First, they are usually sick and tired of the grammar-translation approach which is still practised in many schools. Second, they have limitless access to information in English and grasp new words pretty quickly, but have very little idea of how and when to use them properly. In both cases, the lexical approach is beneficial as it promotes fluency. It is also quite learner-centred: if you listen to your teens attentively, you’ll hear them asking about the vocabulary which is relevant for them. Personalized items of language tend to get remembered faster and are later used more often.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how some principles of lexical approach can be used while teaching teens vocabulary.

Assess words frequency

The more frequent a word is, the more times students will notice that around and, as a result, the faster they’ll learn it. Frequent words are those which glue the phrases together as much as grammar does. There are websites like Corpus of Contemporary American English or British National Corpus can help you with that.

Let’s take a lexical set of adjectives to describe personality and find their frequency:

hard-working (1232)

open-minded (808)

generous (9814)

ambitious (8485)

reliable (11870)

(numbers refer to occurrences in Corpus of Contemporary American English)

It means that ‘reliable’ is the most popular from this set, with ‘generous’ and ‘ambitious’ following it. If you are choosing the items to draw more attention to, opt for those with higher frequency. Did you know that the word ‘blonde’ in English is less common than, for instance, ‘arise’? Frequency can surprise.

Think of proper concept checking questions when you present vocabulary

They should provide teenagers with more opportunities to produce language. Don’t stop at just matching words to pictures in the coursebook. The following example of introducing the word ‘helmet’ was taken by me from an amazing workshop by Hugh Dellar, and that’s what he said:

‘Questions like those below seem pointless when items have already been matched to meaning/pictures:

Do you wear it on your head or feet?

Is it hard or soft?

Does it protect you?

Think of better questions to ask about the word helmet.

In what jobs or activities do people usually wear a helmet?

Why do people wear them?

What do you do with a helmet – what verbs go with it?

What else might you wear along with a helmet?

When might you say ‘Luckily he was wearing a helmet’?’

A great way to make them speak, right?

Always expand a single word you find useful to its collocations and examples

Single words can rarely show actual use of the word or provide sufficient exposure to grammar.

heavy

What’s the opposite of a heavy suitcase?

(a light suitcase)

What other things can be heavy?

(a bag, a book, a box)

How else can you describe a suitcase?

(big, small, nice, light, strong)

Why might a suitcase be heavy?

(It’s very big. It has a lot in it.)

What might be the problem if you have a heavy suitcase?

(You can’t carry it. You have to pay for excess baggage.)

What might you ask someone if you have a heavy suitcase?

(Could you help me with this? It’s very heavy.)

What do you have to do with a suitcase?

(pack it, check it in, carry it)

(taken from Teaching lexically: Principles and practice by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley)

There is another trap here. When you ask teenagers to come up with an example of a just-learnt word, they are often tempted to create something like that:

He is generous

Being absolutely correct, this sentence gives us no idea of what generous actually is. It is unlikely to provide teens with a mental clue which will help them remember the word when they need it. So, why don’t you introduce them to collocation dictionary first, like Oxford Collocation Dictionary of English?

Here, they will know that something or someone can be amazingly, exceedingly, exceptionally, extraordinarily, extremely, incredibly, most, very, wonderfully, excessively, or overly generous. They will also come across some generous donation, discount, gift, and offer and meet the phrase ‘It was very generous of you’.

Any example appearing after that will look more natural and much more memorable.

Of course, you may not have time provide every single word with collocations and examples of usage, and so you need to choose items most worth spending time on — let’s get back to frequency again.

Start with low levels

We are often pressed by the grammar in our coursebooks. It is usually inseparable from vocabulary: we start asking students about their future plans when we learn Future Simple, and the previous weekend is discussed only with sound knowledge of Past Simple. However, it’s a good idea to build short dialogues even with your beginner teens. Especially with your beginner teens! You can actually get them into talking if you provide them with words and do not limit to using full grammatically correct sentences. How often do we go like:

-What did you do at the weekend?

-Watched a film.

-No! Repeat: ‘I watched a film at the weekend’.

Well, sometimes. How often are teenagers eager to repeat and drill these full sentences in a parrot mode? Well, never. How about this?

-Your weekend. Tell me, please.

-Good.

-Anything special?

-Not really. Sleep and walk.

-With friends?

-Yes.

-How long?

-Three hours, I think.

-But the weather?

-Rain. It’s ok, I like rain.

Such a dialogue will make a lot of teachers shudder — me as well. However, it’s just great for the first step and provides another opportunity to practise the language. If we wait till Past Simple at the end of the first coursebook to start asking your teens about their weekend or last holidays, we might be disappointed with how much of the language they just don’t get.

A British linguist David A. Wilkins said that ‘without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed’. He is definitely right: vocabulary is the key to communication and the base for further development of language skills.

With time, lexical approach to teaching vocabulary will encourage your students to see larger chunks of the language and focus their attention on naturally occurring expressions. No doubt that they will benefit from it.

In April, we’ll move on with using lexical approach for teaching grammar. Stay tuned!

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