A teacher writes words and short sentences as language chunks in context as unanalyzed wholes. She then gives the chunks in context for use by learners. What method or approach of teaching of vocabulary does this reflect?

A teacher writes words and short sentences as language chunks in context as unanalyzed wholes. She then gives the chunks in context for use by learners. What method or approach of teaching of vocabulary does this reflect? Correct Answer Lexical approach

Language teaching refers to a process whereby a child gains communicative comprehension or fluency over a language. It involves practice by learners where facilitation is provided by a teacher. There are several methods of English language teaching and the Lexical Approach is one of them.

Key Points

Lexical Approach: The lexical approach, proposed by Michael Lewis (1993), has emerged as an alternative to grammar-based approaches to second language teaching. It focuses on developing learners’ proficiency.

  • This approach focuses on developing learners’ proficiency with lexis, or word and word combinations. Lexis includes not only single words but also the word combinations that people store in their mental lexicons.
  • This approach believes that ‘language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks’ as this approach is a widespread occurrence of multi-word units or lexical chunks in native speakers’ languages.
  • Lexical phrases in any language offer more communicative and expressive power than grammatical structures. This approach gives special attention to collocations which helps the individuals to communicate effectively in a particular context.
  • For example, a teacher of class VI presented vocabulary to her learners not as individual words, but as unanalyzed chunks like 'as far as possible' 'whenever possible' and so on

Hence, it is clear that the above-mentioned method of teaching vocabulary is known as the Lexical approach.

Additional Information 

  • A communicative approach is a method of language teaching which makes learners confident to communicate effectively by involving them in real communication. It highlights the importance of real communication.
  • A structural approach is a language tool that helps the learner to master the structure or pattern of sentences. It is the descriptive approach that gives more importance to speech only without reference to meaning.

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