Abstract
The study presents the basic principles of lexically oriented approaches in English language teaching. The main aim of these approaches is to turn away from the traditional notion of acquiring a foreign language that was prevailing under the influence of Chomsky's generative grammar (Chomsky, 1957, 1965, in Pawley and Syder, 1983), in which a language is seen as a system of rules and structures which are filled with individual words.
Lexically oriented approaches put lexis and lexical phrases in the center of their interest. They maintain that it is lexis not grammar that plays a vital role and therefore deserves more attention in language teaching (e.g.
Willis, 1990; Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1992; Lewis, 1993). With the development of corpus linguistics, numerous studies emerged confirming the importance of collocations and idiomatic expressions as they facilitate acquisition of a fluent and natural language (e.g.
Nesselhauf, 2005). However, despite the general consensus, the implications of these findings in foreign language teaching were minimal.
The study also seeks the reasons of the failures of the attempts to implement the ideas of lexical approaches. The main problem seems to be the incomprehensibility of a vast number of lexical expressions, a lack of a general consensus on how to classify them and work with them in foreign language methodology.
Moreover, the psychological aspects of teaching play its role as the focus on lexis impose a much greater burden on memory, working with personal associations and differences between individuals. Within these approaches, more than anywhere else can be claimed that teaching does not equal learning (Lewis, 1993).