What term describes a group of items that belong to one topic area, possibly different parts of speech?

• A. Lexical field
• B. Error analysis
• C. Passive knowledge
• D. Global error

Answer: (A)

A lexical field describes a group of vocabulary items that share a single topic or semantic area, and they can include different parts of speech because the connection is thematic, not grammatical. For example, a weather lexical field might include nouns like rain and forecast, adjectives like rainy and sunny, and verbs like to rain or to forecast. The important point is that all these words relate to the same topic, helping learners see how related words work together within a theme. This is different from error analysis (studying learners’ mistakes), passive knowledge (forms you recognize but don’t actively use), or global errors (mistakes affecting overall meaning or structure) because those terms refer to types of knowledge or error patterns, not to how vocabulary clusters around a topic.