The Idea That Changed Language Teaching
Four Types of Lexical Chunks
'By the way,' 'in other words,' 'on the other hand.' Stored and used whole.
Words that naturally co-occur: 'make a decision' (not 'do a decision'), 'heavy rain' (not 'strong rain'), 'strongly disagree' (not 'very disagree').
'Under the weather,' 'bite the bullet,' 'hit the nail on the head.' Must be learned as complete units.
Semi-fixed patterns with slots: 'I was wondering if you could...', 'Have you ever...?', 'What I mean is...'. These are the building blocks of fluent discourse.
The Chunk Advantage
Faster Processing
Retrieving chunks as units is 40% faster than constructing from rules
Native-Like Fluency
Native speakers communicate in chunks — learners who chunk sound more natural
Vocabulary Growth
Teaching collocations expands effective vocabulary faster than single words
Teacher Tip
“Whenever you teach a new word, automatically teach it in its most common collocations. Don't teach 'decision' — teach 'make a decision, come to a decision, face a difficult decision, reverse a decision.' DrillKit can generate collocation-focused gap-fill exercises for any vocabulary set.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Lexical Approach mean abandoning grammar teaching?
No — Lewis himself never suggested eliminating grammar. The shift is in emphasis: treating grammar as a framework for understanding patterns in chunks, not as the primary vehicle for language acquisition.
How do I determine which chunks to teach?
Focus on high-frequency chunks from the British National Corpus or COCA. Tools like COCA (corpus of contemporary American English) let you check the most common collocations for any target word. Also mine student-produced text for missing collocations — 'do a mistake' reveals what chunk they haven't acquired.
Is the Lexical Approach better for some levels than others?
It's valuable at all levels, but especially transformative at B1-B2 where learners often plateau on grammar but can dramatically improve by acquiring more sophisticated chunks.