UNIT 2 LEXIS

 Do meanings have to do with their words or do words have to do with their meanings? That is what unit 2 is intended for. Since this unit explains about Lexis,  it means that the unit explains also what kinds of meaning words can have. These meanings are divided into three categories which are according to their situation (Lewis, M. 2000), form, and variety, and I am going to explain the iimportance of each category. For example, if we refer to the situation, we refer to the context: I might be talking about nature so include the word TREE and quickly, the person whom I am talking to will know that I talk about a large plant. That meaning is Denotative.  However if I am talking about my family and I say that my TREE is very wide, the other person will notice that I refer to the group of my relatives,and that meaning is Figurative. As I learnt, the meaning of the words can change according to the form of the words. Let's include some examples to make this definition clear. I say that my father is POLITE, and I describe how my father is; but if I say that my father greets and talks POLITELY, then the meaning changes because now I describe his behavior due to I added the suffix LY. One more example: It is LEGAL to smoke here will never be the same than saying It is ILLEGAL to smoke here because the prefix IL changes the meaning of a word. That process is called AFFIXATION (Pinker, S. 1999).

This information is very helpful to me. It is going to help me as English language teacher, since my students can have a lot of misunderstandings in words meanings. Since I already have knowledge of LEXIS, I will know how to help my students learning.

References:

Spratt, M.; Williams, M.; (2011) The TKT Course, Ernest Klett. 

Lewis, M. (2000); Implementing the Lexical Approach

Pinker, S. (1999) Worls ad Rules, the ingredients of language and life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexis_(linguistics)

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/grammar-vs-lexis-or-grammar-through-lexis