Lexical strategies

This course paper consists of introduction, two chapters, conclusion, bibliography and appendix.
The significance and actuality of the theme, the aim and tasks, the theoretical and practical importance of the paper is outlined in introduction.
The results of the research are generalized in the concluding part of the qualification paper.
The first chapter considers theoretical issues of translation and describes lexical problems of translation.
The second chapter deals with detailed analysis of each type of lexical transformations.
The work can be useful for all the teachers of foreign languages when they teach their students to translate the written sources of information or when the letters are taught to speak and transmit the information in foreign languages.
The practical value of the work is that the results of the investigation can be used in the courses of lectures in linguistics, seminars in linguistics and also can be useful for practical courses of English language.

1. A lexical approach. Teaching lexical chunks

A lexical approach to language teaching foregrounds vocabulary learning, both in the form of individual, high frequency words, and in the form of word combinations (or chunks). The impetus for a lexical approach to language teaching derives from the following principles:

• a syllabus should be organised around meanings
• the most frequent words encode the most frequent meanings and
• words typically co-occur with other words
• these co-occurrences (or chunks) are an aid to fluency
A syllabus organised around meanings rather than forms (such as grammar structures) is called a semantic syllabus. A number of theorists have suggested that a syllabus of meanings – especially those meanings that learners are likely to need to express – would be more useful than a syllabus of structures. For example, most learners will at some time need to express such categories of meaning (or notions) as possession or frequency or regret or manner. Simply teaching learners a variety of structures, such as the present simple or the second conditional, is no guarantee that their communicative needs will be met. The present simple, for example, supports a wide range of meanings (present habit, future itinerary, past narrative, etc), some of which may be less useful than others. Wouldn't it be better to start with the more useful meanings themselves, rather than the structure?
A semantic syllabus – i.e. one based around meanings – is likely to have a strong lexical focus. The following sentences, for example, all involve the present simple, but they express different notions. These notional meanings are signalled by certain key words (underlined):
Does this towel belong to you? (possession)
How often do you go to London? (frequency)
I wish I'd done French, (regret)
Exercise is the best way of losing weight, (manner)
Words like belong, often, wish and way carry the lion's share of the meaning in these sentences: the grammar is largely padding. A lexical approach argues that meaning is encoded primarily in words. This view motivated two coursebook writers, Dave and Jane Willis, to propose that a lexical syllabus might be the best way of organising a course. The Willises believed that a syllabus based around the most frequent words in the language would cover the most frequent meanings in the language. Accordingly, they based their beginners' course around the 700 most frequent words in English. They used corpus data (i.e. computer banks of naturally occurring text – see page 68) to find out how these words 'behaved' – that is, the kinds of words and structures that were associated with these high frequency words.
For example, an extremely common word in English is way. According to COBUILD corpus data, it is in fact the third most common noun in English (after time and people). An analysis of corpus data shows that way is used to express a variety of meanings:

method or means manner, style, behaviour what happens, what is the case degree, extent, respect location, movement, direction, space

It's a useful way of raising revenue. The cheapest way is to hire a van. He smiles in a superior way. Play soccer Jack Charlton's way. That's the way it goes. We were so pleased with the way things were going. She's very kind and sweet in lots of ways. In no way am I a politically effective person. A man asked me the way to St Paul's. Get out of the way.

(after Willis D, The Lexical Syllabus, Collins)

Using corpus data, they then studied what kinds of grammatical structures way was typically found with – i.e. its syntactic environment. For example, the first use of way in the table above (meaning 'method or means') is commonly found in association with this pattern:
way + of + -ing a useful way of raising revenue the different ways of cooking fish
The next step was to devise teaching materials that illustrated these meanings and patterns, bearing in mind that the starting point was not the pattern itself, but the meaning (method, means), and its frequency, as evidenced in the high frequency of the word way.