Lexogoth arose out of a frustration familiar to every language learner who has ever had to study vocabulary: the struggle to find the right word combinations and the realization that memorizing word lists alone is not enough to participate fluently in communicative tasks.
We believe this difficult transition is largely due to poor study methods and insufficient practice with vocabulary. Most foreign language students begin their learning journey by memorizing vocabulary lists, which allows them to quickly and efficiently acquire a small base lexicon. While this approach is useful in the early stages, many textbooks—particularly in French—continue to rely on word lists year after year. This persistent focus eventually handicaps students: when they are required to perform meaningful communicative tasks later on, they soon discover that a mix of grammar rules and isolated words is simply not enough to use the language effectively.
Learning through lists prevents students from forming connections between the words and expressions they encounter. In other words, learners end up with a collection of disconnected lexical items, without the semantic network needed to tie them together. This lack of internal structure leads to shallow memorization, which in turn makes students forget new vocabulary much faster than if it had been embedded in a network of associations. Word lists also tend to ignore the inherent complexity of words. A word is more than just a definition or a translation: to use it properly, one needs to know which complements it takes, which meanings are frequent and which are not, what register it belongs to, in which contexts it can be used, as well as its synonyms, antonyms, and derivatives.
To make matters worse, vocabulary practice in many French textbooks is still limited to crosswords, fill-in-the-blanks, or short completion exercises, far from enough to build solid lexical competence. Because of this rigid reliance on word lists, combined with a lack of rich, meaningful input that could illustrate both the meaning and use of new words, students progress in the foreign language much more slowly than they should.
In our view, vocabulary should always be taught in context, with students exposed to numerous examples that clearly demonstrate how words are used and that help them build a robust semantic network more quickly. It is from this perspective that we developed Lexogoth: our goal is to provide students of French with a representative corpus of high-frequency words, expressions, and collocations in varied contexts. This enables learners to remember and practice these lexical items more effectively and more efficiently. Below, we explain the methodology we used and how the corpus was developed.
For further reading on vocabulary acquisition, see: Nation (2001), Thornbury (2002), Laufer (2022), Bentolila (2010).
The development of Lexogoth is closely linked to two major trends in foreign language education that gained serious momentum in the 1990s:
The Lexical Approach by Lewis (1993, The lexical approach: The state of ELT and a way forward)
The use of corpora with authentic material to support the learning process (corpus linguistics)
Let’s start with Lewis’s Lexical Approach. One of the key principles of this approach is that, in the context of foreign language learning, language should no longer be seen as a collection of sentences built from grammatical structures into which lexical items sould be inserted (the traditional grammar-based approach to language teaching). Instead, language should be understood as a collection of ready-made expressions, compound words, and regular word combinations that are stored in the learner’s memory and can be used directly and quickly in communicative situations, with only minimal adjustments depending on the context.
Put simply, according to Lewis, it is not grammar but the network of lexical units that forms the basis of successful language use. In this context, lexical units—also called chunks—can be defined as the set of individual and compound words, frequent word combinations, expressions, and collocations. Lewis’s idea is that foreign language teachers should base their instruction on these lexical units and provide students with rich and varied input through authentic texts and conversations, along with intensive use of concordancers and dictionaries. Such an approach is expected to lead to faster and deeper language acquisition; the idea is that students, during communication, no longer need to construct sentences based on sometimes complex grammatical rules, but can quickly and effortlessly retrieve ready-made chunks from their memory.
And indeed, there is much to be said for the Lexical Approach and the use of chunks; here are some studies on their usefulness and application:
Using chunks improves foreign language learners’ writing skills (Albaqami, 2022, The Role of Lexical Chunks in Promoting English Writing Competence among Foreign Language Learners in Saudi Arabia).
Native speakers also rely heavily on pre-formed chunks or phrases for communication (Pawley and Syder, 1983, Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency).
There is evidence that students who learn chunks demonstrate greater fluency and better speaking skills, while those who focus on individual words struggle to produce sentences spontaneously (Boers, Eyckmans, Kappel, Stengers, 2006, Formulaic sequences and perceived oral proficiency: putting a Lexical Approach to the test).
Of course, Lewis’s proposal to base language teaching predominantly on lexical knowledge has also drawn criticism. Here are some key points:
On what basis should word combinations and expressions be selected, and how can a course be designed around them? And assuming one selects the most frequent words, how can an entire year’s curriculum be organized around all the authentic material related to those combinations? (Alison Wray, 2002, Formulaic Language and the Lexicon)
It is relatively easy and manageable to learn large word lists and store them in long-term memory, but what about word combinations where students are expected to study dozens of common collocations for a single word? This seems practically and humanly impossible, as it would require an excessive amount of time and effort from students (Alison Wray, 2002).
What about grammar? Grammar, especially syntax, determines how we construct correct sentences. Why should it be sidelined when it provides one of the most important mechanisms for creating new sentences? (Rod Ellis, 2003, Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching)
A second important development is corpus linguistics, a linguistic discipline that emerged in the 1960s and typically uses computers to systematically collect and analyze large amounts of language data to identify patterns. Well-known English-language corpora available online include The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and The British National Corpus (BNC). Thanks to the growing accessibility of computers in the 1990s, more people—including language educators—gained access to corpora that had previously been limited to research institutions. This opened the way to exploring the use of text corpora in foreign language teaching. From the 2000s onwards, various initiatives sought to bring authentic text corpora to students and integrate them into teaching through electronic dictionaries supplemented with corpus data, concordancers for studying word usage and syntactic structures, and syllabi of expressions and word combinations based on frequency.
Both developments —the Lexical Approach and corpus linguistics—have been the methodological and theoretical foundation that inspired us. We start from the idea that, once a student has reached a certain level, language acquisition—especially in a foreign language—should focus mainly on learning authentic and context-bound lexical units (frequent word combinations, phrases, fixed expressions, etc.) that have been carefully compiled using corpus linguistics tools. Lexogoth combines in one program many of the advantages of a concordancer and a dictionary. It also provides useful advice on the use of words and word combinations (frequency, meaning clarification, grammatical issues, register, pronunciation, etc.).
By using Lexogoth, students no longer have to deal with the drawbacks that inevitably come with the individual use of such tools:
Concordancers return search results with thousands of example sentences mixing all meanings of the searched lemma. If a language learner has to sift through all these examples and distinguish the different uses based on dictionary definitions, learning will be very slow or impossible. In Lexogoth, we have done this heavy work for the students, clearly distinguishing meanings and providing representative examples.
Definitions in online dictionaries are often too abstract for learners and offer little guarantee of correct usage due to insufficient clear examples. In Lexogoth, we provide clear examples and explain many definitions in English to ensure learners fully understand.
Concordancers are sometimes specialized programs that are difficult to learn to use. Lexogoth’s user interface is simple and intuitive.
The seemingly infinite lists of examples offered by corpora are not suitable as direct study material: too many examples, no information on register, no suggestions for synonyms or paraphrases, no sociocultural explanations for certain phenomena (such as verlan), etc.
Finally, we want to emphasize that Lexogoth is not a language course or method like Lewis originally envisioned with the Lexical Approach, but a tool to help students learn frequent word combinations and words in context more quickly, providing authentic material with which they can systematically and independently practice and reinforce their lexical knowledge.
As we mentioned above, explanatory (or translating) dictionaries are not ideal tools for foreign language learners because, in our view, too many essential meaning components of lemmas—necessary for proper usage—are not made explicit enough. For example, this concerns the selection of complements by a verb or the actual usage in everyday language, rather than the “virtual” usage found in dictionaries or textbooks. For instance, Robert (le Robert en ligne) gives the following definitions for the verbs frôler and friser:
[frôler] 1. Toucher légèrement en glissant, en passant. 2. Passer très près de, en touchant presque. ➙ raser. La voiture a frôlé le trottoir. au figuré: Frôler le ridicule.
[friser] … 2. Passer au ras de, effleurer. (voir: frôler, raser) 3. Approcher de très près. Elle frise la soixantaine. Cela frise le ridicule.
Based on the definitions above, someone wanting to use frôler and friser might conclude that the two words can largely be considered synonyms. However, after checking the corpora we use, we found that friser and frôler can indeed be considered synonyms in a figurative sense (with abstract complements), but not in their literal meaning (i.e., followed by concrete complements), as we could hardly find usage examples where friser is used in that sense. Although the definitions are largely identical, it would be incorrect to assume their actual usage is the same. For example, you will rarely, if ever, come across sentences like un motard alcoolisé qui frisait dangereusement les passants dans le centre-ville de….
To prevent language learners from encountering such problems and to help them learn word meanings more smoothly, we have therefore chosen to always verify the words, structures, and their different meanings included in our corpus based on frequency. We did this using two tools:
Consultation of the French Web 2023 corpus from SketchEngine (covering all language registers)
Consultation of the RTBF corpus (French-speaking Belgian television and news channel; standard language), and the Le Monde corpus (French newspaper; standard and polished language)
Afterwards, we consulted the following reference works to verify whether the lemma or word combination was included and to map out the main meanings of the lemma:
– Le Robert (dictionnaire en ligne)
– Larousse (dictionnaire en ligne)
– Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (en ligne)
After this step, we searched for useful examples illustrating the meanings currently used in French (regardless of register). We aimed to gather as broad a range of relevant examples as possible and consulted the following resources:
The French Web 2023 corpus from SketchEngine
The website www.languefrançaise.net, specifically the general dictionary and Bob, l’autre trésor de la langue for colloquial or informal language
French-speaking Belgian media: RTBF (public broadcaster), Belgian newspapers: Le Soir, La Libre Belgique, La Dernière Heure; French newspapers: Le Monde, Charlie Hebdo, Le Figaro, Le Parisien, Libération; Swiss newspapers: 24 heures, Le Matin, La Tribune de Genève; French-language media from Madagascar, Canada, Congo (DRC), Haiti, Morocco, and Algeria
Official government websites from Belgium and France, and to a lesser extent Canada and Switzerland; websites of companies from the Francophone world; websites of international organizations such as the European Union, United Nations, NATO, IMF, etc.
Numerous internet forums (especially for familiar and spoken language); some of the main sources include JeuxVideo.com (mainly youth language), Forum Santé – Doctissimo, French-speaking Reddit channels, AlloCiné (film reviews), SensCritique (film reviews). This also includes numerous blogs ranging from hair styling and technology to international politics (covering all language registers)
French subtitles of recent films and TV series; we ensured that subtitles were created by native French speakers rather than AI-generated to guarantee authenticity
Websites offering language advice: Banque de dépannage linguistique (Canada), the Dire et ne pas dire section of the Académie française, notes from Larousse (online dictionary), Projet Voltaire, the WordReference.com forum, and the contrastive Dutch-French grammar resource Grammar Warrior
Next, we selected examples that appeared frequently in various sources and included them partially (as chunks) or fully (as sentences) in Lexogoth. We made sure the examples clearly illustrated the existing (abstract) meanings and, in the case of verbs, that a clear selection of the expected complements was used. To illustrate this, let’s return to the example of frôler:
... sombrer dans la paranoïa communiste / Cela expliquera peut-être mieux sa méfiance qui frôle la paranoïa. / frôler le ridicule; l'illégalité, le burn-out, l'overdose / frôler la mort, la faillite / une balle lui a frôlé le coeur / Une grosse pierre, lancée par un inconnu, lui a frôlé le visage et a percuté la voiture derrière lui. / Le taux de participation aux élections frôle les 60 pour cent. / La police a interpellé un motard alcoolisé qui frôlait dangereusement les passants dans le centre-ville de Lille. …
Because not everything can be conveyed through examples alone, we regularly add extensive notes concerning register, compatibility with specific complements, synonyms, etc., to better guide learners toward correct usage. For “frôler” and “friser,” for instance, we added the following information:
1. In the figurative sense of "narrowly escaping" or "bordering on," you can also use "friser" as a synonym: "friser la mort, la faillite, le burn-out, les 50 pour cent,…" 2. In the literal meaning (grazing past something, lightly touching), where the object of "frôler" (as in "la balle lui a frôlé le nez") is something concrete, the equivalence between "frôler" and "friser" seems to no longer hold, even though Larousse and the Académie still consider both words to be synonyms in this sense. In this meaning, the verb "friser" is barely used, if at all; therefore, you will not encounter phrases like: "...frisait les passants..." or "...frisé le visage…"
If a meaning did not appear in dictionaries (e.g., recent Anglicisms, vulgar language, neologisms) but had a decent frequency, we still chose to include the word in our corpus. Conversely, if a word or meaning was recognized by one or more dictionaries but appeared infrequently or not at all in our consulted corpora, we chose not to include it.
Sometimes, we also found it necessary to compress some dictionary definitions because the differences between them were too subtle to be clearly distinguished.
The Lexogoth corpus (July 2025) consists of two parts: first, we included the vocabulary from the main lexical fields for levels A1 and A2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) as short, useful chunks (phrases or word combinations) specifically aimed at functional language skills for beginners. This part accounts for roughly 15 percent of the total corpus. We then expanded this vocabulary by adding the main and most common meanings and uses. The second and larger part of the corpus consists of an in-depth exploration of existing lemmas and their usage in familiar and everyday spoken language, covering roughly the B level of the CEFR. An example for the verb descendre:
(a) monter l'escalier / descendre l'escalier / croiser qn dans l'escalier / descendre, monter l'escalier quatre à quatre (b) L'incendie était terrifiant, nous confie une locataire. C'est la fumée qui m'a réveillée, j'ai réussi à descendre par l'escalier avec mon fils. / L'ascenseur ne fonctionne pas depuis ce matin; j'ai dû descendre par l'escalier. / descendre par l'escalier, par l'ascenseur / descendre de l'escalier, de l'échelle, d'un arbre ... / descendre du métro, du train, de la voiture, de son vélo.... / Où est ton frère? Il est dans sa chambre. Dis-lui de descendre immédiatement pour dire bonjour à mamie / monter dans sa chambre (c) prendre l'escalier pour monter à son appartement au 4e étage / Je suis monté en prenant l'escalier. / Pour monter sur une échelle, il faut monter une marche à la fois.
(REMARKS) 1. "Descendre l'escalier" or simply "descendre" without a complement means "to come down the stairs." This is the most frequent construction. Note that this is a transitive use of "descendre" and requires the auxiliary verb "avoir": "J'ai descendu l'escalier." If "descendre" does not have a direct object (COD), you should use "être": "Je suis descendu. / Elle est descendue par l'escalier. /..." The same rule applies to "monter." 2. "Descendre de..." is primarily used to mean "to come down from (an object) that you are sitting, standing, or climbing on," as in "descendre d'un arbre, d'une échelle," or "to get out of/off a vehicle," as in "descendre de son vélo, du train,..." Here, the auxiliary verb is also "être". 3. "Descendre par l'escalier,...": When specifying how (by which way) someone came down, it is often to contrast it with another method: "on descend par l'escalier ou par l'ascenseur?" 4. "Une mamie" or "mamy" mean "grandmother," while "papy" or "papi" refer to a "grandfather." For the plural, you can add an "s" to the words: "des mamies, mamys, papis, papys." 5. "Quatre à quatre" means "head over heels, very quickly," and is often used with verbs of movement like "grimper, monter, descendre, franchir,…"
For this second part, we also systematically add meanings and uses that we consider to be at an advanced level (CEFR level C). For these entries, we regularly include notes to help learners master the correct usage and study new structures. Below is another example for the verb “descendre”:
...Je risque de me faire descendre en flèche sur ce forum, mais est-ce que je suis le seul à trouver ce film débile ? / Cherche pas, à ce prix-là, c'est du vol et ton appli va se faire descendre en flèche. / La presse argentine n'a pas attendu longtemps pour descendre en flammes la formation dirigée par Jorge Sampaoli.
(REMARKS):... 2. "En flèche" can be used as an adjective phrase ("une montée en flèche") or as an adverbial phrase ("monter en flèche"). 3. "En flèche" is most often used with verbs of "rising" or "increasing," such as "monter, augmenter, grimper," and means "at rocket speed." It is also used quite frequently with verbs in the semantic cluster of "starting," such as "partir, démarrer," etc. Finally, the combination is also used with verbs that express a decrease, such as "baisser, descendre," although to a much lesser extent. See the next note, however. 4. "Descendre en flèche" is sometimes used incorrectly in place of the informal expression "descendre en flammes," which means "to heavily criticize, tear someone down, or rip them apart." For example, the text above would have been better written as: "…de me faire descendre en flammes…" and "…va se faire descendre en flammes."
In the second part, we also systematically include words and structures that frequently appear in the media, internet forums, and government websites. By being exposed to authentic and current material, language learners can understand media and literature on important social issues and also gain the tools to express themselves about these topics.
The way the entries in Lexogoth were designed lies at the heart of our innovative approach: we combine the functionality of a dictionary, a concordancer, and a textbook. It was a deliberate choice to bring together lexical precision, authentic usage, and a didactic dimension, enabling students of French to acquire frequent lexical combinations (chunks) more efficiently and rapidly, through intelligent repetition or targeted consultation. For this reason, users will encounter different types of entries in the corpus:
(a) Entries with an exhaustive treatment of a single lemma: these entries are closest to the dictionary function and illustrate the main uses and meanings of a word, often organized in a clear and structured way.
(b) Entries organized around a specific theme, such as fraud, climate change, or electric mobility. These entries provide a solid basis for building and expanding a lexical network.
(c) Entries focusing on a language problem at the grammatical, lexical, or pragmatic level, which students of French often encounter when using the language.
(d) Simple entries that list words or focus on a single expression or combination. These entries are primarily designed to support the development of a basic vocabulary.
Thanks to this varied structure of the entries and of the corpus as a whole, users can acquire new vocabulary and frequent lexical patterns in an effective and flexible way.
In Lexogoth, we strive to highlight the diversity of the French language as broadly as possible. For instance, we pay a lot of attention to the geographical variants of French, specifically Belgicisms. Belgicisms are French words, structures, etc., that are specific to the French used in Belgium but have little spread elsewhere. We dedicate less attention to other varieties of French, such as those from Canada, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Congo, and Algeria.
Anglicisms —that is, English (especially American) words and structures used in French— also receive extensive coverage in our work, and wherever possible, we provide synonyms from the standard language.
Although the focus in Lexogoth is primarily on the standard language, we devote a lot of space to informal language—the language that French speakers use in their everyday interactions. We always mention in our notes whether an expression belongs to informal language, and here too we try to provide synonyms or alternative formulations from the standard language. We also address vulgar expressions and the uniquely French phenomenon of verlan, always providing standard-language equivalents where possible.
Many language apps and websites focus on the fast and easy acquisition of elementary vocabulary through a classic approach based on isolated words, often accompanied by an image, a photo, or a translation. While this method can be useful for beginners or when learning specialized jargon, these apps often fall short in developing the active, productive vocabulary needed for correct and fluent language use. Lexogoth was designed to bridge that gap, distinguishing itself on the following key points.
– Authentic Context: Many popular language apps (Duolingo, Drops, Babbel, etc.) base their vocabulary instruction on repeating isolated words or very simple sentences that often feel unnatural (e.g., “I can fly”). The problem is that these apps fail to show learners how a word is used in its natural environment—that is, in real written and/or spoken language. They don’t teach which complements often appear with a word, what its register is, which socio-cultural elements might limit its use, or which of its meanings are frequent and which are not. Lexogoth operates on the principle that a word is only truly known when a user understands how it can be used in context. We aim to teach this by presenting users with exclusively authentic text fragments, with a special focus on frequent collocations and idiomatic expressions.
– Relevant Words and Structures: Where other apps often rely on thematic lists (like “living,” “food and drink,” “getting around,” “daily life”) for students to memorize, Lexogoth consists of a carefully, manually compiled corpus. This corpus contains words and word combinations that are current, relevant, and used with a relatively high frequency. To ensure this, we consistently consulted recent text corpora when including new entries.
-Deep Anchoring of Lexical Knowledge: Traditional language apps try to keep their users engaged by offering short sessions (e.g., Drops), presenting vocabulary learning as a game (with streaks, badges, achievements, etc.) through simple fill-in-the-blanks, translation, or pronunciation exercises. Lexogoth takes a different approach: the app contains no exercises in the classic sense. The goal is for users to deeply anchor patterns and correct word combinations through repeated and attentive reading of the examples. This process, which closely resembles how native speakers use their language, will ensure that the acquired knowledge can be easily retrieved and used during communicative situations. In other words, students will less often need to rely on the time-consuming and cognitively demanding word-by-word sentence construction and will be able to react more quickly and correctly.
– Attention to Diversity in Language: Registers, Variants, and Sociocultural Context: Most apps pay little to no attention to the different language registers tied to the use of words or specific meanings. A lack of attention to these nuances leads to inappropriate or unnatural language use. The same applies to the geographical variants of French and the socio-cultural components linked to certain word usage, as is the case with verlan language. Lexogoth provides the necessary attention to this diversity, so users not only learn the correct meanings of a word but can also use it in an appropriate context.
-No AI-Generated Material, but Empirically Validated Data: Numerous language learning apps and methods use generative AI to quickly and cheaply create learning material. This is a smart approach, but the quality of the generated sentences is not always reliable, as they often create unnatural sentences or use word combinations that are rare. In Lexogoth, the examples are not AI-generated but are carefully and manually selected from relevant corpora of recent native speaker usage. We must add that we did use AI tools like DeepL, ChatGPT, and Gemini to speed up the translation process into Dutch. However, the translations were manually checked and updated where necessary to guarantee a high level of accuracy for the user.
Vocabulary acquisition is a difficult and sometimes painful process for language learners. It’s not enough to simply know the translation of a word; you also have to learn a host of other things, such as the type of complement that follows a verb, the correct preposition after a noun, the language register to which a meaning belongs, the pronunciation, and more.
We believe Lexogoth can help ease and accelerate this learning process . For many common French words and combinations, the corpus provides multiple, clear usage contexts that can save the user a lot of time (searching in dictionaries, deciphering difficult definitions, etc.) and give them the means to reliably and systematically learn and review vocabulary.
However, users must not fall into the trap of complacency, as effective vocabulary acquisition must also be paired with quality instruction and highly targeted productive exercises (speaking, interaction, writing). But that, of course, is the task of the teacher…
Currently (July 2025), Lexogoth contains a little over 40,000 clickable items. We are actively working to fill the gaps that are (most certainly) still present in the work. This process will undoubtedly take several years, and we plan to release a major update every three months.
Albaqami, M. (2022). The Role of Lexical Chunks in Promoting English Writing Competence among Foreign Language Learners in Saudi Arabia. Arab World English Journal, 13(2), 1-15.
Bentolila, A. (2010). Le vocabulaire: pour dire et lire. In A. Bentolila, Parle à ceux que tu n’aimes pas: Le défi de Babel (pp. 157-174). Odile Jacob.
Boers, F., Eyckmans, J., Kappel, J., & Stengers, H. (2006). Formulaic sequences and perceived oral proficiency: putting a Lexical Approach to the test. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15(4), 227-246.
Laufer, B. (2022). Formulaic Sequences and Second Language Learning. In P. Szudarski & S. Barclay (Eds.), Vocabulary Theory, Patterning and Teaching: Studies in Honour of Norbert Schmitt (pp. 95-108). Multilingual Matters & Channel View Publications.
Lewis, M. (1993). The lexical approach: The state of ELT and a way forward. LTP.
Nation, P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge University Press.
Pawley, A., & Syder, F. H. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In J. C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and communication (pp. 191-226). Longman.
Thornbury, S. (2002). How to Teach Vocabulary. Pearson Education.
Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge University Press.