What Is The Lexical Approach

In addition to the vocabulary in their readings, students have been expected to learn twenty-five new vocabulary words per week. The focus is not on rote memorization of definitions; students must know synonyms, antonyms, and especially how to use vocabulary words in the context of the entire sentence. They study how to choose the right word for their purpose (diction) and analyze the subtleties of language.

Encourage students to think back to this lesson when they are reading text. “If you come across one of these words or a new word that you do not know, use the sentence or sentences around the word to figure out the meaning.”

We’ve allowed a natural approach to language instruction to dominate our schools, hoping our English learners 
“will just figure it out.” (SCOE, 2009) This approach suggested by Kevin Clark proposes that teachers explicitly teach ELL by giving them a set of skills. Teacher will have to teach students not just vocabulary, but the sound system of language, the words and their word parts and meanings, and also rules for structuring sentences grammatically. Teaching students from this perspective can support a deeper understanding of the language. When the

The English language is full of so many rules that are applied that most do not even know about. There is phonology, which is the way words sound and morphology, which are the actual words. But, we also have semantics, which is “the study of the meaning or the study of linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form” (Dictionary.com, n.d).

Punctuation is crucial when you write any piece of literature. While I was peer editing, one common problem always occurs and they were run-on sentences. Run-ons separate great writers from the poor writers. I always kept punctuation on my mind while writing my essay because I know punctuation is crucial while writing any essay so I always review my narrative. However, vocabulary could be a hazard to while writing an essay. Vocabulary separates the children from adults in real life. When I read stories, I know when they are written by uneducated people because they use simple words such as big, good, bad, and etc. In order to get away from baby words I need to use a thesaurus to expand on what I am trying to explain. I myself, a junior in high school, been a victim of using baby words, but there are no excuses so I am trying to create a habit to expand on my

Key features of language include its words and their sub structures such as morphemes, graphemes and syllables at the writing level as well as reading or speaking, words, their meanings and contexts in which the words get spoken or read. Language has to be interpreted as a whole, and not just as the specific word. There must be an explicit pattern or structure. In order for language to be understood correctly, the meaning of words must be arranged in a given context. This is what constructs language; even though words are arbitrary themselves, in order to integrate as a language, they must be used in the appropriate context. This pre-established cultural context is what will enable effective communication. (Daniel Willingham, 2007, p. 1).

This class observation is from a video of a second grade English class in Atlanta, Georgia. The video is from 2010 and features Ms. Wiggins teaching her students vocabulary words. Ms. Wiggins’s goal was for her students to understand the meaning of the vocabulary words, and to reach that meaning themselves. Rather than giving direct definitions, she guided the class to the correct answers. Although not specified, this video was probably taken during the middle or end of the year. This can be inferred by the automatic responses students had to specific prompts from their teacher, as well as the smooth classroom procedures.

Well to start off, let’s have a look at what grammar even is. Grammar can be defined as the ‘systematic study and description of a language’ or as ‘a set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structure of a language, usually intended as an aid to the learning of the language.’ These definitions were taken from grammar.com.

Although vocabulary is the sub-skill of a language, it plays a very important role in language learning and teaching. In fact, vocabulary is central to language and is of paramount importance to language learners. On the other hand, words are the building blocks of a language that are used to label objects, actions, and ideas. In other words, people cannot convey the intended meaning without knowing vocabulary. It is widely accepted that vocabulary is a very important part in English language learning because no one can communicate in any meaningful way without vocabulary. As McCarthy (1990) stated, the single, biggest component of any language course is vocabulary. Nation (1990) also affirms that vocabulary can be considered as the most important element in language learning because Learners think that many of their

‘The lexical approach can be summarized in a few words: language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks. The lexical approach is a way of analysing and teaching language based on the idea that it is made up of lexical units rather than grammatical structures. The units are words and chunks formed by collocations and fixed phrases’ (nd.p215).

This paper believes that every approach has strengths and weaknesses. Hence, choosing an appropriate method depends on the level of the students or the purpose of the course. As an English teacher, I am convinced that we should comprehend both advantages and disadvantages of each method. Thence, we try to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses. Finally, the chosen method must achieve the objective of the course and meet the demand of the learners. That is my own philosophy of

The third part is collocation activity. The aim is to instruct students to learn the right collocation. Firstly, the teacher asks students to recognize some words and then he prepares some pictures to asks students to match the appropriate combination. For example, a bunch of should be combined with flowers. When students match right, the teacher would respond to them ‘Well done’, ‘excellent’. By doing this, students become familiar with the collocations like a bottle of water, etc.

It is not uncommon to say that grammar instruction plays an important role in language teaching. Regarding the status and importance of grammar teaching, a variety of opinions have been made. Batstone (1994) states that “language without grammar would be chaotic: countless words without the indispensable guidelines for how they can be ordered and modified” (p. 4). More vividly, Wang (2010) makes two similes. She compares grammar to the frame of a house, which is a decisive factor to ensure the solidness of it. Additionally, she regards grammar as a walking stick, whose function is to help and support students to learn English. Thus, the nature of grammar instruction manifests its own significance as it helps students

Collocations was first brought up by Palmer (1933) in English language teaching. However, in 1957, Firth introduced collocations to the theoretical linguistics. Collocations are pervasive in texts of all genres and domains. Collocation can be defined as ‘the grammatical company a word keeps and the positions it refers’ (Hoey, 2005).

Larsen-Freeman (2001) as cited in Mart (2013), describes grammar as a system of meaningful structures and patterns that are governed by particular pragmatic constraints. This clearly indicates that grammar plays a crucial role in learning the target language. Grammar instruction is one of the most difficult issues that people have encountered in language learning and teaching. Therefore, the best way to overcome this issue is by