actising what we already know.
- don’t ignore Teacher Talk Time–students need the correct input teachers provide
- stop breaking language down
- teach examples rather than rules
- if you have to teach from a structural syllabus–dump it.
- teach longer utterances because phrases have tunes but words don’t. It’s easier to remember a tune.
- teach less material but more thoroughly
- just because students like rules doesn’t mean it’s good for them. We don’t go to the doctor for the doctor to say what you want to hear, but to tell you what’s wrong.
Language learning is much messier than teachers and learners want to think. He used the analogy of watering a plant. We have to water it for it to grow but we can’t say which leaf it is we’re watering. We know we’re helping the plant grow, but we don’t know how. People’s lexicons are like that.
Hoey, M. (2005). Lexical Priming: A new theory of Language. London and New York: Routledge.
Lewis, M. (1993). The Lexical Approach. Language Teaching Publications.
Lewis, M. (1997) Implementing the Lexical Approach: Putting Theory into Practice. Language Teaching Publications.
Lewis, M. (ed.) (2000). Teaching Collocation: Further Developments in the Lexical Approach. Hove: Heinle Language Teaching Publications.
Woolard, G. (2013). Messaging: Beyond a Lexical Approach in ELT. e-book available on kindle