UNIT 2

LEXIS 

The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the word lexis is “vocabulary “in this unit I checked some important aspects about it. First, lexis refers to individual words or set of words which have a specific meaning. For instance, the heart it is the main part of the body this meaning is called denotative  but also we can give another meaning for heart for example, it is red and it has a special form this meaning is called figurative meaning. Everything depends on which context or situation the word is used.

However, we can say that the meaning of some vocabulary items can come from their form like in prefixes, suffixes or compounds (nouns made from two or more separate words. To sum up, when we teach any vocabulary we have to take into account two important features the context and the form since it helps students to deduce the meaning without too much difficulty. 

Second, in this unit I checked some lexical features that most of students have problems with the proper use of them such as; collocations are words that often occur together e.g.  do homework, take a nap etc. Moreover, idioms are also considered a big challenge to teach or learn since they cannot be translated literally because they are a kind of fixed expression that the meaning differ e.g. go bananas means I am upset, felling blue means I am sad. Finally we have the false friends or true cognates they are words which have the same or a similar form in two languages but a different meaning e.g.  Spanish word= codo, English translation= elbow, English word=code. In addition, teachers need to look for strategies or methods that let their students understanding how to use those lexical feature.

As conclusion, when we teach new words we can check if these words have any false friends in their language or if these words are homophones or homonyms of others they know in order to avoid misunderstandings.

References:

HubPages,. (2015).How to Teach Vocabulary To ESL Students. Retrieved 23 April 2015, from http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Teach-Vocabulary-To-ESL-And-EFL-Students

Beare, K. (2015). Readers Respond: Quick Vocabulary Activities for the ESL / EFL Teacher. About.com English as 2nd Language. Retrieved 23 April 2015, from http://esl.about.com/u/ua/esleflteachingtechnique/lm

Videos:

YouTube,. (2015). ESL Vocabulary Demonstration. Retrieved 23 April 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwCSbH_ScR0