TKT REFLECTIVE BLOG Portugal Mery 9A: Unit 2 LEXIS

UNIT 2 LEXIS

Lexis refers to individual words or sets of words which express specific meaning. Jane Spiro argues that “Many learners and linguistics agree that vocabulary lies at the heart of learning a language” (Spiro, 2013)

People all the time is speaking about the meaning of words that is why we have to know about the different kinds of meaning words can have. First of all, denotation meaning occurs when we describe the thing or the idea instead of saying the words directly like for example: a dog is an animal with a tail, two ears, hairs and four legs. Then, we have the figurative meaning which occurs when for example we mention the word house and immediately lots of images comes to our mind. Thirdly we can understand words by context in other words the situation in which it is used. Another word comes from their forms like for example: prefixes, suffixes and compounds which are nouns constructed by two or more separated words. Collocations are words that occur together like the typical phrase “do homework”. In the same token idioms is a kind of fixed expression that cannot be translated literally, then we have chunks that occur in semi - fixed units, synonyms that are words with the same meaning, antonyms which are words with opposite meaning. These words can be part of the lexical set which can also be part of the word family. And finally, we have false friends, with this kind of words teachers should be very empathetic because they are words that have same or similar forms but different meaning. Homophones, are words with the same pronunciation but different spelling and meaning for example: there with there. Homonyms are words with same spelling and pronunciation but with a different meaning. And variety of English it is something difficult because as there are a lot of English languages it causes affection because people name thing differently according to the place they are located.

Based on what I have learned from this unit it could be a good idea to ask my students elaborate a mini dictionary created by themselves, the purpose of this is help them to remember each word from the vocabulary and let them learn them in a creative way. In the past, vocabulary teaching and learning were often given little priority in second language programs, but recently there has been a renewed interest in the nature of vocabulary and its role in the learning and teaching (Jack C. Richards, 2002) I agree with this point of view and that is why I want to contribute with something new.

PICTURES SHOWING EASY WAYS TO LEARN VOCABULARY