To develop speaking skills, teenage learners need to practise speaking a great deal and over an extended period of time. But real improvement requires more than just practice – it requires learners to expand their language abilities: grammar, lexis, pronunciation and so on. Chief amongst these is lexis – individual words, multi-word items, lexical chunks and fixed phrases – since most breakdowns in language production are caused by lack of access to the right word or phrase.
In this webinar, Jeff Stranks, co-author of of English in Mind (2004), More! (2008), and THiNK, looks at the relationship between lexical competence and spoken fluency, and suggests materials and activities that can you can use to help learners increase their lexical range and thus become better and more confident conversationalists in English.
What constitutes lexis?
There are a number of important components, which are:
- single words e.g. book, walk, easy.
- word combinations e.g. have dinner, get on with (someone) and a major blow.
- fixed expressions e.g. a piece of cake, the way I see it.
- sentence heads e.g. ‘What I mean is…..’, ‘it’s important to note’.
For the learner to be able to express themselves effectively it is important that they learn a range of lexis. Using tasks to build phrasal verb familiarity is important and the earlier this is done the better.
What do you think is the main reason learners hesitate or stop to think when they are speaking English?
Most of our listeners agreed that the main reason learners hesitate or stop to think when they are speaking English is that they are searching for a word or phrase to use – and Jeff agrees. Although this isn’t the only reason and there is a connection between spoken fluency and vocabulary range.
So what as teachers, can we do?
Coursebooks are great at having a lexical focus but as teachers we can do more to expand the learner’s vocabulary.
Lexical sets
Lexical sets are a common way of presenting lexis to students, examples of these are:
- Days of the week
- Months
- Colours
- Rooms and furniture
Using lexical sets to increase lexis knowledge is generally positive; however, using just this method does have its constraints as a lot of lexis don’t fit neatly into a set, so it can be missed. Also this isn’t a natural way to learn a language, in real language learning we don’t learn by repeating sets. Research suggests that lexical items are better learned when learners start the learning process themselves and make topical connections between items being learnt. How does this transfer into a classroom setting? Let’s consider the lexical set ’emotions’.
Task
Using the lexical set ’emotions’:
- excited
- nervous
- scared
- confused
- bored
- angry
Ask your students to mime actions that they associate with these words e.g. for excited they could jump up and down and/or wave their hands. These actions will help create associations and expand their thinking.
Are there any objections?
Many of these words/phrases are above my learners’ level. Learners won’t remember all the words.
But remember that relevance, learnability and personalisation are key for learners! Your students may not learn all the words, or need them all for their exams, but they’ll their lexical range and thus become better and more confident conversationalists in English.
To view the full webinar, click on the video below.
If you want to find out more about THiNK, check out the website!