LEXICAL APPROACH
LEXICAL APPROACH
The Chomsky’s notion of a native speaker’s output consisting of an infinite number of “creative” utterances is at best a half-truth. In fact prefabricated items represent a significant portion of a native speaker’s spoken and written output. Native speakers have a vast stock of these lexical prefabricated items or chunks and are vital for fluent production. Fluency does not depend so much on having a set of generative grammar rules and a separate stock of words as on having rapid access to a stock of lexical chunks. It would seem, then, that speakers need both a prefabricated, automated element to draw on as well as a creative, generative one. Referring to this article I think that students most of the time do not have much fluency in conversation because they want to express in a correct grammatical way and this is not a good option because students should use the prefabricated word that they have in their main to fabricate phrases and sentences. The grammar in this case plays a secondary role.
Once the importance of prefabricated language is acknowledged, the grammar/vocabulary dichotomy becomes obviously false. In fact, language has long been analyzed as consisting of grammatical structures and a set of usually single vocabulary items. Grammar has been given priority over vocabulary. The latter has been seen as secondary in importance, merely serving to illustrate the meaning and scope of the grammar. In the lexical Approach this dichotomy is unrealistic and considered to be based on false assumptions about language. Language is basically its lexicon. The key principle of a lexical approach is that “language consists of
grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar.� In other words, lexis is central in creating meaning; grammar plays a secondary role in managing meaning. When this principle is accepted, the logical implication for teachers is that we should spend more time helping learners develop their stock of phrases, and less time on grammatical structures. I think that this is true because our language is formed not just from the knowledge we get from the school, also it is formed with the knowledge or vocabulary we get from our environment. Moreover, teacher should concentrate in the vocabulary meaning in students instead of the correct use of grammar in the vocabulary.
Students seem to be more proficient in two skills, i.e. speaking and listening, despite the fact that the approach itself emphasizes all the four skills. Students may be able to speak and communicate well, but the effectiveness of vocabulary and grammar used is still questionable. With the recent campaign for the lexical approach, EFL personnel have increased their attention in Collocations. This article is true because sometimes learner study English just for understand and form communicate with others, they do not pay attention in the use of a correct grammar.
The lexical approach makes a distinction between vocabulary—traditionally understood as a stock of individual words with fixed meanings—and lexis, which includes not only the single words but also the word combinations that we store in our mental lexicons. Lexical approach advocates argue that language consists of meaningful chunks that, when combined, produce continuous coherent text, and only a minority of spoken sentences are entirely novel creations. It means that our vocabulary is full of words and word combinations that we get of our daily life. Other aspect is that language is based in chunks or word that we put together and makes sense or coherence. Positioning the Lexical Approach
Connections with the Natural Approach and the Communicative Approach.
”The Lexical Approach values comprehensible input in the way outlined in
Krashen’s input theory.” (Lewis 1997) ”it is the exposure to enough suitable input, not formal teaching, which is the key to increasing the learner’s lexicon.” (Lewis 1997)
”Acquisition, over which the teacher has no direct control, is valued, rather than formal learning.” (Lewis 1997)
”The lexical Approach re-emphasizes much that was put forward in the original Communicative approach, most notably the centrality of meaning.” (Lewis 1997)
”When people use language for real communication, they instinctively pay attention to only those mistakes which impede communication. Why, then, do language teachers ever attend to anything else? Correcting anything other than written work is explicitly anti-educational.