Sorry for my late posting for the above topic.
I was not familiar with the lexical approach, and this has been pretty much the first study for the approach for me. Of course, my experience in studying English has been the grammatical approach. The lexical approach is not utilized in Japanese teaching because there is no regular Japanese corpus, although I’m studying language teaching as a Japanese teacher.
When I read Lewis’s ‘Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach’ (2000), I felt a sense of uncertainty. Then, when I read Thornbury’s ‘The lexical approach: A journey without maps?’ (1998), I felt that he acts like a spokesman for my opinions, as in “what is this ‘suitable input’ and how is it organized?” (Thornbury, 1998, p.5) and how is the lexical approach operationalized? (Thornbury, 1998)
At the same time, however, Thornbury (1998) introduces his friend’s Maori teacher’s method as one of the variations of the lexical approach which not only uses an exemplar-based system but also a rule-based analytic system for grammaticizing the lexis for avoiding danger of fossilization. As I also cannot agree with Lewis’s claim (2000) which seems to be unfair in terms of learners’ output, I’m very impressed by the adjustment made by the Maori teacher.
It seems to be important to devise a balance between the two systems if teachers introduce this approach. However, as Harwood (2002) points out, learners’ needs and wants are varied, so it seems to also be important to keep the learners’ option for the two systems.
List of references
Harwood, N. (2002). Taking a lexical approach to teaching: Principles and problems.
International Journal of applied Language, 12(2), 139-155.
Lewis, M. (2000). Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach. Hove: Language Teaching.
Thornbury, S. (1998, April 7). The lexical approach: A journey without maps?
Modern English Teacher, 1-7.
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Interestingly, Scott Thornbury is now a big supporter of the lexical approach. I would also suggest that the learning of Japanese could be enhanced if a more lexical orientation was taken. I haven't studied Japanese , but own experience with studying Chinese was that the traditional grammatical approach taken didn't provide a particularly useful or motivating pedagogical way forward.
ReplyDeleteAt present, I think that most the popular way of Japanese teaching as a second language in Japan may be the combination of the audio-lingual approach and the communicative approach.
ReplyDeleteKimiko
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ReplyDeleteI have to refer to the following fact…
ReplyDeleteAt present, most the popular way of English teaching as a second language in schools (from junior high schools to universitis) in Japan is of course the traditional grammatical approach.
Kimiko