Teacher Discussion Forums

Lewis, in Practical Techniques for English Teaching, The English Verb, and The Lexical Approach, mentions that 'would' should be taught as an item of lexis rather than as just a component of conditional clauses, because 'would' is an extremely generative, useful item in its own right.

Does anyone know more on this?

Well, when a student was once asking me to "teach her about would", I photocopied the relevant page(s) from the fourth edition of the bilingualized Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, thus providing her with a pretty clear listing of its uses (use? Ah, 'usage' would fudge that issue of how many meanings it could/should(n't) have!).

I'd have to dig out Lewis' books to actually give you any "chapter and verse". (I'm pretty sure there is little or nothing in his Practical Techniques regarding what you're apparently quoting, though). The last time I was looking in TEV was regarding the subjunctive, which really is something that should (in Lewis' opinion) be treated lexically (i.e. as part of a now limited range of functional phrases).

To be honest, I might be wrong about TEV, but at the end of Practical Techniques there's a chapter that looks a bit out of place in which he talks about things like conditionals, reported speech, and would. I'm pretty sure the bit about would is like the last page or two in the book, or thereabouts.

I didn't think about checking a dictionary though... should've been obvious. Thanks.

Heh, I'll need to tease those books out of the Jenga-like piles they're hiding in, then!

All this dictionary talk has reminded me of an old thread ('Huddleston speaks!', another eventual fave/"flashing bell" from Woody) in which, among other things, Lewisian thinking was applied to some NODE definitions of the uses of 'could':
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 1454#11454

(Flashing bells: http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=8667 ).