74

The Lexical Syllabus; Dave Willis

Originally published by Collins ELT, 1990

CHAPTER 6: Syllabus organisation

Aims - coverage and authenticity/spontaneity

Our aim in writing Level 1 of the Collins COBUILD English Course was to provide the learner
with exposure to language which would illustrate the meanings and patterns of 700 of the most
frequent words of English, to highlight all of those words and to treat selected items in detail.
This would mean that a false beginner would, after around one hundred hours of study, have
some familiarity with the words and patterns which make up around 70% of all English text. If
we could achieve this coverage we would be offering the learner a corpus of tremendous utility.
We accepted that we were unlikely to achieve such coverage completely. The target for Level 2
was to cover the next 850 words and for Level 3 the next 950, a total of 2,500 words after three
books, accounting for around 80% of all text. We recognised that in order to achieve coverage
of 700 words, and afterwards 850 and 950, we would have to include other words from outside
this high frequency list. We set out, however, to achieve the best coverage we could with as
little extraneous lexis as possible.
Our task was made much more difficult, but also much more meaningful, by our decision
to use as far as possible only authentic or spontaneously produced texts. By 'authentic' texts we
meant those produced by language users in the course of their everyday lives for some
communicative purpose external to language teaching, and not simply produced to illustrate
some generalisation about the language. Almost all the written texts we used were authentic in
this way. It was also decided that if we were obliged to make up single sentence examples to
illustrate specific points about words, we should do so with reference to the data sheets drawn
from the original COBUILD corpus, as far as possible reproducing data sheet examples with
minimal alterations.
By ‘spontaneously produced’ texts we meant texts which were unscripted and unrehearsed,
but which were produced not in the course of everyday life, but at our request and in artificial
circumstances. Most of the spoken texts we used fell into this category. A large number of these
were recorded by native speakers of English in a studio, carrying out tasks which would later be
performed by learners in the classroom. These texts were not simplified in any way, since
participants in the recording sessions were told that they were providing material for a research
project rather than material for language teaching. The resulting texts have almost all the
features of authentic spoken discourse. These include false starts, changes of subject, requests
for clarification and so on. More significantly they demonstrate communication as a cooperative
act in which participants work together to achieve an outcome.
In Level 1 Unit 11, for example, learners are set this task:
 Syllabus Organisation 75

158 Puzzle

a How good are you at logical thinking? Can you work out this puzzle?

Peter, Mary and John all went away last weekend. One of them went to Birmingham one to
Manchester, and one to London. One of them went to the theatre, one went to see a relative, and
one went to buy a computer. Who did what?

Here are two clues to help you.

• One of them went to London to visit her mother.

• John bought a computer but not in Manchester.

The following is part of the transcript of the native speaker recording:

BG: Right. So Mary went to London

DF: So it's Mary and mother. John bought a computer but not at Manchester, therefore it must be-
BG: John must have gone to Birmingham.
DF: Birmingham. Computer And, er, who's the other one? Peter.
BG: Must have gone to Manchester.

This does not feature the neat turn-taking of scripted dialogues with each turn virtually
complete in itself, replying predictably to or commenting explicitly on what has gone before.
There are two participants but the text is very much a joint product, and if the text were not laid
out neatly with each turn attributed to a particular participant it would be very difficult to
separate out the contributions:

So it’s Mary and mother. John bought a computer but not in Manchester, therefore it must be -
John must have gone to Birmingham. Birmingham. Computer. And, er, who's the other one?
Peter? . . . must have gone to Manchester.

It is indeed true that we have no precise description of language in use. But as I argued in
Chapter 1, learners need to find out as much as possible about language in use, and this cannot
be done unless they are exposed to language in use. The form of language we use is determined
critically by the purpose for which it is used. It is essential therefore to provide learners with
language which is genuinely informed with some communicative purpose. This is difficult,
expensive and incredibly time consuming, which may explain why there is so little
authentic/spontaneous language in coursebooks. If it can be done, however, it brings enormous
benefits. It means the language that learners hear and read in the classroom is exactly the kind
of language they will be exposed to outside. This brings great advantages not only of economy
but also of motivation. The
76 The Lexical Syllabus

satisfaction learners gain from being able to process spontaneous native speaker speech at
normal speed constantly enhances and reinforces motivation.

Input - from topics to tasks and texts

The process of writing the coursebooks was inevitably a complex one. The particular syllabus
design procedures and the methodology which was to carry the syllabus had never before been
incorporated in a published course. There were a number of different strands in the research,
design, writing and piloting of the course. All of these processes impinged on one another and a
hold-up or failure in one process had repercussions throughout. Things were not made simpler
by the fact that the authors of the course were working in Singapore, while most of the research
was being carried out in Britain, particularly at the University of Birmingham. What follows,
therefore, is a streamlined report of the whole process. It omits false starts, unexpected failures,
conference phone calls linking Singapore, Birmingham and London, problems with computers,
the difficulties of storing diskettes in a tropical climate, and a host of minor problems which are
a part of any major publishing venture.
A good deal of research was undertaken before we began to assemble Level 1. We were
provided with the raw material of the syllabus in the form of some 700 data sheets of the kind
exemplified by would and any in Chapter 3. We wrote to a large number of ELT institutions in
Britain and overseas in order to build up a list of topics which were felt to be of value and of
interest to students. On the basis of this information and of our own experience as teachers, we
then identified a series of topics to form the basis of the course and devised a number of tasks
based on each of these topics. These tasks were then recorded in a studio using educated native
speakers. The recordings were transcribed and concordanced to enable us to define the learner's
corpus more easily. At the same time we set about identifying a bank of written text which
could be made accessible to remedial beginner learners and which would integrate without too
much difficulty with the topics we had identified.
Meanwhile the COBUILD team in Birmingham was assembling the TEFL Side Corpus
made up of over twenty of the most widely used ELT coursebooks worldwide:

In early 1984, as part of the preparation for the later Collins COBUILD Er~glish Course, the
TEFL Corpus was analysed in detail in order to identify the linguistic structures and speech
functions which were common to most of its books at the lower levels. This analysis could be said
to mirror the 'received' or consensus syllabus for the teaching of English which operates currently .
. . (Renouf 1987)

We believed that our lexical approach would provide adequate coverage of this consensus and
also go well beyond it. We intended to use the TEFL Corpus to make sure that we did indeed
have coverage of the consensus syllabus.

Procedure

Once our bank of texts was assembled, it was ordered according to our
 Syllabus Organisation 77

intuitions about the difficulty of the texts and tasks. This intuitive ordering was then subject to a
preliminary pilot, which was designed to test not only the accuracy of our predictions as to
difficulty but also the validity of our task-based methodology. It was also intended to find out
whether elementary students could indeed handle authentic written text and spontaneously
produced spoken discourse. In general we were happy with the results of this pilot, even
though, inevitably, some tasks and texts had to be abandoned and others had to be reordered.
The remaining tasks and texts were ordered, and an outline of the coursebook was put together
which included rubrics for the exercises, but not at this stage any language focused exercises.

Checking the lexical coverage

The texts and rubrics were then concordanced by computer and the concordances checked
against the data sheets to see if we had adequate coverage of the main uses of the 700 target
words. Basically the coverage was satisfactory. We had sufficient data to present a good picture
of almost 650 of the target words. Some of the omissions were words which, though very
frequent in themselves, tend to be restricted in range and to occur in contexts which would
create considerable problems for false beginners. Among these were words like community,
development, trade and energy. Some, like concerned, finally, involved, indeed and unless
were felt to be of high utility and therefore to be serious omissions. In addition to these words
we had also missed a few major meaning categories of some very common words. One of these
casualties was would meaning ‘used to’. Nevertheless, since the coverage of frequent words
and patterns was our overriding priority, it is not surprising that we achieved a very much more
comprehensive coverage than is usually found in an elementary coursebook.
We decided that it would be uneconomical to extend our corpus considerably in order to
ensure coverage of the few significant omissions, but we did take careful note of the missing
words and meaning categories to ensure that we included them in Level 2. To replace them in
Level 1 we chose to highlight around fifty other words of particularly high frequency which
happened to be well contextualised in our data. Among these were such words as telephone,
visit, window and station. To these we added two more sets of words. First were those which
were of high utility and occurrence in the classroom situation bearing in mind the methodology
we had decided to adopt - words like teacher, student, group and share. Secondly there were
words which did not qualify for inclusion on the grounds of frequency alone, but which
completed important lexical sets. These included such items as days of the week, and a number
of adjectives of colour and shape. Together with the 650 words already identified, these made
up the target for Level 1. Inevitably a number of other words occurred in the texts, some of
them, like cat, banana, psychiatrist and lining, of low frequency and utility. We had no
intention of highlighting these. The fact that they occurred in the learner's corpus was a
consequence of our decision to work only with authentic and spontaneously produced text.
Similar procedures were applied to specify content for Levels 2 and 3. As
78 The Lexical Syllabus

with most language courses, the emphasis and therefore the proportion of text, began to move
from spoken to written. In addition to other written texts, Levels 2 and 3 each included a
complete short story by Roald Dahl and Level 3 also featured a good deal of newspaper text.
When we came to profile the words in Levels 2 and 3, we took account of the fact that profiles
become less complex as one moves down the frequency scale and we were thus able to work
without data sheets. In profiling words for Level 2 we worked from database (see page 32) and
dictionary entries, and for Level 3 we relied on the Collins COBUILD English Language
Dictionary itself. Of the 1,800 words additional to the 700 in Level 1 we managed to
contextualise all but about 200. Texts and rubrics for Levels 2 and 3 were concordanced in the
same way as for Level 1.
Like most coursebooks, all three levels went through several rewrites as a result of
readers' comments or piloting. The information and advice culled from these processes had to
be incorporated, but here again we were presented with particular problems. We could not
respond immediately to adverse comments on or reactions to a particular text or task. It
sometimes happened that the text in question offered a particularly good context for important
words or phrases. Since we were committed to the use of authentic/spontaneous text we could
not simply write something else to give us the same cover. We were reluctant, therefore, to drop
a useful text unless we could find and exploit a good context elsewhere in the materials or in
our text bank. If we did drop the text we had then to identify the items we were losing and go
back to the concordances of our material to find other places where these items were covered. A
single decision of this kind had considerable repercussions. We did not doubt that our
determination to keep the best possible coverage of our target words in the learner's corpus was
justified, but sometimes we paid a high price for it.

Adjusting the learner's corpus

Statistically it was almost inevitable that with some words the picture which emerged from
concordances of our texts differed in important ways from the picture derived from the 7.3
million word COBUILD corpus. The word like provides an example. The main COBUILD
corpus has 11,600 occurrences of like. Of these about 60% mean 'resembling, similar or having
the appearance of something else; in the same way as'. Typical occurrences are:

People with sensitive skins were beginning to look like lepers. The proprietor's word, like Hitler's,
was absolute.
The aim is to run them like nursery schools.

A sub-category of this meaning accounted for around 20% of the remaining uses:

SUCH AS; USED WHEN CITING EXAMPLES OF A PARTICULAR TYPE

OR CLASS.
She lived on lovely clean foods like milk, butter, eggs . . .
A private gardener like myself would never get on in nursery work.

The remaining 20% were occurrences like:

I don’t like what you stand for.

There's nothing I like better than talking to my colleagues.
 Syllabus Organisation 79

and sentences with would like such as:

Would he like to inspect the hut now?

That's what I'd like to know.

In our text data, however, the proportions were reversed in that the occurrences of like meaning
‘be fond of’ and would like meaning ‘went to’ heavily outnumbered the other categories. We
made sure, however, that we drew attention to the first two categories no less than the third. In
doing this it occurred to us that whereas many coursebooks have whole units dealing with 'likes
and dislikes', relatively few of them highlight the more frequent meanings of like. In all cases
like this we were careful to cover as far as possible all uses which were prominent in the
COBUILD corpus, even if there were relatively few such occurrences in our own texts.
Obviously we would have been happier with a neat match between our mini-corpus and the
main corpus, but the amount of material which would need to have been processed in order to
achieve this put it out of the question.

Language focused work

We felt reasonably confident that at each level, and certainly by the end of Level 3, we had
provided learners with exposure to a highly representative sample of English. But we did not
want to rely simply on exposure. We wanted to enable teachers to highlight the most important
words and phrases as they occurred in the texts to which learners were exposed. For this reason
we itemised learning aims, including lexical aims, for each section of each unit (see page 70),
and summarised lexical aims for each unit (see page 71). Without guidance of this sort, learners
have no way of knowing what is important and needs to be remembered. We were also well
aware from our own previous teaching experience that teachers too need to be prompted if they
are to recognise which items have high utility.
In addition to this we wanted to provide specific language practice of different kinds. We
wanted first to make sure that we covered all items in the consensus syllabus as identified by
the TEFL Side Corpus, unless there was a clear reason to omit them. We did this largely
through special grammar exercises.

200 Grammar words

so
1 marking a summary or a change of subject 6 meaning ‘also’
A: I wasn’t in London last weekend. B: So you A: I’ve got some money. B: So have I.
weren’t in London last weekend?
BG: I haven’t really got anything else There is one example below of each of these six
planned. DF: So what about the shopping? meanings of so. Which is which?

2 expressing amount a DF: Will you be going to Nisa this

We were so tired that we went straight to bed. weekend? BG: Yes. I think so. DF: So will I. So
that's one possibility.
3 meaning therefore b A : It depends if I’ve got a car or not. B: Right, so
He saw someone he thought he knew, so he called out and you do your shopping by car.
ran after her. c Please let me know as soon as you have fixed your
travel plans so that I can make sure you are
4 pointing back properly looked after on arrival.
A: It s very easy. B: Do you really think so? d After so much hassle I’m determined to stay at the
top.
5 so that used to talk about result or purpose
The British Council helps British participants by
helping to pay their expenses so that they can attend the
Seminar.
80 The Lexical Syllabus

The aim was to give a picture of the grammatical behaviour of the very commonest words of
the language. These exercises drew almost entirely on material from the learner's corpus as
described in Chapter 4, enabling the learners to draw on their own experience of the language.
A reference section which brought together these grammatical generalisations and illustrated
them with further examples was included at the back of the Student's Book Level 1 and Practice
Book Level 3.

So (200)
1 marking a summary or a change of subject

Okay. So we've got the camel in the sunset next. (171)

So what do you do at quarter to eight? (143)
Right. So Mary went to London. (158)

2 expressing amount

There are always so many tourists.

No wonder you look so tired. (142)

3 meaning ‘therefore’

The suitcase looked exactly like mine, so I said ‘Excuse me, sir.. .’

4 pointing back

JV: Wouldn't you think Cairo was 1500? DL: Yes, out of the ones given, I would’ve
thought so. (90)

5 ‘so that’ used to talk about result or purpose

It had a thick lining, so that you could practically sleep out in it. (104)
Let me know as soon as you have fixed your travel plans, so that I can make sure that you
are properly looked after. (193)

6 meaning ‘also’

JV: The woman next to him has orange trousers. DL: So has mine. (38)
David lives in London and so does Bridget.
__________________________________________________

Look at these examples.

I'm tired. So am I/So is she.
I've finished. So have I/So has she.
I'll help. So will I/So will she.
I like it. So do I/So does she.
I liked it. So did I/So did she.

Reply to these sentences in the same way.

1 I'm hungry.
2 1 enjoyed the film.
3 He always comes.
 Syllabus Organisation 81

4 They're going home.

5 She's done it before.
6 He'll have to work harder.
7 She was so tired she went straight to sleep.
______________________________________________________

These exercises provided learners with valuable input. Even more important they encouraged
learners to look at language critically to see what patterns words featured in, and to assign
meanings to those patterns.
The grammar was, therefore, organised almost entirely lexically in Level 1. This gave us
some misgivings to begin with, but gradually we became convinced of the value of this
approach. The value of organising things under words is that words are immediately
recognisable. We felt that grammarians, coursebook writers and teachers had become used to
working with abstract categories parts of speech; verb tenses; semantic labels such as
'conditional'; functional labels such as 'reported speech' end so on. When you have the
language, you begin to search for categories to describe it. But learners do not 'have' the
language. They are struggling to learn or acquire it. In doing so they are obliged to work from
surface forms to perceive whatever recurrent patterns they can. In the case of an almost entirely
non-inflected language like English, 'surface forms' means words. In fact we did include in our
grammar morphemes such as -ing, markers of past tense and the past participle -ed and -en
together with -s as a marker of the plural and third person singular, and -'s as an abbreviation
for is and has and marking possession:

213 Grammar words

-ing

1 describing something Write down five of these things.

There were two girls eating fish and chips. something you like doing
Write down one or two interesting things about each person. something you stopped doing a long time ago
something you can see someone doing
2 after am, is, be etc. what you were doing at this time yesterday what you
One girl was carrying a white bag. will be doing this time tomorrow something you
The S student will be asking you questions about things that you remember doing as a child
usually do during the day. someone who is sitting at the front of the class

3 after see, look at, hear, listen to etc. What categories do these sentences belong to?
Listen to them talking about when they go to bed.
a Put in the money before making your call.
4 before am, is etc. b Listen to David and Bridget discussing the same
Dialling 999 is free. problem.
c The conversation ceased and she heard gasping
5 after stop, start, remember, like etc. sounds.
I remember going to London many years ago. d Using a cardphone is not difficult.
She likes watching television. e You can telephone your family back home without
using money.
6 after when, before, instead of etc. f The special cards are available from Post Offices
Remember that when dialling a number from within the same and shops displaying the green 'Cardphone’ sign.
area, you do not need the prefix. g I really like running. Swimming is nice too.
Before attempting to break down the door, the man tried. . . h You have quite a long working day, don't you ?

Once this groundwork was laid in Level 1, we allowed ourselves to reference grammar in
other ways. In Level 2 we organised some grammatical entries under functional headings such
as ‘Cause and Effect’:
82 The Lexical Syllabus

76 Grammar
as As a visitor you can take tax-free goods home.
Cause and result with Until, mad with energy and boredom, you
In the first examples, the part expressing cause is escaped. (26)
coloured. The other part expresses the result.
1 a sentence 4 words meaning ‘cause’ or ‘result’ :
consequently He was very tired. Consequently he fell make His pointed ears made him look like a rat.
asleep. result Shorter periods of use can result in fuel bill
as a result Britain is quite a small country. As a result savings. (91)
travel is quick and easy. cause What was the cause of the accident?
that’s why…but they’re ever so small. That's why rain lead to A serious illness led to his losing his job .
is thin. .
2 a clause 5 no marker
because I don't have a journey to work because I work I don't want that one. It's too expensive.
at home. (80) Until, mad with energy and boredom, you escaped.
and John is trying to get a new job, and is busy sending (26)
application forms all over the place. (2)
as We chose to go by plane as it meant we had more Look at the sentences below. Say which part
time in Paris. expresses. cause and which result.
so There’s no chance of a promotion there, so I’m a We had never been to Northumberland before.
going to move on. (2) That's why we wanted to go. (29)
b We went by plane. As a result we had more time in
so . . . that I was so proud (that) I jumped up and down. Paris.
since I suppose that would come out the same way since c My favourite was always English because I liked
people seem to prefer cats and dogs to snakes and writing stories (58) :
spiders .(25) d It's a very pleasant school, and I'd be sorry to leave
it. (2)
3 a phrase e . . . a woman . . . looking a bit angry as it's one in
as a result of As a result of this postcard I think Becky the morning by then. (78)
will write back.(33) f I can't see the TV with you standing in front of it!
because of A: Why can't you starve in the desert? g He worked hard and did very well as a result.
B: You can't starve in the desert because of the sand h Finally, tired out, they fell asleep.
which is there. (Can you explain this joke?)

But this language was still indexed lexically and therefore retrievable by the students using the
word as a starting point.
The approach in these grammar exercises, therefore, was to present learners with the raw
material of language (almost always language which was already familiar), and to provide
prompts of different kinds to encourage learners to analyse and categorise language forms.
Other exercises were devised to highlight other features of language.
Language Study exercises were used to lead in to detailed study of specific texts,
particularly where the immediate context was an important aid in clarifying a point about
language:

70 Language study
a Giving advice
· Read the transcripts for section 69 carefully. Pick out seven useful phrases you might use if you
were starting to give advice to someone.
e.g. Well, I actually did that last year. We . . .
 Syllabus Organisation 83

We included Wordpower exercises which focused on important words and showed how the
frequent words in the language often have a number of meanings. This again led learners to
think analytically about words, and often made the point that abstract meanings are by far the
most frequent:

195 Wordpower
thing Look at these phrases using the word thing.
1 replacing another word or phrase Do they belong to category 1, 2 or 3?
She likes to eat sweet things.
Think of three things the driver might ask the hitch-hiker a) The news is bad today. Things are very
next. (97) worrying.
b) We went out in a boat one day and saw seals
2 referring to the situation in general or life in general and things.(29)
Hi! How are things with you? c) Has any of these things ever happened to
Business is bad. Things don’t look good. you?(103)
d) The important thing is you must report the
3.1 introducing an idea that you want to develop accident.
But tell me just one more thing: what do I do with my e) Could you bring it first thing tomorrow?
husband and the three kids?(188) f) The awful thing is, I had totally forgotten her
I think the first thing he might say is ‘Do you know what name.
seed you were doing?(136) g) I’m afraid I’ve got no time. Things are very busy
at present.
3.2 highlighting the importance or the important aspect of
what you are saying (Note: cartoon illustrations omitted)
The thing is, he has a skilled job.
The silly thing is, the car was parked at the time.

In Level 2 we introduced Phrase-building to highlight common language patterns. Again the

phrases were associated with words rather than with abstract patterns:

196 Phrase-building living in London is more expensive.

transport’s easy in Central London.
it’s difficult to park your car.
Here are some other words which are used in the fact shopping is such fun, you spend too
same way as thing category 3 The point is much.
(see section 195). trouble you can find whatever you want.
a Make up five sentences and try to remember problem
them. The question how to get home after 11o’ clock.
b Now make up some similar sentences about trouble is where to park.
things in your problem what to eat and where.
country.

At Level 3 we incorporated exercises of a similar type and went on to develop exercises which
would draw attention to the structure of such common text patterns as ‘situation - problem -
solution – evaluation’:
84 The Lexical Syllabus

Note: in the original version this column

78 Looking at adverts contains five facsimile advertisements for:

a Look carefully at these items from the New Leather Jackets

Horizons catalogue. Which things:
are ideal for people who travel a lot?
could be classified as containers?
Time folds flat
are made of the same material?
would be the best gift for an absent-minded The unbreakable flask
person?
might be useful for a person who lives in or travels Designer shirt wallet
to a cold climate?

b Which adverts do these phrases come from? Keyminder

The fold-away handle makes for easy pouring and
storage wearing a jacket. a pushhutton light top
quality hand-made this new version This is the
one they use, warmth and comfort

c Find the word but in the left-hand adverts. What

does it signal ? Think of other words like but.
78d d Which of the adverts are Edmund and
Elizabeth talking about here? What do they mean:
There you’ve killed two birds with one stone?

79 Language study

SITUATION—PROBLEM—SOLUTION—EVALUATION
Notice the structure of these adverts. Read the notes in the table carefully, then suggest what words or phrases from the
texts could go into the empty spaces. Then continue building up the table with notes from the other adverts.

Situation Leather jackets Men often carry a Car keys

General topic popular and wallet
comfortable
The problem is In winter, don’t when not wearing (people lose
that… keep cold out (too a jacket(too bulky them)(difficult to
thin) for shirt pocket) use in dark)
The solution is line jacket with Slim leather 4X Bleeper device
to… sheepskin 2,5, fits in shirt when you whistle
pocket light
Evaluation Warmth and
comfort combined
with style

All of the exercises reinforced the same methodological approach. They encouraged learners to
look critically at the corpus, and to make generalisations about the language to which they had
been exposed. We also encouraged learners to refer back to the language they had experienced
earlier. All of the target words at each level were listed alphabetically in the coursebook with
references to the sections in which they occurred. Levels 1 and 3 contained a grammar section
referenced to items in the corpus. Levels 2 and 3 incorporated lexicon or dictionary entries to
encourage the development of reference skills, with exercises to reinforce this. The aim
throughout was to develop familiarity with a carefully selected and weighted corpus of
language, and to enable learners to exploit that corpus to good effect. While the basic
methodology was taskbased with a focus very much on outcome, the language associated with
those
 Syllabus Organisation 85

tasks was examined in great detail in the light of a precisely specified syllabus. The problem of
ordering was solved partly by recycling. This recycling is naturally built into a corpus which
relies on natural language. It was reinforced by the way we selected items from the corpus for
illustration and analysis. Finally, learners were able to use indexes and reference sections to
recycle for themselves.

Grading and ordering

It is clear, therefore, that our decision to adopt a task-based methodology and to restrict
ourselves almost entirely to authentic/spontaneous text had implications for grading and
ordering language material. We wanted first to build up a learner's corpus, and then gradually to
increase the learner's familiarity with and conceptual understanding of significant parts of that
corpus. In order to achieve this, we began by ordering not language items but tasks At first this
was done intuitively by identifying those tasks which we thought would present relatively few
problems for elementary learners, usually because the outcome was highly predictable. We then
checked our intuitions during our own piloting, and then against feedback from other pilot runs.
This led to some reordering, until we had a sequence of tasks which the learners could
reasonably be expected to handle both receptively and productively.
The very commonest forms of English occurred not only in the earliest tasks, but again and
again right through the corpus. We were able, therefore, to draw attention to the present tense of
the verb be and to common question forms in the very first unit:

8 Language study
‘s, is, ‘re, are
Read these examples. They am all from Unit 1. Find all these words: ‘s, is, ’re, are.
1 What does ‘s mean?
2 When do we say is (or ‘s) and when do we say are (or ‘re)?

Who's that?
Do you know where they're from ?
Tell him or her where you're from.
This is -. She's from-.

Where's David from?

Who's Chris? What's his surname?
Who are these people? What are their surnames?
86 The Lexical Syllabus

11 Language study
Asking for addresses and phone numbers

11 First read the questions below and then listen.

David, Bridget, Chris and Philip use eight of these questions. Which questions do they use?
What's your phone number?
Have you got a phone number?
And your phone number?
Have you got a phone? What's your number, then?

Can you give me your address?

Could you give me your address?
Can I have your address?
What's the postcode?

Sorry, could you repeat that?

Sorry, how do you spell that?
Can you spell your name for me?
Can you tell me how you spell your name?

We did not believe that in Unit 1 these would be learned in the sense that learners would be able
to produce them with consistent accuracy. The first stage was simple awareness raising. We
knew that these items would occur again and again until they were finally incorporated in the
learner's repertoire. Unit 2 built on questions marked by intonation, and drew attention to
inversion:

20 Language study

a have got

Look at these examples from the recordings of Bridget and David.

There are no full stops ( . ) or question marks ( ? ).
1 Which examples are questions?
2 What is the word ‘ve?
3 Which words come before and after got? :

DF: Have you got any brothers and sisters

BG: Yes, I've got one sister called Rosemary
DF: Okay

BG: And have they got any children

DF: Mhm. Two children, two girls
BG: Yes

BG: and you've got one sister called Felicity

DF: Mhm

BG: And they've got two daughters called . . . Emma :

and...
 Syllabus Organisation 87

DF: Sarah
BG: Sarah
DF: Mm
20 b Listen and repeat each phrase. Then practise saying some of these phrases with your partner.
Listen for two stresses in each group of words.

Have you got any brothers and sisters?

I've got one sister called Rosemary.
Two children.
Two girls.

Question forms occurred again when the models and auxiliaries were treated:

132 Grammar words

do

What is the difference between sets 1 and 2?

Set 1
Ask your teacher if you don't understand.
How do you know?
It doesn't matter.
What does Chris say?
I didn't get up until 8.30, so l was late.
Did Chris give good directions?

Set 2
I usually do the cooking and cleaning in the morning.
My husband does the gardening at weekends
He did the meals when I was ill.
What are you doing?
All right. You do it first, then it's my turn.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
These examples are a mixture of sets 1 and 2.
Sometimes both types appear in the same sentence. Which is which?

a What does your brother do?

b Did you do your homework?
c No, I didn't, because I had a lot of other things to do.
d Who's going to do the dishes?
e Which bus? A 62 or 63 will do just as well.
f Is this yours? No, it's nothing to do with me.
g Have you done your homework?
h It doesn't matter.

Look at the Grammar Book. Which categories do the last eight examples go into?
88 The Lexical Syllabus

and again with wh- words. Finally, certain sections in the Grammar Book reference section
summarised the use of questions:

can, could (93,138)

1 ability/possibility

What things could you describe as sort of reddish? (37)

What other questions could I have asked?
Can you explain the answers? (46)
How much can you remember? (48)
She ran awe' as fast as she could. (198)
Ten twelve. That could be the time. (78)
Oriental definitely. It could be Thailand. (171)
_______________________________________________________________
What can you see?
I couldn't hear what he was saying.
_______________________________________________________________
Look at the picture on page 58.
Make three sentences starting:
I can see…
_______________________________________________________________
1.1 ‘could’ for suggestions
You could look in the newspaper.
_______________________________________________________________
2 permission
You can go out now, but come back in ten minutes.
Could I do it tomorrow instead of today?

3 offer / request
Can you give me your address? (11)
Can you spell your name for me? (11)
Can I speak to Dr Brown please? (89)
Can I take a message? (89)
Can you tell me the time, please? (94)
Can you tell me how long it takes?
Could you give me your phone number please? (11)
Could you look after the children for me? (97)

There was, then, massive coverage of question forms. But generally they were treated
from a lexical starting point. This not only gave the opportunity for recycling, but also
highlighted holophrastic forms such as ‘Can I . . . ?’, ‘Can you . . . ?’, ‘Could you . . . ?’. The
Grammar Book also gave learners an opportunity to retrieve items from their corpus and (as
they were referenced to sections of the text) to go back and retrieve the original contexts in
which they occurred.
Some forms were more difficult to retrieve. The word by, for example, was not highlighted
until Unit 8, because it was not until then that we had a context
 Syllabus Organisation 89

for all of its common meanings:

111 Grammar words

by

1 who/what did it
Do you think this would be said by a teacher?

2 how
She begins by asking what time they start.
I do my shopping by car.
I come to work by bus.

3 when
I've got to finish this by tomorrow.
It opens at eight, so I'm there by eight.

4 where
There's a phone box by the school.
It's over there by the post office.
______________________________________________________________
Find examples for each category.

a She starts by asking what time they begin work.

b She usually gets back home by 9 a.m.
c. . . handicrafts made by people in the Third World.:
d Come and sit here by me.
e Guess what your partner's number is by asking 'Is it under 50. . .'
f I think I left it by the telephone.
g I have to finish this by tomorrow.

Compare the examples in each category with the examples in the Grammar Book.

This too was further exemplified in the Grammar Book:

by (111)
1 who / what did it
Wally is awakened by the phone ringing. (91)
Handicrafts made by people in the Third World.
(104)
Is that a magazine published by Macmillan? (146)

2 how

You solve it by elimination. (158)

English by Radio. (146)
London is only 55 minutes away by train. (179)
Find out by talking to people.
90 The Lexical Syllabus

3 when

Everyone helps to clear away after dinner. By then it's about 7.15 or 7.30 p.m. (113)
Even though the Forth River is only 66 miles long, by the time it reaches Edinburgh it is over 4
miles wide. (179)

4 where

Behind the chair? Of the person sitting by the desk?

(72)

Just by the bus stop. (122)

On the wall by the entrance was a notice. (173)

This strategy affords the teacher and the learner a great deal of flexibility. First Df all an
item is not highlighted until they are able to refer to examples of use. Secondly, most of these
items will occur again and again. If they continue to cause problems they can be located in text
either by referring to the Grammar Book or by looking at an index which references some of the
sections in which the items occur and further exposure or practice is given. Finally, the
commonest items are summarised in the Review pages and in the Grammar Book. The
Grammar Book entries can be used for intensive practice and pattern drills if the teacher or
learners feel this to be necessary. The stage at which this might best be done can be determined
by teacher and learner rather than imposed by the coursebook writer. What is offered is a
learner's corpus together with the wherewithal to exploit that corpus to the maximum
advantage.
Problems of grading were obviously less acute in Levels 2 and 3. But here again the same
strategy was employed. Learners were given the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the
corpus in a principled way. To enable them to do this it was necessary to use the word as the
reference point. The lexical basis on which the course was built became a valuable part of the
methodology. At first this caused some concern. We were reluctant to lose well known and
loved structural labels such as the passive, the second conditional and reported speech. As we
worked with our lexically based grammar, however, we became mole and more convinced that
this outcome, too, was more than justified.