Beginners’ Guide to The Lexical

Approach
By Leo Selivan

The term “teaching lexically” was coined by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley,
coursebook writers (Innovations, Outcomes) and teacher trainers (LexicalLab), who
have proudly taken over from the retired Michael Lewis as torch bearers of the Lexical
approach. In this “Beginners’ Guide To The Lexical Approach” I outline the main
principles of the lexical approach, the way I see it, and highlight key figures in the
history of the Lexical Approach and its main proponents today.

Principle 1: Ban single words

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Words are never – well, almost never – used alone. I can think of only a handful of
words that can be used on their own:

Hurry!

Silence…

Tragic.

But most of the time words are used in company of other words. So why record them
alone? Why teach accident only to find that a minute later your students say *He made
an accident, when you can teach have an accident? Or why write on the
board deprived and its definition or L1 translation, when you can immediately provide
the nouns it often goes with:

deprived area / childhood / background

Make a habit of writing new words on the board with other words that surround them
and encourage your students to do the same in their notebooks. Ideally, write whole
phrases or sentences to illustrate how a word is used:

Have you done your homework?

They are investigating the murder of…

That’s it. I’m drawing the line.

 If time doesn’t permit, write at least two words together.

do homework

investigate the murder (of)

intense workout

heavy rain

Remember: collocations – and not individual words – are minimum units of meaning.

A bit of theory
A

The origins of the Lexical Approach can be traced back to John R. Firth (1890 – 1960),
who was one of the first linguists to argue that the meaning of a word is determined by
the words it co-occurs with and popularise the term “collocation”. His context-
dependent view of language is succinctly summed up by his famous quote:

You shall know a word by the company it keeps.

Useful links and resources

Inspired by J. R. Firth’s quote, Hania Kryzsewksa and Paul Davies’s new book is aptly
titled “The Company Words Keep”. The book features more than a hundred activities
for raising learners’ awareness of and practising lexical chunks, exploiting authentic
texts and supplementing textbook materials. 
See the book review HERE and preview sample activities from the book on the Delta
Publishing website: www.deltapublishing.co.uk/titles/methodology/the-company-
words-keep
Principle 2: English word ≠ L1 word
P

Shifting the emphasis from words to collocations and multi-word phrases not only
implies recording new language in chunks. You should try to reduce students’ reliance
on word for word translation. For example, I refuse to answer the following questions:

What does (English word) mean?

or

How do you say (L1 word) in English?

Because it, of course, depends on what this word means in a given context and what the
student wants to say.

If you use translation in class, get students to translate whole phrases or collocations.
For example, get students translate “soft” in the collocation fork below. Do they always
end up with the same word in their L1?
voice
soft skin
drink

Similarly, translation of “abuse” would probably be different depending on the

adjective it goes with:

physical
 verbal abuse

drug

And do mild cheese, mild injuries and mild sentence correspond to the same “mild” in

your students’ L1? I bet you’ll find that, with the exception of scientific terms
(e.g. appendicitis), there is NO word for word correspondence between semantic fields
of L1 and L2 words.

A Bit Of Theory
A

Contrastive analysis was an approach to second language acquisition prevalent in the

1960s. It was used to predict difficulties that L2 learners might encounter when
mastering new grammatical structures based on the learners’ L1. If features of the
learner’s L1 grammar are different to those of the target language, they will
cause interference and hinder acquisition of the target language grammar. In recent
years, Contrastive Analysis has attracted interest of L2 vocabulary researchers. For
example, Laufer & Girsai (2008) show how learners’ acquisition of new vocabulary
has improved when the teacher drew their attention to differences between collocations
in L1 and English (interlingualdifferences). Similarly, Nesselhauf (2003) calls for the
pedagogical practice of contrasting collocations in English and the students’ L1
collocations when these do not coincide, i.e. the same noun collocates with different
verbs in English and L1.

Useful links and resources

If you are teaching in an EFL context and speaks the students’ L1, you can use
translation and contrastive analysis to highlight collocational differences between
English and L1. But what if you’re teaching in a multi-lingual ESL setting? Ken
Lackman’s ebooks are an excellent resource for developing students’ awareness of and
training them to notice collocations and lexical chunks through fun classroom
activities.

www.kenlackman.com/activitybooks2.html

Ken Lackman is a teacher and teacher trainer based in Canada, and is a practical
proponent of the Lexical Approach.
Principle 3: Explain less – explore more
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Let’s face it. We, teachers, love explaining. After all, if we don’t, it seems like we
aren’t fulfilling our role and students’ expectations. But many things in English (or any
other language for that matter) simply cannot be explained. There is no reason why we
say heavy rain and not *hard rain, why buildings can be described as both talland high,
but people can only be tall, and how come if we can look, stare and gaze at people, we
can look at but not *gaze at a problem. Why not? If I’ve been looking at it for a long
time!

By constantly explaining and giving students – often dodgy – “rules”, we actually do

them a disservice. Instead of handing students the answers on a plate, invite them on a
journey of linguistic discovery. And remind them that language is an organism not a
mechanism; and many things in language cannot be explained because… that’s the way
it is!

How can foster a culture of lexical exploration in the classroom? Encourage students to
ask questions about how words are used. Get them to look at the examples (and not
only definitions!) in an online dictionary or show them concordances with the target
word. Arouse their curiosity about language. You’ll know that you’ve succeeded when
students start asking you not only “What does the word mild mean?” but:

What else can be “mild”?

or
 Can we say “a mild punishment”?

A A Bit Of Theory
Corpus Linguistics is the study of language through samples obtained from real-world
linguistic data. The work of John Sinclair, one of the corpus linguistics pioneers,
exerted great influence on Dave Willis (Lexical Syllabus, 1990) and Michael Lewis
(The Lexical Approach, 1993). Sinclair showed that we do not build sentences out of
single words, and that frequent multi-word units, such as mild heavy rain, exert
influence, I’ll get it, Have you done your homework? are stored in the mind ‘as
wholes’. Sinclair referred to this phenomenon as the idiom principle.

Useful links and resources

Once the remit of corpus linguists, many corpora are easily accessible today online.
There are also plenty of user-friendly, corpus-based tools which can help you plan
vocabulary lessons, i.e. look up common collocates, identify word patterns and find
natural examples. See a collection of such tools on my blog: bit.ly/lextools
If you are interested in learning more about corpus, how to perform various corpus
searches as well as building your own corpus, check out Mura Nava’s blog EFL Notes.
He is a real corpus connoisseur.

Principle 4: Pay attention to what students (think they)

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know
 This is important for two reasons. If students know take and place, does it mean they
known take place? Or if they are familiar with both play and host, does it mean they
will understand the meaning of play host (to)? What about make do (as in “it’ll make
do for now”)? The meaning of many multi-word units cannot be determined from
individual words they are comprised of (these are known as non-compositional lexical
units). Secondly, there are many collocations, whose meaning is semantically
transparent (i.e. compositional collocations) which is precisely the reason why students
fail to “notice” them and later have difficulty incorporating into their own lexicon, such
as take a photo or do homework (students often produce *make in these combinations).

Also, interestingly, many expressions in English (whether compositional or not) consist

of the most common words such as: get, do, come, well, fall etc.

I’m running late

it has nothing to do with…

I’m coming down with something

get a grip

lose your cool

make ends meet

do well in…

have a word with…

don’t get me wrong

Advanced level students overlook these, paying more attention instead to long,
sophisticated words such as “dejectedly” and “amenable”. But revisiting the words they
already know and exploring new meanings associated with them (by virtue of new
collocations) they can actually get more mileage, i.e. improve their fluency and
naturalness of expression.

A bit of theory
A

A new theory of language, known as Lexical Priming, lends further support to the
Lexical Approach. Its father, the neo-Firthian linguist Michael Hoey (University of
Liverpool), argues that words occur in predictable combinations because language
users store words in the context in which they have heard or seen them and then
reproduce those contexts in speaking or writing. In other words through encounters
 with words in recurring patterns we become primed to replicate these patterns. By
drawing students’ attention to collocations and common word patterns we can
accelerate their priming, enabling them to become more fluent and sound more natural.

Useful links and resources

Over the past 20 or so years, Michael Lewis’s Lexical Approach has attracted a number
of followers but has not been immune to criticism. In his plenary talk at IATEFL 2014,
Prof Michael Hoey provides compelling evidence for the Lexical Approach by drawing
on corpus-linguistic and psycholinguistic research as well as his own theory of Lexical
Priming. https://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2014/session/plenary-session-michael-hoey

How to Teach Listening in the ESL

Classroom: 15 Valuable Activities
That Create Solid Skills

3 Ways to Increase Listening Skills and

3

Confidence
First of all, here are three basic principles.

1. Limit the use of translation.

1

Your students need to be able to understand and respond without having to translate in
their heads all the time, especially when they are listening rather than reading. At first it
might seem like the easy, comfortable way to learn a language, but if it develops into a
habit then they will never be able to speak English fluently.

Translation is a habit that needs to be limited because…

 Students tend to start to panic when they find they don’t know every word.
 Using those electronic translators especially can give warped ideas of meaning.

This doesn’t mean that you never let them translate. Sometimes having an equivalent

from their first language is the only way to move them forward, but quickly move on
and don’t allow them to keep returning to it.
 In general, there are better ways to handle running into new vocabulary while listening.

When students hear a new word or expression, they need something to tie it to.

As their teacher, you can help them with this by providing…

 Context: Help them to find clues to the meaning in the context of the listening
“text.”

 Pictures: Show them a picture so that when they hear the word or expression
again later, the picture will come to mind.

 Action: Get them to perform an action so that when they hear the word or
expression again later, they will remember that particular action.

 English synonyms or antonyms: Their understanding of English will grow by

leaps and bounds if they can explain an English word with other English words.
Encourage (and guide) them to look up unknown words in an English dictionary.

Help students to relax, and not to panic, as they listen to material (especially
the firsttime) and to find out how much they can understand. They will probably be
pleasantly surprised. For some students, this in itself can be a real confidence booster.

2. Avoid confusing listening skills with literacy skills.

2

When you first introduce a new listening “text” (e.g., video, story, song, podcast…)
concentrate on listening and don’t provide subtitles or written script (yet). In real
life, there are no subtitles, so let your students have a go just listening. (Later you can
add subtitles or a written script as well as literacy-related activities.)

The reasons for this are as follows:

 Firstly, we don’t want students with poor literacy skills to be

disadvantaged in learning the listening skill. They may have poor literacy skills
because they are young, or because of limited vision, or because of a learning
disability, or even because they come from a non-literate background.
Nevertheless, they can learn to listen and understand.

 Secondly, students who are confidently literate often want to be able to see and
read the words while they are listening, but this would rob them of the
opportunity to really listen. Students need to be able to listen and understand
without seeing the written words at the same time.

 Thirdly, as mentioned above, it can be a real confidence booster when they

discover just how much they do understand without any other help. And, of
course, this is more like real life outside of the classroom.
 Once they have listened without seeing subtitles or script the first time, and you have
discussed some issues, then you can listen and watch again with the assistance of
subtitles or text.

3. Use videos because students can also watch.

3

We want to prepare our students to take part in conversations. We want them to be able
to listen, understand and respond. A large part of that listening involves reading a
speaker’s facial expressions and body language, which can vary from culture to culture.
So, most of the time, your students need to practice their “listening” skills by watching
videos, or watching you talk or tell stories.

A great source for visual material is FluentU, an immersion platform with real-world
videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—that are ready-
made for focused listening. FluentU makes it easy to create productive ongoing
listening activities by allowing your students to access the same high-quality material at
home and in the classroom.

There are two situations in which students are likely to be listening to English without
seeing the speaker(s):

 On the radio
 On the telephone

But even in these situations they still need to be able to imagine the body language
being used.

How to Plan a Lesson to Improve Listening

H

Skills: 15 Activities for Before, During and

After Listening
So do you just play the video, and see what the students make of it?

No!

Just as you would for a reading text, you need to prepare your students to deal with
something new to concentrate on and listen to, whether they are watching a video,
listening to someone read or tell a story, listening to a song or just listening to a live
talk.
 There are several activities you can use before, during, and after listening, and then
later in the lesson or another day. All of these are designed to improve the students’
skills and confidence in listening.

P Pre-listening activities
1. Predicting and guessing
1

In normal conversation, what we hear tends to fit in with what we expectto hear, and
without necessarily thinking about it we tend to listen for specific details. It’s telling
that when someone says something totally unexpected or out of context, many people
respond in surprise with “What?!” as if they didn’t actually hear the words. While
listening to people we are familiar with in a particular context, we can easily guess
what they will say.

So before playing the “text,” prepare your students for the experience, and get them
thinking about the topic:

 Tell them the title of the piece, and ask them to guess what it is about, or what
they think might happen in the story. Writers and filmmakers think very carefully
about the title of their story and they want readers, listeners or viewers to think
about the title, so all of the words are important. Sometimes the title is designed
to be tricky and possibly misunderstood at first to pique interest, so you can
guide your students to enjoy that, too.

 Tell them the names of characters involved and let them predict and guess who
they are and what they are like. As the students get into the movie or story, they
will probably identify with one or more character, so let them enjoy guessing
about them and discovering more later on.

 Ask a question to get them thinking about the theme of the “text” or something
in it. For example: If it is something to do with food, you could ask them, “What
is your favorite food?” If it is something that happens on a train, you could ask
them about their favorite or most frequent mode of travel and talk about
transport, just to get them thinking along those lines.

 Show them a picture: a snapshot from the video, or a picture from the cover.
Discuss it. Predict and guess. If the students are going to listen to you read or tell
a story from a book, show them the cover and talk about the picture—there is
usually a lot of information hidden there, and it helps bring out relevant
vocabulary.

Hopefully, they might even remember relevant English words they have previously
learnt. All of this will help to review known vocabulary, and introduce some new
vocabulary.
2. Vocabulary preparation
2

When you choose something for your students to study in the context of a listening
lesson, you need to consider its suitability for the age and maturity of your students
and whether it is at an appropriate difficulty level. This could be based on the amount
of “new” vocabulary in the “text.”

Make sure you have watched or listened right through (never use something you
haven’t thoroughly examined!) and note down words or expressions that they might
find challenging. Obviously, if there are a great many new words, maybe it’s too
difficult—unless maybe the meaning is really obvious from the visuals.

Make a list of words from your movie or story that some or all of your students
may have difficulty with, especially words that are key to the story. You don’t have
to teach the students all of the new words the first time through. Just choose a few that
are essential and teach them before playing the “text.” Of course, including one or two
that they already know will probably boost their confidence, too.

Remember: When you are introducing new words, translate only if absolutely

necessary. Where possible, connect the words with pictures, actions and other English
words.

D During listening activities

While students are watching and/or listening, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether they
are really still paying attention or just relaxing and daydreaming. (At least if it’s a
video, they are more likely to stay focused.) So it’s a good idea to give them tasks to do
while playing the “text.”

Here are some ideas.

3. Listen for specific words and expressions, or even watch

3

for specific items.

Obviously, your students need to be listening specifically for the words and expressions
you have just taught them. They should also have some words they already know to
listen for, to help them focus and improve the skill of listening.

Give them specific questions to focus on, such as…

 What is the word that comes after the target word?

 Who says this word?
  How many times do you hear this word?

You can even give them a small “Bingo!” card with the target words for them to mark
off as they hear them.

They could also be looking for specific visual items. On the board or a worksheet, put
the things they are looking for into chronological order as they appear: This could be in
the form of English words or pictures.

4. Listen for sequence and order.

4

Students could be asked to work out the order that things happen. They could, for
example, have several pictures on a worksheet that they have to put into the right order
as they notice them happen. (Before listening, they could guess the order, and then
check as they go along.)

5. Listen and watch for specific events.

5

Ask the students to watch out for specific happenings.

For example:

 Notice who wears a hat.

 Notice who gives something to someone else.
 How many people say, “Hello!”?
 Who drives a green car?

A After listening activities

Right after watching the video or listening to the story for the very first time is a very
important moment. At this moment, you want to…

 Reassure students if they are feeling lost or overwhelmed.

 Help them to make sense of what they have just seen and heard.
 Help them to hang on to learning they have just acquired.
 Prepare them for the very valuable second time through.

Here are some ways to cover that ground.

6. Refer back to pre-listening vocab and sequences.
6

 Discuss how (and why) they were correct (or not) in their pre-listening
predictions and guesses.
 Talk about the characters, e.g., who they like and why.
 Review the vocabulary that was discussed before listening.
 Ask if they noticed the things they were asked to watch for.
 Ask about the sequencing.

This could take the form of a class discussion, a prepared worksheet, discussion in pairs
or even a quiz-type game.

7. Notice collocations.
7

Draw attention to the context of the newly-acquired vocabulary and ask if they noticed
any familiar or unfamiliar words that might tend to collocate with them. The ability to
notice this can become a valuable skill for students.

This is also a preparation for the second time they listen or watch. Now that they have
noticed specific words, expression and characters, get them to widen their observation
to see what is around.

For example: Let’s say you are watching “Finding Nemo,” and your students have been
listening for the word “ocean.”

Students could notice that…

 Everyone says “the” ocean, not just “a” ocean.

 Three times, someone mentions “the entire ocean.”
 Right at the beginning, Marlin had promised Coral an “ocean view.” (What does
this normally refer to?)
 What always leads to the ocean? All drains.

Of course, if you are going to try to talk about specifics like this you could also…

 Use FluentU videos, where there is lots of help from interactive subtitles.

 Watch and be very familiar with your videos.
 Find a script database and download the script. (Making it easy to do a search on
particular words.)
Activities for later practice and
A

reinforcement
Depending on your class setup, how long your lesson is, how old your students are and
how long the video or story is, you could listen again immediately to reinforce all of
your recent learning.

If that is not possible, then make sure you do take time later to listen again—more than
once!

Here are some things to try:

8. Listen again for the same things (maybe some students

8

missed them) and new things.

Listen (and watch) again, with the same instructions as the first time, to make sure that
every student enjoys success.

Here are some additional ideas:

 Students could be in pairs to point out to each other the things to pay attention to.
 Add some extra things to listen for and notice, especially those collocations
mentioned above.
 Add some other new during-listening activities this time.

9. Listen for particular words and expressions in new

9

environments.
Learning increases when students can start using new vocabulary in new situations. If
possible, let them listen to something else that uses some of the new expressions.
Maybe you could use a different medium. For instance, tell them a story (made up, if
you like) that uses some of the new vocabulary. You could tell a story about a place
that has great “ocean views,” referring to the Nemo example above.

10. Listen to new expressions and compare them with

1

similar ones.
Now take the newly acquired words and expressions and change them a bit, making
substitutions for parts of them. Let students listen and notice the differences. Again,
you could tell a story and change some parts. For a simple example: Instead of
 Goldilocks and the three bears, there could be three frogs, or Goldilocks could be a
boy, etc.

There could be other changes in the language, such as gender of pronouns, or tense.

11. Play “listen and do” games.

1

The addition of movement to a learning activity can improve and cement the learning.
So practicing newly-acquired words and expressions using action is both fun and
beneficial. If students have learnt some verbs, these can be mixed with already familiar
verbs in an activity that involves responding to the words with actions. For example, a
“Simon Says” type game.

12. Use technology for listening practice at home.

1

If students only think about English during class time, then it will take them a very
long time to learn it well because they need to learn to think inEnglish. Nowadays, it is
not difficult to provide them with a video, or story podcast, to listen to again at home.
They could be so enthusiastic about it that it doesn’t even feel like “homework”! They
can be given set exercises or questions to help them focus, or they can simply relax and
enjoy it, soaking up the language.

E Extra activities for after listening

There are other ways that students can be reminded of words and expressions taught
during a listening session.

13. Dictation
1

The teacher can dictate quotes from the video or story that they have already watched
and enjoyed, and the students can try to write them down. This helps to tie in their
literacy skills with their listening, as well as reinforcing what they have learned through
watching.

This could also be a “running dictation” where students are in pairs—one to run and
dictate, the other to listen and write—and the written text to dictate is posted
somewhere at a distance such as outside the classroom. The running student goes and
reads and remembers as much of the text as he can, then runs back and dictates it to his
partner to write down.

14. Bingo!
1
 Words or expressions focused on in the video or story can be incorporated into a
“Bingo!” game. Go to a website such as ESLactivities.com to create enough cards for
the whole class, each containing the same words but in random order. Give students
objects such as small stones or sunflower seeds to use as markers. Students place
markers on their cards as you call out the words, and when someone gets five in a row
in any direction they call “Bingo!” The winner becomes the next caller, the markers are
removed and the game starts again.

15. Flashcard games

1

Words and expressions to be focused on can be written on flashcards and used for
many different games. For example, students could have their own small set of cards
and hold up the appropriate one when it is heard while listening to the “text.” Or pairs
of words could be placed on the boards with students in pairs racing to claim the right
one when it is heard.

L Listen again and again

It is very important for students to listen to the story or watch the video again, as soon
as possible after the first time.

But it’s also important to keep doing this later at greater intervals.

With every repeat, old information will be reinforced and new things will be learnt,
too!
Lexical notebooks or vocabulary
cards?
by Leo Selivan

Few would doubt that students should leave a lesson with some kind of transcript of it:
be it a notebook or, if technology allows, pages from an Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB)
emailed to your students – in order to be able to go over the material covered in class.

As far as vocabulary learning is concerned, it is important to record new language in a

way that is memorable and manageable. To this effect, I have always encouraged my
students to keep a lexical notebook to record new lexis which comes up in class.

Lexical notebooks

A lexical notebook is different from a vocabulary notebook where you merely write
new words in alphabetical order alongside their L1 translations. The idea behind a
lexical notebook is to organize new lexis in a way that would closely resemble the way
it occurs in the real language. For example, if the expression doesn’t ring a bellcomes
up in class I encourage my students to record it exactly the way they encountered it,
ideally in a full sentence:

The name doesn’t ring a bell

rather than stripping it down to make it look like a dictionary entry

not to ring a bell

The same rule applies to words. Students are naturally drawn to new words in a text
and unfortunately often ignore the surrounding language. But as we know, words are
not used in isolation and therefore it is extremely useful to record new words together
with their lexical partners (collocations) and in grammatical patterns they occur in
(colligation), in other words, record chunks of language as opposed to isolated words.
For example, if encountering the word strict for the first time in a reading text or video
we watch, students will often write it down with a translation alongside and may pay no
attention to its collocate (strict rule) or pattern (under the strict rules of). For that
reason, I remind my students to record it exactly as it appeared

under the strict rules of

or, time permitting, even the whole sentence where this new word occurred:
She was brought up under the strict rules of her religious parents.

This format of recording new vocabulary is also consistent with the claims made by
applied linguists (for example, Schmitt & Schmitt, 1995) who argue that when learning
vocabulary new knowledge should be integrated with old knowledge.

Organisation
Ideally, lexical notebooks should be organised by topics, such as work, health,
appearance etc. In the Work section Intermediate students may write language like this:

WORK

was called in for an interview

go on maternity / paternity leave

I am a fast learner

doesn't have any qualifications (degrees, diplomas, certificates...)

doesn't meet the requirements = not suitable

steady/demanding/stressful job

As you see, there are no strict rules as to how entries should be made. Students will
normally make their own choices whether they need translations or definitions. But one
important rule is never write single words. Apart from topics, you can also have pages
dedicated to different situations (IN A HOTEL, IN A RESTAURANT), key words
(Expressions with UP, POINT or WAY), differences between two confusable words
(for example study / learn with examples for each) or grammatical patterns (Verbs
followed by –ing, questions with Have you ever…?)

The main principles

Different ways of recording lexis in lexical notebooks have been demonstrated by

Shaun Dowling in his article on this website. To sum up, bear in mind the following
principles:
  Less is more
It’s better to focus on fewer words but provide full information about them,
including collocations, grammatical patterns and possibly example sentences.
There is no need to record every single new word especially if these will be of
little use to students productively.

 Words, like people, need space

Some space should be left after each entry where students can subsequently
add other similar examples, e.g. under
under the strict rules of
students can later record

My father is very strict

 Lexical notebook is like a diary

Closely related to the above principle is this suggestion: start a new topic on a
different page. This way you can add new language to each section as you go
along. For example, if the topic of a subsequent lesson is FOOD and a useful
piece of language emerges related to work, it would be prudent to go back and
record it in the WORK section.

To remind students of the importance of organizing by topic I always use an example

of a diary. When you want to make a note of a doctor’s appointment you don’t write it
when you make it but on the day when you actually have it. Likewise, vocabulary
should be recorded in way that aids retrieval. For example, you want to use an
expression or chunk and don’t remember it – you can look it up in the relevant page of
your notebook.

 Words, like people, need company

As already mentioned above, words, save for a handful of exclamations, are
never used alone so students should be discouraged to record individual words.

 Leave used language alone

This dictum comes from Michael Lewis’s book Teaching Collocation (2000)
where the advantages of recording new language exactly in the form in which we
find it is extensively discussed.

Doubtless lexical notebooks have a lot going for them: they help raise students’
awareness of the lexical nature of language, draw their attention to how language is
used and, some claim, can be used to foster learner independence (see Woolard, 2000).
Disadvantages of lexical notebooks

While it is fairly easy to see why they are an effective way of recording lexis, lexical
notebooks are not without their disadvantages. One disadvantage is time. Recording
whole chunks of language is time consuming and students may not see its direct
benefit. Students are somewhat reluctant to go back and add a new item to an already
existing topic or a new collocate to the previously recorded word – they prefer to
record it in a linear fashion (by date) instead of revisiting and elaborating on the earlier
entries. As a result, they may have expressions or collocations with the same key word
scattered all over their notebook rather than consolidated in the same place.

Also, surprising as it may seem, some students get a bit carried away when it comes to
recording things in their notebooks: they will jot down a certain chunk or expression
over and over again every time it pops up in class. For example, when a previously
learnt vocabulary item comes up in a revision activity and students cannot remember it,
they will record it again instead of looking it up in the notebook. I’ve seen students
who would end up with the same bit of language written down four times in different
part of the notebook – this isn’t exactly organization we talked about earlier.

Despite my admonitions that it’s better to write it down once and know where it is
(using the same analogy with a doctor’s appointment in your diary) my students
(particularly older ones) explain that it helps them remember it. While I personally
believe that copying things down over and over again helps spend the ink rather than
remember vocabulary I couldn’t find any cognitive research to back up my claim.

Another obvious shortcoming is that lexical notebooks do not provide the active recall
practice necessary to commit new vocabulary to long-term memory. While lexical
notebooks help learners make meaningful links between words and connections
between new and old knowledge, active recall has been shown to aid memorization and
is considered a necessary component of effective learning.

Word cards

Word cards, also known as flash cards, are small cards with the English word on one
side and the L1 translation on the other. In recent years, with the increased interest in
vocabulary acquisition in general, word cards have been undergoing somewhat of a
resurgence in popularity. In the heyday of the Communicative Language Teaching,
which emphasised implicit, incidental learning, word cards and rote learning in general
were looked down upon and discredited as mechanistic and behaviourist. These days,
top researchers in the field of vocabulary acquisition, such as Paul Nation (2001) and
Norbert Schmitt (1997), claim that word cards are beneficial for vocabulary learning
with Nation (2005) stating that:

"Using cards […] is an excellent way of quickly increasing vocabulary size. Forget all
the criticism you have heard about rote learning and translation; research has repeatedly
shown that such learning is very effective."

Also, you can find a lot of websites, Quizlet being probably the largest, which allow
you to make your own word cards and “play” with them.

Curious to see whether it would work for me, I tried using word cards with two groups
of students. The first group was doing a very short intensive course and the second - a
longer course with lessons once a week. Students were furnished with an envelope and
a bunch of cut up card and off they went. With the first group it worked wonders. Not
only did they see the benefit of keeping a record of all the new or useful language they
encountered but we also used the cards for a variety of revising activities.
From word cards to lexical cards

Switching to word cards did not mean that I compromised my principles and started to
present words in isolation, stripped of context. I had to make some adjustments to the
simple flash card idea - word on one side / translation on the other. In my cards,
learners recorded words on one side and collocations on the other, with translation as
an option depending if the students didn’t know the word at all or half-knew it (knew
the meaning but not the use)
Lexical cards: advantages and disadvantages

Clearly this way of recording vocabulary has advantages too. Even though you cannot
organise new items by topics it is easy to find your way around them. Students would
rarely make the same entry twice or three times – the main disadvantage of lexical
notebooks mentioned above – and it’s easier to get your students to expand their
knowledge of new items by adding more collocates, examples etc. Cards are easier to
carry around and flick through when you have a spare moment. While students cannot
do much with lexical notebooks apart from occasionally going through them, lexical
cards lend themselves to a number of revising activities (See some ideas here).
Unfortunately, when I tried using the lexical cards on a longer course, the students’
enthusiasm did not seem to last as the growing piles of cards became harder to manage.
But the main advantage of using cards for recording vocabulary is that this format is
not suitable for all vocabulary items. While the process of recording individual words,
such as ruthless and difficulty, is pretty straightforward, how does one record language
chunks, particularly new combinations of already known words, such as

The long and the short of it

I couldn’t get back to sleep
I don’t know how to put it but…
I should get going.
It goes without saying that….
How long are you planning on staying?
Don’t get me wrong
When we first came over here…
I haven’t really thought about it

One way is to record them as you would record individual words: the whole chunk on
one side and translation on the other. But then you can’t do all the recycling activities
described above. Another way around this problem is recording the key word on one
side and the whole chunk on the other. But what is the key word in don’t get me wrong:
is it “get” or “wrong”?

Conclusion

Although the importance of note-taking is recognised, it would be interesting to see

some research of the effects of different types of note-taking on vocabulary learning.
Till then, whatever method you use, students and teachers should bear in mind that
words are not learnt / taught in isolation. Recording new words with their translation
and/or definition helps learners with just one aspect of word knowledge - meaning, this
is only a tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface is a huge mass of other aspects to be
learnt about the word and how it is used.

My experiment with lexical cards proved successful to some extent and I will definitely
implement it again, especially on short courses. In the meantime, I’ve gone back to
lexical notebooks as a default.

References

Laufer, B., Meara, P., & Nation, I.S.P. (2005) Ten best ideas for teaching vocabulary.
The Language Teacher 29 (7), pp 11-14. Available on http://jalt-
publications.org/tlt/issues/2005-07_29.7
Lewis, M. (2000). There is nothing as practical as a good theory. In M. Lewis (Ed.),
Teaching Collocation (pp 10-27). Boston: Thomson-Heinle
Nation, I.S.P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: CUP
Schmitt, N. (1997). Vocabulary learning strategies. In: N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy
(Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy (pp 199-227). Cambridge:
CUP
Schmitt, N. & Schmitt, D (1995). Vocabulary notebooks: theoretical underpinnings and
practical suggestions. In ELT Journal 49 (2), pp 133-143
Woolard, G. (2000). Collocation - encouraging learner independence. In M. Lewis
(Ed.), Teaching Collocation (pp 28-46). Boston: Thomson-Heinle

Source

Recycling Vocabulary
Author: Jo Budden

Did you know that you have to see a new word at least five times before you can
usually use it and include it in your ‘active’ vocabulary?

In your classes, students will have a valuable opportunity to pick up new vocabulary on
a variety of topics. It is a good idea for you to encourage your students to revise this
vocabulary on a regular basis in order for students to take ‘ownership’ of these words
and to start to use them confidently.

Recording new vocabulary

If you feel that sufficient effort isn’t being made to record new vocabulary it’s well
worth talking to your students and asking them how and where they record new words
that come up in class. They may have a notebook where they write the new words or
they may have no system in place. All students should be encouraged to make an effort
recording vocabulary in an orderly way. Suggest to the class that they have a special
vocabulary book. Depending on their preferences and learning styles the notebook can
include pictures and mind maps. It doesn’t have to be just a long list. Suggest to your
class that they carry this book with them and use the time spent waiting for buses or
sitting on trains to have a look through and test themselves. If you are learning their
language and somehow recording new vocabulary you could bring in your notebook (or
whatever you have to keep track of new words) and show them how you are making an
effort to extend your own vocabulary.

The word bag

Apart from encouraging your students to keep an orderly vocab book of some sort,
another way of having easy access to the words that have come up in your classes is to
create a ‘word bag’ for each of your groups. All you need are two large envelopes and
some strips of card. Write on one envelope ‘Blank word cards’ and ‘Class Word Bag’
on the other. Cut up lots of small strips of card and put them in the ‘Blank Word Cards’
envelope.

Every class, nominate a student to be in charge of the ‘word bag’. He or she should be
given the envelopes at the beginning of the class and is responsible for writing all the
new vocabulary on separate blank word cards and putting them into the class word bag
envelope. If this isn’t practical for your group, you can be responsible for putting the
words in the bag after each class. If you can keep the envelopes in the class you teach
in, pinned on a cork board or in a safe place, it will be easier for you to keep track of
the bag. After a few lessons you will have a good selection of words in the word bag.

Revision activities

Here are some activities for using the word bag to recycle the vocabulary. They can be
used at the beginning of a class as a warmer or at the end to fill up the last five minutes.

 Quick Fire Quiz - Pull out a bunch of words from the bag. Give clues or
definitions so the students can guess the word on the card. The student who
guesses the word correctly, wins the card. The winner is the student with the
most cards at the end.

 'Beep' sentences - Read a sentence incorporating the word on the word card.
Instead of saying the word, say ‘beep’. Students guess the missing word. When
students get the idea, pass them the word bag, so they can create their own
sentences.

 Circle story - Give each student a word card. You start and begin to tell a story
and use the word you have on your card. When you have used your word, the
next student continues the story until they can incorporate their own word.
  Team vocab tests - Divide the class into teams or pairs. Pull out a set number of
words and using translation or clues give the teams a vocab test!

 Pictionary - In two teams, use the word cards as prompts for a game of
pictionary. Use the board or paper.

The more you use the word bag, the more uses you will find for it! I find that students
feel a sense of security, knowing what vocabulary will be checked and they can also get
a great sense of achievement when they feel confident using new words. Acquiring
vocabulary takes a lot more effort for many students than we and they would like to
believe. The word bag helps to avoid the feeling that new English vocabulary is a
‘bottomless pit’! It can make the learning experience more tangible and achievable.