Teaching Vocabulary To Advanced Students:A Lexical Approach.

ADVANCED STUDENTS AND THEIR NEEDS

Advanced learners can generally

communicate well, having learnt all the basic structures of

the language.

However, they need to broaden their

vocabulary to express themselves more

clearly and appropiately in a wide

range of situations

The teaching of vocabulary

Above elementary levels was mostly

incidental, limited to presenting new items as they appeared in

reading or sometimes listening texts

Nowdays it is widely accepted that

vocabulary teaching should be part of the

syllabus, and taught in a well-planned and

regular basis.

Aspects of lexis that need

to be taken into account

when teaching vocabulary

(Gairns and redman, 1986)

Boundaries between conceptual meanings.

Homophyny

Homonymy

Polysemy

Style, register, dialect

Affective meaning

Synonymy

Translation

Chunks of language

Grammar of vocabulary

Pronunciation

We must use teaching techniques that can help realise this global concept of what it means to know a lexical

item .

We must also go beyond that, giving learner opportunities to use the items learnt and also helping

them to use effective written storage systems.

MEMORY AND STORAGE SYSTEMS

Understanding how our memory works might help us create more effective ways to teach vocabulary.

Learning new items involve

storing them…

First in our short-term memory.

Afterwards in long-term memory.

Oxford (1990) suggests memory strategies to aid learning, and these can be divided into:

Creating mental linkages

Applying images and

sounds Reviewing well

Employing action

Grouping, associating, placing

new words into a context

Physical response

or sensation,

using mechanic

al technique

s

In a structured

way

Using imagery, semantic mapping,

using keywords

and representing

sounds in memory

DEALING WITH MEANING

The main ways to deal with discovering

meaning

Guided discovery

Contextual guesswork

Using dictionaries

USING LANGUAGES

To turn the receptive

vocabulary items

Into productiv

e ones

Production will depend on motivation, and this is what teachers should aim

at promoting, based on their awareness of students needs and

preferences.

THE LEXICAL APPROACH

LEWIS

‘Language consists not of traditional grammar and

vocabulary, but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks’

Have some common

pronciplesTask -based

learningLexical

approach

Which have been influencing foreign language teaching