M1 Lexis 2

The Distance Delta
Lexis 2
The Distance Delta
© International House London and the British Council
1 © Copyright The Distance Delta

The Distance Delta
Lexis 2
Summary
We will begin by briefly considering the size of the English lexicon and how much native
speakers know of it. We will then look at what we know about how vocabulary is stored in
our minds, and what suggestions this seems to offer about teaching. Then we will consider
what it means to ‘know’ a word. We will then go on to consider the different criteria we can
use in selecting lexis for a teaching programme. We will be looking at different ways of
introducing lexis and what the important elements to cover are. However, as well as the
direct teaching of lexis we need to consider how we can offer incidental learning
opportunities and finally how we can equip learners with the right kind of strategies to
become independent learners of lexis.
Objectives
By the end of this input you will be able to:
▪ Demonstrate awareness of the basis on which lexical items may be selected for inclusion
in the syllabus, scheme of work or lesson plan.
▪ Display awareness of what is involved in knowing a lexical item.
▪ Describe the differences between spoken and written lexis.
▪ Describe and select appropriate procedures for helping learners acquire and learn lexis
in and outside the classroom.
▪ Demonstrate familiarity with a range of classroom procedures and techniques for the
teaching of lexis.
▪ Demonstrate awareness of the rationale underlying these procedures and techniques.
▪ Demonstrate awareness of how learners can be encouraged to become more

autonomous in their learning of lexis.

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Contents
1. Vocabulary Size: The Language and What We Know
2. The Mental Lexicon
2.1. Words in the Mind
2.2. Teaching Implications
3. Knowing a Word
3.1. Meaning
3.2. Connotation
3.3. Register
3.4. Variety
3.5. Style
3.6. Word Association
3.7. Written Form: Spelling
3.8. Phonological Form: Syllables, Sounds and Stress
3.9. Word Class
3.10 Collocation
3.11 Retrieval
4. Written and Spoken Lexis
4.1. Overview
4.2. Features of Spoken Lexis
5. Lexis in Language Learning
6. Explicit or Direct Teaching of Lexis
6.1. Selecting Lexis for Teaching Purposes
6.2. Frequency
6.3. Range
6.4. Availability
6.5. Teachability and Learnability
6.6. Learners’ Needs
7. Teaching Lexis
7.1. Ordering Lexis

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7.2. Grouping Lexical Items for Teaching Purposes
7.3. How many items?
7.4. Introducing Lexis
7.5. What do we need to teach?
7.5.1. Collocation
7.5.2. Checking Meaning
7.5.3. Pronunciation
7.5.4. Spelling
7.6. Practising Lexis
7.7. Using Corpora in the Classroom
8. Incidental Learning
9. Vocabulary Learning Strategies
10. Lexis in Teaching Materials
11. Conclusion
12. Terminology Review
Reading

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1. Vocabulary Size: The Language and What We Know

Estimates of the size of the English language have varied tremendously. Schmitt and
McCarthy in Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy quote estimates ranging
from 400,000 to millions of words. There is an obvious problem in what counts as a word
e.g. are ‘loved’ and ‘loving’ the same, are the different meanings of ‘bear’ the same, and
what about chunks like ‘to kick the bucket’? Are they one lexical item or two or four?
Various attempts have also been made to estimate the number of words that a native
speaker knows. Wallace says:
Estimates of the vocabulary of educated native speakers vary very widely: many
estimates of recognition (i.e. passive) vocabulary come out at between 100,000 and
200,000 words, including words derived from the same root (like glad and gladly). Even
very conservative estimates put the number at 40,000 words.
Wallace, Teaching Vocabulary, p31
Gairns and Redman state:
An educated speaker is able to understand between 45,000 and 60,000 items,

although no native speaker would pretend that his productive vocabulary would
approach this figure.
Gairns & Redman, Working with Words, p65
More recently, Norbert Schmitt quotes estimates in terms of word families i.e. the base
word, all of its inflections and its common derivatives. He reports that researchers identified
a total of about 54,000 word families in the English language based on a count of Webster’s
1963 dictionary. A child of five has a vocabulary of about 4,000 to 5,000 word families and
this is added to by about 1000 per year, meaning that an English native speaking university
graduate would have a vocabulary size of about 20,000 word families.
In contrast to the impossibility of learning every word in English, these figures indicate
that building a native-sized vocabulary might be a feasible, although ambitious,
undertaking for a second language learner.
Schmitt, Vocabulary in Language Teaching, p6
Some words are far more used than others. If we distinguish between different genres and
spoken and written language we find that a core vocabulary of very frequent items exists.
Many of the words that make up the 54,000 word families are not encountered that often
although educated native speakers still have some knowledge of many of them, unless they
are from very particular specialised areas.
2. The Mental Lexicon

As we have already seen, a native speaker has an impressively-sized vocabulary. This, along
with the fact that we manage to access words so rapidly, whether hearing or seeing
(understanding) them, or saying or writing (producing) them, means that they must be
organised in a systematic way in our minds. Insights into how we organise our knowledge of
lexis may help us decide on appropriate teaching strategies and techniques for our students.
Bear in mind that knowledge about this area is limited and also much research relates to
first language rather than second language learners.

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2.1. Words in the Mind

Based on research including word association experiments, I say a word and you say a word
that comes to mind, and looking at native speaker slips of the tongue, certain assumptions
can be made about how our knowledge of lexis is organised in our minds.
Words seem to be organised in semantic fields and there are all sorts of links, not only
between words, but whole schemata or areas of ‘encyclopaedic’ knowledge. In other words
one lexical item sets off many associations and many links. Words seem to be stored in
complex webs or nets.
Somewhere the word is related by an intricate series of links to an encyclopaedia of

world knowledge gathered over many years. Encyclopaedic information is also
organised and may often provide links between words. This kind of knowledge
produces a web-like set of associations.
McCarthy, Vocabulary, p41
▪ In terms of links between lexical items, co-ordination is the strongest feature i.e. words
on the same level of detail; this includes opposites.
e.g. bread - butter, yellow - green, left - right, good - bad
▪ Words which collocate are strongly associated e.g. bright - red, fish - finger,
▪ Other apparently slightly weaker associations include superordination, hyponymy and

synonymy.
▪ Beginnings and ends of words, the number of syllables, the stress and the general
rhythmic pattern are prominent. Rhythmic patterns and stressed vowel sounds are
particularly prominent for children. Thus words with similar phonological patterns are
associated.
▪ Words within the three major classes of words, verbs, nouns, adjectives, are closely
bonded together.
▪ Words with similar spelling patterns are connected.
▪ It is also evident that we do not store items individually but sometimes in chunks. It also
seems that derived words are also stored whole and we do not have to assemble them
before producing them.
McCarthy points out that these are aspects of knowing a language well:
If the L1 lexicon seems to associate words according to clearly definable types of

relation, it may not necessarily be so for L2. Learners may for a long time lack the
ability to make instantaneous collocational associations and may be more inclined to
associate L2 words by sound similarities.
McCarthy, Vocabulary, p40

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Look at the diagram by McCarthy (Vocabulary p42). It shows a small part of the 3
dimensional net or web he sees as existing around the word television. If you or your
students were to do your own version, there would be similarities but also
differences based on cultural differences or different language associations.
Native speakers are able to retrieve words extremely quickly, the more frequent and used
they are the quicker. In writing it may take longer since we are usually more careful in our

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choice of words or expressions. In listening or reading we do not pay attention to every part
of the word: the general shape, orthographical or phonological shape may be enough for
comprehension to take place since relevant schemata are already in place to aid
comprehension.
For further reading see McCarthy, M. Vocabulary OUP Chapter 3.
2.2. Teaching Implications

Although most research on the mental lexicon relates to native speakers, it seems logical
that we should be helping our learners build up a similar mental lexicon for English. Theirs
will fit in some way with their existing L1 lexicon of course.
There is no general agreement as to how the various lexicons are organised in

the minds of bilingual and multilingual speakers - though there is increasing
evidence in favour of a single integrated network.
Aitchison Words in the Mind p205
Thinking about Teaching
Thinking about the mental lexicon, you can see links with how you teach vocabulary. For
example, modelling and drilling new lexical items, pointing out stress or similarities to other
words in terms of sounds is useful because these feature quite strongly in the way we store
lexis although this may be stronger for some learners than others. We can also get students
to categorise and group items in a personally meaningful way or relate lexical items to their
personal experience.
The teaching of lexical items in lexical sets is important as it helps learners make associations
and connections in different ways. Items can be organised along the following lines:
▪ Synonyms, co-ordinates, superordinates, antonyms etc.
▪ Synophones (words that sound similar e.g. wonder/wander, wink/blink) or homophones
▪ Grouping words according to sounds
▪ Grouping words according to spelling patterns
▪ Grouping words according to part of speech
▪ Collocates
3. Knowing a Word
There is a big difference in the degree to which we ‘know’ different words. Some we may
have a very vague idea of, others we may be fully confident with and be able to use
completely accurately and appropriately. For example, you know ‘isobars’ are some kind of
lines on weather maps but not much beyond that. You know how to spell the word and what
it sounds like, but have no real, workable knowledge of the meaning. Similarly, at times we
know how and when to use a word orally, but cannot spell it:
A distinction is often made between receptive (passive) and productive (active) vocabulary.
Receptive means that we understand it, productive means that we can also use it. However,

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this distinction does not tell the whole story, as we see from the examples given above. As
McCarthy points out:
The active/passive distinction has been under attack for some time… It is
rejected on the grounds that it takes a simplistic view of the way in which the
lexicon is stored in the mind i.e. as a static thing kept in two separate
compartments.
McCarthy, Vocabulary p45
What is important though is that there are different elements involved in knowing a word.
We may start off with just one or two of these bits of knowledge and, as we meet the word
again, each time we learn something else about it. We may learn of new contexts in which it
occurs and refine our grasp of its meaning, we may find new collocates, we may learn the
pronunciation, or how to spell it and so on.
3.1. Meaning
The referential, denotative or core meaning are different terms used to refer to meaning
that is intrinsic to a lexical item. It is the meaning that you find in a dictionary. For example:
▪ Skinny is ‘unattractively thin’.
▪ A suburb is ‘a district away from the centre of a town or city, especially one where
people live’.
▪ An anorak is ‘a short coat with a hood that is worn as protection against rain, wind and
cold’.
▪ A thatched cottage is ‘a small simple house especially in the country in Britain with a
roof made of dried straw, reeds or similar material’.
One word may of course have several different meanings, homonymy, or several related
meanings, polysemy. We should also mention here the use of metaphor. If we fully know the
meaning of a word that includes certain institutionalised metaphorical uses, then if we come
across it used in an unusual metaphorical way we still try to make sense of it.
If you are unsure of the use of these terms, review Lexis 1.
3.2. Connotation
Also known as connotative meaning, affective meaning and emotive meaning, these terms
refer to meaning that is ‘additional’, and which shows people’s attitudes towards things.
Connotation may be shared by a group of people of the same cultural or social background,
gender, or age; others may be restricted to one or several individuals and depend on their
personal experience.
Connotation may be simply positive or negative but it is often more complex than that. For
example, the dictionary tells us that spinster is ‘sometimes derog’ (derogatory).
For instance, summer afternoon may conjure up a whole range of associations with things
such as sunshine, beaches, laziness etc. all things that are part of your schemata. In a
different culture the schematic knowledge summoned by one lexical item may be entirely
different. In some cultures the term ‘old house’ has negative associations as people in that

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culture generally prefer living in newly constructed buildings in the latest style with the most
modern facilities. In other cultures it has positive associations, ones related to the building
having character, a sense of history and even greater value. ‘Skinny’ has associations with
under-nourishment and illness and ‘suburb’ has associations of being middle-class and dull.
However, it is important to remember that connotation may be quite personal or restricted
to certain groups of people so not all connotations will be universal.
3.3. Register
Another aspect of word knowledge is knowing whether the word is a ‘neutral’ word, that is,
used in general contexts, or if it is technical or used only by specialists. This is linked to the
idea of native speaker intuition about frequency: we generally know or have an idea about
how common, or likely, a lexical item is in a particular spoken or written genre. We will
return to this in Section 4, below.
Students sometimes produce lexis in their written work which sounds strange because it is
of the wrong register. E.g. ‘I am writing to you to get some information…’
Register refers to a speech variety used by a particular group of people, usually sharing the
same occupation e.g. doctors, lawyers, ELT teachers or the same interests e.g. tennis,
football, video gaming etc.
A particular register often distinguishes itself from other registers by having a number of
distinctive words, by using words or phrases in a particular way and sometimes by special
grammatical constructions. A less polite way of referring to register would be jargon.
Some writers use the term register as an umbrella term for the factors that we discuss under
register, variety and style.
3.4. Variety
Variety usually refers to varieties within a language due to geographical or social differences.
Thus we talk about British English, Australian English, Scots dialect, RP, Estuary English,
Geordie, Scouse etc. There may be some grammatical differences but lexical differences
tend to be quite marked e.g. in American English a ‘hood’ is the bonnet of car; a ‘stroller’ is a
pushchair or buggy; a ‘soda’ is a fizzy drink; ‘suspenders’ are braces (to hold up trousers) but
in British English they have completely different meanings.
3.5. Style
By style we refer to the type of language used in a particular genre or because of the level of
formality of the discourse. Structural differences play a part but there are also distinct lexical
differences. In English, for example, words of Latin origin often tend to be more formal.
Consider ‘to request’, which is from Old/Middle French compared to ‘ask’ which is from Old
English.
3.6. Word Association

Another aspect of knowing a word is that we are able to associate it with other words. We
know where it fits in with other words. Word association experiments, as we saw, display
certain patterns which reflect this kind of knowledge. Likely types of associations are words

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that sound similar, words that tend to co-occur e.g. ‘abandon’ and ‘ship’, ‘spend’ and
‘money’, words that collocate, and words that are related in meaning through, for example,
co-ordination, synonymy, antonymy, or other kinds of sense relations.
3.7. Written Form: Spelling

We recognise a word written down and we can also spell it correctly ourselves. Some people
have more difficulty with this than others. It is a learnt skill. Some words are commonly
misspelt by native speakers and non-natives alike e.g. ‘definitely’ and ‘separate’. Sometimes
confusion stems from the variety of English used e.g. ‘practise’ (verb) UK and ‘practice’(verb)
US but also changes in spelling related to the form of the word can be problematic e.g.
‘practise’ (verb) or ‘practice’ (noun) (UK). Other words e.g. ‘responsible’ may be spelt
incorrectly as a result of the spelling in the student’s L1, ‘responsable’ in Spanish.
3.8. Phonological Form: Syllables, Sounds and Stress

This relates to knowing what a word sounds like and how to say it. We know if it sounds like
other words in terms of sounds, number of syllables and stress. For example:
Ooo oOoo
comfortable incredible
probable reliable
portable reversible
fashionable impossible
3.9. Word Class

We know if a word is a noun, verb or adjective. Even if native speakers are unaware of these
labels they will still use the words in a grammatically appropriate way in a sentence.
3.10. Collocation
Collocation can be divided into lexical collocation and grammatical collocation (colligation).
Lexical collocation covers items like ‘make a mistake’ whereas grammatical collocation
covers things like dependent prepositions, for example, ‘to apologise for doing something’
or ‘to be good at something’. Another aspect of collocation is word order. There are fixed
patterns in binomials and trinomials, such as ‘a black and white television’ (not white and
black), ‘when I’m old and grey’ (not grey and old) and ‘every Tom, Dick and Harry’ (not
Harry, Dick and Tom).
3.11. Retrieval
This is a slightly different aspect of knowing a word. We all know the feeling of not being
able to remember a word. Sometimes a word seems to get lost or we are searching around
for it. Then we suddenly remember it later. This seems to be a temporary hiccup, though,
and does not happen that often. We can say that the ability to perceive and produce i.e.
receptive or productive retrieval is another basic element in knowing a word.

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4. Written and Spoken Lexis
4.1. Overview
Early descriptions of the structure and lexis of English were based almost exclusively on
written samples. However, recent developments in research techniques and more
representative sources of data, such as corpus linguistics, have allowed us to see far better
what differences exist between written and spoken English, and what exactly we should
teach learners if we wish to develop their competence in spoken English. The Longman
Spoken and Written Corpus, the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English
(CANCODE) and the British National Corpus (BNC) have all thrown up fascinating data about
variations between spoken and written English. We looked at how corpus data has given us
information about differences in lexical selection depending on genre previously in Lexis 1 in
the course materials. We will now look at some of the major differences
4.2. Features of Spoken English

Spoken English has a number of salient features which are not shared by written English.
The most significant are:
▪ The standard unit of spoken English is the clause, rather than the sentence;
▪ Meaningful interaction can be maintained with turns of only one item: can you work out
what is happening in this exchange? ‘Ready?’ – ‘Yeah’ – ‘Okay’ – ‘Good’ – ‘Oh’ – ‘What?’
– ‘Keys’ – ‘Mmm’ – ‘Ah’ – ‘Right’ – ‘Okay’.
▪ Certain words in written English tend to be used semantically, e.g. now is used as a time
adverbial. In spoken English, words take on a discoursal role: Now in spoken English is
used to get attention or mark a change of topic.
▪ Interestingly, the average native speaker’s vocabulary of spoken English is roughly half
that of the written language (Nation, I.S.P. 1990, Teaching and Learning Vocabulary
Newbury House). Schmitt has calculated that 2,000 words account for 95% of all typical
spoken interaction (Schmitt, N. 2000 Vocabulary in Language Teaching CUP). Research
has also calculated that in order to increase this figure by 1% to 96% a native speaker
needs to know 3,000 words. It would, therefore, seem that teaching learners any items
outside these ‘core’ 2,000 words is not an effective use of class time: speaking English
well does not mean having a large vocabulary when speaking.
▪ In order to get around the reduced lexicon of spoken English, we use much more vague
language, such as ‘kind of’ or ‘or something’, and repetition.
▪ Lower lexical density than written English. Lexical density is calculated by working out
the ratio of content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) to function words.
Spoken English has a lower information load than written English, as most functions of
spoken English tend to be more interactional than transactional;
▪ Lower lexical variety. A text may comprise, say, 20 items but 5 of them occur twice. So,
in fact, the text uses only 15 items. Spoken English has much lower lexical variety than
written English. In other words, there is a lot of repetition of items and less substitution
and use of synonyms than in written English.
▪ Vague language e.g. ‘kind of’, ‘or something’, ‘I mean’, ‘that sort of thing’ etc. are very
frequent spoken lexical items. Contrary to the letters which appear in national

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newspapers, such language is not symptomatic of falling standards of English, nor of

slovenly speech. Rather, they reveal a sensitivity on the part of the speaker not to sound
overly-authoritative or superior. Compare ‘Well, speak to your boss’ with ‘Well, speak to
your boss or something.’ Which sounds less domineering?
▪ The selection of discourse markers tends to be more limited, and also more informal:
‘anyway’, rather than ‘another important aspect is…’, ‘so’, rather than ‘for this reason’
and so on.
▪ More use of delexicalised verbs e.g. ‘get’, ‘do’, ‘make’ and ‘so on’ which have no real
independent meaning, and their associated collocations.
▪ ‘Basic’ nouns, verbs and adjectives.
▪ More use of deictics to share place and time with people, e.g. ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘now’ and
‘then’.
The corollary of all this research is what classroom use we should now make of the findings.
McCarthy believes we should focus first on exposing learners to the 2,000 words needed for
effective competence, and this would make sense. Elementary learners can achieve a basic
(if unstructured) communicative competence with the acquisition of selected lexical items.
Teaching materials currently are moving towards a more lexically-driven syllabus, although
the dominance of structures would still appear to hold sway.
5. Lexis in Language Learning

The sheer size of the lexicon, its importance and the fact that ‘knowing a word’ is a matter of
degree has implications for the teaching and learning of lexis. The main implications are:
▪ Some lexis must be dealt with explicitly. We need to select which lexical items to teach
to our learners. We need therefore to think about the criteria for selection of vocabulary
for different learners. We also need to think about how to group lexical items in our
teaching. However, since knowing a word is not a black and white thing we need to
consider vocabulary acquisition as a process that will take place over time. It may or may
not be important for learners to learn ‘everything’ about a word the first time they meet
it. We need to have appropriate teaching techniques for dealing with lexis.
▪ Activities in which incidental learning of vocabulary can occur (maybe first or

subsequent exposure to a lexical item) need to be included in a teaching programme as
well as explicit teaching activities.
▪ Since there is so much lexis in a language, learners will also need to acquire or learn and
develop their vocabulary on their own. Teachers can help them do this by training them
in strategies for dealing with unknown items. We also need to bear in mind that words
can be forgotten and take this into consideration in our teaching and in our strategy
training. We need to provide learners with strategies for remembering vocabulary.
In the following sections, we explore some of these areas in more detail.
6. Explicit or Direct Teaching of Lexis

The explicit teaching of lexis is now considered an important part of what we do in the
classroom. It is particularly important at lower levels since until the learners have some

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knowledge of the most frequent and useful items they are unlikely to be able to take
advantage of incidental learning opportunities.
McCarthy writes:
For many language teachers the broader questions of what vocabulary to teach will be
in someone else’s hands (syllabus designers, for example) or will have already been
determined by the coursebook or other factors. Even so, it should be a matter of great
concern to teachers how their syllabuses and materials have been designed, what
criteria (if any) have been followed in making decisions about vocabulary content in
language courses, and what the goals of particular decisions are. Without addressing
such questions it becomes difficult to evaluate syllabuses and materials, difficult to
understand oneself why particular vocabulary is to be taught, and, often, difficult to
explain to learners why they are being asked to learn particular words.
McCarthy op cit p79
Now let us consider some of the different ways in which vocabulary can be and is selected
for teaching purposes.
6.1. Frequency
Frequency refers to the number of times a word occurs in the language.
You may remember that we referred to Michael West’s General Service List of English
Words as one of the best-known early word lists (published 1953). It was based on a sample
of about five million words (taken from written text) and listed the most frequent two
thousand words. It also took into account different parts of speech and different meanings
of items.
For the last few decades advances in technology have made it possible to record vast
amounts of text to build up corpora or corpuses. These can be used for a variety of research
purposes. One of the simplest uses of such a corpus is to see which words occur most
frequently in the language.
Below is a list of the 50 most frequent words in:
▪ General English i.e. written and spoken text of varying types
▪ Spoken English
▪ The specialised genre of car repair manuals
As you can see, ‘I’ and ‘you’ are higher frequency in speaking than General English and in the
specialised text there are many content words, in this case nouns and verbs related to
automotive repairs. These words would be found with much lower frequency across non-
specialised texts.

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From Schmitt, N. 2000 Vocabulary in Language Teaching Cambridge University Press (p72)

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The often repeated finding of frequency counts has been that the most frequent
2,000 headwords account for at least 85% of the words on any page of any book
no matter what the subject matter. The same words give an even greater
coverage of spoken language. Focussing learners’ attention on the high-
frequency words of the language gives a very good return for learning effort.
Nation, P. & Newton, J. Teaching Vocabulary in Coady, J. and Huckin, T. (eds)

Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (CUP 1997) p238
Nation suggests that the 2000 most common words should be the initial teaching goal and
then teaching can focus on low frequency items or specialised items such as technical or
academic language depending on what they are going to use English for. The advantages of
using frequency counts are as follows:
▪ Corpuses can be kept up to date.
▪ Concordances which display the environment in which the word occurs give information
about collocation, meaning and part of speech in terms of most frequent occurrences.
▪ They give insight into differences between spoken and written English.
▪ Obviously these are words that the learner will encounter in all situations.
▪ Most of the most frequent items also have a wide range.
The disadvantages of using frequency counts are as follows:
▪ Words of the same area (topic) are not necessarily of the same frequency, so are difficult
to teach in lexical sets.
▪ Learners in classrooms do have specific needs e.g. words to do with learning like
homework, or pronunciation, or words to do with themselves, their culture, their work
which are not necessarily frequently occurring.
▪ Words that are frequently occurring in native speaker contexts may not be as relevant
for foreign language learners.
Lewis points out that a lot of strong collocates e.g. golden handshake, golden opportunity
are not particularly frequent but their strength alone makes them extremely useful.
6.2. Range
Range refers to the number of different texts in which a word occurs. In selecting vocabulary
it is useful to consider this in addition to frequency. A word could be frequent in one genre,
we saw this in the car manuals word list where the word valve came in at number 15, but
not frequent in a range of different genres.
If you are teaching General English, range is important. You can often use your intuition, or
you can consult a corpus where the number of occurrences of the word, the number of text
types and text samples used is also shown. A dictionary may also indicate if the word is
restricted to certain text types by telling you that it is legal, slang and so on.
Once again your intuition will usually tell you if the word has a wide range: this is part of
‘knowing a word’.

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6.3. Availability
Availability refers to how readily a word comes to mind. For example, a lexical item like
‘washing up liquid’ comes quite easily although it may not be terribly frequent. McCarthy
points out that a word may be more available because it represents a concrete object rather
than something abstract. It is certainly true that if you are brainstorming vocabulary to teach
on a certain topic that the first words you come up with are often concrete nouns.
Words like issue, problem, solution, and approach which do a lot of work in English and are
frequently occurring, may not be very available.
From the foreign language learner’s point of view is availability an important consideration?
Just because a word is available to a native speaker it is not necessarily useful to a learner.
And conversely some words that are not available may actually be very useful.
6.4. Teachability and Learnability

Two terms used to help teachers decide how to select lexical items are ‘teachability’ and
‘learnability’.
Teachability
▪ At item is easy to illustrate meaning
▪ Concrete items are more teachable than abstract ones, especially at low levels
▪ The item is related to other words e.g. part of a lexical set
▪ There is a similar concept in the L1 i.e. it covers same semantic field e.g. ‘ser’/‘estar’ is
classically difficult for learners of Spanish or Portuguese because they both mean ‘to be’
whereas in English there is only one verb for both.
▪ The sound/spelling relationship is straightforward
Learnability
▪ There is no particular phonological/spelling difficulties e.g. ‘vegetable’, ‘comfortable’ are

difficult phonologically, depending on L1. Some words may be difficult to spell correctly,
even intermediate students misspell ‘which’ as 'wich'.
▪ The item may be very similar to an L1 item, or similar to other known L2 words
▪ There are no grammatical problems e.g. ‘he suggested we went’ not ‘he suggested us to
go’
▪ It is meaningful to the student i.e. fits in with their schemata, encyclopaedic knowledge
▪ It is useful to the student, it’s a word they need.
▪ It is not culturally alien e.g. ‘estate agent’, ‘pint of bitter’ are alien depending on who
(and where) you are teaching.
However, just because something is difficult to teach (or learn) does not mean that we
should avoid it. Rather it indicates that the teacher needs to anticipate difficulties of this
kind and plan teaching accordingly.

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Difficulty and learnability cut right across the notions of frequency and range. We
cannot predict that just because a word is frequent it will be learnt quickly and
thoroughly or conversely that because a word is infrequent it will not be easily learnt.
Looking at the 100 most frequent words it is easy to see why they cause problems. A lot are
delexicalised (they carry little meaning by themselves) and have a very wide range of uses.
They are not easy to teach in a direct way; many may be words that learners need to learn
gradually after frequent exposure in context.
6.5. Learners’ Needs

This criteria pulls together many of the others we have just considered and perhaps ends up
being the one thing that should determine selection of vocabulary.
▪ Learners need frequently occurring words because they will meet them often and need
to use them often.
▪ Learners need other words that are relevant to themselves, their learning situation and
their reasons for learning English.
▪ Learning situation could include classroom language, metalanguage used e.g. the words
‘verb’, ‘tense’, ‘subject’ may not be very frequent but are undoubtedly useful for a
language learner. Similarly lexical phrases like, ‘Did you do your homework?’, ‘Fill in the
gaps’ and ‘Work in pairs’ may be taught early on because they are particularly relevant
to the classroom situation.
▪ Things that you need to know or want to know may be more easily learnt than others. If
a learner asks you how to say a non-frequent word in English, it would be perverse not
to tell them just because it was not a frequently occurring word.
▪ Some aspects of native speaker language (common phrases or expressions) may not be
what learners need: it depends on the context in which they are going to use their
English.
Selecting Lexis in Different Contexts
Obviously this will vary according to whatever the local variety of English is, but as some
examples, learners in Britain are more likely to need everyday items such as things to do
with travel (Oystercard, tube); things they might need to buy (shampoo, plasters); names of
food (pickle, roll); appliances (hairdryer, adaptor); entertainment (cinema, tickets); services
(laundrette, cashpoint) etc.
Learners in the USA would need ‘subway’ rather than ‘tube’, ‘movie theatre’ rather than
‘cinema’ etc.
If you are teaching in a NESE (non-English speaking environment), learners will need words
to talk about their country e.g. food, festivals, transport, etc.
You can find out from your learners what vocabulary areas they need by linking it to topics
they are interested in. This will no doubt bring up lots of content words but a lot of language
consists of more abstract words like ‘problem’, ‘solution’, ‘issues’, ‘approach’ etc. which play
an organising function in discourse. They are used a lot and may be misunderstood. Learners
would not be able to identify these kinds of words from analysis of their own needs.

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7. Teaching Lexis
7.1. Ordering Lexis
One criticism of the Lexical Approach is that it does not offer any kind of guidance on
designing a lexically-based syllabus. Traditionally various criteria have been used to select
then order vocabulary for teaching purposes. These have included the following:
▪ Frequency
▪ Fit within a structural syllabus
▪ Teachability
▪ As it comes up in reading texts, writing tasks etc.
▪ Students’ needs e.g. survival English, special purposes etc.
▪ Topic
7.2. Grouping Lexical Items for Teaching Purposes

It is common practice now to group items in lexical sets. This is in line with how it is thought
we store lexical items in our minds.
Since vocabulary consists of a series of interrelating systems and is not just a random
collection of items, there seems to be a clear case for presenting items to a student in
a systematised manner which will both illustrate the organised nature of vocabulary
and at the same time enable him to internalise the items in a coherent way.
Gairns, R. & Redman, S. Working with Words p69
They suggest ways of grouping items but other writers, however, warn against teaching
words in this way, (that is, words that are associated) saying that research has shown that
they are more likely to be confused. Hunt and Beglar in Current Research and Practice in
Teaching Vocabulary (Richards J. C. & W. A. Renandya (eds.), Methodology in Language
Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice Cambridge University Press) advise starting by
learning semantically unrelated words.
Lewis also suggests ways of organising lexis for teaching purposes, some of which are
familiar (topic, situation etc.), and some which may be less so (metaphor, phonological
chunking etc.).
7.3. How many items?

This is another disputed area.
It is impossible to be dogmatic about the number of new lexical items that should be
presented in a sixty-minute lesson. We would suggest an average of eight to twelve
productive items as representing a reasonable input.
Gairns & Redman, Working with Words p66
They also point out, however, that it is unlikely that all of these would be retained by the
learners. Conversely we should remember that learners will also be exposed to many other

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lexical items during their learning of English, through reading, listening or communicative
activities.
Lewis refutes this suggestion of a fixed number of items for ‘presentation’. He prefers to
view vocabulary acquisition as occurring constantly, both in the classroom, and outside
although at differing rates, depending on learners. He believes learners notice more than we
credit them with and that highlighting language formally, especially through some kind of
Presentation – Practice – Production paradigm, can actually be counter-productive.
7.4. Introducing Lexis

It is generally considered useful to contextualise new lexical items to help clarify meaning,
use collocation and also to make the lexical items more memorable. It is an obvious way of
linking new to known, and that is a prerequisite for learning to take place.
The more words are analysed or are enriched by imagistic and other associations, the
more likely it is that they will be retained.
Carter & McCarthy, Vocabulary and Language Teaching p12
However Lewis claims:
De-contextualised vocabulary learning is a fully legitimate strategy.
Lewis, The Lexical Approach, p194
And:
Vocabulary lists can be an effective way to quickly learn word-pair translations.
Nation, 1990, quoted in Hunt, A. & Beglar, D. Current Research and Practice in
Teaching Vocabulary
McCarthy points out:
Research is frustratingly inconclusive as to whether presenting and learning words in

context is superior to learning words by pairs of translation equivalents but most
teachers feel that contextualised input is vital even from the earliest stages; arguably
learners do not get any real grasp of a word anyway until they have performed some
sort of mental contextualisation upon it.
If you think back to what we looked at in terms of the mental lexicon, with the web of
associations for every word, this would seem to support this view.
Ideas for introducing vocabulary at different levels.
Lexis can be introduced through:
▪ Visuals, (drawings, photos, board drawings, OHT drawings) realia, mime, video, the
classroom, the students, the teacher
▪ Reading texts, listening texts
▪ Concordances, dictionaries, lists

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▪ Anecdote, situation, story
▪ Explanation, translation
▪ Also testing/practice techniques, which assume some knowledge on the part of the
learners or require them to use dictionaries, e.g. brainstorming, matching word and
definition, matching word and picture, matching L2 and L1 word, grouping items
according to given criteria, labelling a picture, crosswords, gapfills, putting words on a
cline, role-play, completing spidergrams. Thornbury (2002) talks about the importance
of learners having to make what he terms ‘decisions’ about language. These can be very
undemanding decisions, such as what part of speech the item constitutes, whether it has
any double letters, what other words it could be grouped with, how they could use it to
talk about their own lives and experiences and so on. However, the more decisions
learners make about the item, the more they have to grapple with its central meaning,
and so they are more likely to acquire that item. He terms this ‘cognitive depth’ and this
goes some way to explaining why vocabulary teaching is, often, ineffective: we focus on
meaning once, get learners to apply the item once, then move on. Getting them to do
two, three, or four (five? six?) things with the same items would, Thornbury believes,
lead to more effective, and more frequent, acquisition.
The introduction can be teacher-led, or student-centred if they are given a task to carry out.
Visuals are more likely to be exploitable at lower levels. At upper levels testing/practice
techniques are more likely to be used because the learners have differing degrees of
knowledge about the items and can therefore help each other.
7.5. What do we need to teach?

Looking back at what knowing a word means, we need to cover various aspects when
dealing with new lexis. How much you focus on each element depends of course on how
well the students need to know the item at that point.
7.5.1. Collocation
Collocation is, as we have seen, a strong aspect of word knowledge so this would suggest
that it is a good idea not to teach words in isolation but within a phrase. If a word is
presented in isolation, some time could then be spent looking at common collocates.
Remember, ‘lexical item’ does include more than individual words and pre-fabricated chunks
are an essential part of fluency. As an example, at elementary level the following
collocations could be taught with the four words in bold.
Hair
▪ He/she’s got long/short/blonde/dark/fair/brown/red/black/grey/straight/curly/wavy

hair
▪ A man/woman with ... hair
Salad
▪ A mixed/green/tomato/fruit salad
▪ I’d like a salad

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Wine
▪ Dry/sweet/ red/white/ sparkling wine
▪ I’d like a glass of ....... . / I don’t want any more. / Shall we open a bottle of ........ ?
School
▪ To go to school, to be at school, a primary/secondary school, a language school
7.5.2. Checking Meaning

This means checking that the students really understand what the word is (and is not).
Although it may seem obvious to you, it may not be to the students. In a lesson where a
teacher was presenting a lexical set of household electrical appliances such as vacuum
cleaner, microwave, hi-fi, kettle, and toaster to an intermediate, multilingual group. He was
doing this using some visuals. He held up his (very good) drawing of a toaster. He modelled
and drilled the word then moved onto the next one. At this point one student leaned over to
another and whispered ‘What is toaster?’ The other student hesitated and then whispered
back ‘handbag’!
We have seen that meaning, including connotation, and the way a word is used (register,
style, variety) is an important part of knowing a word so these elements need also to be
highlighted for students.
An additional problem of meaning may arise when the word looks very similar to a word in
L1. In this case the learner may jump to conclusions that the word is the same and not pay
attention to the meaning that has been presented. Examples of these false cognates/false
friends or ‘faux amis’ as far as Latin-based languages are concerned are, ‘sympathetic’,
‘actually’, ‘nervous’ and ‘sensible’.
When dealing with meaning it is often useful to draw upon the sense relations. For example:
you might refer to superordinates and hyponyms e.g. car, bus, van, are types of vehicle, or
you may offer an antonym e.g. bland is the opposite of tasty, or offer a synonym as an
explanation e.g. wealthy means rich. This kind of technique will not be sufficient on its own
but helps to build up the picture of the word meaning. Relating new to known is an
important part of learning and it should help the learners begin building their own web of
associations for lexical items.
Below is a list of lexical items and important features relating to meaning and use that you
would need to point out when teaching them. There is also an indication of techniques that
might be useful in establishing and checking meaning.
1. Vegetable
▪ Visuals to establish meaning (preferably photos but could be drawings)
▪ Elicit examples of types of vegetable
▪ Negative checking: ‘Is an apple a vegetable?’ ‘Is pasta a vegetable?’
▪ Personalise: ‘What are your favourite vegetables?’ ‘Any you don’t like?’ etc.
2. To be on top of the world
▪ Situation/anecdote about a series of happy events, how was the person feeling?

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▪ Elicit synonyms: very, very happy etc.
▪ Mime: happy face, skipping around!
▪ Describe other situations. Is the expression appropriate?
▪ Personalise: ‘When have you felt on top of the world?’
3. To cry
▪ Mime or visual to establish meaning
▪ Checking: ‘When do people cry?’ (When they’re sad, when they hurt themselves)
▪ Checking ‘Who cries a lot?’ (Babies, children)
▪ Personalise: ‘Do you ever cry?’ (In a sad film etc.)
4. To stagger
▪ Mime to establish meaning
▪ Explanation: to walk but not in a straight line, looking as if you may fall.
▪ Checking: ‘When do people stagger?’ (when they’re injured, drunk)
▪ Examples: He staggered into the room, he staggered up the stairs, he staggered across
the road
5. A sheet
▪ Visual, drawing of bed with a sheet.
▪ Mime making the bed. What am I putting on it?
▪ Checking: ‘What’s it made of?’ ‘What colour is it?’ ‘Is it warm?’ ‘Can you sleep with just
this when it’s cold?’ ‘Is it thick?’ ‘Do you wash it a lot?’
▪ Point out: a sheet of paper
6. A mess
▪ Situation: ‘When my nephew visits my little boy they take out all the toys (mime
throwing them around). I walk in the room, mime shock, Oh my God! What a _____! The
room’s a _____!’
▪ What do we need to do? (Put the toys away).
▪ Checking: What’s the opposite of a mess? The room’s (tidy).
▪ Checking: Is this classroom a mess? What about your room at home?
7.5.3. Pronunciation
As we have seen, pronunciation is another important feature of word knowledge. It is
therefore important that the learners know what the word sounds like, how many syllables
there are and where the stress falls. This can be done by modelling and drilling and through
listening activities such as dictation, grammar dictation (dictogloss), and listening
comprehension activities such as getting students to group words according to phonological
aspects (sounds, stress patterns, syllables). Students can also practise producing the words

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in roleplays, storytelling, or describing pictures to recycle the lexis. They should also be
encouraged to record phonological aspects in their written records i.e. marking stress, using
phonemic script or their own form of it e.g. writing another English word that sounds the
same. You may pick up on relationships such as homophony (‘heir’ is pronounced the same
as ‘air’, ‘aunt’ is the same as ‘aren’t’) or synophony (‘honey’ sounds like ‘money’) when you
are introducing lexis.
7.5.4. Spelling
At some point the learners need to see the written form of the word. If you present the
items orally, this stage may be left until after they have practised the lexis orally, particularly
at low levels since spelling patterns are not always consistent with pronunciation in English.
However, bear in mind different learning styles and some learners may find it difficult to
grasp new items simply from hearing them. Vary your approach so that sometimes they see
the words first. Making links with other words e.g. ‘tough’ with ‘rough’ may help students
memorise spelling.
7.6. Practising Lexis

It is important to have a stock of ideas for practising lexis in different ways.
More meaningful tasks require learners to analyse and process language more deeply,
which helps them to commit information to long term memory.
Gairns & Redman, Working with Words
You can probably add to this list:
Gap-fills, crosswords, hangman, information gaps, odd one out, pelmanism, labelling
pictures or diagrams, ordering words, matching exercises, video e.g. which things do you
see?, word association, storytelling, discussions etc.
7.7 Using Corpora in the Classroom

In Lexis 1, we saw how corpora have played a key role in lexicographical research and how
this in turn has impacted on syllabus design. However, with the provision of internet access
in an increasing number of classrooms these days as well as access being readily available
through mobile devices, there are now greater opportunities to utilise corpora in the class.
On a very basic level, a corpus (plural corpora) is a body of language samples. These samples
can be taken from a broad range of sources and in the case of a written corpus might come
from newspapers, magazines, novels, correspondence, webpages etc. but could also be from
something much narrower and more specific e.g. the works of Shakespeare. Using software,
searches can be made to reveal a range of information about a lexical item. This can be
anything from its frequency or the frequency that a particular meaning of a lexical item
occurs as well as the patterns in which it is found: this can include its collocations, colligation
(grammatical patterns) and semantic prosody (the connotation).
In the example below, there are the search results for the word ‘cast’, the node, with the
results displayed in what is called a concordance or concordance line. The word to the left of
the node is in alphabetical order but it is possible to adjust the search settings to the word
on the right depending on what the user is researching.

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http://conc.lextutor.ca/concordancers/wwwassocwords.pl
Many corpora can be publically accessed and utilized: some are enormous, for example The
Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is composed of more than 450 million
words from more than 160,000 texts with 20 million words added each year. Others like the
SRI's Amex Travel Agent Data are more specialized and limited in their scope. In this case, it
is a spoken corpus of travel agent interaction with customers.
In terms of their classroom use, corpora can be used to confirm teachers’ assumptions about
the way language is used so what were once hunches can relatively quickly be turned into
facts. Corpora also provide an almost unlimited amount of natural, and often up to date,
examples of what native speakers typically write or say in discourse obviating the need for
teachers to rely on invented sentences which may not reflect natural language use.
Accessing corpora may therefore also help teachers in the preparation of class materials. It is
now even possible for teachers to create their own corpora for their classes to use.
From the learners’ perspective, using corpora fosters enquiry-based and student-centred
language learning and can be useful to reinforce language by encouraging learners to
investigate their own errors through looking at correct use. Corpora can also assist in helping
leaners to notice patterns in authentic examples and infer meaning. This can be done either
in the class or for homework. Students can also generate class materials by using corpora to
create their own worksheets and activities like a gap-fill to recycle language. However,
corpora do not have to be used just for serious and analytical study, they can also be used
for the kind of fun whole class activity that are commonplace in many ELT classrooms e.g. by
getting students to competitively test their own language hunches/knowledge. This can be
done by the students in groups predicting five collocates for particular words that have
come up in class recently or they can predict which collocations have the highest frequency.
After doing a search of a corpus, they score points for the ones correctly identified or the
highest frequency ones.
The example of a concordance above, whilst useful, is not necessarily particularly user-
friendly. It does not make information about frequency or pattern readily available. It simply
provides the raw data, though it is possible to some extent to manipulate how the data is
presented. We need to bear in mind that originally corpora were used primarily for
academic linguistic study rather than for teachers of language and their students. However,
there are corpora now that are more geared towards practical classroom use and learner

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self-study. As can be seen from the example below, the search results are organised in a
different way: the node is organised by part of speech and there is a bar chart which at a
glance shows the frequency of certain collocations. If the user then wants to access the
original text sample this is done by clicking on the relevant item and the concordance is
revealed.
http://www.just-the-word.com/main.pl?word=cast
A selection of publically accessible corpora:

▪ Just the Word http://www.just-the-word.com/
▪ Lextutor http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html
▪ The British National Corpus http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/
▪ The Contemporary American Corpus http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
▪ Lextutor http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html
8. Incidental Learning
As well as explicit teaching of lexis in class it is important that we provide opportunities for
incidental learning of vocabulary. If you think of the size of the lexicon, and the need for
repeated exposure in learning lexis, it is clear that incidental learning is a crucial feature of
vocabulary acquisition. Learners who do not take advantage of opportunities to learn
incidentally, i.e. they rely on the teacher and expect everything they need to learn to be
dealt with in the classroom, are unlikely to progress very far in their learning of the
language. Lewis in Implementing the Lexical Approach highlights that a learner would need
125 hours of instruction to acquire 1,000 items. Does this seem to ring true of the learners
you have taught?
At beginner level there is likely to be a lot of explicit or direct teaching of lexis. At higher
levels there is likely to be a much greater proportion of incidental learning of lexis.

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Incidental learning may then relate to new lexis or items which learners have already met
explicitly in class. Further exposure is of course necessary to extend knowledge of that word
in terms of register, collocation, frequency etc. and to remember the item. There are various
ways in which we can promote incidental learning:
▪ Extensive reading using graded readers particularly at lower levels
▪ Extensive reading using authentic materials e.g. newspapers, articles, leaflets, poems,
short stories, novels, etc.
▪ Authentic listening material e.g. pop songs, TV news, radio news, soap operas, comedy
shows, chat shows, documentaries, films etc.
▪ Communicative tasks where the emphasis is on meaning rather than form e.g. story-
telling, TPR activities, role-play etc.
▪ Online research activities (e.g. research on the Internet or CALL)
▪ Project work
▪ Student presentations on a topic of their choice
9. Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Given the size of the lexicon and the usually fairly limited time that we have available in our
classes it would be absurd to think that we could teach our learners all the vocabulary they
wanted to know.
As well as overt teaching and opportunities for the incidental learning of vocabulary,
learners need to be given tools to help themselves acquire or learn vocabulary.
Because low frequency words are many in number, can often be guessed from context
if the high-frequency words are known, and occur very infrequently, each word does
not deserve attention from the teacher, but strategies for coping with and learning
these words do. These strategies include, in order of importance, guessing from
context, using word parts to help remember word meanings, and using mnemonic and
rote vocabulary learning strategies.
Nation, P. & Newton, J. Teaching Vocabulary in Second Language Vocabulary

Acquisition p240
Vocabulary learning strategies may include:
▪ Choosing which lexis to learn: letting learners choose words and expressions from a text;
choosing a text to read and working on lexis; personalisation; student presentations.
▪ Dealing with unknown lexis (in texts): ignoring; spotting similarities to L1 or another
known FL; deducing meaning from context; asking someone; using a dictionary.
▪ Using a dictionary: becoming familiar with information e.g. pronunciation, grammar,

frequency indications, phrases.
▪ Recording vocabulary on cards; in a notebook; word with definition/picture; in a phrase;

marking stress; phonemic script; synophones.

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▪ Memory strategies: linking new words to known; spidergrams; associations; keywords;

focus on orthographical or phonological form (drawing the word, rhymes).
▪ Revising: looking at cards with word on one side meaning on the other (there are apps
for mobile devices like Word Learner which perform the same function); labelling things
at home; marking words looked up in a dictionary.
▪ Extensive reading.
▪ Learning word formation rules e.g. prefixes, suffixes, typical noun endings, compounds
etc.
10. Lexis in Teaching Materials

As teachers it is obviously important to anticipate potential problems learners may have
with lexis. Below is a list of some issues relating to meaning, form, phonology and
appropriacy.
Problems of meaning may include:
▪ False cognates: ‘sensible’ in English means ‘sensitive’ in Spanish and French.
▪ Homonymy and polysemy: students might be familiar with one meaning of an item but
not another e.g. bank is a financial institution but is also a verb used to describe an
aircraft turning steeply in the air. They may also try to look for connections in meaning
(polysemy) although these are sometimes helpful e.g. the branch of a tree/branches of a
bank or shop. In this case it does not help them work out the meaning of the new
vocabulary item
▪ Idiomaticity: students may try to interpret an item literally when working out the
meaning e.g. go on a blind date; to be a dark horse.
▪ Spelling similarities e.g. ‘colleague’ and ‘college’, ‘dairy’ and ‘diary’, ‘chicken’ and
‘kitchen’. If the words look very similar or are separated only by two inverted letters, this
can be problematic for learners whose L1 reads right to left e.g. Arabic speakers. This is
compounded if the phonology is problematic e.g. ‘receipt’ and ‘recipe’.
▪ Synonymy: students may feel a word means the same as another item, where in fact
they are used differently e.g. ‘start’ and ‘begin’. Often these are synonyms, but in many
cases, they collocate differently e.g. start a business/a car/a fire/a rumour/a family but
none of these are possible with ‘begin’. When considering form, ‘start’ can work as a
noun, but ‘begin’ needs a suffix ‘beginning’. Also we cannot say ‘get begun’ but we can
say ‘get started’, and in some fixed/semi-fixed phrases, they also operate differently e.g.
‘start from scratch’, ‘I can’t begin to imagine’ etc.
▪ Overlapping or more restricted uses in L1 e.g. ‘glimmer’, ‘glisten’, ‘glitter’, ‘gleam’ etc.
all mean ‘shine’ but with slight differences. L1s may not have this distinction.
Alternatively, there may be just one word in English to represent several in their L1 e.g.
‘ventanilla’ (window on a plane) ‘ventana’ (window in a house), ‘escaparate’ (shop
window) in Spanish are all expressed by ‘window’ in English.
▪ The word may be more than one part of speech (also an issue of form) e.g. ‘round’ can
belong to one of five parts of speech. This is called ‘zero affixation’.

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▪ Culturally-specific lexis: learners may not understand references to people currently in

the news, or of cultural relevance e.g. that a headline referring to ‘Kate’ is probably a
reference to Kate Middleton, or that ‘The Palace announced today…’ means this is an
announcement from Buckingham Palace about something connected with the Royal
Family. Referring to something or someone indirectly by using something closely
connected with them is called ‘metonymy’ so a spokesperson for the White House
means someone speaking on behalf of the US Government.
Problems of form may include:
▪ Spelling rules e.g. ‘swim’ to ‘swimming’ but not ‘write’ to ‘writing’.
▪ Masculine and feminine e.g. ‘waiter’ / ‘waitress’.
▪ Irregular forms e.g. ‘mouse’ / ‘mice’.
▪ Silent letters (also an issue of phonology), e.g. ‘cupboard’ where students may omit the
letter ‘p’ when writing.
▪ The choice of item affects what comes after e.g. ‘ask’ and ‘request’ have similar meaning
but require different patterns e.g. ‘He asked us to leave’ but ‘They requested that we
leave/left’.
▪ Invariability: adjectives are almost always invariable in English, that is, they do not
change form. Some learners may want to make them agree with the head noun e.g.
‘three reds cars’
Problems of phonology may include:
▪ Silent letters are articulated: ‘knee’ might be pronounced /kniː/ not /niː/.
▪ Sound/spelling dichotomy: e.g. some students produce /ˈeɪtʃ/ or /æʧeɪ/ for ‘ache’ for
example. Learners from phonetic languages find this area of pronunciation particularly
difficult as they feel there are no clear rules to how any sequence of letters is
pronounced in English.
▪ L1 transfer: e.g. French students produce /pæŋ/ for pain.
▪ Consonant clusters: ‘spray’ or ‘contribute’ are difficult to articulate.
Problems of appropriacy may include:
▪ Students select the wrong register: ‘Excuse me, can you tell me where the bog is
please?’
▪ ‘Wrong’ variety of English ‘diaper’ for ‘nappy’, ‘thongs’ for ‘flip-flops’ etc. This is
dependent on the context where English is being used and with whom.
11. Conclusion
The learning of lexis forms a crucial part of learning a language. Research into how lexis is
stored in our minds has given us useful insights which can feed into our teaching of lexis.
Corpora provide us with an invaluable resource, enabling us to select the most frequent
lexical items and common uses, and to identify common collocations. We need to teach lexis
explicitly, but the classroom, as well as outside, is also the place where incidental learning of

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vocabulary can take place. We also need to give our learners tools for learning and
remembering vocabulary by themselves.
12. Terminology Review

The definitions below all refer to concepts from this input.
For 1 – 4, supply the term being defined.
Example: Language which students understand but are not able to produce is receptive
(or passive) knowledge
1. A group of words sharing the same root but different affixes, e.g. love / lovely / unloved
/ lover.
2. A collection of real-life texts, either written or spoken, which can by analysed to

investigate language use.
3. The ‘core’ or dictionary meaning of a lexical item, with no layers of social / regional
interpretation.
4. All the words and phrases in a language. The term covers single words (‘tree’, ‘mouse’
etc.), multi-words (‘by and large’, ‘street sign’ etc.) and phrases (‘pipped to the post’,
‘What I’m trying to say is…’ etc.)
For 5 – 8, provide a definition for the terms given.
Example: Lexical density
‘The ratio of content words to grammar words in a text. Spoken texts (tend to) have
more grammar words than written texts.’
5. Connotation
6. Register
7. Delexicalised verbs
8. Incidental learning
Suggested Answers
1. Word family
2. Corpus (plural corpora)
3. Denotation
4. Lexis
5. The interpretation of a word in a particular context or language variety. For example,

‘propaganda’ and ‘suburban’ have particular connotations in English which may not be
the same in other languages. ‘Gallant’, ‘laddish’, ‘trainspotting’ and ‘square’ also have
very strong shared connotations.

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6. Linguistic varieties which are governed by context, e.g. the formality of the situation,
who we are speaking to, the topic and so on. These variables affect our choice of lexis.
7. Verbs which have no intrinsic meaning when they occur on their own, such as ‘take’,
‘have’, ‘get’, ‘know’, ‘be’ etc. They only really have meaning when they occur with
another item, e.g. ‘take your time’, ‘have a go’, ‘get better’ and so on.
8. Learning which occurs inside the classroom but which was not planned by the teacher.
In terms of lexis, this may occur, for example, when learners are reading a text and
notice (and correctly hypothesise) about the meaning / use and form of an item in the
text which the teacher does not deal with formally.

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Reading:
Although not essential to your Module 1 preparation, if you would like to explore this area
further we suggest the following:
Suggested Reading
▪ Lewis, M. 1997 Implementing the Lexical Approach LTP
▪ McCarthy, M. 1990 Vocabulary Oxford University Press
▪ Thornbury, S. 2002 How to Teach Vocabulary Oxford University Press
Additional Reading
▪ Aitchison, J. 1987 Words in the Mind Blackwell
▪ Coady, J. & Huckin, T. (eds) 1997 Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition Cambridge
University Press
▪ Fowle, C. July 2000 Vocabulary Books ETP Issue 16
▪ Gairns, R. & Redman, S. 1986 Working with Words Cambridge University Press
▪ Hanks, P. 2013 Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations MIT Press
▪ Holden, W. R. 1999 Learning to learn: 15 vocabulary acquisition activities MET 8/2
▪ Lewis, M. (ed) 2000 Teaching Collocation LTP
▪ McCarthy, M. & O’Dell, F. 1994 English Vocabulary in Use (Upper Intermediate &
Advanced) Cambridge University Press
▪ McCarthy, M. & O’Dell, F. 1999 English Vocabulary in Use (Elementary) Cambridge

University Press
▪ Morgan, J. & Rinvolucri, M. 1986 Vocabulary Oxford University Press
▪ O’Keffe, A., McCarthy, M. & Walsh, S. Vocabulary Matrix: Understanding, Learning,

Teaching 2009 Heinle-Cengage ELT
▪ Prodromou, L. October 1997 Corpora: the real thing? ETP Issue 5
▪ Schmitt, N. & McCarthy, M. (eds) Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy

Cambridge University Press.
▪ Schmitt, N. 2000 Vocabulary in Language Teaching Cambridge University Press
▪ Wallace, M. 1982 Teaching Vocabulary Heinemann
Practical Materials
▪ Cory, H. 1999 Advanced Writing with English in Use CAE Oxford University Press
▪ Hadfield, J. 1998 Elementary Vocabulary Games Longman
▪ Hadfield, J. 1999 Intermediate Vocabulary Games Longman

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▪ Redman, S. & Ellis, R. et al 1997 A Way with Words Resource Packs 1 and 2 Cambridge
University Press
▪ Redman, S. 1994 English Vocabulary in Use (Pre-intermediate and intermediate)

Cambridge University Press
▪ Smith, S. & Smith, J. 1998 Wordflo Longman
▪ Watcyn-Jones, P. 1993 Vocabulary Games and Activities for Teachers 1 and 2, Longman

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The Distance Delta

The Distance Delta

© International House London and the British Council

1 © Copyright The Distance Delta

▪ Display awareness of what is involved in knowing a lexical item.

▪ Describe the differences between spoken and written lexis.

▪ Demonstrate awareness of the rationale underlying these procedures and techniques.

▪ Demonstrate awareness of how learners can be encouraged to become more

2 © Copyright The Distance Delta

1. Vocabulary Size: The Language and What We Know

2. The Mental Lexicon

2.1. Words in the Mind

2.2. Teaching Implications

3.6. Word Association

3.7. Written Form: Spelling

3.8. Phonological Form: Syllables, Sounds and Stress

3.9. Word Class

4. Written and Spoken Lexis

4.2. Features of Spoken Lexis

5. Lexis in Language Learning

6. Explicit or Direct Teaching of Lexis

6.1. Selecting Lexis for Teaching Purposes

6.5. Teachability and Learnability

6.6. Learners’ Needs

7.1. Ordering Lexis

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7.2. Grouping Lexical Items for Teaching Purposes

7.3. How many items?

7.4. Introducing Lexis

7.5. What do we need to teach?

7.5.2. Checking Meaning

7.6. Practising Lexis

7.7. Using Corpora in the Classroom

9. Vocabulary Learning Strategies

10. Lexis in Teaching Materials

12. Terminology Review

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1. Vocabulary Size: The Language and What We Know

Wallace, Teaching Vocabulary, p31

Gairns and Redman state:

An educated speaker is able to understand between 45,000 and 60,000 items,

Gairns & Redman, Working with Words, p65

Schmitt, Vocabulary in Language Teaching, p6

2. The Mental Lexicon

5 © Copyright The Distance Delta

2.1. Words in the Mind

Somewhere the word is related by an intricate series of links to an encyclopaedia of

McCarthy, Vocabulary, p41

e.g. bread - butter, yellow - green, left - right, good - bad

▪ Other apparently slightly weaker associations include superordination, hyponymy and

▪ Words with similar spelling patterns are connected.

If the L1 lexicon seems to associate words according to clearly definable types of

McCarthy, Vocabulary, p40

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7 © Copyright The Distance Delta

For further reading see McCarthy, M. Vocabulary OUP Chapter 3.

2.2. Teaching Implications

There is no general agreement as to how the various lexicons are organised in

Aitchison Words in the Mind p205

Thinking about Teaching