Hello team,
Here are some of my thoughts about the Lexical Approach and language teaching.
The Lexical approach is an essential subject in English language teaching. From being a second language learner to a language teacher, I experienced how difficult for English learners to learn lexis and put them into meaningful chucks. Although I am measured as a fluent English speaker, I still struggle with multi-words chucks sometimes. I often doubt myself in chucks like ‘one on one tutoring’ or ‘one to one tutoring’, ‘How’s going?’ or ‘How are you doing?’ etc. It would be great if someone could clarify what’s different between these chucks in a same context.
In the past, the lexical approach wasn’t considered as significant subject to introduce by language teachers. Even now, some language teachers don't use lexical approach in their classroom teaching. And also they don't teach students in a natural way, I mean the way how native speakers speak. For example, they teach students to speak like 19th century, such as “How are you?” “I am fine, thank you. How are you?”, “How old are you? “I am 20 years old. How old are you?” and so on. Unfortunely, these kind of the words which make them talk like robot and they don’t understand other words which used in everyday communication by native speakers. Last year, I was teaching intermediate level students in a language school. One day in the school, I saw a student and greeted to her “how’s going?” That student smiled at me and thought a while and replied, “I am going to classroom.” Another example, I was greeting to all students before starting the class one morning, “how are you this morning?” They replied “I am fine, thank you. How are you this morning?” The examples show that when students are taught in a mechanical way, they would struggle with the words which used by native speakers, and more problem is to affect their communication skills. However, in recent study shows that the lexical approach and language teaching has been drawn enormous attention by scholars. There are many journals and books about the lexical approach demonstrated how its magnificent role in language teaching.
Yet, “In implementing the lexical approach that what we actually do in the classroom may not change very much as a result of our own change in thinking about centrality of Lexis in the language and the language learning process. But we can bring about a gradual change in learner’s perception of the language and lead them towards greater autonomy in identifying multi-words chucks in language study (Michael Lewis as cited in Baigent, 1999).
Reference:
Baigent, M. (1999). Teaching in Chunks: integrating a lexical approach. Modern English Teacher, 8(2), 51-54.
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I am not saying that I would agree with that either. It must be pretty boring for the language learner to be learning in a ' rote' method of teaching. But let's think about that for a moment?! Is that there is some kind of benefit to the learner in this method? Let's think for a while. Please think about Mrs CHAN, or Mister Sato. is a bonus nearing their mid-80s in age. They have just decided to come to an English language school to try to and learn to speak in English. They are very scared and apprehensive. Learning in a 'rote' method is something from their years in the education system of the country, is familiar to them. I understand the benefits of using a new methodology, however, I would rather teach students who were ' alive' rather than dead ones who have had a heart attack because they couldn't understand them the methodology that was being used i.e. the lexical approach.
ReplyDeleteThe lexical approach is for language teachers to use in their teaching, I don’t think student need to understand the methodology. Hopefully, the following cases will change your conception.
ReplyDeleteCase 1: A friend of mine was a university English Teacher who came to New Zealand ten years ago. At the beginning of arrival, she was struggling to communicate with Kiwi. The reason she was struggling was because she had never learned in a natural way such as ‘Good day’, ‘pain in the neck’ and ‘I’m all set’ etc. And all she learned from the books were ‘How are you?’ ‘How do you do?’ ‘I am ready’.
Case 2: My dad started learning English in his late 60s in a NZ’s language school. After a year of learning, all he could say was ‘Hello’ and ‘Bye-bye’ and he still can’t communicate with native speakers. Whereas my Mum who had never learned English in her life. Last year, she asked my children (native speakers) to teach her English, now she could use lots of words like ‘come on’, ‘hurry up’, ‘where are you going?’, and ‘nice day’ to communicate with them.
Case 3: Some of my students told me that they understood lots of words which in a single format. But when these words are put together, they have no idea about the meaning.
Teaching real language which is the core part of lexical approach in language teaching. There is no point to teach your students something is ineffective in communication.