Study Chinese Online From China

Lexis. Is that a car or something to do with language?

August 6, 2006 on 3:20 pm | In Studying |

What is lexis? This is something relatively new in the field of language learning. Old school teaching of languages used to focus on phrases, substitution drills and grammar. It was believed that language consisted of a ‘grammar’ and that for one to learn the language it was necessary to learn the grammar.

Problem is, when has any first-language learner of a language explicitly learned grammar? Grammar is an academic construct, a way to analyse a language. There are rules in a language, there is a right and a wrong way to say things, but does that mean we need to learn grammar?

This is where the concept of lexis came about. There are bits of language that do go together, call them lexis. It’s what tells us that we should say ‘go to school’ rather than ‘go towards school’. Gramatically they are both correct, but meaning wise, it’s the first bit that we want.

The radical re-think of what makes up the building blocks of language means that we can also take the approach to study of language in a new way. It’s actually rather easy to learn ‘lexis’ chunks. They seem to flow rhymically and easily out of one’s mouth. They make sense. They are memorable.

It is the way to go.

(We specifically will tackle how to find the proper lexis for studying Chinese online. There are lots of Chinese language materials out there but it is easy to get distracted or use materials and tools that eventually are not the best use of your time and efforts to learn to speak, read and write in Chinese Mandarin)