A real candidate’s lexis LSA essay: non-transparent multiword verbs at B1, combining a text-based approach (for meaning and collocation) with guided discovery (for syntax).
A candidate's essay, not a Cambridge model. 2015 criteria.
Analysis covered
Types: prepositional / phrasal / phrasal-prepositional. Syntax: transitivity and separability. Semantics: transparency, polysemy. Register, collocation, phonology: prepositional verbs stress the verb, phrasal verbs stress the particle.
Teaching solutions (each with a rationale)
- Text-based presentation (meaning in context; collocation).
- Guided discovery: give examples, learners sort the rest by transitivity and separability.
- Gapped concordance lines for collocation and polysemy.
- Backchaining or choral drilling for stress.
- Select items by frequency, text type and learner needs.
Bibliography (as printed)
Cowan (2008) The Teacher’s Grammar of English; Gairns & Redman (1986) Working with Words; Thornbury (2002) How to Teach Vocabulary; Thornbury (2006) An A–Z of ELT; Scrivener (2005) Learning Teaching; Lewis (1993) The Lexical Approach; Richards & Schmidt (2010) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics.
Apply in my context (Claude)
- Phrasal verbs are a strong LSA choice for your context: FCE Use of English tests them heavily, and Uzbek/Russian have no equivalent category, which gives a rich problems section.
Connections
Writing an LSA background essay · Colligation and bottom-up grammar