Learn what lexicalization and grammaticalization are.

The traditional view of language teaching holds that language is lexicalized grammar, that is, language is regarded as a vocabulary generated by certain grammatical rules. However, the research results of linguistics, especially corpus linguistics, reveal that there are a large number of fixed or semi-fixed language structures with syntactic and lexical characteristics in natural languages. These patterned structures are stored in the brain as a whole and constitute the most basic language unit in English. This linguistic phenomenon has attracted the attention of linguists, and the traditional view of language has been challenged. More and more researchers realize that "language production is not a process restricted by syntactic rules, but a process of extracting phrase units from memory." Michael lewis pointed out that language is not composed of lexicalized grammar, but of grammaticalized vocabulary. An important part of language acquisition is the ability to understand and produce unanalyzable whole chunks. Linguists represented by Lewis advocate the application of lexical chunks in language teaching to improve learners' language proficiency.