The Lexical Syllabus (Part 1 of 2)

Dave Willis, The Lexical Syllabus - A new approach to language teaching , Collins ELT 1990 ISBN 0 00 370284 7

An edited version of a review originally posted to the CETEFL group

Dennis Newson
August 2005

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 Reviewing Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, a reviewer in the New York Times wrote:   'The  sort   of  popular science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius'. Perhaps David Willis’ The Lexical Syllabus is not quite that magical,   but it does articulate many of the doubts about standard practises in TEFL you may have thought and never dared   to say out loud.

David Willis and his wife Jane are co-authors of the Collins Cobuild English Course and the present book represents the theoretical and methodological thinking underlying that course. 'Cobuild' stands for Collins (the name of the publisher) and Birmingham University International Language Database, a corpus of 20 million words stored and retrievable electronically. The Willses made full use   of this and their course is shaped by its existence.

The Lexical Syllabus is 136 pages short and consists of 8 chapters and a one-page bibliography. The chapters are:

  1. From methodological options to syllabus design
  2. Words and structures
  3. The lexical research and the COBUILD project
  4. Syllabus content
  5. Communicative methodology and syllabus specification
  6. Syllabus organisation
  7. Word, structure, function and discourse
  8. A brief review

Chapter 8 provides a convenient summary on which to base this posting - whose purpose is not to make a  carefully balanced assessment but to draw a stimulating book to the attention of members of the EFLTU list. 

The Willis’ approach is based firmly on  authentic language i.e. on the data from the research which analysed the natural language of the COBUILD 20 million words. Examples are not made up and nothing is chosen on the basis of intuition - everything is based on the corpus: this is real  language.( The recording which accompany the course are not scripted either, they are recordings of authentic, spontaneous language.) As a result of  this constant appeal to what natives actually say and write many favourites from the TEFL teacher’s syllabus disappear or have to be radically modified. For example    – less than half of the uses of   the preposition IN have anything to do with time or space; SEE is commonest as in I see = I understand; GIVE in uses like to give a talk and KEEP as in keep warm.  Favourite contrasts like the difference between the Simple Past tense and the Present Perfect have less to do, Willis claims,  with meaning in some objective sense than with the speaker’s or reader’s choice.  

Mmmm. And so how is this real, authentic language to be taught? Willis argues for (and produces with his wife in the COBUILD course) a task-based methodology: “...in which the focus is on the outcome of the activity rather than on the language used to achieve that outcome.." This is the heart of the different approach. He contrasts his approach with the structural or presentation approach “which depends on grading language patterns ....and presenting these language patterns to the learner one at a time.” In this approach control of language is essential and so is accuracy. Willis’ view is diametrically   opposed.: “A presentation methodology is based on the belief that out of accuracy comes fluency. A task-based methodology is based on the belief that out of fluency comes accuracy, and that learning is prompted and refined by the need to communicate.”

A task-based methodology  encourages the learner to make what use they can of whatever language they have. “Form-focussed approaches see language as a system of patterns or structures. Learners gradually...[build] up a picture of the whole language.” Task-based approaches see language as a system of meanings, and the learner’s task the learning of a semantic system, a system of meanings. (Willis quotes the linguist Halliday’s ..book with the suggestive title: Learning how to mean.) >

The COBUILD English Course (and The Lexical Syllabus is largely an account of the writing of this course) devises an appropriate   methodology and syllabus based on use of a learner’s corpus   which covers the most important meanings and patterns in English. (This learner’s corpus is claimed to be innovative).This corpus is used as a quarry for language awareness activities and   for providing material for the learner to exploit   by “referencing and recycling”, two methods Willis' exercises use frequently. "This is how the learner learns. Learners do not learn the language a bit at a time, they are trained to look critically at their own language experience and examine and analyse , by making descriptive statements after inspecting samples of language . There are no grammar rules to be presented and learned, pupils produce their own descriptive and explanatory statements. These different kinds of language exercises are, of course, of particular interest to the classroom teacher".

Even if you teach in situations where you are bound to a particular syllabus, I believe that this book, by altering your own perception of what it is you teach (or should teach) and how your pupils learn can help you to be more effective.

[Sadly, The COBUILD English Course is no longer in print. DJN August, 2005].

 

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