What Is The Lexical Approach

In addition to the vocabulary in their readings, students have been expected to learn twenty-five new vocabulary words per week. The focus is not on rote memorization of definitions; students must know synonyms, antonyms, and especially how to use vocabulary words in the context of the entire sentence. They study how to choose the right word for their purpose (diction) and analyze the subtleties of language.

If teachers have prior knowledge of the subparts of the English language, as well as knowledge of the diverse cultures he/she is instructing can help the teacher create and blend a comprehensive and student-inclusive lesson plan and curriculum. Prior knowledge influences how the teacher and students interact with the learning materials as both individuals and a group. (Kujawa and Huske, 1995) Prior knowledge assists in segue of appropriate instruction and retention, because it is a foundation from which to build from and facilitates the idea of making sense of the educational experience.

Punctuation is crucial when you write any piece of literature. While I was peer editing, one common problem always occurs and they were run-on sentences. Run-ons separate great writers from the poor writers. I always kept punctuation on my mind while writing my essay because I know punctuation is crucial while writing any essay so I always review my narrative. However, vocabulary could be a hazard to while writing an essay. Vocabulary separates the children from adults in real life. When I read stories, I know when they are written by uneducated people because they use simple words such as big, good, bad, and etc. In order to get away from baby words I need to use a thesaurus to expand on what I am trying to explain. I myself, a junior in high school, been a victim of using baby words, but there are no excuses so I am trying to create a habit to expand on my

Key features of language include its words and their sub structures such as morphemes, graphemes and syllables at the writing level as well as reading or speaking, words, their meanings and contexts in which the words get spoken or read. Language has to be interpreted as a whole, and not just as the specific word. There must be an explicit pattern or structure. In order for language to be understood correctly, the meaning of words must be arranged in a given context. This is what constructs language; even though words are arbitrary themselves, in order to integrate as a language, they must be used in the appropriate context. This pre-established cultural context is what will enable effective communication. (Daniel Willingham, 2007, p. 1).

The English language is full of so many rules that are applied that most do not even know about. There is phonology, which is the way words sound and morphology, which are the actual words. But, we also have semantics, which is “the study of the meaning or the study of linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form” (Dictionary.com, n.d).

This class observation is from a video of a second grade English class in Atlanta, Georgia. The video is from 2010 and features Ms. Wiggins teaching her students vocabulary words. Ms. Wiggins’s goal was for her students to understand the meaning of the vocabulary words, and to reach that meaning themselves. Rather than giving direct definitions, she guided the class to the correct answers. Although not specified, this video was probably taken during the middle or end of the year. This can be inferred by the automatic responses students had to specific prompts from their teacher, as well as the smooth classroom procedures.

It is not uncommon to say that grammar instruction plays an important role in language teaching. Regarding the status and importance of grammar teaching, a variety of opinions have been made. Batstone (1994) states that “language without grammar would be chaotic: countless words without the indispensable guidelines for how they can be ordered and modified” (p. 4). More vividly, Wang (2010) makes two similes. She compares grammar to the frame of a house, which is a decisive factor to ensure the solidness of it. Additionally, she regards grammar as a walking stick, whose function is to help and support students to learn English. Thus, the nature of grammar instruction manifests its own significance as it helps students

Although vocabulary is the sub-skill of a language, it plays a very important role in language learning and teaching. In fact, vocabulary is central to language and is of paramount importance to language learners. On the other hand, words are the building blocks of a language that are used to label objects, actions, and ideas. In other words, people cannot convey the intended meaning without knowing vocabulary. It is widely accepted that vocabulary is a very important part in English language learning because no one can communicate in any meaningful way without vocabulary. As McCarthy (1990) stated, the single, biggest component of any language course is vocabulary. Nation (1990) also affirms that vocabulary can be considered as the most important element in language learning because Learners think that many of their

For many years vocabulary was seen as incidental to the main purpose of language teaching – namely the acquisition of grammatical knowledge about the language. Vocabulary was necessary to give students something to hang on to when learning structures, but was frequently not a main focus for learning itself. If language structures make up the skeleton of language, then it is vocabulary that provides the vital organs and the flesh. An ability to manipulate grammatical structure does not have any potential for expressing meaning unless words are used. Then structural accuracy seems to

Collocations was first brought up by Palmer (1933) in English language teaching. However, in 1957, Firth introduced collocations to the theoretical linguistics. Collocations are pervasive in texts of all genres and domains. Collocation can be defined as ‘the grammatical company a word keeps and the positions it refers’ (Hoey, 2005).

Well to start off, let’s have a look at what grammar even is. Grammar can be defined as the ‘systematic study and description of a language’ or as ‘a set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structure of a language, usually intended as an aid to the learning of the language.’ These definitions were taken from grammar.com.

According to Halliday systemic functional linguistics (SFL) considers a language as a system of expressing meaning within context. Generally it is applied in understanding the quality of texts, the most authentic products of human interaction. Halliday (1985) considers a text as a semantic phenomenon but not as a grammatical one. However, as he notes semantics is interrelated to grammar as meaning is conveyed through wording that is with the help of grammar. In order to trace the meaning of a text discursive grammar should be functional and semantic at the same time, to be precise, grammatical categories must be interpreted as an expression of semantic models. Thus, according to Fontaine

In this essay I will discuss the definition of the concept grammar in linguistic science and thee attitude teachers may have towards such a conceptualization of what grammar is. I will go into detail by explaining perspective and descriptive grammar.

‘The lexical approach can be summarized in a few words: language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks. The lexical approach is a way of analysing and teaching language based on the idea that it is made up of lexical units rather than grammatical structures. The units are words and chunks formed by collocations and fixed phrases’ (nd.p215).

1. Definitions do the trick. Knowing the meaning of a word is not enough. Teachers should also teach the word’s multiple dimensions: structure and pronunciation, grammar, semantics, and spelling.