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Introduction
The principles of the Lexical Approach have been around since Michael Lewis published 'The Lexical Approach' 10 years ago. It seems, however, that many teachers and researchers do not have a clear idea of what the Lexical Approach actually looks like in practice.
In this first of two articles we look at how advocates of the Lexical Approach view language. In our second article we apply theories of language learning to a Lexical Approach and describe what lexical lessons could look like.

The theory of language

Task 1
Look at this version of the introduction. What do the parts printed in bold in square brackets have in common?

The principles of the Lexical Approach have been around since Michael Lewis published 'The Lexical Approach' 10 years ago. It seems, however, that many teachers and researchers do not have a clear idea of what the Lexical Approach actually looks like in practice. 

All the parts in brackets are fixed or set phrases. Different commentators use different and overlapping terms - 'prefabricated phrases', 'lexical phrases', 'formulaic language', 'frozen and semi-frozen phrases', are just some of these terms. We use just two: '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 are 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) 

by the way 

up to now 
upside down
If I were you 
a long way off 
out of my mind 

Lexical Chunks (that are collocations) 

totally convinced
strong accent 
terrible accident
sense of humour
sounds exciting 
brings good luck