Building Blocks

The Lexical Approach's principal tenet is that the language native speakers use, whether in a formal or informal situation, is not original (i.e. it is not uniquely created for that context); but is built up in readymade, prefabricated chunks - which the speaker/writer selects from his/her lexical store (featuring, in the case of an adult native speaker, tens of thousands of chunks) and assembles together to construct what he/she wants to say.