Preliminary communication
The lexical approach to L2 teaching with special attention to Croatian
Marina Bergovec
Abstract
The lexical approach to second language teaching has received interest in
recent years as an alternative to grammar-based approaches. The lexical ap-
proach concentrates on developing learners’ proficiency with lexis, or words
and word combinations. It is based on the idea that an important part of
language acquisition is the ability to comprehend and produce lexical phrases
as unanalyzed wholes, or “chunks”, and that these chunks become the raw
data by which learners perceive patterns of language traditionally thought
of as grammar. In this article the general principles of the lexical approach
are described.
In addition to that, the paper explores the possibility of using this approach
in teaching Croatian as a foreign language are shown. The analysis reveals
advantages and disadvantages in using this approach in teaching CFL to
other speakers. As Croatian is a language with different language struc-
ture than English, particularly in morphology, only some of the lexical ap-
proach principles could be applied successfully, particularly at the beginning
of learning. For example, while the English verb to come has only four
different forms: come, comes, came, coming, its Croatian equivalent, verb
do´ci, together with its aspectual pair dolaziti (which is used in the present
tense) has dolazi, dolazimo, dolazite, dolaze (there are more for some less
used tenses). On the other hand, the principle of memorising institutional-
ized expressions could be easily used in Croatian FL learning to some extent
too.
Keywords
lexical approach; teaching and learning Croatian
Hrčak ID:
20655
URI
Publication date:
15.11.2007.
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