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Book review

Optimizing a Lexical Approach to Instructed Second Language Acquisition, Frank Boers and Seth Lindstromberg.Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK (2009). 194 pp

Although the publication of books on formulaic language seems to currently be ‘in its heyday’ (Martinez, 2010,p. 152), when authors in those books want to refer to actual pedagogic applications of their findings, there still seems tobe only one oft-cited name: Lewis (1993), whose book The Lexical Approach was released well over a decade ago.Hence, there has hitherto been a real dearth of publications e particularly books e with a focus on how formulaiclanguage could and should be integrated into language instruction. Now, at last, there is a 21st century book to redressthis paucity.

Choosing to use the term ‘lexical approach’ in the title was a strategic decision taken by Boers and Lindstromberg,a recognition of the profound influence Lewis’s work has had, particularly among EFL practitioners (p. 17). However,the authors also qualify the term as used in this book as not a focus on ‘the’ lexical approach (Lewis, 1993, 1997), buton a lexical approach in language teaching, a proposal on how to optimize a ‘chunk-oriented pedagogy’ (p. 17).Moreover, Boers and Lindstromberg add that while Lewis’s lexical approach was instrumental in raising languageteachers’ awareness as to the importance of multiword lexical items in SLA, they suggest that the added value of theirnew book is 1) more attention to the role memory plays in the learning of language chunks, and 2) the benefit of overdecade’s worth of research from applied and cognitive linguistics that can now help better operationalize the approach.

The authors also go on to outline what they see as three tenets of Lewis’s approach that should be reconsidered orabandoned:

1. ‘[C]lass time should be devoted to teaching strategies. rather than to teaching individual items’ (p. 18). Theauthors instead suggest that it is the job of teachers and materials writers to get students learning more languagechunks.

2. ‘[W]hether. students actually commit any of the input to memory is up to the students themselves’ (p. 19). Theauthors see a larger role for mnemonic techniques that will accelerate the learning of formulaic sequences.

3. ‘Lexis is arbitrary, and so there is no point in trying to explain why any particular word combination (consti-tutes). a chunk’ (p. 19). The authors counter that many word partnerships are not arbitrary and why they gotogether can often be explained, and this explanation can have learning benefits.

The rest of the book, therefore, in large part is an exploration and description of theory, research and techniques thatsupport the above three assertions.

In Chapter 2, ‘The Contribution of Chunks to Acquisition and Proficiency’, the authors first compare the nature andnecessity of L1 and L2 chunk acquisition and note that although people may retrieve formulaic language frommemory in prefabricated chunks in their native language(s), this may not be the case in the acquisition of laterlanguages. On the basis of this idea, Boers and Lindstromberg suggest that language teachers should ‘help theirstudents make the best of the analytical processing mode by attaining highly consolidated procedural knowledge ofknown chunks’ (p. 27). In addition, the authors claim that this more limited access to the holistic mechanisms presentin L1 acquisition is also reason to be sceptical of an exclusively exemplar-based acquisition of an L2 grammar byadults. Nevertheless, the authors note that there is evidence that L2 learners benefit from formulaicity, citing studiesshowing that learners who receive explicit instruction in formulaic sequences are generally perceived as being moreproficient relative to peer controls.

doi:10.1016/j.system.2010.03.007

337Book review / System 38 (2010) 336e338

The authors in Chapter 3 review the mechanisms by which formulaic sequences can be acquired incidentally andreturn to what the authors view as one of Lewis’s problematic tenets, that of the importance of teaching strategiesrather than particular chunks. They note that research has shown that the likelihood of incidental uptake of unfamiliarvocabulary is not very high or dependable, and the fact that the vast majority of multiword items occur relativelyinfrequently compounds this dilemma. Furthermore, the authors posit that collocations that are relatively composi-tional, such as tell a lie, may not even be noticed as their semantics do not really interfere with comprehension.

In the light of the arguments built in Chapter 3, in Chapter 4 the authors present a rationale for a systematicselection of formulaic sequences for explicit instruction in the classroom. Asserting that ‘highest-frequency phrasesare the ones which, by simple virtue of being very common, stand the best chance of being learned incidentally’(p. 61), Boers and Lindstromberg advocate the prioritization of ‘medium-frequency’ chunks. In addition, thosemedium-frequency chunks, according to the authors, should be fixed or semi-fixed (since deviations from theirnormal forms can be particularly problematic), and have semantic properties (e.g. imageability e carrot and stick)and phonological characteristics (e.g. alliteration e through thick and thin) that are conducive to mnemonicelaboration. In other words, as opposed to Lewis’s contention that word combinations are largely arbitrary andtherefore defy formal explanation, Boers and Lindstromberg demonstrate in the book that there are in fact manyformulaic sequences whose semantic and/or phonological properties explain why certain words co-occur the waythey do e and, according to the authors, such elaboration has mnemonic benefits. These items are referred to asespecially ‘teachable’ as they have mnemonic potential, but that potential ‘is unlikely to be taken full advantage ofby the students themselves unaided’ (p. 70).

Further on, the authors discuss how, once selected, formulaic sequences could be organized in a syllabus and bylearners. They again cite Lewis, who favoured vocabulary notebooks that included open formats for the recording ofchunks of language that learners would, theoretically at least, fill in over time. Boers and Lindstromberg take issuewith such an approach, arguing that it is not likely that learners will be able to identify chunks on their own, let alonepossess the level of motivation to do so autonomously. Moreover, the authors question whether merely recording anitem will be conducive to acquisition. Instead, the authors believe that ‘it is possible to pre-design’ a lexical notebookwith boxes that require more cognitive involvement, such as organizing lexis to reflect semantic prosody, for example.

Towards the end of the book, the authors discuss other issues surrounding the learning of chunks, such as breadthversus depth of knowledge, and automaticity. On automaticity, Boers and Lindstromberg recommend a return todrilling that to some may seem reminiscent of audiolingual methods of teaching. However, the authors suggest thatsuch repetition can help students both remember and fluently produce the formulaic sequences targeted for explicitinstruction. The authors conclude by exploring potential future directions in the teaching and testing of formulaiclanguage.

Without a doubt, this book is a timely and important contribution to the rapidly growing body of literature onformulaic language. Throughout the book, however, one of the most troubling issues I found was the authors’ iterativereference to Lewis’s work. After all, Boers and Lindstromberg make it a point early in the book to clarify that theywish discuss ‘a’ lexical approach, not ‘the’. Additionally, although some critical analysis of Lewis’s work is perfectlyappropriate in this book, a number of the criticisms of Lewis levelled by the authors seemed superfluous, andsometimes even misleading. For example, although it is true that Lewis tended to overstate ‘awareness raising’ asa pedagogic panacea in his writing and overestimate the level of motivation a learner would need in order toimplement the strategies he advocated, he was never against the explicit teaching of specific formulaic chunks in theclassroom; he merely stressed the futility of counting on that practice as a means to accumulating a critical mass oflexis. In fact, many of the very materials that Lewis himself either wrote or commissioned were based on a pre-selected set of formulaic items. I know this to be so because I helped write some of them (Flower and Martinez,1995; Lewis, 1997, pp. 146e152; Martinez, 1997).

Moreover, Boers and Lindstromberg often seem eager in the book to find fault in Lewis’s work, but then sometimesinclude ideas that were actually first proposed by Lewis without giving him credit. In particular, in their discussion ofautomaticity in Chapter 7, the authors discuss repetition and oral drilling without once mentioning Lewis’s musings inthis area in his original (1993) work: ‘There is, thus, a strong pedagogical case for introducing lexical phrases into theclassroom, and asking students to repeat them several times in a drill activity.’ (Lewis, 1993, p. 127).

In addition, although I wholeheartedly agree with the authors when they implicitly fault Lewis for dropping bigideas without considering the practical realities of classroom learning, some of the ideas forwarded by Boers andLindstromberg could also be cast in a similar light. For example, the authors’ proposal for a more cognitively engaging

338 Book review / System 38 (2010) 336e338

lexical notebook is undoubtedly theoretically sound, but it is unclear the extent to which learners (and for that matter,teachers) could realistically be expected to diligently record items e especially incidental lexis e in such a way.

In other parts of the book e again, much like Lewis e the authors make claims that seem to conveniently skirtspecificity. For example, instead of the apparently arbitrary nature of lexical chunk selection espoused by Lewis, theauthors propose criteria that prioritize those that are ‘medium frequency’. At no point, however, do the authors clearlydefine what ‘medium frequency’ is. On the other hand, a great number of the examples offered by Boers and Lind-stromberg throughout the book to illustrate the selection criteria (e.g. show someone the ropes, cut no ice withsomeone) are in fact very rare according to the British National Corpus and not at all what one would instinctivelythink of as ‘medium frequency’. Perhaps this putative frequency range is not better operationalized because once theother criteria concerning the preference for what the authors deem as especially ‘teachable’ are included, the numberof ‘medium frequency’ formulaic items that possess features such as alliteration and figurativeness (e.g. hold yourhorses, neck and neck) actually shrinks to the point of questionable significance. But then the authors do not definewhat ‘medium frequency’ means in the first place.

At the same time, the authors seem to completely dismiss the utility of explicit focus on high frequency formulaicchunks. They base this position on the notion that such items (e.g. with a frequency equivalent to the top 3,000 wordsin English) ‘stand the best chance of being learned incidentally’ (p. 61). There are some potential issues with thisposition. First of all, to a large degree it contradicts what Boers and Lindstromberg themselves argue in Chapter 3, thatthe evidence for the efficiency of vocabulary learning by incidental uptake is not very promising e so why exactlyshould these items be any different? Moreover, the authors actually cite empirical research (e.g. Bishop, 2004) thatshows that learners often do not even notice chunks in context. Martinez and Murphy (forthcoming) have shown this tobe especially true when the formulaic items are comprised of very common words, which is generally the case amongthe most frequent chunks in English. What is more, if, as Boers and Lindstromberg claim, formulaic sequences that arerelatively fixed and semantically opaque are good candidates for inclusion, then it behoves L2 pedagogy to includevery high-frequency multiword items (e.g. in order to, take place, one another), especially at lower levels, as a largenumber of the most frequent multiword expressions exhibit precisely those properties (Martinez and Schmitt,submitted for publication) and, moreover, there is evidence in learner corpora (e.g. the Cambridge LearnerCorpus) that e despite their frequency e they are not generally acquired until relatively late, if at all.

Despite these criticisms, Optimizing a Lexical Approach to Instructed Second Language Acquisition should beembraced by anyone interested in formulaic language, but especially by those directly involved in L2 instruction, suchas teachers and textbook writers. Although many of the specific recommendations in the book, such as how chunksshould be prioritized for instruction, perhaps represent but a few of the myriad possible ways of implementing a lexicalapproach rather than, as the authors seem to suggest, a central one, the overall message of the book is nonethelesssound: learners benefit from explicit engagement with formulaic sequences in instructed language learning, and thereare some concrete ways of selecting, teaching and practicing them that should be included in L2 pedagogy. It is, asLewis claimed back in 1993, at least ‘a way forward’.

References

Bishop, H., 2004. Noticing formulaic sequences: a problem of measuring the subjective. LSO Working Paper. Linguistics 4, 15e19.

Flower, J., Martinez, R., 1995. American Business Vocabulary. LTP, Hove, UK.

Lewis, M., 1993. The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and a Way Forward. LTP, Hove, UK.

Lewis, M., 1997. Implementing the Lexical Approach: Putting Theory into Practice. LTP, Hove, UK.

Martinez, R., 1997. Conversation Lessons: The Natural Language of Conversation. LTP, Hove, UK.

Martinez, R., 2010. In: Corrigan, Roberta, Moravcsik, Edith A., Ouali, Hamid, Wheatley, Kathleen M. (Eds.), Review of Formulaic Language,

vols. 1 and 2, pp. 152e154. System 38(1).

Martinez, R., Murphy, V. The effect of frequency and idiomaticity in second language reading comprehension. TESOL Quarterly, forthcoming.

Martinez, R., Schmitt, N. A phrasal expressions list, submitted for publication.

Ron MartinezUniversity of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

E-mail address: ronmartinez@yahoo.com