LEXYCAL APPROACH

The basic principle of the lexical approach, then, is: "Language is grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar" (Lewis 1993). In other words, lexis is central in creating meaning, grammar plays a subservient managerial role. If you accept this principle then the logical implication is that we should spend more time helping learners develop their stock of phrases, and less time on grammatical structures.

Let's look at an example of lexical chunks or prefabricated speech in action:

Chris: Carlos tells me Naomi fancies him.
Ivor: It's just a figment of his imagination.

According to the theory we have just outlined, it is not the case that Ivor has accessed 'figment' and 'imagination' from his vocabulary store and then accessed the structure: it + to be + adverb + article + noun + of + possessive adjective + noun from the grammar store. It is more likely that Ivor has accessed the whole chunk in one go. We have, in Peters' words, in addition to vocabulary and grammar stores, a 'phrasebook with grammatical notes'. Probably, the chunk is stored something like this:

It is/was + (just/only) + a figment of + possessive + imagination

Accessing, in effect, 8 words in one go allows me to speak fluently and to focus on other aspects of the discourse - more comments about Carlos, for example. We can make 2 more points about this example:

• A number of friends and colleagues were asked to give an example of the word 'figment'. They all gave an example which corresponds to our chunk above. When asked to define the word 'figment', hardly anyone could do this accurately. This is an example of how native speakers routinely use chunks without analysing the constituent parts.

• There is nothing intrinsically negative in the dictionary definition of the word 'figment', yet it is always, in my experience, used dismissively or derisively. This is an example of how we store information about a word which goes beyond its simple meaning.