Lexical approach in education: analytical review

The lexical approach is a modern direction in teaching a foreign language. The pedagogical significance of the lexical approach is in teaching communicative grammar, which unites the content of teaching English and its formal features. The purpose of the paper is to give a systematic literature review on the lexical approach described in a Russian-language literature for the period from 2015 to 2020. Using systematic literature review methodology, the relevant inclusion criteria were formulated. The articles were identified and analyzed in accordance with the research questions (RQ): RQ1 - dynamics of publications; RQ2 - authors; RQ3 - type of publication; RQ4 - research topic. The dynamics of publication activity shows a steady increase in the number of publications in the Russian-language field. Author analysis shows a significant preponderance of Russian authors; a weak point is that only a few authors have two or more publications on the subject under analysis. A review of the type of publication shows a small number of journals with high impact factor; the vast majority of publications are articles in conference proceedings. These publications represent the experience of the authors, but the type of publication does not imply deep elaboration and analysis. Further, three goals of publications on lexical approach are the dominant ones. They include: lexical approach as a teaching method; application of lexical approach in foreign language teaching; the study of specific language units using the lexical approach. The results obtained highlight lacunar topics and define further research.