A rich view of lexical

competence
Peter J. Robinson

In this article I begin by examining

some features of the negotiation
of
meaning between learners and teachers, where the goal of the interaction
is to convey the meaning of a technical word from the teacher to a learner. I
suggest that this examination
leads us to distinguish
between the declarative knowledge
that words have particular meanings, and the procedures
we typically employ for realizing or achieving this declarative knowledge.
These procedures
form part of our procedural
knowledge
of how to
negotiate. A communicative
view of the interactive nature of lexical negotiation requires that we focus as much on procedures as we do on the more
narrowly defined declarative meanings which specialist words have. I then
argue that this requires us to take a richer view of what is involved in
lexical competence
than that which many vocabulary learning materials
seem to be based on. My own proposal is to adopt Canale and Swains
(1980) checklist of the dimensions
of communicative
competence,
and I
present exercise types which exemplify
how these dimensions
could be
covered lexically.

General words,
technical words, and
negotiating meaning

There is an obvious,
and much-investigated
difference
between
specific,
technical
words and the more general
core words often used to convey
their meanings.1
The enabling
facility which some words have has long
been recognized.
It is particularly
evident
in the simplified
language
of
motherese
and foreigner
talk, and is as much in evidence
in written
language
as in spoken language2.
For example,
the enabling
facility of
words is a criterion
for selecting
the words used in dictionary
definitions,
like this one from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English:

vermicelli: a food made from flour paste in the form of very thin strings
which

have

been

dried

and are made

soft again

by boiling.

The enabling facility of such words as made soft, the form of thin strings, etc., is
a feature too of the subtechnical
language
used in the oral explanation
of
more technical
concepts.
Hutchinson
and Waters
(1981) have demonstrated the difficulty which learners face in coping with these words. They
claim that it is not the performance
repertoire
of a technical,
specialist
vocabulary
which is called on in giving and understanding
technical
explanations,
but language
like:
Now copper is a.
. is very ductile. What do we mean by ductile? -Itll
stretch - we
can stretch it, we can change its shape, yes. (1981: 6)
Hutchinson
274

and Waters

conclude

from their observations

that the student

ELT Journal Volume 43/4 October 1989 Oxford UniversityPress 1989

articles

welcome

does not need the specific vocabulary

of his [sic] subject
area prior to
starting
his course. He needs the ability to recognize
the glossing
techniques whereby
teachers
introduce
specific terms, and the ability to ask
questions
when an explanation
is not given. But the basic resource of both
these strategies
is a fund of general vocabulary
in which the explanation
will be expressed.
(1981: 6-7).
These
general
words are thrown
up, together
with more specific
words, in any frequency
count of a specific language area. Widdowson
calls
words like do procedural.
They take on the indexical value which particular contexts
attribute
to them, while having little independent
meaning
themselves
(1983: 92). Sinclair
and Renouf, working
on the COBUILD
corpus of English text, have also identified
the fact that these words tend to
change their meaning
depending
on the textual context in which they are
embedded.
They refer to such words as delexical
(1988),
Asserting and
assimilating
meanings

In fact the two types of words seem to correspond

to two different ways of
meaning.
Type 1 words, general words, are used in defining other words,
but are attached
to no particular
schema, and depend on context for their
occasional
or potential
meaning.
Type 2 words, specific words, are highly
schematic,
and have meaning
independently
of particular
contexts
in
which they are used. However,
they are less useful in giving definitions
of
other words. Type 1 meanings
are realized through
attributive
behaviour,
while Type 2 words seem to have more permanent
and durable
fixed
meanings.
The two sorts of meaning
are involved,
typically,
in any negotiation,
particularly
those in the technical
classroom
demonstration.
The effort of
one participant
is often to fix, or explain what she or he means by finding
the right word, while the other partner, more suppliant,
tries to see what
she or he means. In other words, one tries to assert a meaning,
while the
other tries to break down what is said into more simple and manageable
units so as to assimilate
them. The teacher
is often called on, as in
Hutchinson
and Waters
example
above, to do both jobs, to offer the
asserted meaning,
and then in the face of incomprehension
to break it down
so as to make it more assimilable.
Here is another example of this taking place. The declarative
knowledge,
the meaning
being asserted,
is that of tripod. The procedural
words used to
break this down for the learner and render it assimilable
are legs, three, and
stand.

Learner

Teacher
and the, em, video
tripod, see, here

teacher,

what

means

camera
...

is supported

by a

tripod?
em ... it has three legs, see here...
tri means
three, pod means legs ... three legs . . . it, er,
holds it up, its a sort of stand

stand
yes, it stands
Knowledge that and
knowledge
how:
methodology
and
materials

on it.3

Knowing
a word involves both knowing that it has a particular
meaning,
and knowing how it can be, and is being, used. The specialist
vocabulary
identified
as belonging
to specific fields seems to demand
little more than
the declarative
knowledge
that it has a certain fixed meaning:
for example,
the meaning of the word tripod, which is relatively fixed and non-negotiable,
A rich view of lexical competence

275

articles

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as opposed
to those words of wider meaning
potential
like legs, and stand,
which can be used to convey this meaning.
It is because of this wider meaning
potential
that such general,
basic
words constitute
a useful common ground to which participants
in conversation can retreat to sort out difficulties
in negotiating
meaning.
But there
are many quite complex conditions
of occupancy
of this common ground,
and these affect the possible uses of such words. Their low lexical content
means that the users have to agree on the procedures
to follow in attributing
and inferring
their values each time they are used. Such procedural
words
then require
a simultaneous
development
of procedural
ability in the
learner if they are to be of use.
This has implications
for pedagogy.
The declarative
and procedural
components
of lexical competence
demand,
one could say, not only that we
focus on groups of fairly specific and fairly general words respectively,
but
also on quite different methodologies,
and consequently
different materials
if both components
are to be fully achieved.
But the emphasis
has been, for
a long time in vocabulary
teaching,
on the accumulation
and memorization
of lists of definitions,
and completion
of test items that require the selection
of the correct
word from a given group to fill in a gap in a sentence.
McCarthy
has suggested
this can result in an atomized
approach,
an
obsession
with items in isolation
and with definition,
and an overall preoccupation
with lexis at clause- or sentence-level
(McCarthy
1984: 14).
The word store and
the storekeeper

But what checklists,

and consequently
what range of exercise types, do we
have for representing
the vastness
of this view of the job involved
in
developing
lexical competence?
The situation
as regards
the variety
of
exercise types could now be said to be improving.4
But the job of learning
vocabulary
is still represented
in many vocabulary
development
materials
in the largely declarative
terms I outlined previously,
of learning
a word-list
and associated
lists of definitions.
Consequently
exercises with instructions
like the following still predominate:
1 In the blanks, write the most
given below:
The reading on the _____
(thermometer, degrees, etc.)
2 Match each word
a. To _____:
b. To _____:
(accuse, persecute,

appropriate
was nearly

word

or phrase

from

the list

ninety______.

with its definition:

to say that somebody
is responsible
for a crime.
to subject someone
to persistent
ill-treatment.
etc.)

3 Study the following

words and the use of them:
(an) object: An object is something
you can touch
shape. The moon is a spherical
o____ct.

that

has a definite

Such materials
derive from the vocabulary-as-product
view of lexical
competence.
In this sense the lexicon is a word store of listed items. But if
it is to be used, supplemented,
updated,
and drawn on, any store needs a
storekeeper
practised
in the application
of principles
for selecting
and
distributing
the relevant and needed items; in this case, the words needed in
discourse.
A rich view of the dimensions
of lexical competence
has therefore to account
for the development
of procedural
ability, and inevitably
therefore
for the many ways lexical knowledge
is drawn on in communi276

Peter J. Robinson

articles

welcome

cation.
I suggest,
accordingly,
that we can adopt Canale
and Swains
(1980) checklist of the dimensions
of communicative
competence
as a way
of dividing up the areas to be covered by our materials
and methodologies
for teaching
lexis.
Communicative
competence

Canale
(1983) describes
communicative
competence
as the underlying
systems of knowledge
and skill required for communication
(1983: 5), and
distinguishes
four areas of this competence:

1 Grammatical

competence, concerned
with mastery
of the language
code,
vocabulary,
and linguistic
semantics.
2 Sociolinguistic competence, involved
in decisions
about appropriacy
of language to context.
3 Discourse competence, the ability to construct
and maintain
in negotiation,
properly
coherent
talk and text.
4 Strategic competence, involved in decisions about how to repair breakdowns
that occur in communication,
or to enhance
the message.
Of course
all these levels interact,
but the point of separating
them here is to
examine
the coverage
that might be given to each in developing
lexical
competence.
To take two groups of students
at the University
of Bahrain,
Gulf Polytechnic
as an example,
engineers
and business students
are likely
to be involved
in using
language
in different
settings,
to different
addressees,
and on different topics, and this would affect the sociolinguistic
performance
that we might wish to prioritize
in their learning
materials.
Similarly,
the situation
of our students
on an orientation
year means that
we might identify specific performance
manifestations
of strategic
competence as most immediately
relevant to their likely needs, for example asking
for clarification
by reformulating
content,
using reference sources to check
understanding,
or coping with background
noise in a laboratory
session.
Using this framework,
I am now going to present
some materials
for
learning
and teaching
vocabulary
which have been developed
in Bahrain.
Though
the emphasis
is on developing
procedural
ability,
and on the
vocabulary
we see as a means to further
learning,
my colleagues
and I
recognize
the importance
of declarative
learning, and as this has an especial
cultural
saliency as a preferred
mode of learning
in Bahrain,
I will begin
with it, before moving on to materials
more suited to the orientation
I have
outlined
above.
Learning sty/es and
exercise types
Rote learning

Learning
predisposition
is, in a sense, Koranic,
with the emphasis
on rote
memorization.
Vocabulary
lends itself, from one perspective,
quite readily
to this declarative
view of what it is to know and learn. Therefore,
to
provide
a sense of continuity
with their school education
and cultural
orientation,
I provided
students
with various exercises which test vocabulary learnt in this way.
For example,
there are many multiple-choice
quizzes, with the emphasis
on all-or-nothing
answers; many frames or definitional
phrases which are
recycled in computer
lessons5 and which students
like to learn by heart, for
example:
When

we subtract an amount,

we take it away

Words learnt in this way can then be tested

described
previously.

from

via gap-filler

a larger
quizzes

A rich view of lexical competence

amount.
of the sort

277

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Contextualizing

I am not very keen on weaning students

off this sort of artificial fixation of
meaning.
But what I do want to do is balance
it with some procedural
orientation
to establishing
word meaning
in fluctuating
contexts.
This is
the idea that lies behind many of the Word Set exercises we use, which are
much more heavily dependent
on teacher elicitation,
and aim to encourage
learners
to imagine possible worlds to contextualize
the presented
lexis.
These exercises are therefore
very open-ended,
and draw on interpretative procedures,
but they do assume that the declarative
base, the provisional definition,
has been fixed in place first.

Word Sets
Here is a puzzle. There is more than one answer which might be correct.
Look at the words in italics. Imagine
they have been used in a letter. Can
you decide who the intended
reader of the letter might be, what the letter
might be about, and what the purpose
of the letter might be? Tick the
answers which you think might be correct.
inconvenient

incorrect

total

a kind of

problem

subtract

Intended reader:

The letter is about:

a computer
programmer
a shopkeeper
a teacher
a bank manager
a car dealer
your grandmother

a wedding
a bill
your salary
a new car
Arabic history
a meal

check

The purpose is:

to
to
to
to
to
to
to

persuade
amuse
warn
complain
teach
advertise
agree

My methodology
in using this exercise has involved going round the class
asking students
to justify what seem to be unusual
choices or decisions:
How could it be about a meal? etc. The important
thing is to exploit as
much as possible
the leeway
which this gives students
for imagining
possible worlds or contexts
which can justify their choices.
My provisional
answer is that the reader could be any of those given,
except the grandmother.
The letter could be about any of the listed subjects, except Arabic history or a wedding (unless the wedding involves a bill
for the reception).
The purpose
could be warning,
teaching,
or -most
likely -complaining,
(because
of inconvenient,
incorrect,
and check).
There are no absolutely
correct answers
to exercises
like this. They are
ways of making conscious
the activity of sorting words into schemas
and
attributing
frames of reference.
These are what I mean by word sets. The
idea is that the area or frame of reference
suggested
by the title will
constrain
the selection
of likely words.
278

Peter J. Robinson

articles

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Associating

The above contextualizing

activities
take place in relation
to Word Sets
which result from learner
projections
of possible
shared
sociolinguistic
settings. They therefore draw on and develop a sociolinguistic
knowledge
of
the conventions
regulating
participation
in standardized
speech events:
how a particular
addressor
addresses
a particular
addressee
to achieve a
particular
purpose
through
the particular
channel of a written letter.
However,
other relations
between words are more cognitive and private.
These relations
are independent
of any conventions
regulating
specific
speech events. The Word Net exercise below aims to develop this network
of private associations.

Word Nets
Look at the word
yourself by adding

net for plentiful things in Bahrain.

Try to complete
it
as many words for things that are plentiful as you can.

nn

Now can you do a word

Polytechnic?

Strategy building

net for things

that

are scarce in Bahrain,

or Gulf

Having
touched
on the sociolinguistic
and grammatical
dimensions
of
lexical competence,
here is an exercise which refers back to my introduction, in which I distinguished
specific words from those of more general, basic
meaning.
The aim here is to practise strategies
for using procedural
words
to paraphrase
the meanings
of more specific or technical
words.

Using Basic Words

Some words in English are very general and can be used instead
other words. Here are some very general words:
let

way

watch

get

go

guess

do

and here are some words from Unit 9. Can you use the general
to paraphrase
the meaning
of these words?
disappear

predict

revise

direction

of a lot of

acquire

observe

words

above

enable

A rich view of lexical competence

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For example:
What does
something.
What does observe mean?
What does revise mean?
Discuss the other words
find helpful in paraphrasing
Now ask your partner
Unit 9. See if he uses any
explain a word. Use your
any of these words?
used for
a kind of can

Following

text chains

enable mean?

It means

to help or let someone

do

with

your teacher.
Which general words do you
and giving definitions?
to explain the meaning
of one of the words from
of your general, basic words. He will ask you to
own basic words when you reply
Did you use
a sort of

make

usually

is a

which

always

has.

I have defined discourse

competence,
briefly, as the ability to maintain
properly
cohesive and coherent
talk and text. One illustration
of this with
respect to text which can be the focus for vocabulary
exercises is the ability
to distinguish
between
the two types of chaining
which Hasan
(1984)
describes
as the properties
of coherent
text. The first type of chain she calls
an identity chain, as in this example:

identity

chain:

John

This chain establishes

co-reference
to a topic internal to the text. Similarity
chains, however,
reflect world or schema knowledge
of semantic
relations
that are not text-specific,
but are brought to the text and pre-exist
it, as in
this example:

similarity

chain:

Notice how general words like pronouns

he, they, etc. and verbs like do, make,
etc. are important
to forming and following identity chains, while similarity
chains are made of more specific, lexical words. Such chains can be deleted
in cloze exercises at a variety of levels, and on a variety of topics.
They can also be the focus for two types of listening
exercise. Firstly, an
intensive
listening
activity, where the student has to listen for and identify
the order of references
made to a particular
topic in an extract
from a
lecture, e.g. a hammer:
this thing, it, this heavy object, etc. Secondly, extensive
listening exercises where students
are asked to note down as many words as
they can relating
to a frame of reference
or schema like the sea.
280

Peter J. Robinson

articles

welcome

Puzzle value

A final consideration
to be mentioned
here involves increasing
appetite
to
learn by providing
a variety of exercises which have a puzzle value for the
learner. Nation (I 983) is a good source of these.

Conclusion

My aim in this article has been to distinguish

between the declarative
and
procedural
dimensions
of vocabulary
knowledge.
I have also suggested
that
these two dimensions
correspond
to a large extent to two types of words,
highly specific or technical,
lexical words, and the more general delexical
words. I have claimed that vocabulary
materials
in the past may have overemphasized
the declarative,
static meaning
that attaches
to a technical
word, while ignoring
procedural
aspects of vocabulary
learning.
Knowing
how to use procedural
words to negotiate
the meaning of more
technical
words is essential
to learners
if they are to engage in fruitful
classroom
communication.
I have proposed
a framework
for providing
coverage of the communicative
dimensions
of lexical competence
based on
Canale and Swains checklist.
The example
exercise types given here are
intended
to develop awareness
of the communicative
potential
of vocabulary for negotiating
meaning,
to provide contexts for exchanges
and discussion, and for developing
awareness
of the structural
environments
which
words typically
have, and the textual relations
they can enter into.6

Received July 1988

Blum-Kulka,

Notes

1 See Carter
various

tests

1986 and Stubbs

5
6

who

describe

for coreness.

2 For a discussion

1986,

of motherese,

see Snow 1973; and of

foreigner
talk, see Ferguson
1971, and Blum and
Levenston
1983.
This also provides
an example
of Allwrights
claim
(1986) that learners
get all sorts of grammatical
information
via the questions
they
ask about
words.
See Morgan
and Rinvolucri
1986, Gairns and Redman
1985, McCarthy
et al. 1985 for interesting
examples
of new approaches
to vocabulary
exercise
types.
For some discussion
of how we put vocabulary
exercises on a computer
network,
see Cramp
1987.
Thanks
are due to my colleagues
at the University
of
Bahrain,
Alan Cramp,
Barbara
Duff, and Tony
Watson,
who helped
in the development
of these
materials
and, latterly,
colleagues
and students
at
the University
of Pittsburgh,
and Mike McCarthy at
the University
of Birmingham,
with whom I have
discussed
some
of the
ideas
underlying
this
approach.

References

Allwright, R., S. Pit Corder, and R. Rossner.

Talking
guistics.

shop: language
teaching
ELT Journal 40/3:185-91.

and

applied

1986.
lin-

S., and E. A. Levenston. 1983. Universals of lexical simplification

in K. Faerch and G.
Kasper
(eds.):
Strategies in Interlanguage
Communication. London:
Longman.
Canale, M. 1983. From communicative
competence
to language
pedagogy
in J. Richards
and
R.
Schmidt
(eds.): Language and Communication. London:
Longman.
Canale, M. and M. Swain. 1980. Theoretical
bases of
communicative
approaches
to second
language
teaching
and testing. Applied Linguistics 1/1:1-47.
Carter, R. 1986. Core vocabulary
and discourse
in the
curriculum:
a question
of the subject. RELC Journal
17/1:52-70.
Cramp, A. 1987. Setting up a computer
networking
system for the Gulf Polytechnic
English
Language
Unit. The Voice of Technology 7/1:22-29.
Ferguson, C. 197 1. Absence of copula and the notion
of simplicity
in D. Hymes
(ed.): Pidginization and
Creolization
of Languages.
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press.
Gairns, R. and S. Redman. 1986. Working with Words.
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press.
Hasan, R. 1984. Coherence
and cohesive harmony
in
J. Flood (ed.): Understanding Reading Comprehension.
Newark,
Del: International
Reading
Association.
Hutchinson, T. and A. Waters. 1981. Performance
and competence
in ESP. Applied Linguistics 2/1.
McCarthy, M. J. 1984. A new look at vocabulary
in
EFL. Applied Linguistics 5/1: 12-22.
McCarthy, M. J., A. McLean, and M. OMalley.
1985. Proficiency Plus. Oxford:
Blackwell.

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Morgan, J. and

M. Rinvolucri.
1986. Vocabulary.
Oxford
University
Press.
Nation, P. 1983. Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. University of Wellington,
Occasional
Paper no.7.
Sinclair, J. McH., and A. Renouf. 1988. A lexical
syllabus
for language
learning
in R. Carter and M.
J. McCarthy
(eds.): Vocabulary and Language Teaching.
London:
Longman.
Snow, C. 1973. Mothers
speech to children
learning
language.
Child Development 43:549/73.
Stubbs, M. 1986. Language
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Widdowson, H. G. 1983. Learning Purpose and Language

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The author
Peter Robinson
has a BA from the University
of Wales,
a PGCE from the University
of Nottingham,
and an
MA from the University
of London
Institute
of Education. He has taught in Bahrain,
England,
Libya, the
United Arab Emirates,
and most recently
in the USA,
where
he taught
linguistic
and applied
linguistic
courses at the University
of Pittsburgh.

Peter J. Robinson

articles

welcome