EXPLORATION OF ASSOCIATIVE NETWORKS IN LEXICAL TEACHING

Based on Richards (1976) assumptions about what it is to know a word, it can be seen that the study of the lexicon in language teaching in language teaching involves a multidimensional knowledge of which grammatical, semantic and discursive aspects of lexical unity are part of. Differently from a tradition in lexical teaching that focused exclusively on lexical equivalence, as the lexical unit was considered to carry a single and absolute meaning, this work discusses the exploration of semantic aspects of the lexicon that contribute to know how to use it, mainly through the exploration of associative networks, polysemy and parasynonymy. To this end, this work analyzes a set of activities about lexicon proposed by basic education teachers who were participants in an extension course in the University of Sao Paulo.