Literature Review

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter reviews the literature concerning lexis and EA in SLA research. The chapter consists of six main sections. First, lexis and its significance in various academic and professional contexts is broached. It discusses the relationship of lexical knowledge to successful communication and offers a brief explanation about the nature of lexis and lexical knowledge acquisition. The second section focuses on the teaching of lexis, lexical chunks, lexical chunks classification, and the pedagogical approaches towards lexical chunks. Third, the notion of lexical errors and a critical overview of language errors are discussed in addition to the common approaches to examining language errors: interlanguage, contrastive analysis, and EA approaches. Fourth, the chapter illustrates the common sources of language errors and how interlingual and intralingual influences play a major role in the occurrence of errors. A general overview of the Arabic lexis is presented in the fifth section. In the sixth and final section, a review of previous EA studies concerning the lexical errors of L2 learners is provided.