Lexical Approach

Michael Lewis 90’s

developing learner’s proficiency with lexis, or

words and words combinations

Words (e.g., book,

pen)

Pollywords (e.g., by the way, upside

down)

Collocations, or word partnerships (e.g., community service,

absolutely convinced)

Sentece frames and heads (e.g., The fact/suggestion/problem

was…)

- To asist Ss by providing scaffolding.

- To help Ss manage their own learning.

- To provide Ss their main source of input (talk of

the T)

- To analyse real life language samples

based on their own explanations.

- To observe, classify and make

generalizations.- To make good use of

computers.To become the

‘discoverer’.

Advantages:- Ss feel more

encouraged with the learning material- It is helpful and

motivating for Ss to have a step-by-step learning

process.- Ts feel more

comfortable with a clearly defined,

progressive course.

Disadvantages:- Language cannot be divided into different

units in real life.- Some topics

traditionally considered advanced can actually

be taught in much more lower levels.

concentrates on

described by in the

such as

so that Ss are able

while Ts are to

having both

"Language is grammaticalized lexis,

not lexicalized grammar" (Lewis

1993)