This presentation is about Lexical Notebooks and was made at the 2012 IATEFL conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

1. Beyond the Intermediate
Plateau
Collocation
Lexical Notebooks
shaun_dowling@hotmail.com
www.supershaun.com
www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/lexical-notebooks

2. Alternative Talk Titles
 Changing the Learners’ Vocabulary behavior
 The Systematic Noticing of Collocations
 The Central Learning Strategy from the Lexical
Approach
 Making Lexical Autonomy your Aim
 SLA using Lexical Notebooks
 Helping Learners Study Lexis Holistically
 Noticing Language Patterns

3. “Once the learner has arrived at
an intermediate level of language
learning however, progress does
not always appear to be so
marked, and making the
transition from intermediate to
the upper-intermediate or
advanced level sometimes proves
frustrating for many learners.”
“For some they may feel they have arrived at a plateau
and making further progress seems elusive, despite the
amount of time and effort the learner devotes to it.”
(Moving Beyond the Plateau, J.C.Richards)

4. a) There is a gap between receptive and productive
competence.
b) There are persistent fossilized language errors.
c) Fluency may have progressed at the
expense of complexity
d) The learner has a limited vocabulary
range.
e) Language production may be adequate
but often lacks the characteristics of natural
speech.

5. Another dimension of vocabulary development which is
essential if students are to make a successful transition to the
advanced level is to expand what has been called their
collocational competence.
One of the key problems in helping learners improve their
vocabulary is finding effective ways for them to help remember
words they have encountered. How can we help learners move
words from short-term to long-term memory? One clue is from
research on memory. ……… our mental lexicon is highly
organised and efficient, and that items that are related
semantically are stored together. This is why it is much easier to
recall a list of words that are grouped or organized in a
meaningful way, as compared with trying to recall a set of words
that are simply organized alphabetically.

6. Now is the time to
Take Notes

7. 1. Language and building up a volume of lexis
2. Introduction of the Lexical Notebook
3. Maintenance of Lexical Notebooks
Recognition - Build up the system - Exploration
Outcomes and Results of this Research

8. Stage 1: Language and Change
 Course book (resources) needs to be lexically rich
 Activities that train learners to notice collocations
 Regular activities for student to remember lexis
 Give class time and making learners
note down lexis

9. Stage 2: Introduction
Material
1.A Notebook
2.Helpful Inserts (Dowling 2004)
3.List of lexis/collocations
4.Example/Model of a Lexical Notebook (if possible)
5.INSTRUCTION - Categorising

10. Stage 3: Maintenance
Teacher continues to teach lexis
and remind students to take notes
Students complete notebooks
outside class
LN are brought into class and
collected for checking and
feedback.

11. What were the results of
the students’ work?
Were learners able to
complete Lexical
Notebooks?

12. Theme/Topic
Verb + Nouns
This student used
different colours
Lexical Notebook Organisation
Themed and Syntactic categories

13. 1. Main Entries
Collocation/Lexis
+ Meaning
+ Phrase using the collocation

14. 2. Main Entries
Like Take
No definitions
Translation Get
Key Word Organization

15. Results
Control v Treatment group
•The Treatment LN group improved their lexical test scores
- the control group’s level was maintained (Lexical Profile Test)
Lexical Notebook (Treatment Group)
•15 adults - 6 completed the notebook over the period.
9 students stopped due to time commitments
•The records of the 6 students varied considerably.
•LN rating of difficulty 2.67 Average (1 to 5) for difficulty
(not easy or difficult)

16. Entry Results
Learners could notice the most frequent syntactic collocation combinations

17. Formulaic Language
Word Sequences
Between 90% and 95% of the sequences found in all the sample
contained 2 to 5 words
The student who made the most effort wrote more longer
word sequences
High Frequency words (Top 2000 lexemes)
Learners repeatedly noted down a high frequency words
Smallest sample 40% - Largest sample 64%

18. Lexical Notebook Issues
Consider the Cost-Benefits of the strategy
•A heavy onus/weight is placed on the teacher.
•Class conditions may have to be modified
•Materials need to be improved/adapted to attend
to a higher volume of lexical phrases
•Students become familiar with something new,
‘collocations’ and they improve.

19. Alternative Talk Titles
 Changing the Learners’ Vocabulary behaviour
 The Systematic Noticing of Collocations
 The Central Learning Strategy from the Lexical
Approach
 Making Lexical Autonomy your Aim
 SLA using Lexical Notebooks
 Helping Learners Study Lexis Holistically
 Noticing Language Patterns

20. Thank you
Any Questions
shaun_dowling@hotmail.com
www.supershaun.com

21. References
Dowling, S. 2004. ‘Lexical Notebooks’. Teaching English, BBC and British Council: Subm
Ellis, N. C. 2002. Frequency Affects in Language Processing. A Review with Implication
Fowle, C. 2002. ‘Vocabulary Notebooks: implementations and outcomes’. ELT Journal V
Kim, D. 2007. ‘Implementing a lexical approach through a lexis notebook: A pilot study’.
Lewis, M. 1997. ‘Implementing the Lexical Approach, putting theory into practice’. Hove, UK: L
Martinez, R. and Murphy, V.A. 2011. Effect of Frequency and Idiomaticity on Second L
McCrostie, J. 2007. ‘Examining learner vocabulary notebooks’. ELT Journal Vol 61/3,
Schmitt, N. Schmitt, D. and Clapham, C. 2001. ‘Developing and exploring the behavior
Walters, J. and Bozkurt, N. 2009. ‘The effect of keeping vocabulary notebooks on vocabu
Wray, A. 2000. ‘Formulaic sequences in second language teaching; principles and practice