Vol. 4 Issue 22 – Research Paper: ‘Adopting Lexical Approach in ESP Classroom to Teach the Nuances of Business Meetings’ by Meenakshi Raman

This paper is submitted for publication by Dr.Meenakshi Raman, Professor of English and Communication, HoD, Humanities and Management, BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus, NH17B, Zuari Nagar, Goa-403726  email : mraman@bits-goa.ac.in.

Abstract

Teachers of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) adopt several approaches in their classroom to enable their students enhance their skills in using English for various specific purposes. For instance, teachers of business communication aim at developing the skills necessary for mastering the various forms of communication prevalent in businesses: conversation, meetings, conventions, conferences, interviews, group discussions, brainstorming, etc. Lexical approach is one of the most suitable approaches to teaching English required for conducting and participating in business meetings.   In fact, lexical phrases offer far more language generative power than grammatical structures.

The present paper attempts to discuss the various sequential steps to be carried out during business meetings and to explain through examples how the lexical approach can be used in ESP classrooms to teach the nuances of business meetings.

Key terms:  ESP, Lexical approach, business meetings, sequential steps, chunks, lexical phrases

Introduction

Business meetings serve as an excellent tool for transmitting and sharing information, making decisions, arriving at the best solution to problems, receiving feedback on a new venture, and so on. These meetings may be able to achieve their objectives only when they are conducted in an effective and efficient manner.  Among the various factors that contribute to the effectiveness of business meetings, understanding the various steps involved in business meetings and the use of language both by the chairperson and the participants plays a significant role and has a pervasive impact on the outcome of the meeting.

Teachers of business communication adopt several approaches in their classroom to enable their students master the various forms of communication prevalent in business – conversation, meetings, conventions, conferences, interviews, group discussions, brainstorming, etc. Whatever may be the approach, the emphasis on the use of appropriate elements of language remains as a common denominator. Among the various approaches to teaching English appropriate for business meetings, the lexical approach may be the most suitable one because it is based on the premises that language consists of meaningful chunks that when combines produce continuous coherent text and only a minority of spoken sentences are entirely novel creations. In fact, lexical phrases offer far more language generative power than grammatical structures.

Importance of business meetings

It won’t be an exaggeration to say that the effectiveness of business meetings has an impact on an organization’s bottom-line. They are huge investment of time, material resources and most importantly human resources (Drew, 1994:21). When the Chairperson and the participants make good use of their time during business meetings, there is a terrific return on the investment. If they are not focused on their target or spend their time in useless chatter and argument or don’t achieve their objectives, then that is a prescription for no return on the investment. Nevertheless, business meetings are almost unavoidable despite the time they take away from your other work and the ineffective way in which they are often handled. There is no way of conducting business without occasionally participating in or leading a business meeting.

Business meetings enable their participants to pool information, solicit feedback, clarify policy, seek consensus, and solve problems. ( Bovee 2003: 36). Besides these purposes, they represent opportunities. Because they are a significant tool for developing staff, they are career-critical. In fact if a manager is not able to orchestrate a meeting, he (she) is of little use to the corporation. At meetings crucial judgments are formed and careers are made. Therefore, instead of considering meetings as a waste of your valuable time, see them as golden opportunities to demonstrate your skills in leadership, communication, problem-solving and decision-making.

Theoretical vs Practical approach in ESP classes 

Today’s businesses provide ample opportunities for their employees to act as managers in various domains such as project, planning, engineering operations, marketing, human resources, etc. We are also aware that fresh graduates in engineering , management, medicine, commerce, etc., need to take care of several team activities as soon as they begin their professional lives in a national or an international organization. Hence it is necessary that they are well-equipped with communication skills  to be employed by them in multifarious forms of organizational communication, namely, face-to-face conversations, meetings, conferences, interviews, brainstorming, group discussions, telephonic conversations, e-mails, reports, proposals and other publications.

With the ever-increasing demand for the team operations in today’s organizations, skills in handling meetings with effectiveness and efficiency ranks among the top requirements of a business person. Here comes the importance of teaching such skills at the college or university level as the students who are well-equipped with such skills would be able to carve a niche for themselves in their professional career. However, teachers of business or managerial communication adopt either traditional or practical approach in their ESP classes to train their students in the nuances of business meetings. For instance, the approach in discussion, namely, lexical approach, can be considered as a practical approach to teaching business English because it involves an easy way of grouping various words as collocations and chunks so that the learner gets habituated to using them fluently.  Activity-based approaches being predominantly used in almost all curricula, it’s important for the teachers of communication courses to adopt pragmatic approach to developing communication skills in their ESP students. The table given below may help you review the benefits of pragmatic approach to teaching:

 

Traditional / Conventional approach	Practical / Pragmatic approach
Lecture-based	Task-oriented
Teacher-centered	Learner-oriented
Students as passive listeners	Students as active participants
More opportunity to teachers	More opportunity to students
Emphasis on assessment	Emphasis on promoting learning
More theory, less/no practice	Less theory, more practice

An overview of lexical approach

Why do we say, ‘ to do your homework’ and not ‘to make your homework’? and why do we go somewhere ‘by car’ or ‘by train’ but ‘on foot’ ? The reason is collocation. Collocation means the way that words form predictable relationships with other words. Knowing the ‘meaning’ of a word is not only knowing its dictionary definition but also knowing the kind of words with which it is often associated.

The lexical approach to second language teaching has received interest in recent years as an alternative to grammar-based approaches. This approach concentrates on developing learners’ proficiency with lexis, or words and word combinations. It is based on the idea that an important part of language acquisition is the ability to comprehend and produce lexical phrases as unanalyzed wholes, or “chunks,” and that these chunks become the raw data by which learners perceive patterns of language traditionally thought of as grammar (Lewis, 1993, p. 95). Instruction focuses on relatively fixed expressions that occur frequently in spoken language, such as, “I’m sorry,” “I didn’t mean to make you jump,” or “That will never happen to me,” rather than on originally created sentences (Lewis, 1997, p. 212).

The lexical approach makes a distinction between vocabulary—traditionally understood as a stock of individual words with fixed meanings—and lexis, which includes not only the single words but also the word combinations that we store in our mental lexicons. Lexical approach advocates argue that language consists of meaningful chunks that, when combined, produce continuous coherent text, and only a minority of spoken sentences are entirely novel creations.

In the lexical approach, lexis in its various types is thought to play a central role in language teaching and learning．Nattinger (1980, p.341) suggests that teaching should be based on the idea that language production is the piecing together of ready －made units appropriate for a particular situation．Comprehension of such units is dependent on knowing the patterns to predict in different situations. Institution, therefore, should center on these patterns and the ways they can be pieced together, along with the ways they vary and the situations in which they occur.

In particular, lexical phrases were seen as a productive resource for learners, aiding in the production, comprehension, and necessary analytical reflection on the forms and meanings of the target language. Lexical fields represent knowledge in a language, but there is much more to vocabulary than simple lists of words, nouns or verbs.

Guiding principles of the Lexical Approach: (Lewis 1993,115)

1. The grammar/vocabulary dichotomy is invalid; much language consists of muti-words / chunks.
2.  Collocation is used as an organizing principle. We say, for example, ‘take a look’ and ‘have a look’ but not ‘make a look’ or ‘get a look’. There is no reason or rule that tells us why we use some words with ‘look’ but not others. Looking up the meaning of take or have in the dictionary won’t help us find the answer. Collocations, either fixed or more flexible, are the result of many years of habitual use by fluent speakers of the language.
3. Successful language is a wider concept than accurate language.
4. The Observe-Hypothesis-Experiment cycle replaces the Present-Practise-Produce Paradigm. Learners should be guided   to discover ir(regularities) themselves and experiment with new structures and contexts. This appraoch is called ‘ learning through ’ discovery. In contrast to traditional teaching, learners formulate their own principles based on their own experiments.
5.  Most importantly, language consists of grammaticalised lexis–not lexicalised grammar. In other words, lexis is central in creating meaning; grammar plays a subservient managerial role. Following this principle, teachers should spend more time helping learners develop their stock of phrases and less time on grammatical structures. Advocates of lexical approch believe that the language came first, and grammar is our attempt to find order in language. If this is the case, then it is wrong to start with grammar and expect our students to “fill the gaps” by adding vocabulary. As grammar becomes more specific , choices are more and more realised by a choice of lexical item than a grammatical structure. ( Halliday, 1978:43)

Within the lexical approach, special attention is directed to collocations and expressions that include institutionalized utterances and sentence frames and heads．As Lewis maintains, “instead of words, we consciously try to think of collocations, and to present these in expressions. Rather than trying to break things into ever smaller pieces, there is a conscious effort to see things in larger, more holistic, ways” ( 1997 p.204). He distinguishes among the following lexical items：

Single words – most basic kind and the leargest category ; words of high and low information content (e.g. book，pen, with , in, out)

Polywords – small group (record player, by the way，in the mean time) compound and phrasal verbs; usually short consisting of two or three words; each word may belong to any word class; meaning of the whole group totally different from the component words

Collocations, or word partnerships– individual words expected to co-occur with others (e.g. prices fall, rancid butter, community service) non-reciprocal relation between the components- e.g. rancid butter: the word rancid suggests that the noun butter but the word butter does not suggest the adjective rancid with the same degree of certainty. Collocation is the readily observable phenomenon whereby certain words co －occur in natural text with greater than random frequency. Furthermore, collocation is not determined by logic or frequency, but is arbitrary, decided only by linguistic convention ( Wray 2002)．Some collocations are fully fixed, such as“to catch a cold, ”“rancid butter, and“drug addict,”while others are more or less fixed and can be completed in a relatively small number of ways, as in the following examples：

Blood / close / distant / near (est) relative

Learn by doing / by heart / by observation /  by rote / from experience

Badly / bitterly / deeply / seriously / severely hurt

Institutionalized utterances – differ in their length – short, hardly grammatically correct utterances  ( e.g. just a moment please I’ll get it; We’ll see ;That’ll do ; If I were you; )

Sentence heads or frames– Sorry to interrupt; but I can just say…; this is not as…as you think; the fact/suggestion/problem/danger was…

Text frames – (e.g. In this paper we explore…; Firstly…; Secondly…; Finally…)

Full sentences– Help the listener to identify what the language user doing- compalining, explaining, is contradicting; important part of fluency in a conversation.

(e.g. Would do like a cup of coffee?; I’m afraid, I can’t agree with you on this matter. ; Let me explain this through examples.;

Characteristics of lexical items

Meaning is not totally predictable from form

Each is a minimal unit for certain syntactic purposes

Each is a social institution

(Dieter Kranz, 1997)

The Lexical Approach can be summarized in a few words: language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks. Teachers using the Lexical Approach will not analyse the target language in the classroom, but will be more inclined to concentrate learners’ attention upon these chunks. This new approach is understood as a serious attempt at revaluation for the individual teacher and the profession as it develops many of the fundamental principles advanced by proponents of Communicative Approaches. The most important difference is the increased understanding of the nature of lexis in naturally occurring language, and its potential contribution to language pedagogy.

Lexical chunks and Collocations in English

When we talk of Lexical approach, different commentators use different and overlapping terms – ‘prefabricated phrases’, ‘lexical phrases’, ‘formulaic language’, ‘frozen and semi-frozen phrases’, are just some of these terms. ( Carter 1988) Nevertheless all these can be grouped  into two categories-  ‘lexical chunks’ and ‘collocations’.

‘Lexical chunk’ is an umbrella term which includes all the other terms. We define a lexical chunk as any pair or group of words which is commonly found together, or in close proximity.
‘Collocation’ is also included in the term ‘lexical chunk’, but we refer to it separately from time to time, so we define it as a pair of lexical content words commonly found together. Following this definition, ‘basic’ + ‘principles’ is a collocation, but ‘look’ + ‘at’ is not because it combines a lexical content word and a grammar function word. Identifying chunks and collocations is often a question of intuition, unless you have access to a corpus.

Here are some examples.

Lexical Chunks (that are not collocations) I mean, I think, and then, you know, by the way , up to now, If I were you, let me begin by, a long way off, out of my mind, and things like that, there’s a lot of, or something like that, come to a head, have second thoughts, hit the sack, out and about, down and out, rough and ready

Lexical Chunks (that are collocations)   company policy, sales figures, market share, job satisfaction, human resources, advertising campaign, brand awareness, staff turnover, consumer confidence, quality control, interest rate, totally convinced, strong accent, terrible accident, sounds exciting , generate revenue, generate goodwill, generate electricity
brings good luck

Meeting steps and useful lexical phrases

Teaching the nuances of business meetings is a challenging task to ESP teachers. It’s appropriate to initially introduce to the learners the steps involved and the functions carried out in business meetings and then train them in business / general English  collocations and chunks that are used in these contexts. Adopting this approach would help the learners grasp easily the required vocabulary that in general, is more or less fixed.

Business meetings mostly involve the following steps and functions:

Introductions

• Opening
• Welcoming and introducing
• Stating the principal objectives
• Informing the absence and apologizing

Reviewing the past meeting

• Presenting the minutes of last meeting
• Dealing with latest developments

Beginning the meeting

• Introducing the agenda items
• Allocating roles
• Agreeing on ground rules for meeting

Discussing the agenda items

• Introducing the first item of agenda
• Closing the item
• Moving on to the next item
• Giving control to the next participant

Conclusions

• Summarizing
• Winding up
• Thanking the participants
• Closing

Using the lexical approach , the learners can be trained in various lexical items such as  collocations , chunks, etc. Given below are few examples of lexical phrases that are generally used in a business meeting:

Opening

Good morning/afternoon, everyone.

If we are all here, let’s get started / start the meeting / start.

Welcoming and Introducing

Please join me in welcoming (name of participant)

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to (name of participant)

Stating the Principal Objectives

We’re here today to …

Our main aim today is to …

Reading the Minutes (notes) of the Last Meeting

To begin with I’d like to quickly go through the minutes of our last meeting.

Here are the minutes from our last meeting, which was on (date)

Moving Forward

So, if there is nothing else we need to discuss, let’s move on to today’s agenda.

Shall we get down to business?

Introducing the First Item on the Agenda

So, let’s start with …

I’d suggest we start with…

Closing an Item

I think that takes care of the first item.

Shall we leave that item?

Next Item

Let’s move onto the next item

Now that we’ve discussed X, let’s now …

Giving Control to the Next Participant

I’d like to hand over to (name of participant), who is going to lead the next point.

Next, (name of participant) is going to take us through ..

Summarizing

Before we close today’s meeting, let me just summarize the main points.

To sum up, …,.

Suggesting and Agreeing on Time, Date and Place for the Next Meeting

Can we set the date for the next meeting, please?

So, the next meeting will be on … (day), the . . . (date) of.. . (month) at …

Closing the Meeting

The meeting is closed.

I declare the meeting closed.

Collocates of words are fixed more in business English environment as compared to general English. Certain collocations that are listed below are common for all businesses can be taught in the ESP classes:

Company policy, takeover bid, sales figures, market share, job satisfaction, human resources, advertising campaign, brand awareness, staff turnover, consumer confidence, quality control, interest rate, virtual network, stock market, joint statement, market players, market dominated, retail outlets, brand name, fast growing, financial year, plans unveiled, played down, lagged behind, launch service, stock exchange.

Students of Business / Managerial communication courses need to be given extensive practice in the lexical chunks and collocations mentioned in the fixed expressions or full sentences shown above. Practice in active listening is also essential for these students. Selection of texts / meeting dialogues is to be done with utmost care.

Summary

The lexical approach places communication of meaning at the heart of language and language learning. In other words, the main focus is not on form but on meaning. This leads to emphasis on the main carrier of meaning, vocabulary. Collocations along with idioms form the main component of the multiword lexicon and that the multiword lexicon is at the heart of advanced-level lexical knowledge. (McCarthy 2005) .In the lexical classroom, learners will be exposed to a lot more language and grammar than they are expected to analyse and use. Utterances should always be understood as a whole in the given context. Although the lexical chunk has grammar it is not important to analyse the grammar in order to use the chunk correctly. As learners acquire new lexical chunks they also get the benefit of grammar. Adopting lexical approach in ESP classrooms is an interesting and useful way of developing communication skills required for business meetings and other forms of business communication.

References

Bovee C.L., et.al. (2003). Busienss Communication Today. Seventh Edition.New Delhi, Pearson Education Asia.

Carter, R. & McCarthy M.(1988). Vocabulary and language teaching. London: Longman.

Dieter Kranz, Munster University TESL-EJ Vol.3 No.1Nov.1997 R-10 Implementing the Lexical Approach: Putting Theory into Practice http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej09/r10.html

Drew Jeannine and The 3M Meeting Management team (1994). Mstering Meetings.  McGraw Hill Inc., USA.

Halliday M.A.K. (1978). Language as social semiotic. Edward Arnold, London.

Lewis, M. (1993). The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and a Way Forward. Hove, UK: Language Teaching Publications.

Lewis, M. (1997). Implementing The Lexical Approach. Putting Theory into Practice. Hove: Language Tecahing Publications.

Lewis, Michael (2000). Language in the lexical approach. In Teaching Collocation: Further Developments In The Lexical Approach, Michael Lewis (ed.),  Hove: Language Teaching Publications.

McCarthy, M.J. & O’Dell, F. (2005). English Collocations in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nattinger, J. (1980). A lexical phrase grammar for ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 14, 337-344.

Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.