Lexis

Vocabulary

Lexis

• traditional single words

• common “going together patterns”

• longer combination of words

Grammar

Lexis in the classroom

• practice using the lexical items

• finds ways that help them memorise the lexical items

• recall and use the lexical items appropiately.

Productive

receptive

Lexis and skills work

Listening - reading

Pre- teaching lexis

Common pre teaching tasks

• Match the words with pictures

• Chaeck the meaning of these words in the dictionary

• Match the words with the definitions

• Brainstorm words on a set of topic

• Divide these words into goups (food words, and hobby words)

• Label the items in a picture with the right names

• Complete gapped sentences with words from list

• Discuss a topic

Presenting Lexis Presenting Lexis

•Works connected with the same location or event (shop words, wedding words, sport words.)

•Words that have the same grammar and similar use. (adjectives to describe peolple, movements verbs)

•Words that can be used to achieve succes in a specific task (persuading a foreign friend to visit the town)

• techniques for Lexis

• Present: you first offers some cues, pictures or information about the target items and elicit the words from students

• Practice: you then get the students to practice by repeating items, using them in short dialogues, role plays etc.

• Gloves: mime putting them on

• Frightened: tell a personal anecdote

• Disgusting: mime and make a facial expression

• Café: show a flash cards

• Often: draw a line, write never at the end and always at the other

• Put your foot down: act out a short conversation

5.- Lexical practice activities and games

Based in:• Discussions, communicative

activities and role-play requiring use of the lexical items,

• Making use of the lexis

Examples of exercises on lexis

• Matching pictures to lexical items,• Matching lexical items to others, e.g. collocations,

synonyms, opposites, sets of related words, etc,• Using affixes to built new lexical items,• Using given lexical items to complete a specific task,• Filling in crosswords, grids or diagrams,

gaps in sentences, memory games.• Options for working in class: in pair,

small groups, the whole class or a competition group.

Using lexical pracice exercises in class

• Word family

Example:

• Designing a task for specific lexical items

Using a picture you can make your students talk about it:

What is happening?

Where they are?

Etc.

6.- Remembering lexical items

• Student word list

Word Translations

Interview entrevista

Car auto

House casa

Park parque

layer abogado

Travel viaje

Hat sombrero

First, you have to take in account that remembering involves 4 things:

•Putting into storage

•Retrieving

•Using

•putting into storage again.

Alternative ways of recording lexis.

1. Alternative lexical item list

Lexical item Pronunciation Translation Grammar Collocation Example Idea

motorcycle /m ut saik l/ motocicleta noun

Ride a *Get on my *

* raceetc.

Sara bought a beautiful bicycle last

month.

2. Group of words connected by a specific item.

3. A word web

4. Word page: collocations and chunks

There was a terrible

traffic

jam round the rign road

lights

warden

the is really heavy today

What’s holding up the

?

5. Lexical Item collector

Noun(thing)

Noun(person)

adjective

Verb(present –

past- p. participle)

adverb phrases

report reporter reportedreport –

reported - reported

7.- Knowing a lexical Item

• What are some things you can know about a lexical item?• How it is spelled• The number of syllables• Phonemes• Which syllables are stressed• What part of speech it is• Grammatically related forms• Connotation• Appropriacy for certain social situations• Collocation fields• Common chunks, phrases, idioms it appears in• Translations• Lexical families• Synonyms, homonyms, antonyms• Prefixes and suffixes• etc.

How can we worry less about the “input” of lexis and spend more time on going deeper

with language?• Record lexical items in useful ways

• Revisit lexical item pages

• Collect lexical items.

• Sort and classify items

• Chunk and collocation spotting

• Redesign your pages

• When an error comes up, review a range of collocations

• Record real language

• Challenge students to upgrade language

• Give collocations rather than definitions

• Quick choices

• Guess the collocations

• Chunk watching