ELTAB - Language awareness and analysis: lexis

The connotations that the item may have

Bachelor is a neutral/positive word whereas spinster conjures a more negative image.

What is lexis?

Can be seen as vocabulary + grammar. Vocabulary traditionally focused on individual words (lists) but it is a wider concept and consists of collocations, chunks and formulaic expressions.

What it means

Ensure that your students have understood correctly with checking questions

How the word is related to others

For example, collocation or the way that words occur together. You describe things 'in great detail' not 'in big detail'. Also synonyms, antonyms, lexical sets etc

If it follows any unpredictable grammatical patterns

For example, man-men / information (uncountable) and if the word is followed by a particular preposition (e.g. depend on)

What the affixes (the prefixes and suffixes) may indicate about the meaning

For example, substandard - sub meaning under, or unimportant meaning not.

The form

Is it a verb / a noun / an adjective etc

The situations when the word is or is not used

Is it formal/neutral/informal? For example, spectacles/glasses/specs. Is it used mainly in speech or in writing?

How it is pronounced

Phonemic script (= written record of the pronunciation) Drill and practice words that cause pronunciation problems (& word stresses)

Formulaic Expressions

Recurrent multi-word lexical items that have a single meaning or function and follow a set pattern. It is a umbrella cover term for a number of formulaic categories. Idioms, openings and closings of conversation such as 'Pleased to meet you' or 'See you later'.

lexical set

Sets of words that share a meaning relationship. menu, starter, napkin, wine glass, tip, bill all share a meaning relationship. Sometimes a close association can cause 'interference'.

What to teach?

The average native speaker uses around only five thousand words in everyday speech. Selecting what to teach, based on frequency and usefulness is essential

How it is spelt/spelled

This is almost always difficult in English. Clarify the pronunciation before showing the written form.

compound word

Two or more words combined to create a new or more specific word.

Collocation

Two or more words that co-occur in a language more often that would be expected by chance.

Eliciting vocabulary - methods

You can use: Realia - real objects. Mime or act. Use a cline - a scale which goes from one extreme to another. Explain using a scenario

Idiom

a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word on its own e.g. kick the bucket, bucket list, bite off more than you can chew

Lexical item

a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈vocabulary). Examples are cat, traffic light, take care of, by the way, and it's raining cats and dogs. They can be generally understood to convey a single meaning.

variety

depends on where people come from or who they affiliate with

(lexical) chunks

groups of words that can be found together in language, such as fixed collocations, or groups that commonly do, such as certain grammatical structures that follow rules. They include lexical phrases, set phrases, and fixed phrases. E.g. 'Utter disaster', 'by the way', 'at the end of the day', 'encourage + someone + infinitive', 'dependent + on'

register

the kind of language used in specific contexts

style

the level of formality/informality