Contents

ContentsINTRODUCTION ... . 8

PART 1 - IN THE CLASSROOMChapter 1: There is nothing as practical as a good theory. . . . . . . . 10

Morgan Lewis

1 .1 In t roduc t ion . . . . 10I . 2 L e a r n e r s d o n ' t l e a m w h a t t e a c h e r s t e a c h . . . . . . . 1 1I . 3 K n o w i n g a w o r d i s c o m p l i c a t e d . . . . . . . I 2I . 4 T h e i n t e r m e d i a t e p l a t e a u . . . . . . . 1 41.5 The grammar-vocabularydichotomyis invalid . . . . . . . . 151 . 6 A d v a n c e d E n g l i s h . . . . . 1 71 . 7 L e a v e ' u s e d ' l a n g u a g e a l o n e . . . . 1 81 . 8 S o m e c l a s s r o o m a c t i v i t i e s . . . . . 2 01 . 9 A c t i o n r e s e a r c h . . . . . . . 2 71 . 1 0 C d n c l u s i o n . . . . . 2 1

Chapter 2: Collocation- encouraging learner independence . . . . . 28George Woolard

2 . I In t roduc t ion . . . .282 . 2 C o l l o c a t i o n . . . . . 2 82 . 3 R a i s i n g a w a r e n e s s o f c o l l o c a t i o n . . . . . . 3 02 . 4 H i g h l i g h t i n g a n d t e a c h i n g c o l l o c a t i o n . . . . . . . . 3 12.5 Choosing key words . . . .322.6 The independentlearnerandleamer strategies . . . . . . . . 332 . 7 R e s o u r c e s : d i c t i o n a r i e s . . . . . . . . 3 62 . 8 R e s o u r c e s : c o r p o r a a n d c o n c o r d a n c e r s . . . . . . . . 3 92 . 9 L e x i c a l n o t e b o o k s . . . . . 4 32 . 1 0 W o r d g r a m m a r . . . . . . . . 4 42 . l I S u m m a r y . " . . . . 4 6

Chapter 3: Revising priorities: from grammatical failure tocol locat ionalsuccess . . .47Jimmie Hill

3 . 1 L a n g u a g e a n d l e x i s . . . . . 4 73 . 2 L a n g u a g e a n d l e a r n i n g . . . . . . . . 4 83 . 3 W h a t i s c o l l o c a t i o n ? . . . . 4 83.4 , Co l loca t iona lcompetence. . . . . .493 . 5 C o l l o c a t i o n s , i d i o m s a n d p h r a s a l v e r b s . . . . . . . . 5 03 . 6 C o l l o c a t i o n s a n d s r a m m a r . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2

3.7 \\ trJ . 6 L o l

3.9 Tea3.10 Chc3 . 1 i P e d3.12 Sun

Chapter.l

4.1 Bacl^ -+.2 I ne

4.3 Etp4.4 The4.5 The4.6 \Iak4.7 Rer i4.8 Conr4.9 Cont

Chapter 5:

5.1 Intro5.2 Gene5.3 Act i l5.4 Actii5.5 Exeri5.6 Your5.1 Sumr

Chapter 6:

PART 2 -Chapter 7:

7.1 Descr7.2 Intuiri7.3 Termi7.4 From7.5 Collor7.6 Collig7.7 Other

8

Contents

3 . 1 W h y i s c o l l o c a t i o n i m p o r t a n t ? . . . . . . . . 5 33 . 8 C o l l o c a t i o n i n t e x t s . . . . 5 63.9 Teaching collocation . . .593.10 Choosing which collocations to teach . . .633 . 1 1 P e d a g o g i c a l i m p l i c a t i o n s . . . . . . 6 53 . 1 2 S u m m a r y - l e s s g r a m m a r , m o r e l e x i s . . . . . . . . . 6 7

Chapter 4: Integrating collocation into a reading & writing courseT0Jane Conzett

. . . . . . . 1 0

. . . . . . 1 0

. . . . . . 1 1

. . . . . . t 2

. . . . . . 1 4

. . . . . . 1 5

. . . . . . 1 7

. . . . . . 1 8

. . . . . . 2 0

. . . . . . 2 7

. . . . . . 2 1

e . . . . . 2 8

. . . . . . 2 8

. . . . . . 2 8

. . . . . . 3 0

. . . . . . 3 1- . . . . . 3 2. . . . . . 3 3. . . . . . 3 6. . . . . . 3 9. . . . . . 4 3

LL

. . . . . . 4 6

)4'7

. . . . . . 4 1

" . . . . . 4 8. . . . . . 4 8. . . . . . 4 9. . . . . . 5 0. . . . . . 5 2

4 .14.24.34.44.54.64.14.84.9

B a c k g r o u n d . . . . 7 0The need to build vocabulary . . .7IE x p l i c i t v o c a b u l a r y s t u d y . . . . . . 7 2T h e m i s s i n g l i n k : c o l l o c a t i o n . . . . . . . . . 7 3The need for guidance from the teacher . . . . . . .j4M a k e s t u d e n t s a w a r e o f c o l l o c a t i o n . . . . . . . . . . - 1 5R e v i e w a n d t e s t i n g . . . . . 8 3C o n c o r d a n c e s f o r t e a c h e r s a n d s t u d e n t s . . . . . . . 8 5C o n c l u s i o n . . . . . 8 6

Chapter 5: Classroom strategies, activities and exercises . . . . . . . . 88Jimmie Hill, Morgan Lewis and Michael Lewis

In t roduc ingco l loca t ion to leamers . . . . .88G e n e r a l s t r a t e g i e s . . . . . . 9 0A c t i v i t i e s - e x p l o i t i n g a t e x t . . . . . . 9 8Act iv i t ies -us ingaco l loca t iond ic t ionary . . . . . .99E x e r c i s e s . . . . . 1 0 6Y o u r o w n e x e r c i s e s . . . . 1 1 6S u m m a r y . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 6

C h a p t e r 6 : C a l l o w a y ' s C o d e . . . . . . 1 1 8A short story by O. Henry

PART 2 - BACKGROUND THEORYChapter 7: Language in the lexical approach . . . . .126

Michael Lewis

Descr ip t ions o f Eng l ish . . . . . .126I n t u i t i o n a n d e v i d e n c e . . . . . . . 1 2 6Terminology . . .129From idioms to idiomaticity . . . 130C o l l o c a t i o n . . . . I 3 2C o l l i g a t i o n . . . . 1 3 6Other multi-word expressions . . 138

5 . 15.25.3

5.55.65.7

7 . 17.21.37.47.57.67.7

Contents

7.g words . .142

7 . 9 T h e c e n t r a l r o l e o f ' o f ' . . . . . . I 4 5

7 . 1 0 G r a m m a r . . . . . 1 4 7

1 . t I L e x i s . . . . . . . . I 4 9

7 . 1 2 C o l l o c a t i o n a n d t e s t i n g . ' . . . " 1 5 0

1.13 Necessity for change . . . 151

7 . 1 4 S u m m a r y . . ' . . 1 5 3

Chapter 8: Learning in the lexical approach . . . . . . i55

Michael Lewisg .1 In t roduc t ion . . .155

8 . 2 T w o k i n d s o f k n o w l e d g e . . . . . . 1 5 6

8 . 3 A c q u i s i t i o n a n d n o t i c i n g . . . . . 1 5 8

8 . 4 N o t i c i n g . . . . . . 1 6 1

8 . 5 T h e i m p o r l a n c e o f e x a m p l e s . . . . - - - - - 1 6 3

8 . 6 A c q u i s i t i o n i s n o n - l i n e a r . . . . ' . 1 6 8

8.7 Which is fundamental - lexis or structure? ' . . .I7I

8 .8 The lex ica lcha l lengetomethodo logy ' . . . . ' ' .173

8.9 What do we mean by '1eve1'? . .I14

8.10 Teaching paradigms . . .177

8.11 The Lexical Approach and the Natural Approach . . . . . 181

8 . 1 2 T o w a r d s a l e a m i n g t h e o r y . ' . . . 1 8 2

8 . 1 3 S u m m a r y . ' . ' . 1 8 4

Chapter 9: Materials and resources for teaching collocation. . . . . 186

Michael Lewis

9 . 1 C h o o s i n g t e x t s . . . . . . . 1 8 6

9 . 2 G e n r e . . 1 8 8

9 . 3 S u b j e c t - s p e c i f i c l a n g u a g e . . . . . . . . . . . i 8 9

9 . 4 L a n g u a g e c o r p o r a . . . . . 1 9 1

9 . 5 C o n c o r d a n c e s . . . . . . . . 1 9 8

9.6 Referencemater ials. . ' .2O0

9.7 Summary . . - . ' 203

Chapter L0: Collocation and testing . .205

Peter Hargreaves

10.1 Introduct ion . . .205

I0.2 How do we define different levels? . . . .206

10.3 Tes t ingvocabu laryknowledge . . . . . . .208

10.4 Grammatical patterns and collocations in testing . . . . .215

10.5 Sources - native-speaker corpora and dictionaries. . . - '217

10.6 Sources - the learner corpus (CLC) . . . ZI8

10.7 Approaches to testing collocation - - - - -220

1 0 . 8 S u m m a r y . . - . ' . 2 2 I

Chapter 11

11.1 Lear11.1 \ \ h r11 .3 Thel l .+ Semi11.5 Co lU11.5 Con lI1,7 Surru

Bibliograpl

. . . . . . r 4 2

. . . . , . 1 4 5

. . . . . . t 4 7

. . . . . . t 4 9

. . . . . . 1 5 0

. . . . . . 1 5 1

. . . . . . 1 5 3

. . . . . . 1 5 5

. . . . . . 1 5 5

. . . . . . 1 5 6

. . . . . . 1 5 8

. . . . . . 1 6 1

. . . . . . 1 6 3

. . . . . . 1 6 8

. . . . . . f l r

. . . . . . r 1 3

. . . . . . 1 7 4

. . . . . . r 7 7

. . . . . . 1 8 1

. . . . . . 1 8 2

. . . . . . 1 8 4

) n . . . . . 1 8 6

Contents

Chapter LL: A world beyond collocation: new perspectives onYocabularyteaching . . . .224Michael Hoey

1 1.1 Leaming new words . . . 224llz Why word lists are dangerous . .22711.3 The impor tance o f con tex t . . . . . . . . . .2301 1 . 4 S e m a n t i c p r o s o d y . . . . . 2 3 21 1 . 5 C o l l i g a t i o n . . . . 2 3 3l l . 6 C o n c o r d a n c i n g . . . . . . . 2 3 8I L l S u m m a r y . . . . . 2 4 2

Bibliography . .244

. . . . . . 1 8 6

. . . . . . 1 8 8

. . . . . . 1 8 9, . . . . . 1 9 1. . . . . . 1 9 8. . . . . . 2 0 0. . . . . . 2 0 3

. . . . . . . 2 0 5

. . . . . . 2 0 5

. . . . . . 2 0 6

. . . . . . 2 0 8

. . . . . . 2 1 5

. . . . . . 2 t 7

. . . . . . 2 t 8

. . . . . . 2 2 0

. . . . . . z 2 r

Introduction

IntroductionAs David Wilkins observed many years ago, 'Without grammar little can beconveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.' The single mostimportant task facing language learners is acquiring a sufficiently largevocabulary. We now recognise that much of our 'vocabulary' consists ofprefabricated chunks of different kinds. The single most imporlant kind ofchunk is collocation. Self-evidently, then, teaching collocation should be a toppriority in every language course.

The centrality of lexis

Increasingly, language teachers have turned to the question of how languageis stored in the brain. If native speakers store large amounts of language inchunks, what strategies should language teachers adopt if they are to helplearners build mental lexicons which are similarly phrasal?

From a teaching point of view, arguments about exactly what types of multi-word item make up the mental lexicon are unfruitful. It is clear that thelearners'task in acquiring a sufficiently large mental lexicon is considerablygreater than we previously thought. Although grammar remains an importantpart of language acquisition, the lexical memory load, even for anintermediate leamer, is enormous. We now recognise that the principaldifference between intermediate and advanced leamers is not complexgrammar, but the greatly expanded mental lexicon available to advancedlearners. Failure by some teachers to recognise this simple fact can condemntheir learners to a lifetime on the intermediate plateau.

A modified role for grammar

The centrality of lexis means that the teaching of traditional grammarsffuctures should play a less important role than in the past. Recognising thatevery word has its own grammar, however, means that any approach based onthe central role of lexis is in many ways more grammatical than anytraditional grammar syllabus.

Three themes

Three themes re-occur regularly in this book:. The mental lexicon is larger than we previously thought.. The prefabricated chunks stored in our mental lexicons ready for use are

often larger than previously recognised.. Really 'knowing a word'involves knowing its grammar - the patterns in

which it is regularly used.

The contributors all argue that expanding learners'phrasal lexicons andknowledge of word grammar are the two most important elements of anylanguage course. There is a serious challenge for teachers if our new insights

rnto ihe s ize,or-eru'he in-l' r 'ocabuian '

Er en thing irteachers en,i.

Developing I

Tlrc Le:;!tt;i -language iru;\\ 'as. as 1is l1lin_euistics. Tarise not ttonare alreadr Iradical . inro lchan_ses. ln ,

Increasing ur

Ser eral conr:iThe basic rdrrr ar.s. B ul a gt

da-r'r. is quit;most liequen-j:lu'ho have a clto heip leamelteachers der er

From pracfic

Books of rh isorder. Ihe auras a result rfPart I descnttlan_eua_ue and IPart 1. and i', !to Chapters

-

teaching. or ttrilf irst. belore rei

The contrihrLlt':learirers

' nrenli

ranse oi l i t i-ct

l,I iclrce! Le.,rr:

iittle can besrngle most:iently large

consists oftant kind ofould be a top

orv languagelanguage inare to help

pes of multi-lear that theconsiderablyan important.'ven for anthe principalnot complexto advanced

can condemn

nal grammar:ognising thatrach based oncal than any

for use are

: pattems in

iexicons andlments of anyr new insights

Introduction

into the size, importance and nature of the mental lexicon are not simply tooverwhelm students. Mike Mccarthy once eloquently described the'vocabulary'part of language learning as mastering 'the chaos of the lexicon'.Everything in this book is designed to help bring order to that chaos for bothteachers and, more importantly, their learners.

Developing the Lexical Approach

The Lexical Approach (1993) was a combination of applied linguistics andlanguage teaching methodology. Implementing the Lexical Approach (199j)was, as its title suggests, more practical; methodology, rather than appliedlinguistics. The first half of this book is even more practical. The chaptersarise not from what teachers could do in their classrooms, but from what theyare already doing. Some of the suggestions are modest; others are moreradical, involving a reversal of traditional priorities. Introducing modestchanges, in a climate of action research, is surely the best way forward.

Increasing understanding

Several contributors stress their own increasing understanding of collocation.The basic idea is extremely simple - some words co-occur in interestingways. But a great deal lies behind that formulation. Frequent collocation (niceday), is quite different from strong collocation (wage war); bfi neither themost frequent nor the strongest are the most useful for learners. only teacherswho have a clear understanding of different kinds of collocation will be ableto help learners in the best possible way. part 2 of this book is designed to helpteachers develop this clearer understanding.

From practice to theory

Books of this kind tend to go from theory to practice; this book reverses thatorder. The authors in Part 1 describe how what they do in class has changedas a result of their developing awareness of the lexical nature of language.Pafi 2 describes in more detail the present state of our understanding oflanguage and acquisition. Teachers who have tried some of the suggestions inPart l, and want to take their understanding furlher, should turn particularlyto chapters 7 and 8. Teachers with a lot of experience of lexically-basedteaching, or those on in-service courses may prefer to read these two chaptersfirst, before returning to the more detailed practical suggestions of part 1.The contributors to this book have one principal objective - to developlearners'mental lexicons, and with that, to give those leamers a far widerrange of life-choices. It is a worthwhile objective.

Michael Lewis, Hove, January 2000

10 There is nothing as practical as a good theorl

Chapter I

There is nothing as practical as a good theory

Morgan Lewis

Morgan Lewis describes how his initial teacher training led him to value

grammar and explaining, and to believe both in the importance of a good lesson

plan and the close relationship between what he taught and what his students

learned. Experience led him to question these ideas and, as a result of more

theoretical study of the nature of both language and learning' to change his

classroom priorities. A better understanding of language means he gives much

more attention to collocation in all his classesl a better understanding of

language acquisition means consciously bringing more language into every class,

while accepting that the teacher cannot be sure exactly what learners will do

with the language which is presented to them. He believes many teachers with a

few years experience behind them will recognise the story he tells'

1.1 Introduction

Seeing the title of this chapter, you might have assumed that the chapter was

written by an applied linguist who will lemove you from the classroom into

the far off land of academia. In fact, I am a regular classroom teacher with

about ten years' experience of teaching mostly multi-lingual classes in the

UK.

Perhaps like you, after afew years in the classroom, I began to question some

of the received wisdom of my initial training. The Present-Practise-Produce

paradigm I started with seemed such a neat, tidy and sensible way to go about

teaching. I increasingly found, however, that leaming did not follow the same

tidy model. I seemed to have less control over what students were learning

than my initial training had led me to expect. I began asking myself questions

- some more explicitly than others - such as:

. Why is it that what my students leam doesn't more closely resemble what

I teach?. Should I spend so much time trying to achieve accurate glammar from my

students?. Should my lesson plan rule the proceedings?. What is the most efficient way of improving students' performance, given

they don't have a lot of time to leam the language?. What can you really do for those 'intermediate plateau' students who need

a breakthrough and a feeling of progression?. What can you do for advanced students after they have met the third

conditional? And what is 'advanced' English anyway?

J '

- . -

- - ' l

' J

. . , t - ,

-

. . : - . - . , ,

reory

him to valueI a good lessonlt his studentsresult of moreto change hishe gives muchIerstanding ofnto every class,rarners will do.eachers with a

re chapter was:lassroom inton teacher withciasses in the

questlon somerctise-Produce/ay to go aboutr11ow the sameu'ere leaming

l,self questions

'esemble what

nmar from my

mance, given

ents who need

the third

TlsrWhat percentage of the time in your training was spent looking atteaching and what percentage was devoted to learning?After a lesson now, do you tend to think mostly about what you did,or about the leamers?

There is nothing as practical as a good theory 11

I began an extended period of extra study free from the constraints of day-to-day lesson planning and thinking about my particular students. This allowedme to stop being preoccupied with my teaching for a while and as a result, Ifound myself drawn more and more to considering the nature of languageitself and the nature of language learning - what the process in which I wasengaged and for which I was trained was really all about. Surprisingly, myinitial training had not included study of this at all. It was concernedexclusively with how the teacher should teach; learners and leaming werehardly discussed at al-.

I very soon came to two broad conclusions. Firstly, there was no guaranteethai leamers learn what teachers teach. Secondly, the grammar/vocabulary'3ichotomy was spurious, and the central role of grammar, at least as defined,',, ithin my training, probably needed to be re-evaluated.

\faking slight methodological changes in the light of these conclusions wouldnot have satisfied me. I needed to get below the surface, explore the theory,'*, hich lies behind classroom procedures, and decide what the realimplications for the classroom could be. Let me explain in more detail how Irame to these conclusions and show how they relate to the importance ofteaching collocation in the classroom.

1.2 Learners don't learn what teachers teach

{lthough it is hard for many teachers to accept, it simply is not true that oursrudents necessarily learn what we teach them. Teaching is, on the whole,organised, linear and systematic, but it is a mistake to think that leaming is thesame. Leaming is complex and non-linear, and although the result may be as] stem, its acquisition is far from systematic. We cannot control what studentsieam. in what order they will learn and how fast they will learn. As DianaLarsen-Freeman writes in a disconcerting footnote to an article in the journal-\pplied Linguistics: 'I am constantly reminding students, audiences andrnr self that teaching does not cause leaming.'

This has had an important implication for the way I teach: I no longer expectsrudents to master an item or items of language before exposing them to more.Erpecting mastery in the immediate shorl term is an unrealistic expectation.The fact is, they may or may not acquire what you teach them. If they do, theymav acquire it immediately, later or only partially.

means indi\have alreadllearner re-otdo not realhsimple and tthese differeisolation frcpafiicular telit used or ntenses.

The same B'negative' calternatives -

can be undetfine until thassess whatteacher ma1-the dffircnctraining - lrdifference breare at bestdictionary d<injury, and tcollocationaor rather mor

TnsxLook at

l t 'Of

hou,und,

Can yorCan 1,orwant toconcordWhich ror the li

From the cXievolving thelexis, it follormet will wic

12 There is nothing as practical as a good theory

collocate _ heavy - and move on. But an ideal opportunity to activate

languageontheedgeofthestudent'slexiconhasbeenmissed.Itrequiresverylittle extra time or explaining to add: occasional' chain and non as more

collocates of smoker' Given that you cannot know whether students will

remember and use heavy smoker, you might as well give them three more'

They might remember none' one' two of them or all of them' Adding

collocation to your teaching by consciously introducing one. or two new

words and re-activating other half-known words in this way increases the

chance of acquisition titi"g place, though you cannotbe at all sure what the

acquisi t ionencouraged(bu"tnot.caused')bythispart icularbi tof teaching

Whathasthistodowithteachingcol locat ion?ImagineastudentproducesHe's a strong smoker'You could simply supply the student with the t'"19*i

wi l lbe.

oneofthequest ionslposedformyselfaf terteachingforanumberofyearswastheextenttowhichmylessonplanshoulddominateproceedings.Thesedays, I am less concemed about achieving the language aims in my plan and

more concerned about spotting and responding to opportunities like the

heavy/occasional/chain/nin- smoke' scenario - whether prompted by a

student error or finding a collocation in a text to which I can add a handful of

other useful collocatesl This mindset is perfectly captured by Peter wilberg's

discussion of responsibility in One to One' and quoted by Michael Lewis at

thebeginningofTheLexicatApproach:..Theteacher'smainresponsibilityisresponse-abilitY."

TlsrHow much control do you think you have over what your students

learn?Do you still try to follow your lesson plan fairly rigidly?

How willing are you to forget your plan and respond spontaneously

with unprePared inPut?

L.3 Knowing a word is comPlicated

Relatedtothepointthatlearnersdon'tnecessarilylearnwhatweteachisthefact that teaching tends to be linear and step-by-step in nature, whereas

learning is holistic, cyclical and evolves over time' This is because new input

I

TlsrShould learners more or less master one new item or area before

being exposed to more, or are you happy introducing new points

even if learners may, ln the short term, find this more confusing?

lnt producesthe standard

to activaterequfes vely,70n as more;tudents willL three more.rem. Addingor two new

increases the;ure what thet of teaching

nber of years:dings. Thesemy plan and

ities like theimpted by ai a handful of:ter Wilberg'shael Lewis at;ponsibility is

,r'e teach is therrure, whereasruse new input

There is nothing as practical as a good theoryt 13

means individual learners constantly need to make adjustments to what theyhave already internalised. Learning is not simply additive; it involves thelearner re-organising his or her previous interlanguage. For example, learnersdo not really understand the present perfect until they understand the presentsimple and the past simple too, and the relationships that the meanings of allthese different verb forms have with each other. Tenses are not understood inisolation from each other and it follows that learners' understanding of aparticular tense develops as they encounter different uses ofthat tense and seeit used or not used in preference to, and in (implied) contrast with, othertenses.

The same principle of meeting new uses, and becoming more aware of'negative' choices - choosing one item implies rejecting several similaralternati.ves - applies to items of vocabulary. Take the word injury. This wordcan be understood by a student from its dictionary definition and all will befine until the student comes across the word wownd. Sfte) then has to re-assess what injury means in the light of the new discovery, a discovery theteacher may wish the learner had never made when the leamer asks: What'sthe dffirence befween 'wound'and 'injury' 2 One's instinct - and my initialtraining - leads you to answer such a question by trying to define thedifference between pairs of this kind, but this only leads to problems and whatare at best half-truths. The difference between the two does not lie indictionary definitions but rather that we say, for example, stab woundnot stabinjury, and internal injwries not internal wounds. In other words, it is thecollocational frelds of the two words which reveal the difference of meaning,or rather more precisely, the difference between the ways the words are used.

TlsrLook at these pairs of words:

work / job

house / bwildingwnderstand / realise

Can you define the difference between each pair?Can you list a few collocates of each word in each pair? (You maywant to look them up in a collocation dictionary or use a computerconcordance program.)Which do you think would help your learners more - the definitionsor the lists of collocations?

From the classroom point of view, if learners are slowly but continuallyevolving their understanding of the target language, whether grammar orlexis, it follows that giving students collocations of words newly or previouslymet will widen their understanding of what those words mean and, more

l4 There is nothing as practical as a good theorl

imporlantly, how they are used. Taking a few minutes to supply thesecollocations in a lesson shortcuts the process of building up meaning andtherefore acquiring. If you do not actively introduce additional collocations,it may be weeks, months or years before students meet those collocations andtherefore the process of evolving and deepening understanding is delayed.Actively introducing collocations recycles half-known words and, while thisdoes not directly cause leaming, it accelerates it.

Some teachers might say at this point that there is not enough time to explorethe collocations of words in this way - there are too many other importantthings to do, particularly explaining things. A great deal of time is spent inmany classrooms explaining what things mean. For the reasons above, Isuggest that ar least some of that time is better spent showing students whatwords do - how they are actually used and how they collocate - rather thanexplaining what they mean. Explaining and exploring is surely better thaneither alone.

TlsrAre you happy with the idea of explaining less and giving anddiscussing more examples instead?

1.4 The intermediate plateau

Referring to my earlier question: what can you reaily do for those'intermediate plateau' students who need a breakthrough? A big part of theanswer lies in the strategy just discussed. The reason so many students are notmaking any perceived progress is simply because they have not been trainedto notice which words go with which. They may know quite a lot of individualwords which they struggle to use, along with their grammatical knowledge,but they lack the ability to use those words in a range of collocations whichpack more meaning into what they say or write. The answer lies in teacherscontinually bringing useful collocations to students' attention and helpingthem to remember them, rather than trying to improve their grammar orgiving them a lot more new words, which can so easily mean obscure, rarelyused words. Most intermediate students would improve dramatically if theyspent less time trying to perfect their grammar and leam new, rare words, andinstead simply leamed to use the words they already know in the huge numberof collocations of which these words are parts.

A shift in approach of this kind will almost certainly need to come initiallyfrom the teacher as (s)he trains students to re-direct their priorities in wayswhich are most likely to produce both perceived and genuine progress.

1,5 The

-\r-1, t l l i .--r

l - _ a - i _

, : a "

_ _ L ) - 1 . r

., -:..i ,-,- la:r

l l3i l,r l l- i : i I

l f : l n l n - l r -

Jo. Granrr-'r^ | ig ',:, - :1

iansuag i i l

storcd ir [r

These churthrngs. thl;thin_ss - t,rjusi 'u 'orr is

force or aresrtuation scdattgerort-rt n n r n e , - h :

dcmgerous tNotice. it i-sThe item 'isanctionedwhat it is

-

apan:

Langua-e"- iiexpress sonoccur. Tanrplose their crthree u,ords,ltems can e\

TrsnWhat : ,a l t o o i i '

widel., tdisperstAre the

To me, therdentist, a gcrhaven't spol'

lL

- : I L ' , t h e s e-:=;:r i I1q and

. _ __ : rJ3 l10ns .

. r . - i : lCnS and

i s .1e1a\ed.j ,,r hrle this

. r r - r ' n l n r a

:r L]l pofianl

r :: Spent 1n

:ls rbo\-e. I

Lldants u,hat- I*lher ihan

!3l-ter than

, ior rlrcse- r ' r r t n f f h e

.irnts are notb;en trained:,i individualI kno.,i'1edge,riiions r.vhichls ir teachersand helpingErammar or

bscure, rarelytically if theyfe \\,ords, andhu-ee number

:ome initiallynties ln waysro_qress.

There is nothing as practical as a good theory 15

1.5 The gramrnar-vocabulary dichotomy is invalid

So much of language teaching over the years has been based on thedichotomy of grammar and vocabulary: master the grammar sysfem, Iearnlots of words and then you will be able to talk about whatever you want. Thisview of language has meant that students have learned to name a lot of things- an extensive vocabulary, predominantly nouns - and then struggled to usegrammar to talk about those things. No wonder students make so manygrammar mistakes! They are using grammar to do what it was never meant todo. Grammar enables us to construct language when we are unable to findwhat we want ready-made in our mental lexicons. But so much of thelanguage of the effective language user is already in prefabricated chunks,stored in their mental lexicons just waiting to be recalled for use.

These chunks of lexis, which include collocations, do more than just namethings, they also have a pragmatic element. They enable you to talk aboutthings - to 'do'things. This raises the status of collocation to much more thanjust 'words which go together'. Many collocations have immediate pragmaticforce or are situationally evocative. For example, it is hard to think in whichsituation someone might say: This is a corner. But if I say to yotr'. This is ctdangerows cot'rler, it immediately suggests two people in a car as theyapproach a corner where lots of accidents have happened. The collocationdangerows cotrler is immediately evocative of a situation or a speech event.Notice, it is not simply that an adjective has been added to the word corner.The item dangerows corner exists as a prefabricated chunk with its ownsanctioned meaning. Taking it apart would do damage to what it does, evenwhat it is. Therefore, what collocation has put together, let no teacher pullapart!

Language is full of such examples - two (or more) word collocations whichexpress something specific in precisely the form in which they typicallyoccur. Tampering with items of this kind in any way means they completelylose their communicative power. Although such items may be only two orthree words, a great deal of meaning may be packed into them, so one of theseitems can evoke a complex situation very precisely.

TasxWhat event, situation or topic does each of these collocationssuggest:widely available routine check-updisperse the crowd catch wp with the newsAre they typical of spoken English, newspapers,

boost employment

novels or what?

To me, they suggest:dentist, a governmenthaven't spoken for a

talking about a new product, a visit to the doctor oraim, police action after an incident, and friends who

while. In the classroom. items such as these must be

t6 There is nothing as practical as a good theory

brought to students' attention and the bigger context they suggest must beshown. Once this has been done, it is safe to translate the item into theleamers' mother tongue. Not word-for-word but whole phrase to wholephrase, bearing in mind that the structure of the expression may be verydifferent in one language from the equivalent expression in the other.

There are two important points here. Firstly, if you do not teach collocations,you are ignoring alarge set of items which express often complex ideas verysimply and yet precisely. Secondly, the fewer collocations students are able touse, the more they have to use longer expressions with much moregrammaticalisation to communicate something which a native speaker wouldexpress with a precise lexical phrase and correspondingly little grammar.Notice too, that if native speakers usually express an idea lexically with acollocation, the non-native speaker, not knowing the lexical item, has to usegrammar to express the idea in a way which they have not heard in thatcontext - they have no model to guide them. They are in uncharted territory,which further increases the chance of grammatical error. If the teacher is notcareful, this can lead to more grammar explanations and practice when whatis really needed is work to expand the learners'mental lexicons.

An example may make this clearer. The student who doesn't know theexpression adequate supplies to meet the demand is forced to constructsomething llke: We clon't have things enough so that evety person who willhave one can have one. The message has, perhaps, been successfullycommunicated in this case but most teachers would probably feel obliged tostep in and help. Anyone who has the collocations adeqwate supplies, meet thedemand, as part of their mental lexicon is able to recall them as completephrases. This means the more collocations learners have at their disposal, theless they need to grammaticalise. This in turn means more brainspace isavailable to generate and process content. Here are more examples of naturalcollocations and students' attempts to construct the same ideas:

Collocation Students' attemptset yowrself a realistic objective You must know what you

want to do but it must not betoo much for it to be possiblefor you to do.

cause insurmountable dfficwlties make problems which youthink have no answers

major tuming point a very important momentwhen things changedcompletely

revised edition a new book which is verysimilar to the old one butimproved and up-to-date

:)l*

{J

T = E

I t i s a ma jo terTors are aoi these err,in n l : , -p *r '1

introduce tilemphasr: r-ol

1.6 Adrr

I rel-er b:L;k-r,.rdetii,. u;i:-\dr an'-ec srt 'our id.-asIongue. \ lLr ldo not h:lp,inanr, adl arlg ;ms as: I t r t

,, ire l- it i i lci i

; t.'fl1nlUn1iilt

1rr,e these- hpr;ked noul.-,1. Jrt gt-'i.llo

:dlerbisl nh. i ;:a 1- iJ;r;I r, I

:.tiarnpies .h:oh:sicn .rc rnullt-ri orc p

I no iLrng-r ',r

,trf,mmaiiJtl' , ' . hen usrn:rihich \\ e cal

.\n importannot ne$' or dnot include Ivery fact meworth ther ateacher evenslips by urLnrleamers.

Asking studea helpful qunotice the cogoes more lil

nno- -..:l C)

1 i ; i F, - a t

h- - - = f ' )r l

1 " r.-\ f;| : i l J a \

b*a J ';:

fiJ

; ! r "* . . i i :

). i.ri;. C)ts' \ t ) a '

- - " . : J #

i',.it,:,,'. lita

, " ]r,struct, . , , i i : v i l l

*; . - s:lulhr

. b i rsed toa: t t :€et l l le. ' r n r n l r t o

r - r l r } j l l L e

l . ! , r , i31 . the

r rn : , -e iq

r -r- natUral

,,-,t be

i.itr le

i:ru

I I

There is nothing as practical as a good theory t7

It is a major change of mindset for teachers to realise that many grammaticaleffors are caused by lexical deficiencies, and that the best response to manyof these errors at intermediate and advanced levels is to do more lexical workin place of grammatical correction. It may, of course, be necessary tointroduce this idea to learners and persuade them of the value of putting moreemphasis on collocation and other lexical work.

1.6 Advanced English

I refer back to another of my earlier questions: what can you do for advancedstudents after the third conditional? And what is 'advanced' English anyway?Advanced students become fiustrated when they are unable to talk or writeabout ideas which they can comfortably talk or write about in their mothertongue. More complicated or this-will-challenge-them grammatical structuresdo not help them to do this. unfortunately, this has been the standard diet ofmany advanced materials, encouraging learners to produce such convolutedgems as: were I richer I would definitely buy one or Had I not arrived in time,the kitchen wowld have caught fire. The language which helps leamers tocommunicate more complicated ideas is not convoluted grammar structureslike these, but different kinds of multi-word phrases, particularly densely-packed noun phrases (firm but relaxed parental discipline, modern cities inthe developed world, the continuing decline of educational standarcls) andadverbial phrases (in marked controst, referring back to my earlier point,later that year, in the late tutentieth centwry). As the first two adverbialexamples show, among the most important phrases are those which createcohesion across written text. The imporlant thing to note is that all thesemulti-word phrases are collocations of different kinds.

I no longer woffy about how to challenge my advanced crasses with obscuregrammatical constructions or unusual words. I simply keep my eyes openwhen using a text for collocations which I can bring to their attention andwhich we can then explore together.

An important point to make is that very often the words in the collocations arenot new or difficult at all. For example, the item, a major turning point doesnot include any individually difficult words for an advanced student but thisvery fact means that both teacher and student can too easily assume it is notworth their attention. trn fact, it is often true to say that neither learners nor theteacher even recognise it as a new item, so an extremely useful collocationslips by unnoticed and is therefore unavailable for storage and re-use by theleamers.

Asking students: Are there any words you don't understand? is, therefore, nota helpful question. They may indeed understand all the words but fail tonotice the combinations those words are in. My questioning of students nowsoes more like this:

nt l

F4s -i C)1lr I ;-i a1!3

L -/ - / l \' F ' - a * r \

i l " r - ] f :I s r \

h h * J . F j

{(!r , \ t s "

-- '-, ?-

q-

' !

18 There is nothing as practical as a good theory

T Is there anything in the first paragraph you think you

should write in your notebooks? (silence while students

scan the paragraPh) Nothing?SS No.T Are you sure? I don't believe you. (more silence and

looking) What about the expression with risk? In all my

time as a teacher I've never heard a student say or write

run the risk of. Perhaps my students have never noticed it'

Do you use this expression? (general shaking of heads)

Perhaps you have never noticed it either. OK, write it in

your notebooks, then.

Being more proactive in pointing out useful language and getting leamers to

record it is an essential role of the teacher. This goes against thinking which

encourages a student-centred, exploration approach to language. While I

agree that learners should take responsibility for their own learning, they

should not be taking responsibility for choosing which language items are

more linguistically useful. Interestingly, after a period of teacher-dominated

instruction (I prefer to call it learner training) of the kind exemplified above,

learners begin to notice more of this kind of language for themselves, and start

asking me about items in text, thus becoming more autonomous in their

approach. And the questions they ask are better. Better than me asking Are

there any words you don't know?, better than them asking only What does this

word mean? Students begin asking Is this a common expression? What does

this expression mean? Is this a collocatiorz? These questions represent a real

improvement as they mean learners are now asking about language which

they hadn't even noticed before.

I have found that higher level students sense very quickly that they are gaining

useful ground when collocations are drawn to their attention in this way.

Because they are being equipped to say or write more complicated ideas, a

new sense of satisfaction, and therefore motivation, develops. [Deborah Petty

makes the same point about her leamers. See p 95. Edl

1.7 Leave 'used'language alone'IJsed',language is what David Brazllhas evocatively called language which

has already been used naturally in speech or writing. Although we call this

language 'used', that is not to suggest that it has been in any way damaged or

soiled in the process. Perhaps because of the preoccupation with grammar

over the years, and the determination to find generative systems, used

language, particularly speech, has often been thought to need a good clean up

before it can form 'good'input. Once cleaned up, it has usually been broken

dou,n irito individual words. Collocation has been ignored or at least under-,, alued because of this obsession with breaking down used language.

Hort i';noteLrocDo r .o:Do r ot-tsimilarD o r o u

1 translarl

ln order ibr Ienough to sih c l n l e a - . "

conr.iction ttt*hich rle fitkeep the chucleanin-e up-not adding. r\ o f i n o n r r l l r

recording ir"at best. on ncentral roh.

Belou- are ,rlrecorded sonn ^ t ) n t i o l l \ - r i

ieamers. thetto be used alcan actuall i- lprocessrns tl lthe lan_euagerecorded: '.h;

\\-hat actualh\\ ere taken:

Take the hirFoi lou ' i l s iTum a blin,jTo rule ourr iStand on ru,On the othetIt's not rr-orl

I searched nr

Of these eighI also suggesieYocatl\ e an,:also be transl

!l-11'

-ri-

- J I L .

- :I t i l

.:ii learners to

n:niring which

i:ge. While I

r:arnrng, they

Ll.]qe ltems are

.her-dominated

:rpiilled above,;:1r es. and start

;rn-ious in their

ne asking Are',J' hat does this

: ' i : | \ \ /hat does

iepresent a real

trn-euage which

:he\ are gaining

':'n in this way.

rhcated ideas, a

!Deborah Petty

language whichush we call thisrl,'a)-damaged orn u'ith grammar: s1'stems, usedL a good clean upa1ly been brokenrr at least under-an_suage.

There is nothing as practical as a good theory t9

TlsrHow do you encourage learners to record language in theirnotebooks?Do you ask them to record examples exactly as they find them?Do you 'clean the examples up' so that what learners record issimilar to a dictionary entry?Do you encourage them to write (or prevent them from writing)translations?

In order for collocation to assume its rightful place in the classroom, it is notenough to simply have an understanding of what it is and a sense that it canhelp learners increase their communicative power. There needs to be aconviction that we should leave as much language as possible in the form inwhich we frnd it. Avoid breaking it up; keep something of the context andkeep the chunks which are recorded as large as possible. Avoid grammaticalcleaning up, and remember attempting to generalise may result in you losing,not adding, relevant information about how the language is actually used.

Noting multi-word vocabulary in exactly the form it is found in text,recording it, and trying to remember it in that form for re-use later has been,at best, on the periphery of language teaching, when in fact it deserves acentral role. fMichael Hoey cliscusses this point at some length, p 230. Ed]

Below are some examples of language which my learners recorded. Theyrecorded some of them in the form in which they found them, so these arepotentially re-usable if remembered. Others, despite my efforts to guide thelearners, they recorded in a 'cleaned up' version, which means that if they areto be used again, the learners will have to manipulate the items before theycan actually use them. It goes without saying that manipulation requires moreprocessing time, and gives more opportunity for grammatical error, or usingthe language in an unnatural way. The left hand column is what the learnersrecorded; the right hand column is what I wish they had recorded, which iswhat actually occurred in the texts and dialogues from which the exampleswere taken:

Take the hint OK. I can take a hint.Follow in someone's footsteps He's following in his father's footsteps.Turn a blind eye I decided to tum a blind eye.To rule out the possibility of We can't nile owt the possibility of +...ingStand on yow own two feetOn the other handIt's not worth it.

It's time you stood on your own two feet.On the other handIt's not worth it.

I searched high and low for it. I searched high and low for it.

Of these eight items, only the last three are recorded in the most useful way.I also suggest that because they have more context, they are more situationallyevocative and they are, therefore, more likely to be remembered. They canalso be translated more safely.

20 There is nothing as practical as a good theora

The argument has been advanced that leamers can generalise from thetraditional to take one's time, or to give somebody a hand but may not be ableto generalise from the actually used examples: Take yowr time, Can I give yowa hand? Such an argument is surely wholly illogical; the cleaned up infinitiveversions are themselves neither more nor less than generalisations of the usedexamples. Used examples provide a perfectly adequate basis for othergeneralisations and have the added advantages of being both more memorableand more immediately usable.

Related to this idea of respecting used language is the fact that there are a lotof words in the lexicon that have very little precise meaning until they areactually used. For example, the meaning of get is impossible to pin down untilit is used and has co-text. The important point is that it is most commonlyused in relatively fixed expressions with collocations - they're gettingmarried, we got wet, we got thrown owt, I've got a bad cold and so on.Ignoring these expressions in the forms in which they occur, or taking thernapart in order to establish the meaning of get is ridiculous, as the leamers willonly have to put them together again in order to use the original expressions.Once you have realised that the mental lexicon contains many multi-wordchunks, as well as individual words, the teaching of collocations is inevitableif you wish to remain true to the subject matter you are teaching.

So, having laid a theoretical basis for collocation having a central role to playin the classroom, let us consider some practical ways this can be done.

1.8 Some classroom activities

1. Don't correct - collect

Knowing a noun allows you to name a concept, but this is a long way frombeing able to talk about the concept. So, a leamer who makes a collocationmistake when trying to talk about something provides the ideal opportunity toexpand and organise the leamer's lexicon in a very efficient way, similar tothe strong smoker example discussed earlier. Don't just correct the mistake,give some extra collocations as well - three or four for the price of one. Thetranscript below shows how this works.

ST

S2T

S2

I have to make an exam in the summer.(T indicates mistake by facial expression)I have to make an exam.(Writes 'exam'on the board)What verb do we usually use with 'exam'?

Take.Yes, that's ight. (Writes 'take'on board)What other verbs do we use with 'exam'?

Pass.

T \ e . r

S Fai;T \-es

r I { - r i

\Ixd\\tjr

_\o.-,r I i - rT + -a l \ {

pasiSl Ea-*iT \bs,

\\h\\hi\o.l

For advancersimilar to thi

takere-Itpassfailscral

With this lanthe collocatir

TasxYou malthese inI ant toctIf you lttopetI v L'tEvertboWhich rto elicit

You can extemain wordexpressions Ismoker examsmoking. AntSuddenly 1'oryou elicit od

There is nothing as practical as a good theory

T Yes. And the opposite?S Fail.T Yes.

(Writes 'pass'and 'fail'on the board)And if you fail an exam sometimes you can do it again.What's the verb for that? (Waits for response)No? OK, re-take. You can re-take an exam.(Writes 're-take' on the board)If you pass an exam with no problems, whal can you say? Ipassed. . .

52 Easily.T Yes, or we often say 'comfortably'. I passed comfortably.

What about if you get 5l%o and the pass mark is 50Vo?What can you say? I . . . (Waits for response)No? I just passed. You can also just fall. (Writes on the board)

For advanced leamers you may also give them scrape through. I use formatssimilar to this to organise the responses:

2l

Lse from theL,r'not.be able'an I give youlup ffinitivers of the used;is for otherie memorable

there are a lotuntil they arerin downuntilrst commonlywt're gettingfd and so on.rr taking therne leamers willI expressions.lr-multi-wordrs is inevitableI g

ral role to piayrc done.

long way froms a collocationopportunity to

lvay, similar toct the mistake,ice of one. The

takere-takepassfailscrape through

an exam

With this language, students can not only name the concept exam, they havethe collocations they need to talk about exams with confidence.

TlsrYou may like to think how you would respond if a learner said one ofthese in your class:I am too fat so I have to make a strong diet.If you have a problem with yourself it is good to talk abowt it in anopen way to a near friend.Everybody must agree with the law if we want a good society.Which nouns are you going to explore? What questions will you askto elicit or teach extra collocations?

You can extend this activity further by thinking not only of collocates of themain word in question, but also of other common collocations andexpressions likely to be said or written around the same topic. In the heavysmoker example it is only a very short step to elicit or give the item give upsmoking. And from there you could add: I wish I could give up smoking.Suddenly you find yourself with two minutes practice of I wish I could . . . asyou elicit other vices from your students. All this from responding to a

22 There is nothing os practical as a gond theory

collocation effol and thinking aloud and so stimulating the class to ask: What

else do we say when talking about smokers and smoking?

2. Make learners be more precise

It is obviously demotivating if every time students communicate effectively,

the teacher nitpicks and asks for perfection. However, at the right time and in

the right way, improving students'performance is an imporlant part of the

teacher's job, and what students need. So, if a student produces: I was vetl'

disappointed, point out the options: bitterly/deeply disappointed. Ot if a

student writes: There are good possibilities for improving yowr job, you may

want to write excellent promotion prospects in the margin. In other words, it's

not just mistakes that are opportunities for teaching but also the kind of

circumlocutions we discussed earlier. If you notice the roundabout

expressions which are the symptom of the lack of the necessary lexis, you will

frequently recognise opportunities for helping students be more precise or

more concrse.

3. Donot explain - explore

When students ask What's the dffirence between . .'. , fot two words of

similar meaning such as wownd/injwry discussed earlier, rather than spending

too much time explaining the difference, give three or four contextualised

examples of each word - that is, provide the appropriate collocational

language. For example, with make and do you might give: make a mistake,

make an enquiry, make the most of the opportunity; do your best, do some

overtime, Can yow do me a favour? and so on. The same procedure is

particularly useful with those nouns which have very little meaning unless

used in collocations, such as effect, position, action, point, way, grownd' (If

you look in a collocation dictionarY, You will see that these nouns have very

large collocational fields. The most important part of 'knowing' a word like

this is knowing a large number of its collocations.) Consider this classroom

scenano:

T . . . yes, that's a good Point, Marco.S Excuse me but you said 'point' again. You say it in every

lesson but it's sometimes different. What does 'point'

mean?T Point . . . well, we use it in different ways, and it's very

common. Here are some typical ways we use it.(Writes on the board):Why do you want me to do that? I can't see the point;

I know you want to come but, the point is, you're not old

enough.That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that'I always make a point of saying thank you to the bus driver

{ t ' s , i lcoul,JI C I ] \

i lnn nl- _ - r '

0n-tl.slJ- x .I L J : \ .

L a F r g

i,lea-..

1 I \ O u

Al rh r rnoh n . r

I T I S ! L { 1 1 Y l U U N

.,, har ,,i'otll,c

"ie t'initlon.

{. [f in douh

Dn-' ot rhe r:l:rltrlers he".ti'rnleiirnfi hlhe tert is lt'r

Collocation,<

."rtrlocatirrns In,l icin_ an*n I

"ir3 not [o -]n

iericons. Petru similar proilr

In rhis ,,

the clan

channel

have'oal

Simple questn n , - n n - . ' ^ l ' ' 1

let 's sar- the r.,of. using the c

Instead of asboard or ovelI often do thl

then have tccollocations.

more ven' qr

recordin_e thefound that acollocations i

I,:, rsk: It?rl/

: pli.rtntirrclrr- t ! r r ! ! L r Y v r J r

rt jiime and in

1r part of the'-<. I \\ 'as vet))'r:. ' ,J. Or if a

. i r rb. \ -ou may

t3f l\ 'ords, it 's

., ltre knd of

iLrundabout

:e tis. 1'ou wil l

r,ra precrse or

iri 0 \\'ords of

rran spending;ontextualised

;oilocational'-;i;e a trtistake,,est. do somer procedure is].eaning unlessr., growtd. (If

rllns have veryle' a word likethis classroom

,Id

lriver.

There is nothing as practical as a good theory

It's difficult to say exactly what point means but youcould learn these expressions and there are lots more solet's see if we can collect more. If you hear me use one,stop me and we'll write it with the others. If you meet oneoutside the class, write it down and tell us at the nextclass. When you look at them later, try to think whatexpressions you would use in Italian to express the sameideas. Check with Paola or another Italian speaker to seeif you agree.

Although possibly more time-consuming than an explanation of point, surelymeeting four typical uses is time better spent than trying to get to grips withwhat would have to be a vague, complicated and ultimately unhelpfuldefinition.

4. If in doubt, point them out

One of the reasons students have not learned collocations is simply becauseteachers have not pointed them out in the texts they are using. This happenssometimes because the teacher's approach to dealing with the vocabulary inthe text is to ask the class: Are there any words you don't know?

Collocations are missed with this approach because the words of thecollocations may not be new, but the fact they occur together, and are worthnoticing and recording together, must be pointed out by the teacher if studentsare not to 'look straight through' language which will expand their mentallexicons. Peter Skehan (A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning) makesa simi lar point when he wri tes:

In this view, the role of instruction is not necessarily therefore inthe clarity or in the explanation it provides, but rather in the way itchannels attention and brings into awareness what otherwise wouldhave been missed.

Simple questions such as What's the verb before 'opportunie' in the ftrstparagraph? draw students'attention to collocations. Once that has been done -let's say the verb was rulss - quickly add some others: take, grab, make the mostol using the collection and recording technique discussed above.

Instead of asking questions. you can prepare a simple worksheet or use theboard or overhead projector to list parts of the useful collocations in the text.I often do this while students are engaged in a more global reading task. Theythen have to go back and search the text for the missing parts of thecollocations. For any collocations which are worth adding to, I elicit or givemore very quickly. Do not assume students are noticing collocations andrecording them for themselves. They won't unless you train them to. I havefound that after a short period of time, students begin to ask me aboutcollocations in texts - whether they are worth recording - and they also ask

23

24 There is nothing as practical as ct good theory

for extras because that is what they have learned to expect from me. [JaneConzett also points out in her paper that students do begin to collectcollocations for themselves, once they have been introduced to the idea. Ed].

5" Essay preparation - use collocation

Students sometimes complain that they lack ideas when sitting down to writea composition on a prescribed topic. Teachers complain that they do not wantto spend half the class time telling students what to write. There is a simpleanswer. Many teachers brainstorm words connected with the topic in classbefore setting the composition for hornework. When the words are on theboard, the next step is to add, where possible, useful collocates to each word.It is particularly important to introduce the nouns which will be central to thecontent of the essay. As we saw with the exam example above, this provides

students with language items with more communicative power thanindividual words can offer.

Also, as we saw earlier, collocations are much more situationally evocativeand correspondingly far more likely, therefore, to spark the imagination forwriting. A dictionary such as The LTP Dictionara of Selected Collocations isinvaluable for selecting collocates. With a class set, I give the students eightkey nouns central to the essay topic. For example, with an 'education' topic,I might give them: school, education, qualiJication, teacher etc. I then ask

them to look up these words in the dictionary and note down collocations foreach of the words that catch their eye or which they think they might use.They might choose for school: drop ottt of, leave, skip, go to, single-sex,mixed, state, private. Draw their attention particularly to the importance ofverb + noun collocations. If students have their own dictionary, they can dothis at home.

When the written work comes in, I often find either collocation mistakes or

cases where students have used simple or vaglre words when they could have

used more specific or interesting ones. For example, if a student writes very

intelligent, and big mistake,I write in the margin other options such as highb,intelligent and disastrows mistake, or ask them to refer to the Dictionaryt ofSelected Collocations to make their own selection before rewriting their work

with the improvements.

6. Make the most of what students already know

Some students already know a lot of 'simple' words but are not aware of what

those words can do for them because they haven't noticed their common

collocations. I regularly take such words, usually nouns, and brainstormadjectives and verbs which students think go with those nouns. Very often,these collocations are already half-known by students - they sense they havemet them before - but they have not yet internalised them. Time spent on half-known language is more likely to encourage input to become intake than timespent on completely new input. Again, Skehan suggests that ". . . very often

the pedagolaccessibie i

TrsxDo vorextenCknou l

For exampladjectives atme is usualperhaps: crrtassess, be ircollocationsstudents' mesuch as: Ccr:were in? DtBecause so rthey have sctriggered berwords usuall

Note that itquestions becreate an oFquestrons areDo yow alv ca challengirnsee lt as \.enthen. From thmore useful ,practice of lt

TasxWhat peryou expeDo you r1

I do not expelanguage I er1I believe expotaking place, Ion a refreshecollocations. c

r r m : [ T 2 n e

lr ;o. collectt-r; rdea. Edl.

l,:''; n to rvrite

;v ,Jr not urantr: ls a simpler,-,lic in classiJs ,i.re on the

t,- ' eech.,vord.

;:ntral to the

, :hrs provides

t'tn'et than

"ri,, evOCative

i:.-ination for

L i ir-, 'cttt iorts ts

stLldents eightr - - - r i n n ' f n n i n

:r;. I then ask':,.nocations forr;r rnight use.;tt. shtgle-sex,imporiance of

t ' . the) 'can do

Lrrx mistakes orher could haveinl \\'ntes very; such as highly: Dictiona: oJrtine their work

t a\\'are of whattheir common

and brainstormrns. Very often,sense they havele spent on half-Lntake than time" . . . v e r y o f t e n

There is nothing as practical as a good theory 25

the pedagogic challenge is not to focus on the brand new, but instead to makeaccessible the relativelv new".

TlsrDo you think it is better to teach learners a lot of riew words, or toextend their knowledge of some of the words they already half-know? Is your answer different for learners at different levels?

For example, I take the word situation and ask students to give me firstadjectives and then verbs which they think collocate. The number they giveme is usually very small, even for advanced classes. I then supply extras,perhaps: awkwctrd, complicated, critical, desperate,farcical; accept, analyse,dr,se,s.s, be in command of, make the best of the eIc. Again, a dictionary ofcollocations is a very useful resource for this kind of systematic expansion ofstudents' mental lexicons. If you want to, you can ask follow-up questionssuch as: Can yow remember the last awkward/farcical/desperate situation yowwere in? Do you always analyse sitwations or do you just accept them?Because so many collocations are situationally evocative, students often findthey have something to say in response to these questions - something istriggered because collocations evoke bigger speech events than individualwords usually do.

Note that it is better to ask questions with or rather than simple yes/No-questions because they elicit more language in response. or-questions alsocreate an opportunity for the collocations to be used immediately. Typicalquestions are: Do you sometimes break promises or do you always keep them?Do yow always come by bus or do you sometimes come by car? Have you gota challenging job or a cushy job? I must emphasise, however, that I do notsee it as very important that students actually use the collocation there andthen. From the point of view of acquisition, I would rather spend time addingmore useful collocations to the noun than spend too much time in laboriouspractice of fewer items.

TLsrWhat percentage of the 'new vocabulary' you present in a lesson doyou expect your learners to acquire from that lesson?Do you think your expectation is realistic?

I do not expect students to remember or acquire all or even the majority oflanguage I expose them to. But for the reasons discussed earlier in this paper,I believe exposing students to more increases the chances of some acquisitiontaking place. Recently, I was observed teaching in this way by some teacherson a refresher course. At the end of the lesson with the board full ofcollocations, one teacher remarked: It would be a miracle if thet remembered

26 There is nothing as practical as a good theory

50% of what you teach them. I replied, It would be a miracle if theyremembered 10Va of what I presented. We discussed the difference in ourviews at some length but I suspect he remained unconvinced. We simply haddifferent mindsets. The teacher in question apparently believed that step-by-step teaching produces step-by-step leaming, even mastery of what waspresented. Both research and reflection on classroom experience show thatthis simply is not the case. Students do not have enough time to find that outfor themselves; it is our job to provide the most effective learning based onour professional understanding of both language and leaming.

7. Record and recycle

It is becoming clear that the lexicon is much bigger than anyone previouslythought. This implies a greater memory load, an increased learning load - orceftainly an increased input load - and this being the case, careful andsystematic recording of collocations which ensures accurate noticing ofuseful language is essential. During class time, I encourage students to writedown collocations in their main note-taking books and ask them to transferthem later into the collocation section of their lexical notebooks using formatssuch as the one shown earlier. As much as possible, I encourage students torecord collocations in topic groups.

I use a simple and time-efficient approach to recycle collocations. Before thelesson, I make a list of all the collocations I want to recycle but delete part ofeach collocation before photocopying the list for each student. Students thensearch their notebooks to fill in the missing part of the collocation. If thecollocations came from the same text, I sometimes ask students to re-consffuct the main content of the text, or parts of the text, using thecollocations as prompts. This activity has the added usefulness ofencouraging and including those students who may have trouble answeringcomprehension questions about the text for linguistic reasons but who are ableto participate by remembering parls of it, however falteringly.

One important point: when deciding which part of the collocation to delete,leave the word or words which most strongly suggest what the missing partis. For example, for the collocation a window of opportwnlf, it would bebetter to delete opportuniQ, as a window of . .. . . is more helpful than . . . . .opportuniQ. Your choice of deletion, therefore, is a principled one with theaim of helping leamers to remember, not trying to make the task artificiallydifficult.

A slight variation is to dictate part of the collocation and students have toremember or find the missing part in their notebooks before I dictate thewhole item.

Other ways of recycling include: domino-type games - match the cards endto end by matching the collocations; 'find your partner'activities where two-word collocations are split between members of the class who then have to

find their 'p

the table antime hoprn:recycling is

1.9 ActicAll of thesepractice to aupside dourwhy not allclncorporaiereflect on thwhether thelactlon resealreckless or ir

1.10 Con

For many ieiand perhaps icollocationsvocabulary, bthree years a1or fail to -sraonly play atcommitmentott: There istime to practtperfect! Hottand holistic rorganised. thcollocation r',whatever tool

Discussior

In what rvar':feeling of pro

What do 1'orgrammaticallrconecting the

rcle if they3nce ln oursimply had

hat step-by-I what wase show thatfind that outng based on

e previouslying load - orcareful andnoticing of

tents to wdtem to transferrsing formatse students to

rs. Before thedelete part ofSrudents thencation. If theldents to re-rt. using theisefulness ofrle answeringt n ho are able

tion to delete,l missing part;. it would bef u l t h a n . . . . .tr one with theask artificially

rdents have toe I dictate the

l the cards end.ies rvhere two-ro then have to

-{tttt*rnm---

There is nothing as practical as a good theory 27

find their 'partner'; or a simple memory game with cards placed face down onthe table and, in groups, students take it in tums to turn over two cards at atime hoping to find the collocations. A helpful principle to work with forrecycling is little and often, with some variation.

1.9 Action research

All of these ideas can be incorporated painlessly into most teachers' currentpractice to a greater or lesser degree. Your teaching does not need to be turnedupside down to make room for collocation. If, however, you are sceptical,why not allow yourself a trial period over the next few weeks to regularlyincorporate some of the ideas into your lessons? Then take a moment toreflect on the effectiveness of the ideas and activities or even ask the classwhether they have found the input helpful - a simple, step-by-step form ofaction research. A thoughtful evolution is more likely to be beneficial than areckless or impatient revolution.

1.10 ConclusionFor many teachers, collocation is just another way of presenting vocabulary,and perhaps once every other unit ofthe coursebook, an exercise on two-wordcollocations appears and it is seen as a welcome change to the regularvocabulary building that goes on. Indeed, that is how I saw it up until aboutthree years ago - useful, but peripheral. Teachers who do not stop to consider,or fail to grasp, the theoretical basis behind the teaching of collocation willonly play at introducing it into the classroom. There will be no deepcommitment to giving it a prominent role - the old arguments will crowd itout'. There isn't enough time to explain everytthing. There won't be enowghtime to practise. They won't remember all that. They still can't do the presentperfect! However, if we take a deeper look at the non-linear, unpredictableand holistic nature of learning, the nature of natural language - the way it isorganised, the way it is stored in, and recalled from, the mental lexicon -

collocation will become so central to everyday teaching that we will wonderwhatever took up so much of our time before.

Discussion QuestionsIn what ways can you help learners on the intermediate plateau to gain afeeling of progress?

What do you do when your learners express themselves in roundabout,grammatically flawed ways? Do you think first of building their lexicons orcorrecting their grammar?

28 Collocation - encouraging learner independence

Chapter 2

Collocation - encouraging learner independence

George Woolard

George Woolard describes activities he uses which encourage learners to make

the best use, from a learning point of view, of language which they meet outside

the classroom. He encourages learners to take responsibility for their own

learning, and uses part of the tirne in class to give his learners a real

understanding of techniques for searching a text, dictionary' corpus or computer

concordance in ways which help them expand their mental lexicons efficiently,

even without the presence of a teacher. IIe discusses the importance of searching

for and recording certain types of collocation which are particularly useful to

learners" Throughout the chapter, readers may like to reflect on whether

George's experience mirrors their own, and whether they are happy with the

increasing emphasis George places on collocation in his classes.

2.1 Introduction

In recent years collocation has emerged as an important category of lexical

patterning and it is fast becoming an established unit of description in

language teaching courses and materials. The following is a personal account

of how I have brought collocations into my classroom and how my teaching

has undergone small but significant changes as a result.

I believe that the arbitrary nature of collocation is ideally suited to

independent language learning and that we need to equip our students with

skills to enable them to develop their knowledge of coltrocations

independently of the teacher. This is particularly important in an age where

technology has made large amounts of 'electronic' text readily available to

our students through CD-ROM and the Internet.

I also recognise the importance of students recording the vocabulary they

meet, and I outline a simple extension of the traditional vocabulary notebook

to accommodate collocations and other co-textual pattems'

2.2 Collocation

As teachers, it is often instructive to remind ourselves that language teaching

is, in its most basic form, a process of matching meaning with linguistic

patteflr. Language teaching courses and materials tend to classify the

dominant patterns under the traditional labels; grammar, function, and the

non-literal meaning categories of idiom and phrasal verb.

In order to avoid possible confusion and even antagonism, I prefer to adopt a

definition of collocation that does not overlap or clash with any of these

establishe,iI ieach. ir sifeel u'e neeprer-iouslroverlappin_gSLTMC SCNSE

uhich arechance sueiunhelpful.lto specitic Iadopted uhinr-olves locre-examlneanticipate asrudents $-iIto the cornlsuch as /reanaturalh'asSEA OI A SInC

of u'ords rr'halso the confree product

I have aisoadjectir,-e s ala ven'clearof pattem thdifferent kitraditional rThis meansreason -for apafiems. an(

T.q,sxWhat drov,n claWould r

)/ou thir

The definitirdefinition. Ittext with easin both absot

lndence

trners to make

]' meet outsidefor their ownrarners a realus or computer:ons efficiently,ce of searchingrlarly useful toct on whetherrappy with the

gorl' of lexicaldescription in

:r:onal account'* n'ry teaching

a111 suited tor students withi collocationsn an age wherei1r available to

rrcabulary theyrr-r1ary notebook

rguage teachingu ith linguistic

to classify therutction, and the

p,refer to adopt arih any of these

Collocation - encouraging learner independence 29

established categories. For me collocation does not re-define or re-order whatI teach, it simply extends and enriches it. Therefore, for teaching purposes, Ifeel we need a definition that confines itself to a level of patterning that haspreviously received no explicit focus in our classrooms. A number ofoverlapping definitions of collocation exist, many of which have at their coresome sense of the 'co-occurrence' of words. A typical definition is 'words

which are statistically much more likely to appear together than randomchance suggests'. Unfortunately, as a teacher, I find this type of definitionunhelpful. It is simply too abstract and general to guide my students'attentionto specific elements of text in a clear and directed way. In response, I haveadopted what I feel is a more transparent and practical definition whichinvolves looking at the language from the point of view of my students. I nowre-examine the content of the texts in my coursebooks and lessons and try toanticipate and highlight groups of words - collocations - which I think mystudents will not expect to find together. For example, I do not draw attentionto the combinations heavy fwrniture/loads, whereas I do for combinationssuch as heavy seas/smoker. The reason being that I expect my students tonaturally associate the quality of being heavy with objects, but not with thesea or a smoker. I reserve the term collocation, then, for those co-occuffencesof words which I think my students will not expect to find together. These arealso the combinations that I would not expect my students to produce in theirfree production of language.

I have also restricted the use of the term to relations between nouns, verbs,adjectives and adverbs only. This serves two useful purposes. First, it providesa very clear definition of collocation for students. They can easily see the typeof pattern that is the f,ocus of attention, and furthermore, that it is a new anddifferent kind of focus on language. Secondly, it avoids overlap withtraditional vocabulary exercises such as those of 'dependent prepositions'.This means that I do not label co-occuffences such as gwile of, depend on,reason for as collocations. My current textbook has already classified thesepatterns, and exercises exist in the book that focus on such co-occulrences.

TlsrWhat definition of collocation do you think is most suitable for yourown classes?Would you include any areas such as idioms or phrasal verbs, or doyou think it is best to confine the term in the way just suggested?

The definition of collocation I have adopted is essentially a pedagogicdefinition. It took me a while before I felt I could see useful collocations intext with ease, which suggests that teachers and students need to invest timein both absorbing the concept, and practice in noticing useful collocations in

30 Collocation - encouraging learner indep endence

text. Before I became focussed on collocation, I would look at a text, and

typical of the ELT profession, isolate the major grammar pattems and any

items of useful vocabulary almost automatically. Now I find that it is

collocations that are first to spring out of the texts I read. It is very much a

case of seeing more than you used to in a text.

2.3 Raising awareness of collocation

One obvious way of finding out which words our students do not expect to

find together is through the mis-collocations they make in their production oflanguage. It is a good idea to keep a record of these mis-collocations as you

correct your students' essays so that you can bring them into the classroom at

appropriate times to improve and extend vocabulary teaching.

An effective platform for raising awareness of collocation is to focus on a

selection of your students' mis-collocations. At first I suggest you restrictyour examples Io noun + verb, adjective + noun mis-collocations. Brown(1994) cites the following as typical examples of the mis-collocationsproduced by his students: Biochemists are making research into the causes of

AIDS. The result was an extreme disappointment. We'll experience many

costs, andfew benefits will come.

Note that all three sentences are grammatically sound - that is, the students'

use of tense, aspect and subject/verb agreement is accurate. The students'choice of vocabulary is also appropriate, and as a result, if the individualwords are known by the listener/reader, communication is effective. Howevet,

our 'slot and filler' approach to the teaching of grammar and vocabulary has

not sensitised our students to the collocational constraints on wordcombinations. For instance. the first sentence should be: Biochentists are

doing research into the causes of AIDS. This is an extremely common verb +

noun mis-collocation in which the verbs make and do are used with

inappropriate nouns. Interestingly, this partictlar verb + noun pattern has

been recognised and given attention in most traditional EFL courses and

coursebooks , so'rnake and do'collocations provide a useful starling point forintroducing the notion of collocation to learners. It is important to get acrossto students at this stage that these relations are arbitrary - there is no reasonwhy it should be make a decision rather than do a decision. We need to make

them aware that this is simply the way we say things in English and that's that!

The problem with the second sentence lies in the use of extreme. The

expression (X) was extremely disappointing is very common? so it is not

surprising that the student produced the sentence above. It seems a likelytransformation. Howevet, extreme does not collocate with disappointment.The most likely collocates are big, great and bitter. It is important torecognise that the grammar transformation exercises we use in grammar

teaching can encourage mis-collocation.

The thirdkeywords rllooking forbenefits wil

Althou-eh mthose workiwrltten cofi

tied to partitopic-speciffollows thatwill be detecollocationsmust beconrPurposes co

To sum uplearnin-e ner,we make thnew words.then, do u'e

2.4 IJigh

Teachers h:collocationsBrou'n abor,approach. -{T h n n e h o l -

I r.,.as usingclass u'hentbllou,ing: Sslnuld be tstandard tecl

s\ non\ inl

nara nhr: rr - ' - r ' * * -

conte\tu!

Hou'er-er. ralstudents'af tet:rt hiehligh; i rr ,r ,r ; r g1b -. i

D l languaoe -

\\-hen the er

' . lpplemenisl

:1 : . l11 ld

' " r.'J any

.- :h.it it is,'ery much a

rot expect to)roduction ofrtlons as you

classroom at

o focus on a

. you restricttions. Brown;-collocationsthe causes of?rtence many

the students'Ihe students'ihe individual.ive. However,ocabulary hasnts on wordochemists are)mmon verb +

Lre used withrn pattem hasL courses andnling point forrt to get acrossre ls no feasone need to makeand that's that!' extreme. Thern, so it is not

seems a likelYlisappointment.s important tose in grammar

Collocation - encouraging learner independence 31

The third example is very much topic-specific: benefits and costs atekeywords in the language of business. In the sentence above we would belooking for stronger collocates such as: We'll incur substantial costs, and.fewbenefits will accrue.

Although many native speakers would not instantly make these modifications,those working in the business field would do so more readily, especially inwritten communication. This is an indication of how collocation is closelytied to particular subject areas and, to a certain extent, it could be argued thattopic-specific collocations are a major defining aspect of these areas. Itfollows that language proficiency within science, medicine, and commercewill be determined to a large extent by the students' mastery of the commoncollocations particular to each field. This means that a focus on collocationmust become a major priority in Business English and English for AcademicPurposes courses.

To sum up, for many students learning more vocabulary simply meanslearning new words. By focussing our students' attention on mis-collocationswe make them aware that learning more vocabulary is not just learningnew words, it is often learning familiar words in new combinations. How,then, do we help the learner to develop their mental lexicons in this way?

2.4 Highlighting and teaching collocation

Teachers have a prominent role to play in helping the learner identifycollocations in texts. The use of student mis-collocations of the type given byBrown above is one strategy but teachers need to adopt a more proactiveapproach. A description of how my teaching developed in this direction will,I hope, help.

I was using a reading comprehension text with a multi-lingual intermediateclass when one of the students asked what the word views meant in thefollowing: She holds very strong views on marriage. She thinks everybodyshowld be married in a church. My initial response was to employ thestandard techniques:

synonymy: views = opinionsparaphrase: yiews = what you think of somethingcontextualisalion: I think it's wrong to kill animals. What are your views?

However, rather than move on in the lesson, I found myself directing thestudents' attention to the surrounding co-text. An exploration of the left co-text highlighted useful relations of collocation; adjective + noun - strongviews; verb + noun - hold views. This left the students with a useful 'chunk'

of language - to hold strong views - rather than a single word.

When the exercises designed for the reading text were completed, I added asupplementary exercise aimed at activating this chunk:

32 Collocation - encouraging learner independence

Exercise

Look at this part of the text:'She holds very strong views on man'iage. She thinks everybody shouldbe married in a chwrch.'

Most people hotrd strong views on something. What about you? Writesome sentences about yourself following the pattern,

Most people hold strong views on . . . . Personally, I think. . . .

This exercise resulted in students producing personal opinions such as: Mostpeople hold strong views on smoking. Personally, I think cigarettes should bebanned. Note how such responses demonstrate that students tend to noticemore patteming than that which is the focus of the exercises we give them.Here the noun + preposition pattern views + onhas been noticed and used, aswith the grammatical structure I think X should be (done). This natural abilityto notice pattern should not be underestimated, and is the basis for thedevelopment of the independent trearning strategies that we need to develop inour students.

One immediate implication for teachers is that they should re-examine theircoursebooks for collocation, adding exercises which focus explicitly on co-text and which draw the students' attention to significanl verb + noLtn,adjective + noun, verb + adverb collocations. To return to the example above,the next time I used this particular reading text I added a number of shortvocabulary tasks to the comprehension exercises that accompanied the text:

Find a verb and adjective in the text which collocates with the wordviews. Then complete the following sentence:

My father . . . . . . . . views on drinking and driving. He thinks thatthese drivers should be banned.for lift.

As Swan (1996) points out, vocabulary will not take care of itself. Studentswith limited time available for study will not learn high priority lexis if it isnot deliberately selected and incorporated into iearning materials.Collocations, then, must become part of that planned language input.However, the selection of keywords needs to be informed and this necessitatesa greater awareness of the nature of lexrs.

2.5 Choosing key words

Lexicalisation is to do with the amount of information a word carries and thisis a useful spectlum to guide our selection of words to target for collocationsearches. Words llke penicillin are high-content words and as a result havefew common collocates. Test this out by trying to think of adjectives whichcollocate wilh penicillin. Note how few come readily to mind. On the otherhand, drug is less lexicalised and will have a much greater collocational field.Note how you can readily generate a number of adjective + drug collocations- addi c t iv e/ eJfe c t iv e /fa s t - a c t in g/p ow e rful etc.

-+.s \\'e ildecreasee.-u. cllcvocabuhlexicaiisrthese coraitentlonexpressl(h i sh l i oh t_ _ _ e ^ _ _ ^ , - . . '

A furthiDeconteradequatecontextuicarn'thenf n re se t

aware ofespeciall,

The rrand it

In geco11ocl t m a

In selectawarenesthat differeferencedevelop Iprovidelexicalisecommonrather tha

Technicaleasily idelexicaliseare excellwe need tour leamr

2.6 ThA major 1the classrneeds. W

i , s l t ou ld

.' ou? Write

ach as'. Mostres sJtould be

:;ld to nottce

e give them.

and used, as

iatural abilrty

rasis for the

trr develop in

::.amhe their

rircirir on co-

t i ' l t + l loL{n,

imple above,

nber of short

Lrrd the text:

r th- \\'ord

that

:self. Students:'. leris if it isrS rnaterials.- r r r . r f i D l n n r r t: : u i l : r r r y q ! .

L:, necessltates

.'iiri ies and thisi:,r collocations i result havei ::tir-es which1, On the other',:,;aiional held.:r r collocations

Collocation - encouraging learner independence 33

As we move further along this spectrum and as the degree of lexicalisationdecreases, we find some of the most common and useful nouns in the lexicon,e.g. character, idea, plan, problem, situation, way etc. unfortunately,vocabulary books and vocabulary lessons tend to focus on the morelexicalised words rather than these less lexicalised words. This means thatthese common and useful nouns often do not receive the amount or type ofattention they merit. For example, with the word way, common semi-fixedexpressions containing useful collocations of the following sort are nothighlighted: The most ffictive way of (losing weight/falling asleep/etc) is...A further problem lies in the way vocabulary is traditionally taught.Decontextualised leaming of individual words such as translation may beadequate for high information words like penicillin, whlle paraphrase andlorcontextualisation of more common words llke drug are usually sufficient tocary the meaning of the term. In general, however, teachers should be waryof presenting uncollocated nouns to their students. They have to becomeaware of the need to incorporate co-textual information into their teaching,especially with these less lexicalised items. As Lewis (r99j) notes and argues:

The real definition of a word is a combination of its referential meaninsand its collocational field.

In general, the more de-lexicalised a word is, and the wider itscollocational range, the more important it is to meet, acquire and recordit in a collocation.

In selecting vocabulary items from texts, teachers must develop theirawareness of the differing degrees of lexicalisation of words and recognisethat different types of vocabulary may need differing degrees of co-textualreference, and therefore, different teaching techniques. Teachers also need todevelop their students' sensitivity to this spectrum of lexicalisation, andprovide practice in separating nouns into high-content items and lesslexicalised items, so that students focus their co-textual searches on the morecommon and useful items in the texts they meet, for example, words llke drwgrather than penicillin, tool rather Ihan wrench. [See also pp 14314]Technical texts are useful for this purpose as the high-information items areeasily identified by students, leaving them to explore the collocates ofthe lesslexicalised keywords in these texts. Instruction leaflets and operating manualsare excellent sources of material for encouraging this awareness. As teachers,we need to prioritise the development of this kind of lexical sensitivity for allour leatners.

2.6 The independent learner and learning strategiesA major problem remains over the amount of language that can be covered inthe classroom. This will almost always be less than the student meers orneeds. What is essential is that the teacher equips the students with search

34 Collocation - encouraging learner independence

skills which will enable them to discover significant collocations for

themselves, in both the language they meet in the classroom and, more

importantly, in the language they meet outside the classroom.

We need to remind ourselves that collocation is mostly an arbitrary pairing of

words. We can say treat the patient, repair the damage, but not repair thepatient, treat the damage. It is a fact that much of the grammatically accurate

language that we could use, is in fact not used. As teachers, then, we can offerno explanations to our students for the particular choices that are selected and

sanctioned by the speech community, beyond saying 'this is simply the way

the language is'. We should resist the teacher's automatic reflex of seeking

explanations for all aspects of language patterning; to try, for example, to

explain the fact that repair does not collocate with patienr by looking for

subtle semantic differences between the verbs treat and repair.

TlsrDo you think you can define the difference between the vetbs treQt

and repair?

Here are some authentic examples from a computer concordance (see below)

of the two verbs repair and treat:

One child was able to repair engines without being instructed.He has had to work hard to repair his damaged reputation.

The natural tendency of the body rs to repair itself given the oppoilunity.It will take years to repair the economic damage caused by this policy.

Some dentists claim it is uneconomic to rrear NHS patients.

In my profession, you learn how to treat yoar ownwounds.It is one of the few drugs approved to treat Alzheimer's disease.

Can you advise me on how to treat the problem?You can treat tired,lifeless hair with this new shampoo.They have a tendency to treot small customers with contempt.It was no way to treat a dog.We took the dog to the vet but he said it was too late to treat her.

Notice that two of the concordance examples - treat customers with contempt,

no way to treat a dog - could confuse as they contain examples of treat with

a different meaning. If you use unedited concordances, problems such as this

frequently arise. While this can be helpful for more advanced leamers, it

strongly suggests that examples should be carefully selected for intermediate

learners, although not selected to conform to a preconceived pattern. Noticeparticularly, the example The natural tendency of the body to repair itself,which immediately invalidates the apparently attractive 'treat people, repair

machines'ruIe.

Almost aland problrelied onl,and lookirseeking at

One impofrom selermlnol on€mode. Asdevelopmivery real :mostly a nto explorrcollocatiorthose colltmuch in lifrom simpskills. Hor,the colloca

I believe nbasic gramcategoriesThis can bstage is tobe the focuaround thecollocation

Search strareflect theencouragethem routir

1. Isolat2 .Look3. Look4. Look

I've addedsearch stratselect thosiexample, thwhereas blrnoticing an<

We need, th

cations forand,. more

l.paidng of,I repair thellll- accurate.,,, e can offetselected andrn11-the way:i of seekingexample, tolookmg for

e s"'e beiow)

:,1.

r oFportunlty.this policy.

. t t , 5 € .

i i .

: ; i het.

',", itlt contempt,

=> of treat with

ms such as this:rd leamers, it:r intermediate

frattem. Noticer:, repair itself,; people, repair

Collocation - encouraging learner indeperulencer 35

Almost always, a list of authentic examples makes you aware of both patternsand problems which you would have almost certainly overlooked if you hadrelied only on your intuition. collocation is more varied than we tend to think,and looking at authentic examples will nearly always be more revealing thanseeking an explanation based on subtle semantic differences.

mostly a matter of noticing and recording, and trained students should be ableto explore texts for themselves. Not only should they notice commoncollocations in the texts they meet, but more importantly, they should selectthose collocations which are crucial to their particular needs. This is verymuch in line with modern trends in language teaching, where there is a shiftfrom simply teaching the language to helping learners develop their learningskills. How, then, can we encourage and develop the students'ability to noticethe collocations which are significant and useful for them?I believe most students need to spend some time initially in identifying thebasic grammar categories of noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, as these are thecategories which are the focus of co-textual search strategies for collocation.This can be done through traditional exercises in sentence analysis. The nextstage is to highlight the pivotal role of the noun. The fact that nouns tend tobe the focus of information in a text, that we tend to build the information uparound the nouns, means that they are the most suitable headwords forcollocation searches.

Search strategies themselves are relatively simple and straightforward, andreflect the procedures we followed in teaching collocation above. weencourage the student to follow the steps below, and through practice makethem routine and automatic:

1. Isolate key nouns in the text2. Look for (unexpected) verb collocates3. Look for (unexpected) adjective collocates4. Look for (unexpected) adverb collocates

I've added 'unexpected' in brackets as a reminder that the purpose of thesesearch strategies is not to notice all collocates of a word, but for learners toselect those combinations that they do not already know or expect. Forexample, the collocation big disappointment is not surprising or unexpectedwhereas bitter disappointment is likely to be, which makes the latter worthnoticing and recording.

we need, therefore, to actively encourage the development of these skills and

36 Collocation - encouraging learner independenc e

give them sufficient focus in the classroom. One useful way of monitoringtheir development is to establish regular slots in the course programme wherestudents report back to the class on interesting collocations they haveencountered and noticed outside the classroom. It is probably true to say thatthe teacher's role today is becoming more and more one of facilitatingleaming, and one issue of importance centres on how we help our studentsmaximise their leaming of collocation outside the classroom.

2.7 Resources: dictionaries

A particular word may interest or be important to a student, who will naturallywant to explore its collocational field further. However, if encounters withparticular words are left to random or chance meetings in texts, learning willbe extremely haphazard and inefficient. To a certain extent, we can partiallyresolve this situation by heeding Swan's earlier point that we provide a moreconcentrated exposure to collocations through careful planning of thevocabulary input to our courses. However, outside the classroom we need todirect our students to concentrated sources of this kind of information.

1. Traditional dictionaries

One would expect dictionaries to be an obvious source of relevantinformation. However, dictionaries tend to focus on the decoding process.That is, they provide excellent descriptions of the meaning(s) of wordsthrough synonymy and other word relations such as paraphrase andcontextualisation. The organisation reflects the students' approach to thedictionary as a resource for answering the question What does X mean? Amajor drawback is that most dictionaries give relatively little explicit attentionto collocation and other co-textual features of words.

Dictionaries can, however, be approached in a different way and prove to bea worthwhile source of information on collocation. A good English-Englishdictionary usually provides one or two expressions or sentencesdemonstrating the use of a word, and these will probably contain one or twouseful collocates of that word. Teachers should encourage students to browsethese examples for collocations. This needs to become an automatic habit.

By switching the focus to the collocational field of a word, the student is nowusing the dictionary as an encoding tool, rather than a decoding one. For moststudents this is new, and as such, they will need some guidance and trainingin using the dictionary in this way. An approach which I find useful, is to setexercises which actively direct the students to the dictionary to explore aword's collocates rather than its meaning. Such exercises can be free-standingor integrated into a lesson.

In one of my classes, the word criticism in the sentence The Government hasreceived heavy criticism for increasing taxes became a focus. After dealingwith the meaning and highlighting the collocates receive and heavy,I asked

the studerhomeworlwhich wor

for increa:

criticor soldisad

for stbeett

From the t,to work ousevere andis vital to town produr

I then askemet, and thhas come it

One obviorlanguage pris lookin-e ftnot providethe task abowanted to kthe opposittgrowmg selassume thalold/new wlll

2. Electroni

What is cleastudents u,itgreater numsolutions artechnology.dictionary'. IROM, whichusing a perscthe book forformer has trAdvanced I-econfigured toword or phras

monitodngnme wherethey haveto say thatlacilitatingur students

iil naturallyrunters witheaming wiil:an partiallylr ide a moremng of then u,e need tonai10n.

of relevant1in_e process.-r i of wordsrphrase andr:ach to theI rr teon? Ar:it aftention

i lror,e to berlish-En,ehshI S C I I T C I I L C S

n One or tworts to browsea:ir- habit.

udent is now,ne. For most

r r I t r q i n i n o

r fu1. is to sett r : r - n l n r a q

:ree-standing

, t ' t l i rnen t hAS

\1ter deahng..r 1. I asked

Collocation - encouraging learner independence 37

the students to look np criticism in their English-English dictionaries forhomework. The idea was to see if they could find other verbs and adjectiveswhich would complete the sentence , The Government has . . . criticismfor increasing taxes. The relevant entry in the coBUILD dictionary is:

criticism 1. criticism is the expression of disapproval of someoneor something, by stating an opinion on their faults, weaknesses, ordisadvantages in speech or writing. EG. The Government came infor severe criticism. some fi.erce public criticism of the ptan hadbeen voiced.

From the two instances of use given by the dictionary the students were ableto work out that the phrasal verb come in for could replace receive, and thatsevere andfierce were appropriate alternatives to heavy. This kind of noticingis vital to encoding and enables students to transfer their findines rnto theirown production.

I then asked the class to talk about the criticism that their governments hadmet, and this led to a number of responses with the pattern, My Governmenthas come in for severe criticism for . . .

one obvious limitation of this approach lies in the rather small amount oflanguage presented by the dictionary. This is certainly a problem if the studentis looking for a particular collocation. More often than not, the dictionary willnot provide it. [See also p 200] For example, some of my students attemptingthe task above felt that the criticisms of their governments weren't heavy, andwanted to know the contextual opposite of heavy. We had earlier noted thatthe opposite of heavy cold was slight cord, not light cold. The students'growing sensitivity to collocation had made them aware that one cannotassume that simple oppositions between adjectives such as heaty/light,old/new will work in all contexts.

2. Electronic dictionaries

what is clear is that dictionary entries in their present format cannot providestudents with a sufficient range of collocates. Ideally, our students need agreater number of examples of use to browse. Fortunately, a number ofsolutions are becoming available through developments in computertechnology. one of the easiest to use and understand is the ,electronic

dictionary'. Most of the major ELT dictionaries are now available on cD-RoM, which allows the contents of the dictionary to be accessed and searchedusing a personal computer. The main advantage of the electronic format overthe book format lies in the powerful and speedy search functions that theformer has built into it. For example, the cD-RoM version of the o$ordAdvanced Learners Dictionary has a full text search function which can beconfigured to search all the examples of use in the dictionary for a particularword or phrase. when I asked the dictionary to display all the examples of use

38 Collocation - encouraging learner independence

which contained criticism,I was presented with about a hundred sample

phlases or sentences, all of which could usefully be browsed for collocations.

The richness of the information available is clearly shown by this selection:

The new play has attracted considerable criticism.The head teacher come under a lot of criticism from the parents.

There was growing criticism of the govemment's conduct of the war.

I'm sick to death of your endless criticism.She received a lot of unjustified criticism.

The power and speed of the electronic medium in providing a larger sample

of examples of use to browse for collocation means that, in order to promote

and assist the independent learning of collocation, we need to make this type

ofresource available to our students and train them in the constructive use of

their powerful search tools.

3. Collocation dictionaries

A further lesoulce has appeared recently in the form of dictionaries of

collocations. These dictionaries deal exclusively with co-text and provide a

much more comprehensive account of a word's collocates than the traditional

dictionary. Used in tandem with a traditional dictionary they help to provide

some of the co-textual information that the former lacks'

The LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations presents a range of common

collocates of words in a clear and concise manner. Here is the entry for

criticism:

CRITICISMV: accept, agree with, answer, arouse, atftact, be discouraged by/exposed

to/impervious tolrattled by/subjected tolupset by, blunt, come in for/under/up

against, crush, defend oneself against, deflect, deserve, encounter, escape, evoke,

express, forestall, give rise to, ignore, invalidate, justify, level - against sb, meet

with, offer, overcome, provoke, react to, reject, reply to, rise above, run into' shrink

from, silence, soften, stifle, subject sb to, suffer, voice, weather, withstand, yield

t o -V: - centres on sth, comes from sb, died down, grew, hardened, hit home, is relevant,

mounted, revolved around ...A: adverse, basic, biased, bitter, blunt, common, constant, destructive, devastating,

(un)fair, ferocious, fierce, friendly, fundamental, furious, harsh, helpful, hostile,

implicit, incisive, lively, merciless, mild, muted, objective' oblique, open, overt,

penetrating, perceptive, personal, savage, searing, severe, sharp, sincere, stinging.

stringent, strong, subjective, tough, trenchant, unjust, unprecedented, useful,

useless, (thinly) veiled, widespread -

P: chorus of, flood of, spate of, tonent of, wave of, whiff of -

The entry uses the following system:

V: verbs which come before the nounV: - verbs which usually come after the nounA: adjectivesP: phrases which contain the noun

Intelligentstudents' Iinvaluable

It is becorteaching ain languagand sentenand teachdictionarieEnglish-Er

2.8 Res

Vast amouEnglish Lestablishedadded to arand spokenthe use ofteaching mby individu

The recentincreased 1accessed nToday's sfulonger restcoursebookto explore aof text contdensity of tlon in this arlike to focuto help m1' r

A concordaallows a ccparticular uproduced fo

. the seawhere

. only ausualh

. the lisrthe womuch e

rmpletlOIlSr

t10n:

,ample'omote

rs tlpeuse of

ries ofr\ ide aJitionalprovide

olnmonntn, for

:-, oke.

slrirtk

- i ie ld

ier.ant,

itaflng,

Iosti1e,

m$ng,

useful.

Collocation - encouraging leanter independence 39

Intelligent browsing of this kind of resource can both guide and enrich thestudents' production of language. My students have found this to be aninvaluable resource to have on hand when writing.It is becoming clear that dictionaries are underused resources in languageteaching and that they must be given a greater and more central role to playin language leaming. In particular, browsing the exemplifying expressionsand sentences in dictionaries can provide useful information on collocation,and teachers need to encourage and train their students to approachdictionaries in this way. I now encourage all my students to invest in a goodEnglish-English dictionary and a dictionary of collocations.

2.8 Resources: corpora and concordancersvast amounts of text are now stored on computers and many of the majorEnglish Language Teaching publishing houses and universities haveestablished extensive banks ofEnglish or corpora. These are being constantlyadded to and updated. Some contain over 500 million words of both writtenand spoken text. These huge banks of data provide a basis for research intothe use of English, and are used as a basis for modem dictionaries andteaching materials. some of these large banks of English can now be accessedby individuals.

The recent development of the Internet and the world wide web has greatlyincreased the amount and diversity of 'electronic' English that can beaccessed with comparative ease by individuals anywhere in the world.Today's students of English in non-English speaking environments are nolonger restricted to the limited amount of language provided by thecoursebook and classroom. They now have an endless amount of real Englishto explore and exploit. The question arises as to how they can use this wealthof text constructively, without being overwhelmed by the sheer amount ordensity of the information. A great deal of thought and development is goingon in this area at the moment, but with our present concerns in mind, I wouldlike to focus on one activity, that of 'concordancing',

and how I have used itto help my students develop their knowledge of collocations.A concordancer is a relatively simple piece of computer software whichallows a constructive search of large amounts of text for examples of aparticular word or phrase. Below is an edited example of a concordanceproduced for the word disappointment. Note how:

' the searchword disappointment is placed in the middle of the pagewhere it is easily seen.

' only a single line of text is listed for each example and these areusually not complete sentences.

' the list is ordered alphabetically in some way. In the example belowthe word to the left is the focus of organisation. This makes searchinsmuch easier.

40 Collocation - encouraging learner independence

t he dec i s i on w iL l come as a

a n ' s A u s t r a f i a . H e a c c e p t e d

n ' s a b s e n c e w o u l d b e a b i g

i : New Yo rk sa id : ' The b i g

l a r Y F : d r ^ r a d ^ a < n > u i c A i n\ - v . I l r J ! ! Y

n r r i d i n n n a r h : n c r h o h i n a a c '

f : i l r r a i c : n n n m n a r i o u l l . r r r

a : d h a d L o a d m i c , c o n t a i n e d

h r r M i L h : i I c a r h a a h a \ / ^ i - - -

' l : r r n l . r i n a : n A l : A a - n - ^ - - ^ nr u u Y a r l r r v c ^ p r e - - s e

I i ^ | ̂ ^ - F ^ -L v s r s Y a L s D q ^ P L s > - e v

m a n ' s a n t i c s , b u t a l s o f r o m

b l e r q r o h e o r a n l o d r u f t h e r

S t e w a r t ' s b o o k i s a g r e a l

made f i t . t r fe secret of her

I i r o f h a r o o e q u ' i r h t n i s i s

d i s a p p o i n c m e n L t o d e v e l o p m e n t a g e n c - L e s

d i c : n n a i n r m o n f : n d d a T a i f r r i r h . l i - - i* " " t Y

d i sappo incmen t f o r Spu rs as h i s f e l - l ow

^ i ^ - ^ - ^ j n - f r ^ * t s , . . ^ d a v ^ ^ r l c C \ ) a . r Lc f s d p p o r I t L u L e I I t w d s - . . 4 t

n i c : ^ h ^ i n t m 6 h f i n r h a P r z i a r . r , ^ , . as

d i sappo in tmen t . <p> Tha t r ace wen t t o

d i sappo inumenL aL one ' s own i ncompe tence

disappointment at what Hirnmler had Lo sa

^ i c = n n n i n r n 6 - F | ^ h i e . , ' L" , . - e n

d i s a p p o i n t m e n t t h a t t h e y h a d n o t e v e n h e

c l j s ; n n n ' n - m o r f a f t h e d e l a w i n r h e e l e c t

d i q a n n n i n f m o r f ^ \ / c r t h e C h a n c e l l o r o f

d rsappo in tmen t a rose f r om De K fe r k ' s p r

r l i c r n a n n i m 6 n l H i c m a r h n A i c r r n a r r l l a n n a nu r r u v P U l r r u r , , u r r u r r q l l c r r g c v

disappointment in the course of her husband

d i s a p p o i n t m e n t a n d f r u s t r a t i o n . < i t e m >

Concordances provide much dcher sources of co-textual information thandictionaries, and they can lead to a more efficient exploration of the collocatesof a word. As with the dictionary, students will need time and training in howto do this constructively. Simple exercises which familiarise the students withthe material and format are essential. For example, I presented my studentswith this frame and asked them to suggest ways of completing it: I got gradeE for Mathematics. The result was a . . . disappointment. Next" I askedthem to explore the concordance extract above, and they were able to extractbig, deep and greot as appropriate collocates for disappointment.

As students work through more and more exercises on collocation, theybecome more and more sensitive as to whether two words are possiblecollocates or not. Such sensitivity is particularly important for their ownproduction.

For example, one student of mine had written the sentence: I think there's abig possibility of rain today, but expressed doubt about the collocation bigpossibility. Rather than just answer his question we ran a concordance for thephrase big + possibility and found no examples, suggesting that thiscombination if not impossible, is at least unlikely. It is important to recognisethat it is not useful or appropriate to say it is a wrong collocation. We onlysearched a corpus of 2 million words, consisting mainly of newspaper articles,and a search of a larger and more varied corpus might well reveal an exampleof big possibility.

The purpose of the search is to uncover probable language, and my role asteacher is to show students how to find this for themselves, so that they willhave the confidence to decide on their own, not 'whether something exists' ornot, but whether it is probable. Decisions about collocation are about degreesof likelihood. not cerlainty.

This partnumber ohis own rnumber oluseful colstudent cathis can ta

Resourcesshould bebetween tlextract fro

t h e f i e f C .

d make gc

they have

f h a r a n ^ -

bery to c:

but there

c1y s ta teC

ned by tit€

on today a

l y e x i s t ,

de fea t was

f ina11y, - -

d that the:

r o f r r c o d - - -

f U R ' s a c t :

o 15 a pa : :

From theseand becam(work out soto his dictica contextual

Concordancdirecting thmaking altetthe followincost of adt,ethat it couldstudent ranfound an ahwould also a

agenc a e s

^ i ^ - i f a ru f v I r ! L f

- s f " l f o t

ren that

Cup was

'rJent to

- - d ^ 6 f 6 n - a

.!ad- to sa

r-en when

c even he

:he e fec t

: e 1 1 o r o f

i : - e r k ' s p r

' c - r r ' l I o n n a d

:er husband

: . <a tem>

nation thane collocatesning in howudents withn)' studentsI got grade

{ext I askedle to extract

cation, theyare possiblerr their own

ink there's allocation blglance for theng that thisto recognlseLon. We onlYraper articles,,l an example

Ld my role asthat they willdng exists' orrbout degrees

Collocation - encouraging learner independence 4l

This parlicular student then ran a concordance for possibility and noted anumber of examples of strong possibility in the readout. As a result, he editedhis own writing to I think there's a strong possibility of rain today. A rargenumber of occurrences were taken as an indication of a common and thereforeuseful collocation. What is important to recognise in this process is that thestudent can search this type of data and make informed decisions, and that allthis can take place without a teacher on hand.

Resources work best when their use is integrated, and concordances can andshould be used intelligently with dictionaries. An example of the interplaybetween these two resources is exemplified by the same student. Below is anextract from the concordance output for possibilie rhat the student explored.

the f iefd ' then i t becomes a possib i l i ty . The manager said he was

d make good p rog ress .Anoche r poss ib i l i t y i s t o f e t you rse l f o f f do i ng

they have also ru led out any possib i l i ty of support ing a r ights issue

the recogn i t i on o f Lhe cJea r poss ib -L l j t y t ha t t hese i nc reases i n t axe

be ry co cons ide r che f u r t he r poss ib i l i t y t ha t l ea rn i ng m igh t be excep

but. there appeared to be no possib i l i ty of an ear ly breakthrough.<p>

cfy stated. The most obvious possib i l i ty is that the waning of the ov

ned by t .he value of Beta-one possib i l i ty advanced by smith and pet .ers

on today are facing the real possib i l i ty of ef iminat ion as a people a

] y ex i s t , a f be i t as a r emo te poss ib i l i t y i n Eng land , i t i s be t t e r a lw

defeat was not even a remote possib i l i ty . Money fe l l in to h is hands a

f inal ly , there is the st . rong possib i l i ty that a cont .agion ef fect wi f f

d that Lhere is now a stronq possib i l i ty of prosecut . ions being brough

refused even to d iscuss the possib i l i ty that she might be separated

fuR ' s ac t i on a l so ra i ses t he poss ib i l i t y o f r e ta l i a t i on by o the r gove

o is a part icular ly worry ing possib i l i ty and r urge everyone, conserv

From these lines the student noted a number of instances of remote possibilityand became interested in the word remote. After encouraging him ro try towork out some of the word's sense from the concordance lines, I referred himto his dictionary, from which he was able to understand remote possibility asa contextual opposite for strong possibility.

concordancing is a useful tool to employ in correction. There are times whendirecting the student to a concordancer is more constructive than simplymaking alterations to the student's text. I pointed out to the student who wrotethe following: we will have to increase our prices because of the increasingcost of advertising our products that it contained increase and increasing andthat i1 could be improved by changing one of these words. In response, thestudent ran a concordance on cost + of and, from the lines below, quicklyfound an alternative in growing and rising. Subsequent use of a dictionarywould also allow the student to see possibilities in mounting and, spiralling.

42 Collocation - encouraging learner independence

F h a r 6 \ r ^ a : n a v c c n r i o n a l

q = r r i n o s l - o f i n a n e e f . h e e x L r a

r ^ r L ^ € 1 . , ^e X t r f O S U I e - U u i r e r l u r t U a C l n g

1 e a w a r e n e s s o f t h e g r o w a n g

T h 6 ^ ^ m ^ ^ n l ' h l : m a d r h o h i o h

T i h f ^ h q i n n l o d n r r r l h e h i o hu r P L v r r J r r r v + v v

w i t h t h e f a c L t h a t e h e h i g h

h a n : r r c c n f l L a h l a ee r P c r s

Lhe Government Eo the huge

n c l u d e s : ( 1 ) t h e i n c r e a s i n g

ies shoufder the inc reasang l

a e V i n n e a o ' r r r - l L e j n i c i a l

i f - L c e d L o m e e t t h e m o u n L i r g

t r J s t r a c e d w i c h t h e r i s i n g

r V l ] h i t t o e s c a p e t h e r i s i n g

" - - - n n a m i c T h a c n i z : l 1 i n o

cost of mater ia ls due to the staf f reduc

cost of borrowing- <p> 'We are happy to

cost of money. <p> Cal led s imple hedge

cos t o f h i gh l eve l s c i en t i f i c r esea rch ,

cost of computer memory chips and proble

cost of compuLer memory chips, inventory

cost of tunnef l inq ra ised doubt over cha

cost of the ra i lway works and decking t

cost of improvingi water qual i ty . <p> Th

cost of technology, in terms of developm

cost of research and enable them to tend

cost of the f ranchise includes t ra in ing-

cosL o f househo ld b i l l s . <p> The CB I f ea

cos t o f l i v i ng , o f f i c i a f co r rup t i on and

cost of the loan he took out to p ick up

cost of both the tunnel i tsel f and the

The increasing availability of vast banks of English stored on computef,

coupled with a simple but powerful search tool like a concordancer empowers

today's student. In particular, as we have noted, these resources ale ideal for

exploring collocation. It would seem essential, then, that all students should

be trained to use a concordancer and given access to the wealth of English text

that technology has made so easily available. Many teachers shy away from

technology in the classroom, many also labour undel the misconception that

this kind of activity is an expensive and unnecessaly luxury. I would argue

that concordancing is an essential tool for effective independent leaming, and

add that the software and hardware requilements are relatively cheap. At the

time of writing, concordancers like Wordsmith ale available for well under

f100 and they run on relatively small desktop computers. The programs are

not complex and it only takes one short induction lesson to train students to

use them for collocation searches.

It is worth adding here that a concordancer can be used to search any bank of

electronic text. This means that it is possible to provide mole efficient

collocation sealches by building up banks of text which match your students'

needs. This is particulally useful for subject-specific courses like Business

English, where teachers can build up a relevant bank of material by storing

business letters, memos etc, on the hard disk of a computer. This is a fairly

simple operation if the material is available as computer files, from CD-ROM'

or downloads from relevant sites on the World Wide Web. If all of this is not

possible, you can build up a less ambitious bank by the more laborious means

of scanning text into the computer. Banks of material can also be graded for

level to allow the less advanced student to concordance to good effect.

Recently, I have started building up banks of material for elementary and

intermediate students of English. Graded IeadeIS and General English

coursebook matelials are becoming increasingly available on CD-ROM and

provide ideal sources for the creation of appropriately graded banks of text.

Even the very elementary student can develop a degree of learner autonomy.

2.9 L" There isIt is im1single etsubsequessentialIevrsltln

pomts t(significavocabulunoteboolMany olor threethe bankthe franinformat

Previ

CRIT(pronto ex1The g

Revis

CRIT(pronrto extrThe gV: recA: he

Verb andwhich ha

It is im1vocabulaljust listecincreasedtheir listsword. Asof the coDictionat

In a vendevelopirdecodin-e

- - - € t - ^ i , . ^

- = h r h h l / f ^

::pIe hed.ge- r c c o : r a h

: n d n r ^ l r l a

r n \ 7 a h | ^ r l t

bt over cha: d o n l z i n a r

: : v . <p> ' t ' n

- - - r la r ra l nnm

:en to tend

- , ! a l r r r r r 9 .

: : D : i O n a n d- - n i a l z r r n

-: afrd the

computer,: empowersre ideal for3nLts should:n_s1ish text3U ar,r flgm

r-ption that, a , , 1 . - 1 4 . ^ , . aL r u l u 4 r 5 u u

armlg, andr + : n A t t h e

'r,'el1 under.oErams alesiudents to

:,nr- bank offi efficientLxr srudents'i- Business1 L . . - + ^ - - i - ^I L i - \ S t U I [ r B

; - ^ f ^ : * 1 . ,: n ] 4 t d [ r ]

I CD-ROM,

r- this is not

ntr|is meansr sraded for

Irrild effect.

nentarY and- I E * - l i ^ Lr i I L l l _ g l l D l l

f,-R.O\I andn-ts of text.r ixltonomy.

Collocation - encouraging leanter independence 43

2.9 Lexical notebooks

There is more to the successful learning of vocabulary than simply noticing.It is important to record what is noticed in some way. We also know that a>ilgle encounter with a word is not enough to ensure its acquisition, and thatsubsequent encounters - research suggests a minimum of perhaps seven - areessential. Furthermore, it is now accepted that acquisition is facilitated byrevisiting an item and recreating it in the production of language. A11 thispoints to the need to train our students to record, revisit and re-activate thesignificant vocabulary they meet. One simple tool for this purpose is thevocabulary notebook. A traditional way of recording vocabulary is in smallnotebooks. If these are to be helpful they need to be organised in some way.Many of my students keep notebooks organised a$habetically, devoting twoor three pages to each letter. Some pages are also devoted to situations - althe bank; functions - complaining; and topics - occwpatior?s. I have modifiedthe framework which I previously encouraged learners to use to recordinformation about a word by adding two extra lines, as these examples show:

Previous format

CRITICISM(pronunciation + translation)to express disapproval of something or somebodyThe government has received a lot of criticism for increasing taxes.

Revised format

CRITICISM(pronunciation + translation)to express disapproval of something or somebodyThe govemment has received a lot of criticism for increasing taxes.V: receive, come in for, ...A: heavy. severe. fierce. ...

Verb and adjective collocates are recorded in a clear and compact formatwhich has the advantage of taking up little extra space in the notebook.

It is important for both teachers and students to recognise that learningvocabulary is an ongoing and organic process. Items in the notebook are notjust listed and left. They are revisited and extended in the light of the leamers'increased exposure to the language. As such, I expect my students to,add totheir lists of collocates for criticism through subsequent encounters with theword. As their proficiency increases, their personal records incorporate moreof the collocates listed under the entry criticism, cited earlier from the LTPDictionary of Selected Collocations.

In a very real sense, a lexical notebook mirrors an individual's uniquelydeveloping mental lexicon. More importantly, the notebook is not just adecoding tool, but a resource which individuals can use as an encoding

44 Collocation - encouraging learner independence

instrument to guide their own ploduction of language. Encouragement to use

a notebook in this way should lead to fewer errors in their production. It is

now cleal that we need to give vocabulary notebooks a far greater priority in

language teaching, and raise our students' awaleness of the dynamic role they

have to play in the process of learning a language. In order to give the

expanded function and format of the notebook more pfominence, it seemed

appropriate to re-name it, and I now refer to vocabulary notebooks as lexical

notebooks.

2.L0 Word grammar

The definition of collocation that I have adopted in the classroom has a clear

but fairly nalrow focus. In the examples I cited earlier, the explorations of the

words views and criticism were confined mainly to searches of the left co-text

of occurrences of these words, and to relations between nouns, adjectives and

verbs. However, as noted earlier, students can and do notice more, and we

need to encourage further exploration of co-text. When I asked my students to

look at the right co-text of criticism in the sentence The government has

receiyed heavy criticism for increasing taxes, Ihey noted that criticism was

followed by the prepositionpr and the -ing form of the verb. We summarised

this information as . . . criticism fut raising /axes. Subsequent encounters

would obviously enrich the students' knowledge of other prepositions and

verb patterns which occur with criticism. These patteffIs are traditionally

associated with, and taught as, grammar, and I think it is appropriate to retain

that association. However, I think there is a useful pedagogic distinction to be

made between 'grammat'and what I have come to term 'word grammar'' The

difference lies in the way we approach grammar pattems.

Traditional grammal teaching tends to operate on a slot-and-filler approach,

with broad syntactic patterns such as the tenses as the primary focus. Lexis is

a secondary consideration and fills the slots in the syntactic frames that define

such patterns. A word grammar approach, on the other hand, begins with the

word. Our orientation is one of moving out from the word to uncover the

particular syntactic patterns associated with it. Consider the following

combinations:

The government has received a lot of criticism for its decision to raise taxes.

The government has received a lot of criticism over its decision to raise taxes.

The government has received a lot of criticism for deciding to raise taxes.

?The government has received a lot of criticism over deciding to raise taxes.

The last two sentences follow the broad pattern of nown + preposition + ...ing

form. However, most native speakers are uneasy with the final combination.

Furthermore, I was unable to find a single example of this pattern in any of

the large corpora I consulted. All this suggests that this particular pattern is

improbable and therefore of no value to the learner.

Traditioof gramras notedwhich isproducegrammadirectingIt directlanguagecompetel

I now fuwords arcollocateThe smalneatly su

Pracwori

It is precrestablishepresentml

As withrecordedthese notrto recordparticularall havepersonal ithis:

Curre

CRITI(pronuto explThe -ecV: recrA: heaG:

F: . . .T]

nent to use

rctiont It is

priority in

Lic role theY

to give the

e. it seemedks as lexical

has a cTeat

ilons of the

leii co-textecti\-es andre. and we

-irudents tot t i r tent hasi i : ' l S l / 7 WaS

,rmmarisedarcounterssr:ions and' l i r i n n o l l r r

L-- t0 letaln

r . t ron to bermar' . The

a : n n t n a c h

i is . Lexis is

.hat define

ns uith the:ncover the

inl I orvin o_ _ ' ' - _ _ _ o

i ' t l t5€ tC lX€ | .

i 'Jtse taxes.

t ' . . lse taxes.

t'.';i5e taxes.

; l i : t i + . . . L n 8

,-.n-LLrination.

r in rn r r n f

1f pallern ls

Collocation - encouraging learner independence 45

Traditional grammar teaching allows the student to generate a large amountof grammatically accurate language, which is extremely important. However,as noted earlier, a lot of language which is grammatically accurate is not used,which is one reason for the large amount of improbable language our studentsproduce. Grammar not only generalises, it often over-generalises. A wordgrammar approach complements the traditional approach to grammar bydirecting the students' attention to the syntactic constraints on the use of lexis.It directs the student towards probable language rather than possiblelanguage. Both approaches, then, are essential components of grammaticalcompetence.

I now find it helpful to extend my own and my students'perception of whatwords are. I think it useful to see them as having, not just meaning, not justcollocates, but also as having their own particular grammatical signatures.The small but significant changes this brings to my approach to teaching areneatly summarised by Michael Lewis when he suggests:

Practice should be directed towards helping students collocatewords and grammaticalise from words ro sentences.

It is precisely this kind of practice that we need to prioritise and add to theestablished practices we employ in the classroom. It is very much a case ofpresenting our students with a richer picture of language patteming.As with collocation, it is important that elements of word grammar arerecorded in lexical notebooks. I suggest two further categories for entries inthese notebooks, one (G) to record significant grammar patterns; the other (F)to record 'favourites', that is, pattems or expressions which the individualparticularly likes and will probably use. This last category is important as weall have our own particular affinities for certain chunks of language. Apersonal entry for criticism in a lexical notebook might look something likethis:

Current format for a learner notebook entrv

CRITICISM(pronunciation + translation)to express disapproval of something or somebodyThe govemment has received a lot of criticism for increasins taxes.V: receive, come in for ...A: heavy. severe. fierce ...G: ... criticism for raising taxes

... criticism for its plan (to build ...)

... criticism over the decision (to spend ...)F: ... come under heavy criticism for not providing ...

The same criticism has been levelled at ...

46 Collocation - encouraging learner independence

z.lL SummaryThe growing awareness of the rich contextual relationships in spoken andwritten discourse means that collocation and word grammar need to becomeestablished categories of description for both the teaching and learning oflanguages. A greater focus needs to be placed on developing the independentlanguage leaming skills that will help students develop their proficiency inthese areas. In particular, training needs to be given in the constructive use ofdictionaries and the vast and varied sources of English that moderntechnology has made available. Finally, guidance in managing this learningthrough frameworks such as lexical notebooks needs to be provided.

It is probably true that the role of the language teacher today is moving moreand more towards that of learning manager, and as such, a primary aim ofteaching must be to raise the students' awareness of their increasingresponsibility for, and power over, their own leaming.

Discussion QuestionsDo you have learners who would use computer-based corpora andconcordancing software with confidence?

Do you think it is useful to give all your students this confidence? If not, inwhat ways can you provide them with similar information?

What sort of information do you encourage your students to record in theirvocabulary notebooks?

References:Brown, P. R. (1994) Lexical Collocation: a strategy for advanced learners, in Modem EnglishTeacher. Vol. 3. No. 2Lewis, M. (1997) Implementing the Lexical Approach, LTPHilI, J. and Lewis, M. Eds. (1997) mP Dictionary of Selected Collocations, LIPCrowther, J. Ed. (1997) Oxford Advanced Leamers Dictionary, Oxford University PressSwan, M (1996) Language teaching is teaching language, Plenary IATEFLConcordance data generated by MicroConcord, OUP

fContact Oxford University Press for details of Wordsmith, ref'erred to on p 42.]

Cha

Revisicolloc

Jimmie l

In this chthe centrrevolutiorintermediof langualnumber cteacher toso that thrthey meeemphasisifrom the i

3.1 Lan

Devotionstudy andacculacy.developmideas whirstill assocof doing tmost inhitbring to te

When I Igrammaradded. Weof lexis.cupboard.years ofmthe past 1thinkin-e alalone. ThMcCarthl'.teachers tc

The morephenomen

ililnniltrnnnrnur(ruBruuil$ilnililililntuilt[MilIHil{ildll

spok6n andC to becomeleaming of

independent:oficiency inuctive use ofhat modernthis learningded.

noving moremary aim of.r increasing

corpora and

rce? If not, in

ecord in their

Modem English

. LTPversity Press

n l

Revising priorities 47

Chapter 3

Revising priorities: from grammatical failure tocollocational success

Jimmie Hill

In this chapter, Jimmie Hill suggests that putting lexis rather than grammar atthe centre of language teaching is more than just a modest change, it is arevolution. He stresses the size of the mental lexicon needed by even anintermediate learner, and suggests that this means greatly increasing the amountof language input provided in language courses. He draws attention to the sheernumber of collocations to be found in texts, and emphasises the need for theteacher to choose the right kinds oftext for their learners, then to guide learnersso that they can become independent collectors of collocations from input whichthey meet outside the classroom. ControversiallS he suggests that over-emphasising grammar is a major factor in preventing learners from moving onfrom the intermediate plateau.

3.1, Language and lexis

Devotion to a structural syllabus has dominated ELI for too long, with thestudy and practice of grammar seen as synonymous with the teaching ofaccuracy. We are at present in one of those awkward stages in thedevelopment of ELT methodology when teachers are still putting into practiceideas which most theoreticians have long abandoned. All manner of ideas arestill associated with the obsession with grammar: standards, traditional waysof doing things, how textbooks are written, how tests are consffucted, andmost inhibitingly of all, perhaps, the expectations both teachers and studentsbring to textbooks and courses.

When I first started teaching English, we were encouraged to think ofgrammar as the bones of the language, and vocabulary as the flesh to beadded. We now know that language consists largely of prefabricated chunksof lexis. That 'skeleton' image has been consigned proverbially to thecupboard. A central feature of lexis is collocation, an idea that for the first 15years of my career in ELT I hardly gave a moment's thought to, but which forthe past 10 years, has come to play a more and more central part in mythinking about English, the classroom, materials, and methodology. I am notalone. The work of John Sinclair, Dave Willis, Ron Carter, MichaelMcCarthy, Michael Lewis, and many others, has all contributed to the wayteachers today think about lexis and what it means for their teaching.

The more we have become aware of language as a predominantly lexicalphenomenon, the more we know that many of our previously cherished

48 Revising priorities

structuralist ideas are false. This is one of the most exciting tumarounds in ourthinking for a very long time.In one sense, it is a recognition of ways ofthinking which we all knew, but which many teachers have denied.

3.2 Language and learning

All language teachers know that the way they teach, and expect their studentsto learn a second language, is very different from the way they learned theirL1. We acquire our Ll efficiently without any explicit knowledge of grammarrules, parts of speech, or knowing what collocation is. During our Llacquisition we are happy with the idea of making 'mistakes'. We wait for thenatural process of acquisition to take its course. We know that our childrenlearn huge chunks of lexis, expressions, idioms, proverbs, nursery rhymes,songs, poems, bedtime stories without necessarily understanding each word.We now realise that in learning such chunks they are also acquiring thepronunciation, stress, and intonation pattems which will remain with themthroughout their lives. They are also leaming the grammatical system of theLl. No young native speaker of English exposed to Jack and Jill went up thehill to fetch a pail of water is aware of concepts such as simple past tense andirregular verbs. And for many children the illustrated 'pail' in the nurseryrhyme book willbe the closest they ever get to one in their lives, as metal pailshave now been largely replaced by plastic buckets. A lexical approach tolanguage and to leaming does not break everything down into individualwords and structures, but sees language in larger units. It could be seen as asensible return to traditional ways of learning after a rather futile trip downthe dead-end road of structuralism.

It is true that leaming anL2 is not the same as leaming your L1, but it is alsotrue that the human activity closest in nature toL2leaming is L1 learning. Todeny the many similarities seems perverse. It seems sensible to take on boardwhat lessons we can from the lexical nature of language and the lexical waysin which natives learn their mother tongue. In particular, that huge area oflanguage commonly referred to as idiomatic usage, is clearly learnedlexical ly. One of the most important areas of id iomatic language iscollocation.

3.3 What is collocation?

Many years ago, J.R. Firth defined collocation as 'the company words keep'- their relationships with other words. Another definition might be 'the waywords combine in predictable ways'. When we think of the number of wordsin English, the number of potential combinations runs into many millions. So,the first and most important fact about the nature of collocation is the sheernumber of individual collocations which exist in English. Past assessments ofthe number of individual words known by an educated native speaker pale

into insigexpresslothe typicamust dorgrammarknou, thasummansassumed icompietelexicon oIleamed pfcollocatiotall narural

For teache,:b-.en erioi i3r-h-rS ,,r1

l rnsuist ics: a . - r r , - ' r 1 ir 4 r ! : q u t L I l

-.r: l t t lnniirrlUpS rrtr: l i t Al l l ' t i t€ i

? l tot i le1l t S 1

rlinking, ht

3.4 CoilEven if theproblem oloften do str.tcan, but v'eand It's tticopen air? Arestaurant?or the studtconcept ofcollocation

Any analyslcompetencemistakes becollocationsthen focus cmake no dilbut a lack rcumbersomr

iiuxnintinMu!iiiuultuliltl

Cs in ouru'ays of

studentsed theirremmalour Llt ior the:hildrenrhr mes,hL ri'ord.ing them themn of thei u n t l t p

:nse andnurseryt : l n e i l s

'r-rach to

dir idual

i -n as aip dou'n

l t is a lsor i n o T n

ln board- . t . - . ^ . . ^_ J t \ \ d y S

ar"'a ofieamed

:u30e 1s

, l< L-een'

:r u'ordsi , - rn < Sn

he sheerments offter pale

Revising priorities 49

into insignificance when compared with the total number of items - words,expressions, idioms, and collocations - which exist in the mental lexicon ofthe typical educated native speaker. This fact of the size of the mental lexiconmust dominate all our methodological thinking. when we believed thatgrammar was the basis of all language learning, it was quite comforting toknow that we had discovered all the English tenses and they could besummarised on half a dozen pages of a gtammar book. Grammar - in itsassumed finiteness - was a superficially attractive basis for our syllabus. Thecomplete lexicon of English, on the other hand, is enormous. The mental

3.4 Collocational competence

concept of communicative competence, but we need to add the concept ofcollocational competence to our thinking.Any analysis of students' speech or writing shows a-lack of this collocational

iIi

ij

50 Revising priorities

verb + adjective + noun collocation He has a permanent disability. Even iflearners successfully navigate the grammar, what they produce often sounds

awkward and very 'intermediate'. Analysis of students' essay writing oftenshows a serious lack of collocational competence with 'de-lexicalised' verbs

such as get, put, make, do, bring, take. For example, I make exercise everymorning in the gym. Students with good ideas often lose marks because theydo not know the four or five most important collocates of a key word that iscentral to what they are writing about. In this respect, collocation is an oldproblem. Only now, however, are we beginning to see it might be a newsolution to many of our leamers' problems.

3.5 Collocations, idioms and phrasal verbs

Even during the height of structuralism, we knew that the lexicon wascomplicated. Apart from individual words, we were keenly aware that multi-word expressions were important. We identified phrasal verbs and idioms astwo important areas for students. The rest we labelled 'idiomatic usage'. It is

only recently through the rise of corpus linguistics that the extent of thefixedness of much language has been more widely recognised. We know thatfixed expressions range from the totally ftxed (An apple a day keeps thedoctor away), through the semi-fixed (What I'm saying/swggesting/proposingis . . .), to the fairly loose yet still predictable ( go on holiday). In one sense allcollocation is idiomatic and all idioms and phrasal verbs are collocations -

predictable combinations of different kinds. So, how can we use these tetmsmost usefully?

It seems sensible to continue using those terms and categories which languageteachers have found useful in the past - idioms and phrasal verbs - whileintroducing the term collocation to name and categorise that language whichhas previously been ignored or undervalued. Let us look more closely at each

of these three categories.

L.Idioms

An idiom is an expression which is relatively fixed and allows little or nochange. It is often metaphorical: He pwt the cat among the pigeons; Don'tcownt your chickens. Not all idioms are as pictorial as these two examples. Wecould think of catch the bus or fired with enthwsiasm as idioms because of theinherently metaphorical use of catch and fire. The native speaker has noproblem with the idea that bolh fish and buses can be caught or that non-physical things can be on fire.If the same verbs are not used in the learners'L1, it is probable that they will have a problem with the English idiomatic use.We need to broaden our concept of idiom to include much more metaphoricalusage, which is frequently hardly even recognised as idiomatic by nativesoeakers.

2.Phra

Phrasaithe lighwords. rcamot lon the bdistinctiphrasecategonidentify

3. Collo

As mentverbs anspendingmethodohelp theialways rrclear - i<more catl

A collocatime, spefrom onemind. Soshoulderscommonhave luncbecause aleamer. Ba more ob

Teachers rdifferent I

adjeoi,noun +verb +verb +adverbadverbverb + I

Collocatiotafticle + adsituation irof languagr

,'. Even if:n soundsing often;ed'verbs:tse everyause theyrrd that isis an old

be a new

:1COn WaS

hat multi-idioms assage'. I t is:nt of theknow thatI ' e e n r t h e

'proposing

e sense allocatlons -

ICSC TCITNS

r languagers - whiieaee whiche11' at each

little or nootts; Don'trmples. Weause of theier has nor that non-Le learners')matlc use.:taphorical

by native

Revising priorities 5l

2. Phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs contain a verb plus one or more pafticles: make up a story, putthe light out' The meaning may or may not be obvious from the individualwords. Again, learners may have no trouble with the riterar put the cat outbttcannot relate that to put the right out. some teachers "onrid".

get on (in geton the bus) as a phrasal verb. others think of it as verb plus preposition. Thedistinction is not helpfur for the classroom where ttre emprrasis is on thephrase as a whole rather than any analysis of it. Arguments aside, thecategory of phrasal verb is a useful one for both teachlrs and leamers toidentify certain items which they are tryrng to teach and learn.

3. Collocations

As mentioned above, in a sense, all colrocations are idiomatic and all phrasarverbs and idioms are collocations or contain collocations, but rather thanspending all our time describing and sorting expressions, the real issue for themethodologist is to try to help teachers to make simple categories which willhelp their students see some order and organisation in the lexicon. ELr hasalways recognised two types of multi-wo.Jit"- where the patterns have beenclear - idioms and phrasal verbs. It is time to introduce our students to onemore category of language as it really is _ collocation.A collocation is a predictable combination of words: get rost, make up for rosttime, speak your mind. Some combinations may be very highly predictablefrom one of the component words - foot the b,r, minirat ior"r, spring tomind. some 'sfong' collocations have the status of idioms - shrug yourshoulders - they are not guessable and are non-generative. Some may be socommon that they hardly seem worth remarking upon - a big Jtat, a nice catlhave lunch. (As just mentioned, however, native speakers must be careful,because an item which seems unremarkable to them might be a problem to aleamer. Because of their Ll, some learners may find eat runch or take runcha more obvious choice than have tunch.)Teachers will find it useful to draw their learners,attention to collocations ofdifferent kinds. I suggest that the following, in particular, wilr be of interest:

adjective + nounnoun + nounverb+adject ive+nounverb + adverbadverb + verbadverb + adjectiveverb + preposition + noun

a huge profita pocket calculatorlearn a foreign languagelive dangerouslyhalf understandcompletely soakedspeak through an interpreter

collocations can, in fact, be much ronger. For example: adverb + verb +article + adjective + noun + preposition i.roun = seriousry affect the poriticatsituation in Bosnia. The term 'collocation'

shourd nerp oring ail these chunksof language to students' attention as single choices.

<7 Revising priorities

3.6 Collocations and grammar

It is always an oversimplification to divide language up rnto categories whenall the elements of natural language use are interdependent. So, idioms havea grammar and can be minimally variable to fit the speaker's purpose:

Don'tHeShe's just

If only you hadn'tWhy did you

let the cat owt of the bag.

Collocations, too, cannot be divorced from the grammatical context in whichthey occur. There are two important pedagogical considerations here.

Firstly, it is important that teachers are aware of this. The simple collocationbrush your teeth is for native speakers predominantly used in the dentist'ssurgery and in the home when speaking to children or other family members.One of the most common structures in which it will occur is Have youbrushedyowr teethyet? - a parent teaching a child habits ofpersonal hygieneusually at bedtime. One can imagine a husband saying to his wife: I'll be withyou in a minute. I'm .just going to brush my teeth. I imagine few husbandswould ask their wives the question that they would ask their young children.We can speculate that sentences such as the following will be rarer than thepresent perfect and going to uses above:

I brwshed my teeth . . .I'm brushing my teeth . . .I'd brwshed my teeth . . .

Secondly, when the child hears the parent asking Have yow brushed yowrteeth? something else is going on. The child is hearing the present perfect ina natural context. For perhaps ten years of childhood a parent may ask thequestion. Children may never use the question themselves until they areparents themselves. What the children have been exposed to is an archetypicalexample of the present perfect without knowing anything explicit aboutEnglish tense names. It is clear that the acquisition of generalisable grammarrules must be partly related to the acquisition of lexical chunks containing thegramma.r in question. Perhaps the inability of our students to acquire someimportant grammatical areas is based on the implausibility of many of theexamples to which we expose them in current EFL grammar books andtextbooks [See also pp 163-167]. When we know that native speakers learnlanguage in lexical chunks, it is not unreasonable to assume that learningcertain chunks containing these structures will help learners in theiracquisition of English grammar pattems as well. [This is another plea toteachers to encourage learners to notice and record language in a linguisticenvironment in which it naturally occurs. Ed.l

3.7 WhCollocatirI suggest

1. The ler

The first zway worclexicon issubstituticstructuresspeaker tll istener's rmineral yexpectattodrunk by aformer areto a relatirstanding alimited, e1definitionwe cannot

2. Predictr

The very pgives us anThe preserto an extecollocationwhich arewhere learteachers arpattemin-e.

3. The size

Collocatiorseen, enorlhuge percetvary, but it Iis to be fou

4. The role

We know c<our mentaimemory.

rries wheniL1ms have- t 5 c .

it in which

ctrllocationle dentist's, rnembers.trIat e you

ral hl,giene[ ' l l be with

husbandsle children.rer than the

u:;lted your

nt perfect in-nal ask theLtLX they arearchetl,picalphcit aboutrXe grammarIntairdng theu-t]Uile SOille

nirnv of the- t'ooks andn:akers leamh:t learning:rs rn their,ther plea toL a trn-euistic

Revising priorities 53

3.7 Why is collocation important?

collocation is important from a pedagogical point of view for many reasons.I suggest at least these nine are important for teachers:

1. The lexicon is not arbitrary

The first and most obvious reason why collocation is important is because theway words combine in collocations is fundamental to all language use. Thelexicon is not arbitrary. we do not speak or write as if language were one hugesubstitution table with vocabulary items merely filling slots in grammaticalstructures. To an important extent vocabulary choice is predictable. when aspeaker thinks of drinking, he may use a common verb such as have. Thelistener's expectations predict a large number of possibilities: tea, coffee, milk,mineral water orange jwice, even teqwila sunrise, but there would be noexpectations of engine oil, shampoo, sulphuric acid. The latter liquids aredrunk by accident, but linguistically they are not 'probable'in the way that theformer are. Looking at arater verb - enhance - the choice of objects is limitedto a relatively small number of nouns or noun patterns, eg his reputation, thestanding of the company.lf the verb is do, the choice is far greater, but stilllimited, eg his best, the honourable thing, but not a mistake. So, the verydefinition of collocation - the way words combine - gives it a status whichwe cannot deny.

2. Predictability

The very predictability of the collocation examples in the previous paragraphgives us another clue as to why collocation is an important pedagogical issue.The present simple is irnportant in classrooms because we can predict its useto an extent which helps learners. In a similar way, there are patterns tocollocations which can make learning easier. There are parts of the lexiconwhich are organised and patterned, and classrooms are, by definition, placeswhere learning is encouraged by using the most efficient means known toteachers and where leamers need to be encouraged to notice predictablepatterning.

3. The size of the phrasal mental lexicon

collocation is important because this area of predictability is, as we haveseen, enormous. Two, three, four and even five-word collocations make up ahuge percentage of all naturally-occurring text, spoken or written. Estimatesvary, but it is possible that up to 70vo of everything we say, hear, read, or writeis to be found in some form of fixed expressron.

4. The role of memory

we know collocations because we have met them. we then retrieve them fromour mental lexicon just as we pull a telephone number or address from ourmemory.

54 Revising priorities

ELT has not given sufficient thought to this idea. Linguists now give a much

greater importance to memorised, familiar, and idiomatic language. There

was a leaction against these ideas during the sixties and seventies when

methodologists reacted against any suggestion that leaming by heart had any

place in L}leaming. Phrase-books, which had played an important part in

language learning for centuries, were scol'ned in favour of the all-powerful

grammatical model of language leaming.

Every native speaker parent knows how children love to hear the same rhymes

and stories night after night to the extent that they can say the rhymes and tell

the stories themselves. As adults we all have a huge store of memorised text

in our heads, ranging from poetry, addresses, telephone numbets, proverbs,

idioms, sayings, clich6s, to catchphrases, adverlising slogans and jokes. Most

often we have made no attempt to learn these items; knowing them is simply

part of what we mean by being a native speaker. How do I know lead on

Macduff, coughs and sneezes spread diseases, flavowr of the month, freegratis and for nothing, each and every one of us, Don't forget the fruit gums

Mum, and even That's the way the cookie crwmbles? I may never use them.

Indeed, I may be allergic to anyone who does use them! The fact of the matter

(itself a good example of a fixed phrase) is that every native speaker has a vast

store of these obviously fixed expressions. We have a much bigger store of

collocations, ready for use when required.

As language teachers, it is obvious that we have underestimated the role of

memory in language learning. Not enough research is available to us at

present to make useful statements about how memory can be influenced. We

do know. however, that the most crucial element in a leamer's acquisition of

a lexical item is the number of times it is heard or read in a context where it

is at least partially understood. We also know it is more important to hear or

read an item than to use it. Communicative methodology mistakenly assumed

that early production was all important. What is obvious is that what the

language learners are exposed to from the earliest stages is crucial. Good

quality input should lead to good quality retrieval. Impoverished input will

lead to impoverished retrieval.

5. Fluency

Collocation allows us to think more quickly and communicate more

efficiently. Native speakers can only speak at the speed they do because they

are calling on a vast repertoire of ready-made language, immediately

available from their mental lexicons. Similarly, they can listen at the speed of

speech and read quickly because they are constantly recognising multi-word

units rather than processing everything word-by-word' One of the main

reasons the leamer finds listening or reading difficult is not because of the

density of new words, but the density of unrecognised collocations. The

main difference between native and non-native speakers is that the former

have met imade churmuch faste

6. Comple

Typical inttime, andideas. Thirexpresslonlanguage; 1complexiflcomplex nmore expothey develcand eventui

The traditi<orthodoxy,'present'ar

practice is Iby speakin5we need to Iinput at lov

7. Collocat

Paradoxicalthought is tallows usmanipulatewords. Tryrecognised Ithat collocatEFL methorworked in Sthis to be fallots of oppotmore chunlipointed out.

8. Pronunci

I wiil alwalMichael Su.isimilar in stvocabulary tread the poel

\ give a muchrguagg. There:r,enties whenheart had any

rortant part me all-powerful

3 same rhymeshvmes and tellremorised textrers, proverbs,rd jokes. Most.hem is simplykstow lead onie ntonth, free,,ite frwit gums:i er use them.:r of the matter'eker has a vastligger store of

ted the role ofLlable to us ati:rt-luenced. We, acquisition oftntext where it:tant to hear orikenly assumed, that what the, crucial. Good=hed input will

runlcate more1o because theye. immediatelyr at the speed of'ing multi-wordre of the mainbecause of the

rllocations. Thethat the former

Revising priorities 55

have met far more English and so can recognise and produce these 'ready-

made chunks', which enable them to process and produce language at amuch faster rate.

6. Complex ideas are often expressed lexically

Typical intermediate student speech, for example, is laboured, one word at atime, and uses simple vocabulary to express both simple and complicatedideas. This inevitably causes problems. Simple language is ideal for theexpression of simple ideas. Complex ideas are difficult to express in complexlanguage; they are even more difficult to express in simple language. But thecomplexity needed here is not convoluted grammar; it is usually lexical -

complex noun phrases, frequently made of supposedly 'easy' words. Themore exposure students have to good quality input and the more awarenessthey develop of the lexical nature of language, the more they will recogniseand eventually produce longer chunks themselves.

The traditional Present-Practise-Produce paradigm, for so long the acceptedorthodoxy, tends to over-emphasise the 'practise' stage, when in reality the'present' and 'produce' stages are the most important. This does not mean thatpractice is unimportant. While it is true that you do not 'learn'new languageby speaking, it is only by speaking that you can develop confidence. However,we need to place a much greater emphasis on good-quality written and spokeninput at lower and intermediate levels than is currently the case.

7. Collocation makes thinking easier

Paradoxically, the reason we can think new things and speak at the speed ofthought is because we are not using new language all the time. Collocationallows us to name complex ideas quickly so that we can continue tomanipulate the ideas without using all our brainspace to focus on the form ofwords. Try to say manipulate ideas or brainspace more efficientlyl Both arerecognised verb + noun andnown + nown collocations. It is a safe conclusionthat collocation is an important key to fluency. It is one of the sacred cows ofEFL methodology that fluency comes with practice. Any teacher who hasworked in Scandinavia or Holland, where English is widely spoken, knowsthis to be false. Advanced students do not become more fluent by being givenlots of opportunities to be fluent. They become more fluent when they acquiremore chunks of language for instant retrieval. As Stephen Krashen haspointed out, acquisition crucially depends on the quantity and quality of input.

8. Pronunciation is integral

I will always remember a lecture at TESOL France some years ago whenMichael Swan asked me to read a poem to his audience in Scots - a languagesimilar in structure to English, but with enough significant differences invocabulary to make it only pafiially comprehensible. Because I was able toread the poem meaningfully, ie chunking it correctly, the audience all laughed

56 Revising priorities

in the coffect places. In one sense they 'understood' the poem while notunderstanding a large proportion of the individual words. Most teachers willhave had the experience of watching and enjoying a Shakespeare play. Fewwill understand fully the nuances of Shakespeare's language. The actors,however, speak the lines meaningfully, correctly chunked for us.

Because leamers create much of what they say from individual words, theirpronunciation, stress, and intonation, can be difficult for the listener. Thegreat added bonus to knowing a large number of collocations and other longerexpressions is that if learners leam the stress pattern of a phrase as a whole,their stress and intonation will be better.

9. Recognising chunks is essential for acquisition

There are immediate methodological implications. Teachers should read textsaloud in class so that students hear the text correctly chunked. In class weshould do no unseen reading aloud and less silent reading. The reasonstudents find unseen reading so difficult is because they don't recognise thechunks - they read every word as if it were separate from every other word,so during silent reading students may be chunking totally wrongly. And mis-chunking matters. Correctly understood and stored, lexical items should beavailable for immediate use. Students cannot store items correctly in theirmental lexicon if they have not identified them correctly; incorrectly chunked,the input will either not be stored at all or will be wrongly stored. In eithercase it cannot be available for retrieval and use - put simply, students cannotlearn from input which they mis-chunk.

3.8 Collocation in texts

It is interesting to examine written texts from different genres from acollocational point of view. It soon emerges that collocation is an importantfeature of all such texts, although different kinds of texts do exhibit differentcollocational characteristics, making some texts more suitable than others forthe EFL classroom. Let us compare fiction, a financial report, a newspaperarticle and finally, a typical EFL text. Collocations which are of interest areunderlined.

1. George Eliot's Middlemarch

The following short extract shows that collocation is nothing new, but isimportant even in a literary text considered a classic:

Overworked Mrs Dagley - a thin, worn woman, from whose lifepleasure had so entirely vanished that she had not even any Sundalzclothes which could give her satisfaction in Ueparug_fql_Ehulqh -had already had a misunderstanding with her husband since he hadcome home, and was in low spirits, expectingthe worst.

The temptation is to think that 'good writers' do not use such 'ready-made,

off-the-s

There arwould a6their owrit is in thpartly rerphysical iown.

2. Frank

Thestuffand 1whic

Here a mclines of teMcCourtargument lhold hereof expresssuggests tJprecisely r

3. Financir

ShareyestermarkeThe sldifficu

Financial Iseveral of r,,shat"ply, shd

Any coursecollocationaleamers fortrend which

4. Newspap

The wcof a balJuli", u

El Juli.

'm ldle notuhers. willplev. Fewhe actors,

,ords. theirtener. The:her longers a whole,

i read textsn class wehe reason:ognise the)ther word,,. And mis-; should bet1r' in their11'chunked,*n. In eitherents cannot

nes from an importantbit differentur others forL ne\\.spapeflnterest are

1.1911,, but is

rse lifeSundayrurch -

he had

ready-made,

Revising priorities 57

off-the-shelf 'tricks such as collocation, but they do.

There are arguments for more collocations in this extract, but most readerswould agree with those underlined. A novelist, by definition, is free to maketheir own word combinations - in other words, to break our expectations. Andit is in the breaking of the conventional that the greatness of great literaturepartly resides. So, to describe Mrs Dagley as a 'worn woman' evokes herphysical and mental state, but could not be guessed. The phrase is Eliot's veryown.

2. f,'rank McCourt's Angela's Ashes

The new rich people go home after Mass on Sundays all airs andstuff themselves with meat and polatoes, sweets and cakes galore,and they think nothing of drinking their tea from delicate little cuoswhich stand in saucers to catch the tea that overflows.

Here a modern novelist uses six identifiable collocations in the space of a fewlines of text. while writing something original and creative both Eliot andMcCourt rely on their store of ready-for-use expressions. My previousargument that we use collocations in speech to give us thinking time does nothold here since the writer has lots of time to think of new and original waysof expression. The fact that Eliot and McCourt use collocations so readilysuggests that the other reason they are common is because they expressprecisely what we wish to express with or without time constraints.

3. Financial report

Shares in Independent Insurance recovered by more than 5 per centyesterday after the company bucked the trend in the insurancemarket by reporting a 22 per cent increase in underwriting profit.The shares, which fell sharply last year after the company spoke ofdifficult trading rose l4p to 263.5p.

Financial English is dominated by a number of predictable collocations,several of which are used in this short extract: shares recovered, shares fellsharply, shares rose, buck the trend, the insurance market, dfficult trading.

Any course in Financial English would need to identify some of the commoncollocational patterns, verbs which combine with share, while also preparinglearners for the large number of metaphorical expressions such as buck thetrend which are common in such texts.

4. Newspaper article

The world of bullfighting has discovered a new legend in the formof a bablu-faced 16-)'ear-old called Julian Lopez, but known as "ElJuli", who has become the youngest fully-fledged matador ever.

El Juli, a shy and introverted teenager, has been booked up for the

58 Revising priorities

b[g bullfighting toumaments of the forthcoming season and isexpected to kill more than 200 bulls in his first full season in Spain.

The teenager has spent most of his time in Latin America since hequalified as a matador last October when he was still just 15.

His skill and courage has seen him awarded the ultimate accoladein bullfighting - being carried out of the bullring on the fans'shoulders - in more than a dozen Latin American cities in recentweeks.

Quite a lot of this language is worthy of comment. Notice these patterns:

a) the world of sport/art/opera/ballroom dancing etc.b) he re-appeared in the form of a creature half-human, half-bird.c) the (superlative adjective) . . . ever: the youngest fully-fledged matador

ever the best holiday eve4 the most expensive motorbike everd) There seem to be two collocations combined in: A baby-faced 16-year-

old called, namely a baby-faced l6-year-old and a 16-year-old called . . .e) Finally, awarded the ultimate accolade is a very strong collocation

typical of such newspaper texts.

The first and most obvious point to make about factual texts like this is thehigh percentage of words which occur in fixed phrases and collocations. Thisis completely typical of such texts. Collocation is either so commonplace thatit is unremarkable or so inherent in text that it should have a central place inall teaching. These texts are clearly more suited to the EFL classroom than theextracts taken from fiction.

Looking at the bullfighting text from a teaching point of view, it would bemadness to try to bring all the collocations to the attention of students. Wechoose texts for class use for different reasons: because we think students willbe interested in the topic; because there is language which might beimmediately useful; because the language is of a quality to which studentsshould be exposed. Over-exploitation of any one aspect will kill students'interest. Class time should be spent on a few useful collocations. Studentsshould then be encouraged to study the rest themselves at home.

A collocation will be worth drawing to students' attention if it satisfies twoconditions - it is suitable for their level and it has some common culrency,such as the phrase qualify as a . .. .The 'level' of an item will always be asubjective issue, but I suggest the following rough divisions from the textabove:

Elementary: spend time, still just 15, in recent weeksIntermediate: the world of . . ., known as . . ., theyoungest. . . ever,

qualifu as a. . .Advanced: a shy and introverted teenager the forthcoming season,

awarded the ultimate accolade.

The remaithose whirthem. Ingrammattc'milk'ever

5. EFL cor

In some lrinclusion ildealing wirfrom the pridentify at Ito leamers'

plan afthave a pshare inta lovell,went to Ja teenagI told he)

And the follhave theit mighr )have a saI see her

This means rones containin a text of rchosen coursget the mostand density cThere are irnshould be aslidentifying arunderline u:notebooks iri Icollocation. .words; it is in

3.9 Teach

In order to teamethodology istress, and gr

. . - J : -l l r f l r l iL 15

rni 5Fatn.

$irJe he

i , i

a[coiade

he t'ans'

m recent

l patterns:

ird.

:,1 tnatador

f

'ti I6-t'ear-' . ' r i d c a l l e d . . .

!i atl0n

rk; this is theocations. Thisrnonplace thatrntral place in;room than the

,,. it r,r,ould bei srudents. WeL, students willr"-h might berhich studentskltr1 students'

lons. Studentsie"

it satisfies twomon culTency,ilLtr alu,ays be attom the text

? € 5 t . . . e v e \

tftlfitg season,

Revising priorities 59

The remaining collocations fall into the most important teaching category -

those which are not worth spending class time on unless students ask aboutthem. In a structuralist approach teachers did not comment on everygrammatical point in a text; so in a lexical approach it would be misguided to'milk' every text for the last drop of lexis.

5. EFL coursebook texts

In some ways, the most interesting texts to consider are those chosen forinclusion in popular EFL coursebooks - texts of the type teachers are used todealing with every day in class. Examining a single two-hundred-word extractfrom the popular Headway series (Upper Intermediate p 77) it was easy toidentify at least the following collocations which teachers could usefully drawto learners' attention:

plan afamilyhave a problemshare interestsa lovely age for (a child)went to schoola teenzge daughter/sonI told her off

And the following are arguably just as useful:have the one child by the time I'dit might have been nice to . . . we were closest

my best.friendhave the same sense of humourcompletely obse s sed withgrow up suddenlygrow away from (your family)an endless stream of(people)in front of (my) friends

they'd gone away

for days afterwards

This means over twenty useful collocations - including some relatively longones containing important grammatical features as part of the lexical item -

in a text of only 200 words. The conclusion one must come to is that well-chosen coursebook texts are full of collocational expressions. For students toget the most out of such texts, their attention has to be drawn to that wealthand density of collocation.There are immediate classroom implications for how we deal with texts. Weshould be asking students to predict collocations which are in the text byidentifying and gapping them. We should be asking students to notice andunderline useful ones, and encouraging them to store them in theirnotebooks in some retrievable way, along with the L1 equivalent of the wholecollocation. Making sense of text involves not only understanding newwords; it is intimately bound up with the ability to identify collocations.

3.9 Teaching collocation

In order to teach collocation we have to give it the same kind of status in ourmethodology as other aspects of language such as pronunciation, intonation,stress, and grammar. We have to see it as being as central to language

have a sonI s e e h e r a s . . .

60 Revising priorities

acquisition as those other aspects of language which we have long recognised.50 years ago nobody in the medical world had heard of DNA. Today it iscentral to much medical research. The same is true of lexis in general andcollocation in particular. Collocation is not an added bonus which we payattention to once students have become sufficiently advanced. Collocationshould play an important part in our teaching from lesson one.

1. Teaching individual collocations

In the same way that we teach individual words * vocabulary - we need toteach collocations. Rather than wait for students to meet common collocationsfor themselves, we need to present them in context just as we would presentindividual words. Here are some examples'. have a bath, make friends, fall inlove.

At a higher level, when students are leaming less common vocabulary, wemust be aware that some words ale used in a very restricted number ofcollocations. There is no point in knowing the meaning of the wordsimpetuows or initiative unless you also know the collocations'. impetuousbehaviour; take the initiative.

When teaching a new word, teach some of its most common collocations atthe same time. If the word is ferryt, teach:

go on the carferrya roll-on roll-off ferrytake the ferry from (Liverpool) to (Belfost).

If the word is belief teach', strong beliefs, have a belief, belief in God / thepower of medicine / yourself. But you might want to choose which class youteach beggar belief to - even if it is one of the 'strongest'collocations ofbelief. Strong collocations tend to be rare, and we do not want to replaceteaching obscure words with teaching obscure collocations. A good rule,however, is never to teach a new word - particularly a noun - without givinga few common collocates.

This idea that knowing the meaning of a word is useless unless you also knowsomething of how the word is used is relatively new in ELT. Until veryrecently, dictionaries were seen only as decoding devices, designed to helpstudents understand the meaning of words they were not sure of. They werenot seen as encoding or 'productive'- helping students to compose their owntext. It is probably asking too much of any one dictionary that it does both. Itis definitely worth emphasising to students that they do not really 'know'or'own' a word unless they also know how that word is used, which meansknowing something about its collocational field. There are many pairs orgroups of words such as date/appointment/meeting or broad/wide where thedifference between the words is onlv clear from a knowledse of their differentcollocational fields.

Tnswhautl

1 .

These exaclearly shdifference

2. Makinl

As menticnumber ollimited cl:methodolclesson, gir,only addvocabulanindividualcollocation

What teacllanguage lrthink big-eexpresslon,underline iTaking a cccan will bewith a com

8 .q

10.1 1

cognised.oday jt isrneral and

h we pay

rllocation

e need tollocationsld presentds, fall in

rulary, weumber ofhe wordsmpetuous

catrons at

God / theclass you;ations oflo replacerood rule,)ut giving

also know-Intil very:d to helplhey weretheir ownes both. It"know'or

Lch means

I parrs orwhere ther different

Revising priorities 6l

TnsrWhich of the verbs speak, say, tell fit best into the gaps in theseauthentic examples?

1. I can't . . . for the rest of the staff, though.

2. As I . . ., they've already appointed somebody.

3. You'd better do exactly what the doctor . . .

4. Don't wolry. Everything you . . . me is confidential.

5. These figures don't . . . us what will happen next month.

6. It's too soon to . . . whether an agreement can be reached.

7. UN sources . . . the agreement goes much further than any

previous one.8. To . . . you the truth, I was half expecting it.

9. It may be that actions will . . . louder than words.

10. Can L . . to Mr Harrison, please?

11. Shall we . . . two o'clock?

1 2 . . . . m e a b o u t i t !

These examples - and they are only a small selection of these three verbs -clearly show that it is not possible to give a simple explanation of thedifference of meaning with words of this kind.

2. Making students aware of collocation

As mentioned above, the most significant feature of collocation is the sheernumber of individual collocations needed for a mature adult lexicon. Withlimited class time teachers can only teach some of the most common. If, asmethodologists tell us, we should teach no more than 10 new words perlesson, given that half might be learned, a normal school year of lessons willonly add 500 words to a student's vocabulary. This strongly suggestsvocabulary learning techniques are more important than the teaching ofindividual words. The same is true for idioms, fixed expressions andcollocations.

What teachers must do is make students aware of collocation as a vital key tolanguage leaming. On the simplest level, teachers could encourage students tothink bigger than the word - always to look for the two- or three-wordexpression. Noticing is an important stage in learning. Asking students tounderline all verb + noun collocations in a text will be a typical exercise.Taking a common word and asking students to find as many collocates as theycan will be another typical activity in awareness-raising. As we saw above,with a common verb like speak we cannot say that students really know the

62 Revising priorities

word unless they know at least the following possibilities:

speak aforeign language speak (French) speakfluently

speak your mind speak clearly speak with a (welsh) accent

speak in public speak openly sPeak volumes

Sgch a verb would have received scant attention in the past and such attention

as it did receive would be likely to concentrate on 'explaining'the difference

between speak, talk artd tell. As we saw in the task above' however, exploring

the collocational field is far more helpful than any explanation of the

supposed differences.

3. Extending what students already know

Extend students'collocational competence with words they already know as

well as teaching new words. A student with a vocabulary of 2,000 words will

only be able to function in a fairly limited way. A different student with 2,000

words, but collocationally competent with those words, will also be far more

communicatively competent. Many native speakers function perfectly well

using a limited vocabulary with which they are collocationally competent.

The message for ELI is that more class time needs to be spent with some of

the more common words, in particular the 'de-lexicalised' verbs' qet, put,

take, do, make etc. Students who know 2,000 words and six collocations with

each, know 12,000 expressions. For example:

make: make a mistake / a meal / trowble / a complaint / friends / space forend: at the end of / in the end / come to an end / to the bitter end / at a

loose end / at the end of the daYat: at once / at first / at work / at school / at college / not at all

As the last example shows, the words with least content are closest to

traditional grammaf. The discriminating exploration of word-grammar is

more likely to help learners than either the more exotic parts of traditional

grammar or teaching'difficuit' words.

4. Storing collocations

An organised lexical notebook is essential for all students. Deciding where to

put an item, writing it down, and looking at iL again along with other similar

items is all part of the constant revisiting of language which is part of the

learning process. Students' lexical notebooks do not need to be glossy

professionally-produced products. The simplest looseleaf binder with blank

pages can be turned into an organised lexicon very easily. We need to manage

students' notebooks in the same way we manage other areas of their learning'

It is easy to imagine a collocation section arranged in the following ways:

1. Grammatically: sections such as noun + noun, adiective + noun,

verb + noun, adverb + adjective2. By common key word: collocations with do, make, get, up, speak eic'

3. By topic: collocations to talk about holidays, travel, work etc'

We do notthat we slinstantly.revised arlisting nerthat thiscountries rUK-produ

3.10 crJust as impto teach. Aclass. If ccyour past tiof all kind:and let thelrare andcollocationinvolves utlmportantcollocation

1. Unique i

It is usefulare probablcommentat(collocation.coffee. Stmt

2. Strong c

A large nustrong. Prelalthough thiWe often hieven movedthat any kncwould be scollocates.

3. Weak col

Many thingscan make ctcolours in Etis not as sim

: , : iccent

r!tentlon

1,fierence:rploringrn of the

,. know asr, ords will', rth 2,0003 rar more:t:tiy well

:n some of,. Set, pWt,rii.ons with

l1.t,ce fori.1! o

closest to:IAITIMAT 13'raditional

r-q rvhere to,ther similarpart of the

r be glossy' ,,r,ith blankJ to manageeir learning.

Ing ways:

t10L{n,

. speak etc.3 tC.

Revising priorities 63

We do not know how we store language in our mental lexicons. We do knowthat we store it in patterns of different kinds which allow us to retrieve itinstantly. Storing lexis in an organised way in a notebook so that it can berevised and retrieved quickly must be better than not storing it, or simplylisting new items without organising them. one of the advantages of this isthat this makes learning less 'materials-dependent'. In resource-poorcountries most students often have access to a simple notebook when glossyUK-produced coursebooks are financially beyond them.

3.10 Choosing which collocations to teach

Just as important as choosing which collocations to teach is deciding what notto teach. Avoid the temptation to teach every collocation which comes up inclass. If collocation is an idea you may not have been very conscious of inyour past teaching, it is very easy to go overboard. They are everywhere. Textsof all kinds are packed with them. Draw students' attention to irnportant onesand let them find and record others for themselves. Do not, however, confuserare and obscure collocations with important ones. Choosing whichcollocations to teach and which ones to ignore, given limited classroom time,involves understanding collocational strength. As we shall see, the mostimportant for the classroom are what we may call medium-strengthcollocations.

1. Unique collocations

It is useful to think of collocations on a cline or spectrum from those whichare probably uniquefixed/strong to those which are flexible/weak. Severalcommentators have pointed out the uniqueness of foot used as a verb in thecollocation/oot the bill. We cannot imaginefooting the invoice, or footing thecoffee. Similarly, we shrug our shoulders, but no other part of our anatomy.

2. Strong collocations

A large number of collocations, although not unique, are strong or verystrong. Predictably, we may talk of trenchant criticism or rancid butteralthough tlris does not mean that other things cannot be trenchant or rancid.We often have ulterior motives or harbowr grwdges while being redwced oreven moved to tears. Such strong collocations are not unique, but it is clearihat any knowledge of the words trenchant, rancid, motive, grwdge, or tearsu'ould be seriously incomplete without some knowledge of these strongcollocates.

3. Weak collocations

\{any things can be long or short, cheap or expensive, good or bad. Studentscan make combinations such as blue shirt, red car elc; they can apply thecoiours in English in a similar way to their own language. In fact, the pictureis not as simple as that, but for most teaching purposes we pretend that it is.

l',rilil ,

6-+ Reisirtgpriorities

However, there is something 'more predictable', and so more collocational,about these examples: a white shirt, white wine, red wine, red hair a blackmood, a blue film.

Similarly, most teachers would agree that the adjective good is not veryinteresting from a teaching point of view. It can be applied to anything - ameal, a joumey, a government. But notice what happens with some slightlylarger multi -word expre s sions containing g o o d :

It'll take you a good hourOh, he's a good age.He'll do it in his own good time.

we need to recognise that easy words have many uses; they are part of manyweak collocations, but may also be a component of many fixed or semi-fixedexpressions. students need to be made aware of their more predictablecollocations.

4. Medium-strength collocations

The main leaming load for all language users is not at the sffong or weak endsof the collocational spectrum, but in the middle - those many thousands ofcollocations which make up a large parl of what we say and write. Mostintermediate students will know the words hold and conversation, but may notknow that you can hold a conversation They know the words make andmistake, but have not stored make a mistake in their mental lexicons as asingle item. [Remember the key point about lexical items is precisely thatthey represent single choices of meaning, and are recognised and stored assingle items. Ed.l

This, then, explains why learners with even 'good vocabularies' still haveproblems. They may know a lot of words, but their collocational competencewith those words is very limited. I have come to the view that the main thrustof classroom vocabulary teaching at intermediate level and above should beto increase students' collocational competence with their basic vocabulary,while stressing to them the need to acquire more new words on their ownthrough independent reading.

A nomadic tribe is a sftong collocation because nomadic collocates with avery limited number of nouns; a big .flat is a weak collocation and of littleinterest to teachers, but He's recovering from a major operation is a complexmedium-strength collocation. Each individual word may be known tostudents, but they probably do not know the whole collocation. They are morelikely to build the idea phrase by phrase: My father - he's getting better - hehad a big operation. Full marks for communicating meaning, but more of aneffort for both speaker and listener. It is this area of medium-strengthcollocations which is of prime importance in expanding leamers' mentallexicons.

3.11 IAlthou_ulinto therrand collclangua-re

Theorieslinked. Irwhich -eiralso have

In class irare also alearnin-e trlistenin-e.on radio iinteract ninternet. Lelement in

l. Revien

It is clearsyllabus" isentence -qlon grammemphasis rvocabularrthan teache

The sheer ithe learningreater) meteach agree

a. Frequelrmpofiant. imay be hi_elhighly freqr

b. Suitabililrmportant pnatlve-speakSuch items icontext. Ifmisunderstorintend.

c. Level: the

cational,a black

not veryhing - ar slightly

of many:mi-frxededictable

'eak endsrsands ofite. Mostr may not,mke andons as asely thatstored as

;till havenpetencedn thrusthould becabulary,heir own

:s with aI of littlecomplexnown toare moreztter - heore of anstrength;' mental

Revising priorities 65

3.11 Pedagogical implicationsAlthough I meet many teachers who are trying to incorporate lexical ideasinto their teaching, it seems that what we now know about the nature of lexis,and collocation in particular, raises important issues for everyone involved inlanguage teaching.

Theories of language and theories of language learning are inextricablylinked. In ELT we now have a more comprehensive model of language, onewhich gives at least equal importance to the lexicon as to the grammar. wealso have a more horistic view of how second languages are learned.In class we may adhere loosely to a present-practise-produce model, but weare also acutely aware of its limitations. We are readier to accept that the bestleaming probably happens outside the crassroom when studenis are reading,listening, watching and interacting with the language in a book, newspaper,on radio or TV or with a native speaker. Increasingly, too, many leamersinteract with the language, with both native und non-native speakers, on theintemet. In this environment, recognising and adopting collocation as a majorelement in our teaching has several important implicaiions:

l. Review the language content of coursesIt is clear that lexis should be one of the central organising principres of oursyllabus. unfortunately, in classrooms, gtammar still tends to rule, andsentence grammar atthat! Greater emphasis on lexis must mean less emphasison grammar. Accuracy must be rreated as a late-acquired skill. Greateremphasis on 'larger chunks' of ranguage also means that grammar andvocabulary merge into one another. The dividing line is muchless clear_cutthan teachers and textbooks often pretend.The sheer size of the learning road makes change inevitable. Accepting thatthe learning load is not 40,000 items but nearer 400,000 (and probablygreater) means that the sylrabus must be reviewed, and criteria for what toteach agreed, based on four parameters:a' Frequency of occurrence in spoken and written text. Although veryimportant, frequency arone should not be the over-riding parameter. An itemmay be highly frequent in one genre, but not in another. Another item may behighly frequent in native-speaker English but may be unsuitable fbr learners.b. suitability for foreign and second ranguage use. This is a subjective, butimportant parameter. Experienced teachers are aware that some commonnative-speaker items will sound silly or inappropriate if used by learners.Such items often depend on subtle features of intonation, pronunciation andcontext. If learners have not mastered these features,'they risk beingmisunderstood, giving offence or at least giving an impression,t"y do notintend.

c. Level: the lexical learning needs of elementary students are very different

66 Revising priorities

from those of the advanced student. Different kinds of item and differentlearning strategies are appropriate at different stages"

d. Type of course: it is clear that items typical in business English or any formof ESP may have little or no place in a general English course, while forgeneral English it may be possible to predict a certain number of basiccollocations for some of the commonest words of the lansuase.

2. Increase language input

If languages are to an extent learned lexically, this should be reflected in ourmethodology. The main implication is that learners need a great deal moreinput than they received in most traditional language courses. The quantity,type, and quality of input need to be reviewed. One of the major failings ofthe communicative approach was that one leamer's deficient output becameanother's deficient intake. Modem task-based approaches are in danger offalling into the same ffap. While recognising the need for expert direction andmonitoring by the teacher, they focus very much on student output, studentperformance.

Nobody would deny the importance of output, but the main thrust of languageteaching must be to create opportunities for students to acquire more andmore language. This means maximising the amount of appropriate qualityinput available to the learners. The role of the teacher, the classroom, andmaterials a1l need to be changed. Instead of being a language practicefacilitator, the teacher should be first and foremost a language provider andthe expert who helps students notice useful and interesting language. Thismight even - horror of horrors - mean increased teacher talking time,providing the talk is controlled to provide good quality, appropriate input.Language practice, while important, is secondary. The classroom should be alanguage-rich environment with interesting English on the walls, a library ofgraded readers, and internet-access if possible. Published materials shouldcontain more natural language with more activities focussed on the languageand on individual learning. In short, the emphasis should be on activities andstrategies which aid acquisition.

3. Review strategies at different levels

Again, the sheer size of the mental lexicon has implications for vocabularyteaching strategies at all levels. At elementary level the priority is to increasethe number of individual words learners know. These are best learned alongwith a small number of collocates. For example, there is no point in learnersknowing the word holiday unless they also know that you go on holiday,but they will probably be intermediate before they learn a package/beach/adventure holiday. Intermediate students need more new words withmore collocates while also increasing their collocational competence withwords they already know.

At leveimpossstudentnew w(inefficiicollocatadvancrbut hou

a co)a bu:

We alsoways -

revisionadvancesystemalAt presedifficultcolrespowork incompeter

4. Transl

There ardiscardedEnglish aA collocaunique sk

5. Langui

This rais<throughoustudents rcollocatiorcollocatiorothers areevery collcusual, the rshould be t

3.12 Su,It is acceptrchange ourmany of ou

Revising priorities 67

i different

r SnV forrno,i hile for

r of basic

:ted in ourdeal more: quantity,lailings of

lut becamedanger of

rectron andrut. student

rf languagernore andate quality;room, andr p n r o n t i ^ o: ! y r 4 L t r L U

olider andua_se. Thiskrn_e time,nate input.ihould be ar Library ofiatrs should; languagetllitigt .ta

r ocabulary

tro lncrease

med alongin learners,ti holiday,

package/,i'ords withtence with

At levels above intermediate, students need to read widely and it is virtuallyimpossible to predict what items a student 'should, rearn. By this stagestudents should be autonomous leamers and have understood that learning anew word without some of its collocates is a waste of time, or at least veryinefficient. Advanced students will always be adding to their store ofcollocates even of words they learned as elementary students. For example, alladvanced students are familiar with the words book, farnity, holiday and rightbut how many would be familiar with the following collocations:

a coffee-table booka bwsman's holiday

the nuclear familya blinding light

we also need to develop techniques to help students to record lexis in helpfulwaIS. - ways which reveal patterns and which are easily accessible for

correspondingly of limited use to the learner. The main thrust of vocabularywork in most classes should be to make students more collocationallycompetent with the words with which they are already partly familiar.

4. Translation

5. Language model

every collocation mistake than they should correct every grammar mistake. Asusual, the communication of meaning and the learner's current intergrammarshould be the decisive factors.

3.12 Summary - Iess grammar, more lexisIt is accepted that recent developments in corpus linguistics have forced us tochange our view of language. This means it is time for a re-evaluation ofmany of our accepted ideas about learning and teaching. corpus hnguistics is

68 Revising priorities

going to change the content of what we teach radically. These ideas oncollocation are only the first rumblings.

In ELT we have grown accustomed to the idea that language - the content ofwhat we teach - is a rule-govemed system and if we could just leam the rules,we would acquire the language. We now know that this idea is so at odds withthe way both first, and subsequent, languages are learned that there is no pointin hanging on to it as any kind of model for leaming. To be efficient, learningmust reflect the nature of what it is we are leaming. Language is proven to bea mixture of the totally novel, the absolutely fixed, the relatively fixed, and allheld together with fairly simple structures which we call grammar. The largestlearning load and the one which is never complete - even for native speakers- is mastering the lexicon. Within the lexicon, collocation is one of the biggestdefinable areas to which all learners need to be introduced from lesson one.Insistence on accuracy inhibits production and makes students concentrate onlanguage at or below sentence level. Competence depends on being able todecode and take part in discourse, whether spoken or written. Similarly, thereis little point in spending a lot of class time presenting individual items ofvocabulary, practising them, and trying to set up situations for students to usethem. The acquisition of individual items depends not on students'using them20 times in one lesson, but on meeting them, perhaps 10 times, in differentconlexls, at di f ferent t imes.

The fact is, language courses are finite - time is limited. If we are to startteaching collocation, we must stop teaching something else to make room.The answer must be to spend less time on formal grammar work, restricted toa small range of traditional EFL 'structures', regularly revisited. A second factis that most students are intermediate. Spending a lot of class time ontraditional EFL grammar condemns learners to remaining on theintermediate plateau. Helping learners to become 'advanced'needs a hugeinjection of lexis. It is lexis in general, and collocational competence inparticular, which allows students to read more widely, understand morequickly, and speak more fluently.

By taking a finite list of grammatical structures as their basis, many currentcoursebooks and ministry syllabuses are seriously flawed. Progress in Englishfor all post-elementary leamers depends on sufficient lexical input, of whichcollocation is the single most important element.

[Parts of this article ffust appeared in Issue 11 of English TeachingProfessional.l

Discussion QuestionsDifferent texts contain different kinds of collocations. What kinds of texts doyou think will be of most use to your learners? Are there kinds of texts whichyou think will not be particularly useful? How does your choice compare with

the tex

How nsinglereally r

How r,advancrlearner

Do youfrom de

)se ideas on

:re content ofarn the rules,at odds with

re is no pointient,learningproven to befixed, and allr. The largestrtive speakersof the biggestt lesson one.

oncentrate onbeing able tornilarly, theredual items oftudents to usets'using thems. in different

i,e are to startl make room.k. restricted toA second fact:lass time onining on the'needs a huge:ompetence inierstand more

,many curTentress in Englishnput, of which

,lish Teaching

nds of texts do; of texts whiche compare with

Revising priorities 69

the texts you find in coursebooks?

How many items do you think you should present in a singre lesson, or on asingle day of teaching? How many of those do you expect your learners toreally master so that they can use them themselves?

How would you explain the difference between an intermediate and anadvanced leamer? Is it, as Jimmie Hill suggests, a matter of the size of thelearner's mental lexicon?

Do you agree that over-emphasising grammar can actively prevent learnersfrom developing beyond the intermediate plateau?

70 Integratingcollocation

Chapter 4

Integrating collocation into a reading and writingcourse

Jane Conzett

Jane Conzett works on a typical Intensive English Program in the United States.She describes how her reading and writing classes have changed as a result ofher dissatisfaction with the way she was reacting to errors in her students'written assignments. Like Morgan Lewis, she found that some theoreticalreading helped her understand the problem better, and guided her towardsteaching strategies that she finds more effective. She emphasises the importanceof both context and collocation in presenting new words.

Non-American readers need to be aware that language teaching in the US mayvary from what is usual in the British and European tradition. Jane writes fromthe perspective of an American Intensive English Program, but many of herexperiences and conclusions parallel those of George Woolard and MorganLewis described earlier.

4.1 Background

As an instructor in an Intensive English Program (IEP) in the United States,my discovery and understanding of collocation actually resulted from my ownfrustration with vocabulary study in the classroom. Before I describe how thiscame about, a brief outline of a typical American IEP may be helpful forreaders not familiar with such programs. The goal of most IEPs is to improvestudents'ability to use English for academic and professional purposes, mostoften in preparation for academic work in American colleges and universities.Term length ranges from 8-16 weeks; class size averages about 12. Theapproach to curriculum is frequently content-based, and core courses may beintegrated so that students enroll in combined skills courses such asreading/writing, or listening/speaking, or they may be taught as single-skillcourses.

Many programs offer electives such as pronunciation, computer skills, orTOEFL preparation, the latter because the Test of English as a ForeignLanguage is the proficiency test most often required by American universitiesfor admission to degree programs. Students are in class an average of 18 to 25hours per week, and they complete several hours of homework outside ofclass each day.

My frustration as a teacher came about when, despite careful, contextualizedstudy of vocabulary in my reading and writing classes, my students often used

their rproducclassesserendiheard cof colkLearnit,stumbiivocabulhave res

A s m y rapproac,In the crdescribeto imple

4.2 TrA s d o mas an 1rthematici'society

vanety olthe En-eliencountelnonrnatt\

vocabularpoint in oat a tfemenative speand othersvocabular,estimates ithis samespeaker vcthose whot

How can trup the hillthinking. TUS in the 1the notioninferring fiwith severaacquisition,

u'riting

nited States.is a result ofer students': theoreticalher towardsr mlportance

the US mayr v rites frommanr- of herlnd \Iorgan

lr t :d States,

f _rm nlv own

:e horv this: reiptul for

s io lmprove

r tses. most

rl ir ersit ies., r . t t l l , The:r res may be' r i such as

: srngle-sk i l l

;;r skil is, orL: a Foreign-- ;n1\'ers1t1es

:e o f 18 to 25

L outside of

r,11:e\tualized

Lts otien used

Integrating collocation 7l

their new vocabulary incorrectly when they moved from receptive toproductive language. As I struggled to remedy what wasn't working in myclasses, I headed to the library for some help and stumbled almostserendipitously upon the notion of collocation, a word I had previously neverheard of. The proverbial light bulb went on. I recognized from a descriptionof collocations that was included as part of Nation's book, Teaching andLeaming vocabulary, that this was precisely where I and my students werestumbling. Since that time, I have changed my approach to teachingvocabulary in my reading and writing classes, testing and trying methods thathave resulted in more accurate language production by my students.As my knowledge and understanding of collocation has grown, my overallapproach to teaching has changed in some subtle, but important ways as well.In the context of our IEP, a typical one in the united States, I would like todescribe how this gradual change came about, and share some practical waysto implement practice and training in collocations within existing cunicula.

4.2 The need to build vocabulary

As do many American IEPs today, our program teaches reading and writingas an integrated course. Students read articles or texts, often groupedthematically around a particular content area such as ,work and careers,, or'society and aging', and then respond to the readings in writing, using avariety of discourse types. This approach mimics the typical interaction withthe English language that future graduate or undergraduate students willencounter at the university. When these reading and writing tasks are given tonon-native speakers, a natural response is for students to bemoan their lack ofvocabulary, and we teachers - most of us second language learners at somepoint in our own lives - can certainly see their point. In fact,L2leamers areat a tremendous disadvantage when one compares their vocabulary to that ofnative speakers. If we are defining vocabulary as just individual words, Nationand others estimate the size of a native-speaker undergraduate student's activevocabulary (words used in speech and writing) at 20,000 words. crowestimates a much greater passive vocabulary - 60,000 to 100,000 words _ forthis same average student, but even the most conservative estimate of native-speaker vocabulary is enough to be discouraging to every ESL student, eventhose whose language is quite 'advanced'.

How can teachers help their students feel less like sisyphus pushing his stoneup the hill as they study vocabulary? current approaches reflect a shift inthinking. The communicative approach to language teaching, popular in theuS in the 1970s and 1980s, downplayed explicit vocabulary instruction, withthe notion that students could learn vocabulary implicitly, guessing andinferring from rich context. Sokmen has described how this approach metwith several problems relat ing to the slowness of rhe merhod and the rale ofacquisition, the inaccuracy of some of the 'guesses', its disregard for

72 Integratingcollocatton

individual abilities and learning styles, and especially, the lack of retention ofthe new vocabulary.

Recent research, while not advocating total abandonment of inferring fromcontext, which is a valuable reading skill in its own right, supporls the notionthat some systematic, explicit study of vocabulary is vital to gaining languageproficiency. As Sokmen concludes:

The pendulum has swung from direct teaching of vocabulary (thegrammar-translation method) to incidental (the communicativeapproach) and now, laudably, back to the middle: implicit and explicitlearning.

The question today is no longer whether or not to teach vocabulary explicitly,but how to go about it.

4.3 Explicit vocabulary study

Recognizing the imporlance of explicit vocabulary study, our IEP has inrecent years made it an explicit part of the reading and writing curriculum,The means of achieving this vary, depending on the teachers'preferences andthe students'proficiency levels. Some teachers choose vocabulary builderbooks based on word-lists; some choose books based on roots and affixes;others study vocabulary in context in teacher-created lists based on thereadings the students do in class. All of these choices have their advantages.With limited time one can see the efficiency of studying high-frequencyvocabulary; books based on roots and affixes can help students make educatedguesses at the meanings of new words, with the added benefit of helpingstudents who struggle with English spelling patterns. It can, for example, bereassuring to students to know that medicine and medical have the same rootspelling of medic, even though one would not be able to guess this from theway the words are pronounced. In-context study of vocabulary encountered inreading has the well-known advantages of point-of-need relevance to thestudent, and natural, real-life examples of usage.

The vocabulary books I have used have been for the most part well-written,with ample opportunities for students to practice the vocabulary through in-context cloze exercises, matching, fill-in-the-blank, etc. Interestingly, thestudents have always been enthusiastic about explicit vocabulary study,perhaps because it has the initial appearance of being something reassuringlyconcrete in the complex world of second language acquisition.

With good books, motivated students, and plenty of practice, I felt destinedfor success. Instead, even if the students scored well on passive skills exams,when they tried to actually use the new vocabulary, something often wentdisappointingly wrong.

Here are some sentences that were produced by students in our IEP after theyhad received explicit vocabulary instruction for the underlined words:

B e cW e iA F e

My usupartiai cthe worion theirtoxic ntebwt we ctand discommunlangua-uecertainh-accurac\successfu

4.4 ThThe reasoof collocathey contadefinitionbut don'rmight besimple delElsewhereperspectt\'

Even withmay be of

verb +adjectii,verb + Iadverb

Smadja poexplainedstudents arican see thaadjective+tthat informrsnake, nor.snake. Thepowerful, arand the othe

' l t

tion of

l fromnotron1_quage

r l i , - i t l r u

has in.cLllum.,.s andbuilderutlixes;on theLxtages.'.luency

:ucatedhe lping-rrle, bene rootrom thetered in: ro the

. r r r t f A n

r'.ish in-

s1r'. the! J L U U I T

suringly

destinedi eKams,en went

lier they

Integrating collocation 73

Be careful. That snake is toxic.We will sever this class because it is too larpe.A Ferrari is a verT W[e]xt: car

My usual response to production elrors of this type was to give the studentpartial or half credit because they had obviously understoodlhe meaning ofthe words despite the awkward sentences. Sometimes I wrote ,word choice,on their paper, indicating the error type. when a student asked, But croesn,ttoxic mean poisonous? I wourd give a response along the lines of, weil, yes,but we don't usually use it that way, which left both of us feering fiustratedand dissatisfied. I should point out that the student obviously hadcommunicated the intended meaning, and in that regard was successful inlanguage production. However, one of the objectives of the course, andcertainly a goal of the college-bound students themselves, was to increase theaccuracy of their production, and in this regard we were not alwayssuccessful.

4.4 The missing link: collocationThe reason that 'we don't usuaily use it that way,is explained with the ideaof collocation. The three student-produced sentences are incorrect becausethey contain collocation errors. what is collocation? you might get a differentdefinition from every linguist you asked because terminology is not yet fixed,but don't at this stage wo''y too much about what collocation is, or how itmight be precisery defined. I have found it easier to work with this verysimple definition: Two or more words that tend to occur together (collocate).Elsewhere in this book different kinds of collocations, and u -or" theoreticalperspective, are discussed in more detail.Even with my simple definition, it is easy to see immediately that collocationsmay be ol several different types:

verb + objectadjective + nounverb + prepositionadverb + adjective + noun

dispute findingswnuccompanied mino,engage in, hear oUorlhighly irregular situation

Smadja points out that why these words occur together cannot easily beexplained on semantic grounds, and the sentences produced by our IEpstudents are good examples of the probrem. Retuming to the toxic snake wecan see that although the student may learn the grammatical collocation ofadjective+noun, andmay learn that 'the meaning' of toxic is poisonous, all ofthat information neither helps the student to produce the expected poisonowssnake, nor, equaily importantly, to avoid the non-standard/unacce ptabre toxicsnake. The same is true for the potent Ferrari. one meanin g of potent ispowerful, and both are adjectives, but one does go - collocate - with Ferrariand the other does not. Similarry, severecr c/ass is another coilocation enor.

74 Integrating collocation

For the native speaker, knowledge of acceptable and unacceptablecollocations is largely instinctive. This is demonstrated by the way mostnative speakers would automatically add exactly the same words to completethese phrases: sibling , mitigating

You almost certainly selected sibling rivalry and mitigating circumstances.Infact, tt is quite difficult to think of alternatives to the 'obvious' answers whichare plausible and likely.

Collocations may be strong - the presence of one word means you stronglyexpect the other word to be there too - or weak, when the collocates can varya great deal. I have found it helpful to conceptualize collocations on acontinuum like the one below. On such a continuum, units made of freely-combining words llke friendly dog or old car would not be treated ascollocations, nor would fixed expressions and idioms llke throw in the towel.I treat as collocations those items that appear in the middle of this continuum,with stronser collocations to the risht. and weaker collocations to the left.

friendly dog strong cffie sibling ivalry throw inthe towel

weaker stronge

oM car heavy smoker mitigating circumstances Stars and Stripes

[Jane talks of what she 'treats as'collocations. This is wise; rather than gettinginvolved in long discussions of what exactly is and is not a collocation,teachers need to make a pedagogical, rather than theoretical decision. Ed]

4.5 The need for guidance from the teacher

For the study of collocations to be successful, the teacher has theresponsibility to direct leamers' attention to the most useful collocations,those which hold high priority in the context of the curriculum. We shouldalso discourage students from going overboard, and recording everycollocation they meet. This means they must be discouraged from recordingvery weak items (nice house, good vacation), or strong ones which are veryunusual, and correspondingly probably not appropriate for most learners(reduced to penury).

Not all vocabulary effors are collocation errors. Some are substitution orcontextual errors, using the wrong word with the wrong meaning. Someexamples of vocabulary effors of this type produced by our students are,When I have children, I hope I will be vetj amorows with them, and Owrtrainers are vety helpful and suggestlve. These students simply learned thewrong meaning, or the wrong context, for amorous and suggestive.

When one realizes that native speakers not only know an enormous numberof individual words, but they also know much more about how these combine,or collocate, the burden of theL2leamer suddenly seems even greater. It mayhave seemed difficult enough for our students to learn the word sibling,btrtto

leam alsiblingthe 20.(speakerleamersevidenccollocatand poincorpo.matenalcollocatirmportar

After thrcome toquesfionin part dare availi'problern

teachin-ecollocatirtheir mer

4.6 Mt

In some rInstead olwhy donsomethinlthe studerit and pr<make stu<ways clasof their la

1. Teach r

Collocaiiclimited prconcept. JEnglish iaOnce explwhen appr

2. Adapt t

Currentl1,.

)Jeptable',3)' mostcomplete

'i l tces.Ilr

3rs which

. strongly

I can vary

ons on ar i f ree l r r -

i-ated as

:irc towel.

t]ltlnuum,

he left.

i rovel

--->

S:,tpes

rtrn gettlng

rllocation,rrr, Edl

i 1-ras the,iLocations,

\\-e shouldrng everyI recordingt:l are very:i learners

)i1tUtlon OI

Ling. Some

Lidents afe,,t. and Our

learned the

lus number

)- combine,'ater. It may

l:1lng, but to

Integrating c ollocation t 3

learn also that native speakers trse sibling rivalryt and do not generally usesibling competitiott makes the task even more daunting. we suddenly realizethe 20,000-word vocabulary forms onry the rudimentary base of the nativespeaker's mental lexicon. This, combined with the 'word choice,errors the L2leamers make, despite contextualized presentation of new vocabulary, isevidence that ESL students need additional, explicit instruction incollocations. Swan reminds us that vocabulary ,will not take care of itself ,,and points out the pedagogic necessity of deliberately selecting,incorporating, and recycling high-priority vocabulary into classroommaterials and activities. This point applies just as much, if not more, tocollocations which students are less likely to notice unless guided towards theimportance of collocation by their teachers.After the intrial Aha!feeling one has when realizing how much collocationscome to bear upon language, the classroom teacher has to consider thequestion ofjust how to go about the explicit teaching of collocation. Today,in part due to technological advances, more research and resources than everare available to help the classroom teacher specifically address the collocation'problem'. collocation has often been a source of student e[or; someteaching suggestions follow that can help students understand the idea ofcollocation and enable them to use collocations to their advantage in buildinstheir mental lexicons in a systematic way.

4.6 N lake students aware of collocationIn some ways, it is a relief to bring collocations out of the closet, so to speak.Instead of feeling frustrated and a bit ineffectual when a student asks me, Bzlwhy don't Americans say 'mitigating

situations'? I can answer with

ways classroom teachers can assist their students in taking control of this partof their language learning.

l. Teach students the word ,collocation'

Collocations exist inlimited proficiency,concept. It is helpful

the students' L1, so, except for students of extremelyit really is not difficult for them to understand theto remind them that, just like their native language, thesome words that go together, and some that do not.

can save a great deal of class time by using the term

English language hasOnce explained, youwhen appropriate.

2. Adapt books to include collocations

currently, few textbooks for ESL students address collocations

76 Integratingcollocatnn

Modifying and adapting existing books is a good solution, and this can beaccomplished fairly easily. If using vocabulary-builder books based on word-lists or roots and affixes, have students adapt them. Students can makenotations about frequent collocations next to the word lists. Teachers shouldfeel confident in supplying frequent collocations from their own knowledgeof the English lexicon, but if desired, it's also possible to check some of thecorpus-based references mentioned below.

3. Context and collocation notebooks

Within the specific area of vocabulary building, I have found it useful topresent to the students 'the two C's' of context and collocaflon. When I firststafied presenting new words with only the collocations, this did not alwayshelp them avoid pitfalls with new vocabulary because individual words andmulti-word items can operate within a restricted context as well as withparticular collocates. For example, the following is a sample of some contextand collocation information I gave to some students using Goodman'sAdvancing Vocabularry Skills, a book for native speakers and leamers whichwe have at times used in our advanced reading and writing class.

Word Special context? Collocations

discretion (n) (caution/privacy, at your/someone's discretionauthority, judgment) verbs: exercise - , handle sth

with -. use -. leave to sb's -

show -

adj : complete/total/utmost -

There are no service charges added to the bill. Tip at your discretion.He handled the private matter with complete discretion.The job applicants were hired at the discretion of the hiring committee.

facetious (adj) (flippant - often negative) noun: - remark

I wish Bill wowld stop making facetiows remarks.

scrupulous (adj) (relating to honesty, noun: - care, - attentionfairness, exactness)

John deals with the accounts and he's absolutely scrupulous.

What works especially well for this purpose is a stenographer's notebook.

[used for taking US shorthand, Ed.] It's a portable size for recordingvocabulary, and also comes ready-made with two columns thal are ideallysuited to record context and collocation in their respective places, followingthe initial word entry and definition. During one of the first class meetings, Imodel how to record the context and collocation of each word, and then forthe remainder of the course, whenever we work specifically on vocabulary, Iwrite the two headings, Context and Collocation, on the blackboard, andwrite the relevant notations under each headins as we work down the list. For

some \\-becausewords. rpreposltphrasespleasure

Where <exampleobtainedCollocattbased dimodifiedaddition.to providmuch safrNo, you cIfyou sar-day!)

4 . A d d a r

When firstthings ctrelimbs, heorCollocatiorsimple qusubsequentto the collosubsequentquestlon -routine forrtems to the

5. Select vcBy domainloosely the sdomain miEmight incluc

Though prota good basisobserving thunderstand tldomain suclwhimpe4 ho.,pomt out exi

can ben word-n make, shouldrwledgee of the

Lseful to:n I firstt alwaysrrds andas with

l contextodman'srs which

retronile sthsb's -

rost -

ot1.

Utree.

notebook.recordingrre ideallyfollowing

neetings, Ird then forcabulary, Iooard, andhe list. For

Integrating collocation 77

some words I might only note a restrictive context and no collocations; this isbecause the particular word might combine freely with other words. For otherwords, my notation under the collocation column may be as simple as thepreposition that follows an adjective (adept at), or it may be several commonphrases frequently associated with that particular word, (a vicarious thrill,pleasure, experience). Sometimes, I have no notation in either column.where do I get my information? context I can suppry myself, or fromexamples in the vocabulary book. Information about collocations can beobtained from a collocation dictionary like the LTp Dictionarv of seleitedCollocations. which I used here for many entries. or other good ESL corpus_based dictionaries in which the example sentences, sometimes slightlymodified (rather than the definitions) can be ideal for this purpose. Inaddition, like any other teacher, I can also use my own knowledge of Englishto provide collocation information to the students. (A word of advice: it ismuch safer for a teacher to tell students: I rJon't think I,ve ever heard. that thanNo, you can't say that when the class encounters a questionable collocation.If you say the latter, there is every chance a student will hear or read it the nextday!)

4. Add a question

when first presenting a new vocabulary item, teachers can ask, what kincts oJthings are (severed)? (the connection with, economic ties, and,the gruesomelimbs, heads). what kind of things are (potent)? (drinks, chemicals, a mixture)collocations can be elicited from the students or provided by the teacher. Thissimple questioning is especially effective as a reinforcing technique insubsequent lessons, and ensures that the students have the repeated exposureto the collocations necessary to fix them in their memories. All it tat<es durinssubsequent encounters with the vocabulary item is a quick repeat of thlquestion - what kinds of things are . . . ? rt can become an easy, automaticroutine for students and teachers that is effective in helping students transferi tems to their long-term memories.

5. Select vocabulary textbooks that use domain vocabularyBy domain vocabulary I mean the study of different vocabulary items withloosely the same meaning, based on a 'parent'domain,

for exampie the LovEdomain might include adore, cherish, treasure, while the HATE domainmight include detest, loathe, despise.Though probably not intended to, books based on domain vocabulary providea good basis for training and practice in collocation, for two reasons. First, byobserving the lexical variety related to a single concept, students come tounderstand that the English lexicon is not an open system. when they learn adomain such as cRY, suggested by Hollisky and includi ng weep, sob,tvhimpe4 howl, bellow, shed tears, students will see - and teachers shouldpoint out explicitly - thaL words with similar meanings are frequently not

78 Integrttting colloctttion

collocationally interchangeable. Second, the way that domain vocabularybooks are arranged around a particular concept provides an ideal set-up foradding a study of col local ion.

One series I particularly admire is Walk, Amble, Stroll (Levels 1 and 2,Hollisky et al.). In these books, when the words related to basic concepts suchas the OLD-NEW domain are introduced, the authors present them in context,often with collocations:

Many people are interested in old things and events whichhappened a long time ago. Some of them like to buy expensiveantique fwmiture and others enjoy reading books about JuliusCaesar and other leaders from ancient history. Other people aremore interested in new things and new ideas. They like to havemoderu furniture or read about current events. Some of them onlygo to the most recent movies. Do you prefer old or new movies?Are you interested in ancient or modern history?

The underlined words are those selected for presentation by the authors; Ihave added the italics to show the collocations. This domain provides an idealopportunity to point out that we don't say old histoty or antique history; Ihestandard expression is ancient historlt. Similarly, we say cwrrent events andrecent events, but we do not say new events . Depending upon the goals of theclass, the teacher can simply point out the collocations, or create additionalexercises and activities specifically geared to practicing and retaining thecollocations.

One such activity, suggested by Channell, is a collocation grid. These can bedone for many groups of words with similar or related meanings, and fordifferent kinds of grammatical pairs such as subjects and verbs, verbs andobjects, adjectives and nouns, etc. Using the OLD-NEW domain from theprevious example, the grid might look like the one below.

If using a domain vocabulary book in class, the teacher needs only supply theblank grids after modelling the first unit, and the students can complete thegrids with the collocations they discover in each chapter. This is also anexcellent way to review and practice, which is crucial to retention.

events furniture history ideas movles

old

antique

ancrent

new

recent

cuffent

modem

?

T

T

)

T

T

T

T

T

+

+

+

?T

T

++

T

T

T

T

The Wasentenc(example

PapeHan'r( foutt

Teacherswith an;reinforceAgain, fr

WhenDid aHas I'rwas fir

(Italics mrthe compc

Again, w.rTwo C's oFor somecollocatior

6. Tlain st

One semesand writinlrnterestin_e'vocabulan

the studentlmpoftant Ilword units 1

Because Ethematicalilpresent an irreading, andteacher can Icollocationsthemselves.woffy whethany other waand writing,ideas of 'pns

YocabularyL1 set-,up for

ls 1 and 2,ncepts suchr m context,

u'hrchr-ns1veJulius

rle arerr haven only:ot ies?

e authors; I,le s an idealitistorl; the

r events andgoals of the: additionalrtaining the

-lese can be

lg:s. and for'. r erbs andrn from the

r supply theomplete thes is also ann .

movles

Integrating collocation 79

The Walk, Amble,,Srroll books follow the introduction of each domain withsentence completion practice that frequently reinforces collocation. Someexamples from the BUILD domain:

Paper was first . . . in China. (manwfactured, constructed)Harvard, the oldest university in the US, was . . . in 1636.(fuunded, manufactwred, thowght up, produced)

Teachers can mimic this technique of forced-choice practice of collocationswith any words the class might be studying. Hollisky et al take thisreinforcement one step further in their questions for discussion or writing.Again, from their BUILD domain:

When was your country established as an independent country?Did a person or group of people/ound your countryTHas your country's system of government changed very much since itwas first organiled?

(Italics mine, and note particularly the last example where, on this occasion,the components of the collocation occur quite widely separated.)

Again, we must remember, collocation is not the only area of interest; theTwo C's of context and collocation operate in domain vocabulary books, too.For some words (whimpea sob, weep), context is much more important thancollocation.

6. Train students to observe and note collocations in reading

One semester I chose to study vocabulary 'words' in context in my readingand writing class, rather than use a vocabulary builder textbook, and aninteresting thing happened. Working through each unit, I would pull out the'vocabulary' that was important to that particular subject, and make lists forthe students. However, I soon noticed that I was not generating lists ofimportant words, but in nearly every case had lists of expressions - multi-word units that I came to recognize were often collocations.

Because ESL reading and writing books are commonly organizedthematically around subjects such as'the workplace', or'prisons'this canpresent an ideal opportunity to train students to observe collocations in theirreading, and to note and use these expressions in their writing. At first, theteacher can model the kind of list needed by making a list of vocabulary andcollocations for a thematic unit. Later, students can generate the liststhemselves, for leamer autonomy, or as a class. At this juncture, I do notwoffy whether a phrase fits a particular definition of collocation, or analyze irany other way. If it is important, useful vocabulary for the students'readingand writing, I include it. Here are two examples of the lists I made using theideas of 'prisons'and 'the workplace':

80 Integratingcollocation

Prisons

prrson sentencecorections officerprison-issue clothingself-help courseskill timere-entry into societydoing timealternative sentenceprison capacity

The workplace

mental challengeprospective employeesjob autonomyhourly wagestraight salaryemployee turnoverincentive schemesunskilled workersextemal recognition

The single most important thing for teachers, more than worrying whether ornot something is a collocation, is to shift their and their students'focus awayfrom individual words to chunks of language. These chunks improve thefluency and accuracy of the English students produce. This can beaccomplished without changing textbooks or even modifying the course, butby simply calling students' attention to the collocations in the readings,studying them as a paft of a vocabulary list, and repeating and reinforcingthem in writing assignments, described below.

7. Collocations in writing

Writing is frequently taught as an integrated course with reading in manyIEPs, so the above-mentioned technique is easily adapted to reinforcingcollocations in writing. When teachers give writing assignments based on thereadings, they can review with their students a list of collocations andexpressions that are important to accurately expressing the ideas relevant tothe topic. Teachers can also ensure that students use these new expressions bygiving short 'forced choice' writing and discussion assignments, wherestudents will have to use the expressions in order to answer the question: Arealternative sentences a good idea when prison capacity has reached itsmaximwm? Are self-help courses offered to prisoners in your counttj beforetheir re-entry into society?

Alternatively, for a writing assignment which doesn't follow a readingselection, teachers can quickly prepare a short list of common collocationsand phrases used in the context relevant to that assignment; this can bediscussed with students before they begin writing. [Morgan Lewis makes thesame suggestion. Ed.1

For example, if you were going to have your students write an essay about thepros and cons of child day care, you might first want to do a pre-writingexercise and in this context, note on the board and discuss the meaning ofexpressions llke: physical well-being, emotional well-being, quality time, highturnover of pre-school teachers, child-care workers, working outside the home,double-income family, women in the workforce, teacher-child ratios, etc.

8 . ' L o o k

Studentsdictionarconstructthe acculfriendll, 1Once thelfrom thetcollocatiohow to u_s

9. A writi

When ourPurposeslaccustomeemphasizirdegree. Thas my instrexperlencetrainee askiat the apprenvisioninsno actual lato approaclthrough ourinformatiorrphrases - crTypical exatexperiencedCowld we gtHe's tied upnot so far of

Perhaps thefunctional ncits langua_eeemphasize leEnglish in as tudents 'a t t ispeaking. Natheir book Zeat the end of t'useful

invanvariable slots

\\ hether orocus awaynprove theis can be:ourse, but: readings,reinforcing

s m manyreinforcingised on theations andrelevant toressions bynts. wherere stion: Are,eached itsntrty before

a reading:oliocationsthis can bes makes the

ar, about thepre-writingmeaning ofn' t ime, high,.Ie the home,ts. etc.

[ntegrating collocation 81

8. 'Look it up twice,

Students writing in or translating a second language rely heavily ondictionaries and thesauruses, and teachers can attest to the mangledconstructions and confusing meanings that often result. Students can improvethe accuracy of their writing if they are taught to .look it up twice', a student_tiiendly phrase that is another version of Lewis' decoding and encoding.once they have found the basic word they want to use in writing - perhapstiom their bilingual dictionary - a dictionary or ref'erence that includescollocation information such as those given below is necessary to find outhow to use it accurately.

9. A writing lesson from ESp/Business Englishwhen our IEP firsr branched out to include ESp (English for SpecificPurposes) programs for corporate clients, the academic Engrish we wereaccustomed to teaching had to be modified to meet the needs of the trainees,emphasizing the functional and pragmatic nature of English to a much greaterdegree. Though I remain primarily a teacher of academic English in an IEF,as my institution employs specialized trainers for corporate clients, my firstexperience with business trainees was an eye-opening one. one particulartrainee asked if I could give him 'a list of expressions I can memorize and use,at the appropriate place and time. put off by his word ,memorize,, andenvisioning some sort of mechanical traveler's phrase book that would buildno actual language proficiency, I assured him that was not at all asound wayto approach improving his English. Interestingry, though, as we workedthrough our language units on negotiating, describing trends, telephoning forinformation, clarifying, etc,rreaTized that we were in fact presenting lexicalphrases - collocations - and asking our trainees to practice and retain them.Typical examples were: I'll get back to yow Jirst thing tomorrow. The markete-rperienced a sharp drophlight decline/remained stable. Is that everything?Cou ldwe go over tha taga in? Le tme conf i tm. . . .wourdyoumind i f r . " .?He's tied up at the moment. The trainee who asked for useful expressions wasnot so far off the mark.

Perhaps the very nature of ESp and business training - the pragmatic andfunctional notions previously referred to - puts collocations at the forefront ofits language work; certainly the relevant books and training materialsemphasize lexical phrases as a matter of course. Those who teach academicEnglish in an IEP can benefit their students in the same way, by calling:tudents' attention to the 'useful expressions' of academic writing andspeaking. Nattinger and Decarrico have written about exactly this concept in:heir book Lexical Phrctses and Language Teaching. The teaching suggestionset the end of their book provide recommendations for having stuJents practice'useful invariable phrases' commonly used in written discourse, some with''ariable slots that students can fill in. Related to this, Hoey's book. patterns

82 Integrating collocation

of Lexis in Text, demonstrates the cenfal role lexis plays in cohesion, evenacross sentence boundaries and over distances with texts, and an earlier bookby Halliday and Hasan, Cohesion in English, classifies collocation as thesecond of two types of lexical cohesion (the first being various types ofreiteration).

How could this work in the IEP classroom? Teachers can give their studentsshortcuts to more fluent and natural academic writing by having them practicethe 'collocations of writing'. When teaching the common academic task ofsummary writing for example, along with instruction in the generalconventions of summary writing, I have my students practice with a list ofcommonly-used phrases and verbs:

contends that (+ clause)maintains that (+ clause)addresses the issue of (+ noun phrase)

In his/her article/book etc, John Doe disputes (+ noun phrase)suggests (that)discwsses (+ nown phrase)points out that (+ clawse)

These same verbs prove useful later on when we introduce the documentedresearch paper, which requires internal citations. When we address theimportance of objectivity in research papers, neutral phrases such as:Evidence suggests . . ., Recent findings support . . ., h has been determinedby . . ., Support for this point exists in . . ., arepresented for the students topractice. To make a point, we also light-heaftedly compare them to biasedphrases such as Everybody knows that. . ., They had a craly idea that. . . etc.

These ideas are certainly not new, but, much like the explicit teaching ofvocabulary, they fell out of favor with many teachers during the era of thecommunicative approach to teaching. Though concerned at first that theseapproaches might sound too 'canned' or formulaic, I have been pleased withthe results in the students'writing, and pleasantly surprised at how well theyare able to adapt the phrases to their own writing topics.

I have also successfully incorporated collocations and lexical phrases in thewriting curriculum by introducing and having students practice the multi-word items that indicate relationships between ideas. A few examples follow;teachers can emphasize any such phrases as appropriate for their students'proficiency.

Similarity/comparison Difference/contrast: Conclusion

strikingly similar in marked contrast draw a conclusionin like manner a fundamental difference jump to a conclusion

on the contrary the logical conclusiona hasty conclusionln summarv

Agree,rgeneraunanlnout of i

4.7 Rt

As ourrepetitiorstudentsmeanin-elneeds to7, thou-slteachin-sexpenencinformati

Convinciiit operatecan be diiword = d,and electrnot enou-sa word thaknowing Iso systemigoal of gFortunatelhelp teachienjoyableaccomplisl

Listed herrclassroom.want to cotways their

1. Collocat

This technihas alreadl-can compiecompetitive

2. Addition

Vocabulary

, : : 1 , - l f l . eVe i l

:.-, Lier book:- :n ?S the,-: I \pes Of

1-rr studentstem practicermic task oftire genelalr ith a list of

, i , ' , iut phrase)

' documentedir,ddress the

!:s SuCh aS:r:. detenninedni students toi-m to biased. i l i r u t . . . e t c .

ri teaching ofth- era of the;r:t that theser pleased withh,l,' rvell they

;hrases in therice the multi-imples follow;tlieir students'

sion

: irnclusionl conclusion

;a1 conclusionconclusionI t L l l \

Agree/disagreegeneral consensusunanlmous agreementout of the question

Listing/enumerationanother/yet anotherin a number of wavs

4.7 Review and testing

As our understanding of the human memory grows, the importance ofrepetition and reinforcement can't be over-emphasized. The brightest ofstudents will not be able to recall and use new words without repeated,meaningful contact with them. Estimates of the number of times a studentneeds to meaningfully encounter a new word range in the research from 5 to7, though classroom teachers are probably not sulprised by this. Whetherteaching the multiplication tables or collocations, teachers know fromexperience that there must first be systematic, meaningful practice, or the newinformation will not be retained.

Convincing students that they don't really 'know'a word until they know howit operates with other words and contexts is also part of the teacher's job. Itcan be difficult to wean students from the idea that Ll word = L2 word andword = definition, particularly in this instant-gratification age of computersand electronic dictionaries. Telling a student that something is important isnot enough; to make a student accept the notion that there is more to knowinga word than knowing its basic definition, they need to be held accountable forknowing how it is used. Teachers hold students accountable by testing them, I

so systematic testing of vocabulary should include collocations, with the twingoal of giving students additional, meaningful contact with the words.Fortunately, this is not difficult to accomplish, and many resources exist tohelp teachers produce qluizzes, tests and practice exercises. These can also beenjoyable and game-like - many of them matching exercises - and can beaccomplished without overly stressing student or teacher.Listed here are some of the review and testing exercises I have used in myclassroom. As teachers adapt and create their own techniques, they might alsowant to consider current research on learning styles, and consider in whichways their review work complements their students'various leaming styles.

1. Collocation grid

This technique, mentioned above, is especially good for review when a classhas already completed a grid once. A new grid can be supplied, and studentscan complete them again, either as an individual review, a race, or as eithercompetitive or collaborative teams working for both speed and accuracy.

2. Additions to tests for vocabulary-builder textbooks

Vocabulary tests often only ask students to know a word's definition. Where

Integratingcollocation 83

Cause/effectleads toresults inunexpected result orfinding

84 Integrating collocation

applicable, add questions that elicit collocations the class has studied. Again,this is where the teacher's role in selecting high priority, useful collocationsls lmportant.

Intermediate leamers or above, 'Odd one out':

Cross out the word which does not belong in the group:

potent caf potent drink, potent drwg, potent weapon

Advanced learners: the more active task, asking them to supply collocations:

For the following words, add one or more words with which it might beexpected to occur:

potent - potent drwg, potent weapon, ........reality -face reality, harsh reality, virtual reality, ........

For all levels: matching columns of collocations (passive skill). For matchingexercises other than those designed to test material already learned, it isusually best to have the strongest collocations first. The more ambiguousexamples should come later, so that the whole practice gets easier as studentswork through it. Putting the most ambiguous examples first makes the wholeactivity more like a frustrating guessing game than useful review and testing.

3. Backwards vocabulary test

Use this technique in a reading class where a list of expressions andcollocations has been generated by the class for a thematic or content-basedunit. (See number 6 in the section Make students aware of collocationsabove.) The teacher prepares a set of 'definitions', which may actually belonger descriptions or explanations. The student must provide the correctcollocation or multi-word unit. This is especially valuable in helping studentsretain their reading vocabulary. For example:

What collocation or phrase means a method of payment in which a workeris not paid by the hour, and does not eam commission, but is paid a fixedwage, usually arranged as an annual contract? (a straight salary)

What collocation means competition between brothers and sisters?(sibling rivahlt)

4. Producing example sentences

Require only more advanced learners to write 'vocabulary sentences' and thenhold them accountable for using correct collocations.

Since childhood, we as native speakers have been asked to 'use the followingvocabulary words in sentences which demonstrate their meaning'. This is afine task for native speakers, but when teachers require this of secondlanguage learners, collocation error can cause great difficulty, with the addeddanger of reinforcing enors. (We will sever this class becawse it is too large.)

Preliminincrease:students.such as rwho are abe expecladvancedproducedvery pote,

5. Collocr

Teams orp a f i o f a rthe two pstudents fl

4.8 Coi

Computerexcellent ris an on-lEnglish. Eavailableinformatiohttp://wwv

After leanengrnes orcollocationthose colio

fMichael tdisguised cfor leamers

Finally, whforget that.about collcprograms atintroductiorprogram tocar. Much ois readily arbetween Brexpressrons

: , , \eain,..-c at1'0ns

: r ia l lOnS:

rieht be

n r r r r - h i no

n;d. it isl -1 l lgUOuS

s l ludents

tl: s'hole

I,Ji Ie SI1flS.

' -C IS and

. ' : i -based

i: , tcat ions- r r q l l r r h e

r- corTect

i students

r 3 \l'Olker

r.id a fixed

,i sisters?

s' and then

iollowing. This is aof secondL the addedtoo large.)

Integrating colloccttion 85

Preliminary research, though sparse, suggests that collocational knowledgeincreases along with language proficiency. Therefore, for lower-levelstudents, it is better to test passive vocabulary and collocation skills with taskssuch as matching, cross-out and fill-in the blanks. Advanced level studentswho are asked to write sentences with vocabulary that has been studied shouldbe expected to use it correctly. If we have studied potent,I no longer give myadvanced students half-credit for a potent Ferrari. A successful sentence,produced by one of our students is: 11ls Long Island lced rea [a cocktail] wasvetj potent.

5. Collocations Dominoes

Teams or pairs of students are given sets of cards, each of which contains onepart of a useful collocation. The task, like traditional dominoes, is to matchthe two parts. The cards can be re-used and presented again to the samestudents for more review.

4.8 Concordances for teachers and students

computer technology has provided language learners and teachers with someexcellent resources on collocations. one I have used is Cobuild Direct whichis an on-line service for accessing language data based on the Bank ofEnglish. Extraction of concordances, collocations, and word frequency areavailable from the corpus; searching tools are point and click. Theinformation is available [at the time of writing] on the Cobuild website athttp ://www.cobuild.collins.co.uk/. Those interested can try a demo.

After learning about collocations, when students use databases or searchengines on the Internet, they may discover on their own some frequentcollocations related to a particular topic. Encourage them to observe and notethose collocations, particularly if they will be writing about these subjects.[Michael Hoey explains on p 238 how an informational text is a kind ofdisguised concordance, so relevant arlicles are an extremely useful resourcefor leamers to find the particular collocations they need. Edl

Finally, when explaining collocations in the classroom, teachers shouldn'tforget that, as fluent speakers ofEnglish, they have a great deal ofknowledgeabout collocations - their own personal databases. Expensive computerprograms and well-stocked reference libraries are nice, but not vital to theintroduction of collocation in the classroom. You don't need a computerprogram to tell your students to say that a Ferrari is a powerful, not potent,car. Much of the collocation information that students need in the classroomis readily available from the teacher's own mental lexicon. The differencesbetween British and American English, and regional variations of certainexpressions might also be more easily explained by a local native speaker.

86 Integ rating c ollocation

4.9 Conclusion

The English lexicon is not an open system. Realizing this through my ownfrustrations in the classroom has changed my overall approach to teaching insome subtle ways. My primary course goals of helping students to improvetheir reading, writing and vocabulary have not changed significantly, butwhenever possible, I call my students' attention to multi-word units - chunks- of language, and work to help them leam and retain them. I no longerdisparage 'useful phrases' and collocations as shortcuts unworthy of'real'language teaching, but recognize how much they come to bear on languageproduction. It has been my impression as an ordinary classroom teacher thatthose students often dubbed 'good at learning languages' are in fact unusuallygood observers of language, and, in particular, of context and collocation.

Teachers' attitudes in presenting collocations can affect whether their studentsperceive them as useful, necessary information or as just one more thing tolearn in their seemingly endless tasks as language leamers. If teachers presentcollocations in a matter-of-fact, positive way, as if they were no more unusualthan parts of speech or word forms, this attitude is picked up by the students.

In the context of ordinary lessons, useful, strong collocations can behighlighted everywhere we find them both in planned reading and in languagewhich comes into the classroom serendipitously. Reading, listening andspeaking materials, particularly those used by IEPs which follow a thematicor content-based approach, are rich, authentic sources of collocations.Existing vocabulary-builder books can be modified to include informationabout collocations, and notebooks can be kept by students to record contextand collocation information. It is up to the teacher to call students' attentionto these useful collocations, practice them in a regular, systematic manner,and hold students accountable for them through testing and in their writtenlanguage production.

Part of teaching collocation includes training students to use availableresources when they move from receptive to productive language, particularlywriting. When students leam that it does indeed matter 'what word goes withwhat' and have the tools to discover this information on their own, they areable to produce language that is more natural and accurate. They are alsocorrespondingly better able to express what they wish to, which is itself asatisfying achievement.

Until textbook writers address it explicitly, adding the study of collocation tothe curriculum does require a little extra effort on the part of already-busyteachers, but I have found it more than anything to be a change of attitude.Teachers in IEPs can apply the ideas in modest ways, by incorporating thestudy of collocation into their traditional vocabulary work, and by providingtraining in the use of collocation references to improve their students'productive language. In larger ways, teachers can emphasize, more than they

mighr tencounttpicture'collocatias langui

[This c]Conventi

DiscusrDo you sother aspr

Do you ulearners' ,

of that fer

To what eby:. not knl. not knr. writing

grammexpress

ReferenChannel, J.Teaching JouCrow, J. T. IEnglewood CHalliday NLLongman.Hoey, M. (19Hollisky et alHollisky et aiLewis, M. (1!Lewis, M. ( l !England: LanlNation, I.S.P.Nation, I.S.pNattinger, J.FOxford UniverSmadja, F.A.compuhng, 4(:Si ikmen,A. ( iand M. McCarUniversity Pre:Swan, M. (199IAIEFL Confe

:h my ownteaching into lmprovecantly, butts - chunksno longer

Lt, of 'real'

n language

"'acher thatt r,rnusuallylocation.

eil students)re thing to)-rs presentrre unusualre students.

ns can bein languagetening anda thematic

ollocations.informationrrrd context:s 'at tent ionllc manner,h:ir written

e availableparlicularlyd _soes with,,n. they areLev are alsoh is itself a

rllocation toiready-busyof attitude.

rorating the

1 providingir students're than they

Integrat ing collocation 87

might have previously done, the collocations and multi-word unitsencountered naturally in all of their courses, with an eye toward their 'big

picture' effect on the English language. Regardless of the approach tocollocation, our goal as teachers remains the same: to empower our studentsas language learners.

[This chapter is based on a presentation given at the 32nd, TESOLConvention, Seattle, 1998.1

Discussion QuestionsDo you see any advantages or disadvantages in separating vocabulary fromother aspects of language leaming?

Do you use a code indicating the type of error when providing feedback onlearners' written work, particularly essays? If so, does collocation form partof that feedback ?

To what extent do you think faults in your learners'written work are causedby:. not knowing a (single) word that they need?. not knowing the correct collocation?' writing long, grammatically complicated expressions, perhaps including

grammar mistakes, because they do not know the appropriate multi-wordexpression?

References

channel, J' (1981) Applying semantic theory to vocabulary teaching. English LanguageTeaching Joumal 35(2) lI5-122.Cro% J. T. (1986). Vocabulary for advanced reading comprehension: the keyword approach.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.Halliday, M.A.K. & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London & New york:Longman.Hoey, M. (1991). Pattems of Lexis in Text. Oxford: Oxford University press.Hollisky et al. (1995). Walk, ambie, stroil, level 1. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.Hollisky et al. (1992). Walk, amble, stroll, Ievel 2 Bosron, MA: Heinle & Heinle.Lewis, M. (1993). The lexical approach. Hove, England: Language Teaching publications.Lewis, M. (1997) Implementing the lexical approach: putting theory into practice. Hove,England: Language Teaching Pubiications.Nation, I.S.P. (1990). Teaching & leaming vocabulary. New york: Newbury House.Nation, I.s.P. (Ed.). (1994). New ways in teaching vocabulary. Alexandria, vA: TESoL.Nattinger, J.R., & Decarrico, J.s. (1992) Lexical phrases and language teaching. oxford:Oxford University Presssmadja, EA. (1989). Lexical co-occulrence: The missing link. Literary and linguisticcomputing, 4(3), 163- 1 68.Siikmen, A. (1997). current trends in teaching second language vocabulary. In N. Schmittand M. Mccarthy, (Eds.), vocabulary: description, acquisition and pedagogy. cambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, England.Swan, M. (1996) Language teaching is teaching language plenary address to IATEFL,IAIEFL Conference Report. 34,38.

88 C Las s ro om strat e p ie s. activ itie s and exe rcis e s

Chapter 5

Classroorn strategies, activities and exercises

Jimmie Hill, Morgan Lewis and Michael Lewis

This chapter begins by describing ways teachers have introduced collocation totheir learners. It discusses some general strategies for making your classroomapproach more lexical. There is a detailed description of how one teacher,Deborah PettS has introduced more collocational work for different kinds ofclasses. The chapter then presents sample activities and exercises which can betaken into the classroom immediately. All the activities and exercises suggestedhave two purposes - firstly, the immediate one of practising new collocations andbuilding learners'rnenfal lexicons. The second, more long-term purpose is tomake learners more aware of collocation as a powerful way of improving theirability to write precisely and well. Many of the activities and exercises areparticularly helpful in preparing learners for any more adyanced examination.

5.1 Introducing collocation to learners

Learners naturally assume that the word is the basic unit of language, but thisbook is based on a different assumption - that language is stored in our mentallexicons in different ways, some single words, but also a vast number ofmulti-word items. It is essential, then, that teachers introduce the idea ofmulti-word units to their learners, and then adopt classroom strategies whichconstantly remind learners of the importance of these multi-word items. Thephrasal nature of language can initially seem strange to learners, and teachersneed a number of different strategies to introduce the idea to different kindsof leamers. Here are a few, which have been used successfully bv teachers.

1. Words are like people

Leamers may find it easy to understand the parallel between words andpeople. We all feel comfortable when we are sunounded by friends andacquaintances, but anxious in unfamiliar situations when we are surroundedby strangers. We have friendships of different kinds - close, intenserelationships which, even if relatively infrequent, are the most important inour lives - loved ones who live abroad, for example. But we also haverelationships which are frequent but unimportant - the person who travels onthe same train to and from work, five days a week. There is also the one-night-stand - a serendipitous one-off, creative encounter, which may be moreexciting than any regular encounter, but, however sadly, not part of everydaylife. The relationships between words closely resemble the relationshipsbetween people. Readers can no doubt extend the metaphor and use it indifferent ways, appropriate for different groups of learners.

2. A fan

Deborahlearner. rthe ideaOnce he

'As adoubtonce.lt wai

studentogethand prHere. ldid not

After t,

You Sarto whiabilitylongercollocanoticed

3. Model z

Most learnsmall par-traeroplane.followin-e rbuild the p1

. All th

. The sz

. The sr

. The szrnto re

The parallelto have a i.instructionsto assemblerecognisabie

4. Molecule

An analogysay, himself

]s

Clas s room strategies, actiyities and exercise s 89

2. A familiar example

Deborah Petty reports on how a single example persuaded an adult one-to-oneleamer, who initially wanted to understand every individual word and resistedthe idea of translating phrases, of the benefits of a phrasal view of language.once he had been persuaded, he soon recognised the benefits, as she reports:

'As a banker, the learner knew the collocation bear market and had nodoubt that he could use it when speaking to other professionals. Foronce, he was not concerned to analyse the item, simply accepting thatit was the corect term. This was important because, like manystudents, he initially wanted to know why particular words wenttogether and others did not. I had already explained that ,theyjust do,,and pointed out, with examples, that the same was true in German"Here, however, was an example to which he could relate directly: hedid not need, or ask for an explanation.

After this example, he accepted other multi-word items as 'that is whatyou say'much more readily. As a result, we did more collocation workto which he responded very positively, feeling that it improved hisability to communicate. He realised that if he knew a coilocation, he nolonger had to paraphrase as much. I noticed that when he usedcollocations, he made fewer surface effors - an improvement henoticed himself."

3. Model aeroplanes

Most learners will be familiar with the kits you can buy which provide all thesmall parts needed to build a complete and complex model, such as anaeroplane. George woolard has suggested asking learners which of thefollowing methods they would prefer to use if they had such a kit, and had tobuild the plane as quickly as possible:

' All the pieces, but no instructions and no picture of the finished plane.. The same, but with verbal instructions.. The same but with verbal and diagrammatic instructions.' The same, but with many of the smaller pieces already pre-assembled

into recognisable chunks, such as wings.

The parallel with producing language is easy to see; it is enormously helpfulto have a view, albeit rather imperfect, of the finished whole. The verbalinstructions ('grammar rules') are probably less helpful than diagrams of howto assemble certain bits, and the most helpful of all is unquestionably havingrecognisable pre-assembled chunks.

4. Molecules

An analogy with basic chemistry, suggested by Graham smith - needless tosay, himself a trained chemist - may appeal to older leamers with a scientific

location toclassroom

re teacher,rt kinds ofLich can be; suggested:ations andrpose is tooring theirercises arermination.

:e. but thisrur mentairumber ofhe idea oflres whichitems. Thei,i. teachers'rent kindsteachers.

a ords andiends andurroundede. rntenserponant malso havetravels onone-night-' be moreI everydayatronshipsi use it in

l l lT l l l lTl i l l lJ l i l t i r i l l l l : , r i i i : r r i r : . i i , , i : r i i r i l i l t : i

90 Classroom strategies, activities and exercises

background. Al1 chemical substances, however complicated, are made ofatoms, but most atoms do not wander around looking to make more complexcompounds; most of them spend their existence as components of molecules,recognisable combinations of atoms. More interesting still, molecules are ofdifferent kinds and if we imagine a molecule as a string of atoms, at the endsof the string are different combinations which form potential 'hooks' whichcan connect the molecule to others which have appropriate 'hooks'. Theanalogy with words, which combine in standard collocations which, in turn,have characteristics which make it possible for them to combine into largerstretches of language, is close and revealing.

5.2 General strategies

It is increasingly clear that the tradition of presenting lexis as individualwords, or doing practices based on individual decontextualised sentences is atbest inefficient, and at worst actively unhelpful. Grouping those sentencesaccording to some arbitrary linguistic feature seems also to becounterproductive, as it in no way mirrors what we now know about theorganisation of the mental lexicon. Breaking things down too far andconcentrating on the brand new rather than the relatively new, both contradictwhat we now know about the nature of language and acquisition. [Seechapters 7 and 8.1

1. Larger frameworks

In general, learners are more likely to acquire new language so that it isavailable for spontaneous use if it is incorporated into their mental lexicons asan element of some comparatively large frame, situation or schema. Usinglarger units in class, such as an episode of a soap opera, increases thepossibility of leamers transferring items to their mental lexicon within theseglobal organising schemata.

2. 'The same thing twice' activates collocations

One of the most interesting methodological insights of recent research intosecond language acquisition, is the value of what we might call, rather over-simplistically, 'doing the same activity more than once'. Many of usremember writing essays at school, only for them to be retumed 'marked'and

for them then to be filed, possibly even discarded, while we moved on to anew essay, when the write-mark-file pattern was repeated.

Similarly, many learners are asked to make a short oral presentation to theirclassmates; the teacher may provide correction, better ways of sayingsomething, and then the class moves on to a new topic and a new talk.

Research evidence shows that both of these procedures represent missed

opponurlearnerslexical -

wfltlng (

3.4-3-2

In the czhelpful ir

1. Leam<four min2. The sagroup, th3. Againthis time

Changingnew inforReducin-eon better

The reseameasurablfinal versileamers finot retrier,attention ,Repeatin-ebetter collibeing tumi

4. Rehearr

This activteachers arproduce sirin such safra situationessential this not the sthe placeconsequen(in the real-

Graham Srcentral idealexis - with

rre made ofore complexrf molecules,ecules are ofi. at the endslooks'whichhooks' . Thehich, in turn,r.' into larger

:s individualentences is atlse sentences.i1so to be

:.* about thetoo far and

:th contradict.risition. [See

: so rhat it isl:i lexicons as;hema. Usingincreases ther rr ithin these

lesearch intoLl. rather over-\lany of us

i 'marked'and

loved on to a

rtation to theirir s of sayingerv talk.

)resent missed

C las s room strate Ri e s, ctctiv itie s and exe rc is e s 91

opportunities; a change of classroom procedure - giving feedback then askinglearners to repeat the same task - can produce real improvements in thelexical - in particula-r collocational - quality of learners' production, in eitherwriting or speech.

3.4-3-2 minute talks

In the case of spoken language, the following procedure can be extremelyhelpful in developing learners' fluency:

1. Learners work in groups: one student in each group gives a short talk forfour minutes to one of the others in the group.2. The same student then gives the same talk to a different student in thegroup, this time restricted to three minutes.3. Again with a new pafiner, the student gives the same talk a third time,this time restricted to two minutes.

changing partners is important because the speaker is less inclined to addnew information than they would be if talking to the same 'audience' again.Reducing the time limit has a similar effect, encouraging the speaker to focuson better, more fluent, versions of the same content.

The research evidence shows conclusively that for most learners there is ameasurable (statistically significant) improvement in fluency, and that thefinal version shows both grammatical and lexical improvement. In particular,leamers find and recycle collocations in the later versions which they couldnot retrieve from their memories at the first attempt, when so much of theirattention was devoted to deciding the content of what they wish to say.Repeating means learners have more time to process the language leading tobetter collocational use and increasing the chance of the improved languagebeing turned into long-term intake.

4. Rehearsal in safety

This activity reverses what so often happens in classrooms. Too often,teachers and learners enter a kind of 'conspiracy of safety' where learnersproduce simple, safe, corect language and teachers get a neat, tidy lesson butin such safety little may be learned. This activity deliberately puts learners ina situation where they are likely to produce a lot of defective language. It isessential that teachers explain the rationale for this to learners. The classroomis not the safe place where you do not make mistakes, it is safe because it isthe place where you can rehearse and make mistakes without seriousconsequences, so that you will perform better, and feel more confident laterin the real-world situation.

Graham Smith has devised a powerful, but very simple, way of using thecentral idea of the Lexical Approach - language consists of grammaticalisedlexis - with more advanced classes. Here is the basic procedure:

92 C las sroom strateRies, activities and exercis es

1. With pafiicular learners, identify something they genuinely wish to talk orwrite about, and then identify a single central collocation which expressesthe basic topic; this is usually averb + (adjective) + nown collocation.

2. Ask learners, working alone or in small groups, to write a sentencecontaining the collocation. The sentence should be as long as possible,containing as much true and relevant extra information as they can add.

3. If they find this difficult, ask them to use a series of Wh-questions, togenerate extra bits of information. These vary according to the basic sentence,but might be something like: Who is it for? When did/will it happen? Howoften did it happen? Why was it a problem? etc.

4. Allow time for this stage of the activity; help if asked, but emphasise toleamers that mistakes in what they produce do not matter and encourage themnot to play safe, but to try to write what they really want to say. Explain thatthe longer the sentence, and the bigger the mess they seem to get into, themore you will be able to help them with language they actually need.

5. Once they have produced their sentences - Graham reports his learnersoften produce what is, in effect, a short paragraph - you can help by providinginput directlv relevant to learners'needs. This often involves:

more collocations which express the ideas more concisely than theoften over-grammaticalised expressions leamers have produced.linking expressions to arrange and order the information naturally.the correction of some surface srammar elTors.

It should not be necessary to remind ourselves that these last, althoughperhaps worth pointing out, are - at least for most learners - the leastimportant part of the editing process.

6. Finally learners write a good copy. This may be done as homework, or evenin class a day or two later. As we saw above, research evidence shows that re-doing the activity when the content is already decided, and the focus isexclusively on the language used to express the content, can have a major roleto play in converting input into intake.

5. Expand the event

Peter Wilberg has suggested a similar activity, the central pulpose of which isto diagnose language needed by the leamers which they do not know. Theleamer - Wilberg originally devised the activity for one-to-one teaching - isasked to describe in a singie sentence something (s)he did recently - an eventthat (s)he would like to be able to talk about. The learner then describes thesame event in two sentences. Then in three, then four and so on. The purposeis to require more and more detail which the learner cannot express, or at leastcannot express easily, in English.

What they say must, however, be true, and it must be made clear to the learnerthat a real description of what they would like to (be able to) say is all that

a

maners.,are an esoppositelanguagemto a colsay, whicrs param(classroonevidencerelevant c

6. Essay

Teachersmosr diffiWhile it rin their oris very clphrasal, n

In additiorco-occur.verb + rt(struggleexpfesslnllexicon iseasily exp

In preparvocabularthis procethe brainscollect nofor verbswhich coland mor€possible c

Collocatirclassroonboth He tpossible:amenableare verbbetter u,achoice -

know the

',,, ish to talk or'. nlch expresses

" r-..cation.

,, ilte a sentenceong as possible,he-v can add.

\Vh-questions, tothe basic sentence,il it happen? Hoyv

but emphasise tord encourage theml say. Explain thatm to get into, thera1ly need.

:ports his learnersnelp by providing

, S :

seil.than theproduced.-rn naturally.

:e 1ast, althoughners - the least

rrtework, or evence shows that re-lnd the focus is^iil\e amalorrOle

;ose of which is,. not know. Therne teaching - is:rntly - an event:n describes theon. The purpose;press, or at least

::,r'to the learner: r say is all that

Classroom strategies, activities and exercises 93

6. Essay preparation

r:achers who prepare students to write essays often compl ain thatthe single:iost difficult problem is that learners simply lack ideas about which to write.-t|hile

it may be true that many learners could not write well on similar topicsin their own language, it is also important to remember that this lack of .ideas'ls very closely associated with lack of a sufficiently large, and sufficientlyphrasal, mental lexicon.

In addition to the formal definition of collocation as words which frequentlyco-occur, it is important to realise that many lexical collocations, for exampleverb + noun (accept the owtcome, predict the fwture) or verb + adverb(struggle unceasingly against), are the most precise and economical way ofexpressing a particular 'idea', so that lack of a sufficiently large collocationallexicon is the same thing as a lack of ideas, or at least of precise, ready-made,easily expressible ideas.

In preparing learners to write essays, many teachers brainstorrn suitablevocabulary as part of the preparation. It should be immediately obvious thatthis process would generate more ideas, in relatively complete lexical form, ifthe brainstorming process included an explicit collocational element. Firstcollect nouns strongly associated with the main topic of the essay, then lookfor verbs and adjectives which collocate with the noun, then for adverbswhich collocate with the verbs. This process should produce a much largeland more phrasal preparatory list. Equally importantly, the exploration ofpossible collocates is also an exploration of ideas central to the essay topic.Collocations are of different kinds, and not all are equally accessible in theclassroom. Adiective + noun and adverb + verb collocations add meaning, soboth He ambled dotvn the street an:d He ambled slowly down the street arepossible; the latter is merely more descriptive than the first. Much lessamenable to classroom practice, but more important for learners, however,are verb + noun collocations. This is because these are rarely alternative orbetter ways of expressing a single idea. Instead, they are typically the first-choice - the unmarked - way of expressing the idea. A learner who does notknow the expression will be unable to express the idea easily in English. In

94 Clns sroom strategies, actiyities and exercis es

class this means leamers frequently say nothing, or say something they cansay, without even attempting to say what they would like to if they had thesame linguistic resources in English as they have in their mother tongue.Hence, the importance of the teacher proactively providing more collocationsof this type.

One way of doing this is to find a text on the topic of the essay and use it tointroduce useful collocations to the class. If you have access to the intemet,this is simple and quick to do. If you download a text, it takes only a fewmoments to create a cloze-type text by gapping the text. The most effectiveway to do this is by deleting verbs from verb + noun collocations and askinglearners working in groups to think of as many words as they can whichcould go in the gaps.

There may only be one natural choice; in other cases several alternatives,possibly changing the meaning of the original text, may be grammatically andlexically possible. The idea is not to recreate the original text, but toencourage learners to see that expanding their mental lexicons is at least asmuch to do with acquiring new combinations of words as it is with learningwords which they have not met before, whrle at the same time introducinglexis which they may need for their own essay.

7. Essay feedback

If you wish to build your learners' collocational lexicon, you need to go wellbeyond adjective + noun combinations;verb + noun collocations are central.This also applies to the kind of feedback you give learners after they haveproduced a piece of writing. Deborah Petty explains how she changed the wayshe provided feedback on her First Certificate students' essays:

"Writing is a difficult task and however well-motivated learners are, they findthe idea of writing an extensive piece daunting. Many Cambridge coursestudents, while faithfully doing everything else requested of them, postponetheir first extensive writing assignment for many weeks.

In the past, I used a marking code and brief notes for error identification,combined with an encouraging general comment at the end of a piece ofwriting. I returned their papers and gave them a moment to look at mycomments while I listed selected errors on the board. before askins forcorrect ions or improvements.

This procedure concentrated too much on surface errors. The resultingproduct was stil1 unnatural, stilted English and sometimes still difficult tofollow. Many learners avoided rewriting the longer sentences or paragraphswhich we had talked about, and some continued to feel threatened byextensive writing tasks. I realised that many of my comments, althoughdesigned to encourage them, failed to provide concrete practical help inactually improving their writing by, for example, providing morecollocationally-orientated suggestions. I knew about process writing but had

hesitated toextensive E

My studenlreduce thewriting u'itexplained tl

Step 1 Studanything u Iis a collocalthey knou-ireplace tlrcsymbol v.'hrsymbol I 1comments r

Step 2 I resurface errcrelevance ardraft and rer

S t e p 3 I rcoherence. runable to prfor any rem

Step 4 Ther

This approaby the writirpartly becalrthe stages n'of writin-e iessential cadirected tormonolinguarecognise chMore effectilexicons, u'irwhole proce

Originally.asslgnmentsin this war'.request addprocedure pbefore the er

they canv had ther tongue.liocations

d use it toe intemet,rnly a fewt effectivernd askingcan which

iternatives,iiically andr\t. but toat least as

iih learningintroducing

.1 to go well:re central.

rr they haverge d the waY

ire. they findddge course:nl. postpone

de ntification,rf a piece of, look at my-e asking for

fhe resultingill difficult to

ol paragraPhsthreatened bY

:nts. althoughctical helP in

rr rding more. riting but had

Clas sroom strategie s, ctctivities and ererc is es 95

hesitated to use it because I didn't want to overload learners who alreadv hadextensive English homework.

My students were generally positive to collocation work, so I decided toreduce the overall number of written assignments and introduce processwriting with a collocational emphasis as a potential solution. When Iexplained this, all agreed to try the following procedure:

Step 1 Students write an initial draft which I read for meaning alone, notinganything which I don't understand or which puts a strain on the reader. If thereis a collocation which replaces the learner's often clumsy phrase, and I thinkthey know it, I add a symbol they know means: Do you know a collocation toreplace the wnderlined words? For a more difficult collocation I have asymbol which means: Simplify with collocation including . . . . With thissymbol I give the stronger member of the collocation. Any positivecomments relate to specific lexical items.

Step 2 I return their papers, but now focus on meaning-based rather thansurface errors. Because the feedback is meaning-driven, it increases therelevance and memorability of any reformulation. They take away this firstdraft and reformulate it.

Step 3 I read the reformulated version, again for meaning and textualcoherence. If necessary, I provide in full any collocations which they wereunable to produce cotrectly. I also give concrete suggestions rather than hintsfor any remaining supra-sentential problems.

Step 4 They take it away and write a third and final version.

This approach has several benefits. Firstly, learners are no longer intimidatedby the writing process. Secondly, their first drafts quickly begin ro improve,partly because any practice is less stressful, but also because going through allthe stages more thoroughly acquaints them with how a more extended pieceof writing is constructed. They become more aware of collocation as anessential carrier of meaning. A third substantial benefit is that, by beingdirected towards the stronger part of collocations, they develop betternonolingual dictionary habits. This in turn, improves their ability torecognise chunks, while the increased awareness of chunks aids their reading.\lore effective, and therefore more enjoyable, reading enlarges their mental,e-ricons, which in turn provides them with more communicative power. The.,'.hole process is cyclical and improvement is self-perpetuating.

Dri_qinally, I expected the procedure to reduce the number of written-issignments they produced. This has not been the case. The more they write-a this way, the faster they become at writing, and many of them actually::quest additional tasks. These have the exam-related bonus that the:iocedure produces a perfect final version, which is a useful revision toolj-tore the exams. The more we use the procedure, the more enthusiastic they

95 Cla,v s roont s trategie s, activ ities and exercise s

become. Many report that they believe it not only benefits their writing, but

also their English overall."

8. Collocational feedback in business English

She used a similar technique with business students whose principal objectiveis to make their English more effective as a result of a short, intensive coursebased on business meel ings.

She began using listening materials, concentrating on the kind of 'useful

expressions' with which teachers are familiar. After listening for content,leamers listened again for the exact expressions used, recording exactly what

they thought they heard. Many students, however, who had little difficulty in

understanding what had been said, had real difficulty in noticing the exact

words. This endorses other contributors to this book who report learners'looking straight through' the text in front of them, or understanding what was

meant, without hearing exactly what was said.

To aid exact noticing, she added two steps to her procedure - firstly leamerscalled out what they (thought they) had heard, with the teacher either echoingtheir correct examples, or reformulating those they had misheard. Secondly,and in a radical departnre from her previous practice, she asked the learners

to listen again, while simultaneously following a transcript of what was said.

Doubtful at first of the value of this herself, she soon concluded that it

represented a real methodological improvement. But still she remainedconvinced that something more was needed. Within the framework of thelexical approach, functions are often realised by fixed expressions, content is

most often represented by adjective + noun + verb collocations, so balancedlexical input involves both (semi-)fixed expressions and collocations. She

describes her dissatisfaction and her new procedure as follows:

"spending time on expressions alone fails to address the key problem - ESP

students need their own content language as much in a rneeting as in any

other situation, and the longer I worked with the idea that lexis, not grammar,

forms the basis of language, the more I noticed how collocationally and

lexically rich this content language is.

The class brainstormed topics for a meeting and made a rough agenda. Oncea topic and agenda were agreed, leamers held the meeting, which I recorded

on video. Then I made notes of mis-collocations, items which may result in

misunderstanding, and paraphrases which were used because of a missing

collocation. Also noted were phrases used correctly, with the name of theperson who used each one - it is motivating to be told you did something well,but also students are often unsure that something really is correct, even whenthey have used it correctly. Many times learners confirmed that they neededand appreciated this confirmatory feedback.

I experienced a certain amount of resistance from some students, however, tocreating their own simulations, even though they understood the aim was to

have miunderstcin thosechange tsmall cizhowever,themseh,psycholosomeonewatchin_e

I follow Iexpresstolthink theltheir prorsurprisingpronunclathe succes

These proimproved ,

situations.proved a r,'lme a more

Several pottimes, as aprocedure.one approa(introducin-ewith you. trdiminish, thexpenmentaconcentrate lwas coffectnot alwaysconfirmationneeded to tuchanges she rif at times rzwilling to incforms of actioalmost certairencourage thetraditional foc

. : ,,'.'riting, but

r"rpal objectiventensive course

lind of 'useful

no for content,lu exactly whatnie difficulty inicing the exact:epofi learners

rnding what was

-;irstly learners'r ;ither echoing':ard. Secondly,..:d the learnersri ,,i'hat was said.,rlcluded that iti, she remained':irrework of the:irrns. content is.rns. so balanced.',rliocations. She

" . ' S :

'' problem - ESP]seting as in any\,is. l]Ot gramfilar,

-',:cationallY and

.rh agenda. Once.'-. hich I recordedi.:h may result intuse of a missingL ihe name of the

Lcl something well,'crrect, even wheni that they needed

.dents, however, to

od the aim was to

Classroom strategie s, activitie s and exercis e s 97

have meetings similar to those they participated in in real life. They alsounderstood that I was trying to introduce the exact lexis they actually neededin those situations. Their resistance prompted me to make an importantchange to the way the topics for the meetings were chosen. Now I divide evensmall classes into two groups, who then create frameworks as before. Now,however, instead of having them prepare a meeting which they conductthemselves, they do the preparation for the other group. This was thepsychological key to the problem of resistance. Developing a product forsomeone else engaged their interest both in preparing the task and whilewatching the others holding their meetings.

I follow up with a handout listing items containing wrong or cumbersomeexpressions, concentrating largely on correct versions of language which Ithink they will already have met, but which has not yet been incorporated intotheir productive lexicon. when I provide the correct expression, it issurprising how often someone says oh, I've heard /hal. Stress andpronunciation follow I finish by putting up a ffansparency which contains allthe successful lexis.

These procedures are easily adapted to any exam or ESp group in whichimproved writing is one of the aims. All in all, in many different teachingsituations, process writing with the emphasis on collocational input hasproved a very effective addition to my range of skills. It has, I believe, mademe a more effective language teacher."

Several points of interest arise: firstly, her procedure has changed severaltimes, as a result of her own, or her students' dissatisfaction with the currentprocedure. Secondly, she involved the learners, explaining why she thoughtone approach or activity was better than another. As every teacher knows, inintroducing any change of content or methodology, you must caffy the classrr.ith you. Resistance from the learners can invalidate, or at least greatlydiminish, the effect of any change, however theoretically sound. Thirdly,erperimentation has lead her to the conclusion that feedback should probablyconcentrate not on the entirely new, but on the half-known. Confirming what'*'as correct was valuable. Just because learners get something right, it doesnot always follow that they have fully internalised it, and a simpleionfirmation of the kind described above can be the critical interventionneeded to turn the half-known into fully internalised intake. Finally, the-'hanges she made were gradual, experimental, and based on an explicit, evenii at times rather uncertain, theory. If every teacher behaved in this way,','' illing to incorporate small changes, and to engage in and evaluate simpleiorms of action research, many leamers would feel the benefits. Many readersrLmost certainly do this already. one of the purposes of this book is to3ncourage them to do it with the focus on collocations, rather than the more:raditional focus on grammar.

98 Classroom strategies, activities and exercises

5.3 Activities - exploiting a text

Here are two activities which exploit the collocational content of any text.

Remember, howevet, that they will be much more useful with factual rather

than narrative texts.

1. Finding collocations in a text

Ask learners to underline all the nouns (words used as nouns if you wish to

be strictly acculate with advanced learners, so in love letter the wotd letter is

underlined, blut love is not) in a text they have studied. Now underline the

verb which is used before the noun, if there is one. Now, check a third time

and, if appropriate, underline the whole phrase in which the collocation is

used.

This explicit focus on form, after the language has been exploited for

meaning, may be a necessary precondition for input to become intake. Second

language leamers seem to have a natural tendency to break the input down too

far, into individual words. A recurrent theme of this book is that part of the

teacher's task is to encourage noticing of larger chunks.

Near the beginning of a coutse, take a relatively short text and show all the

chunks of different kinds on one occasion. Later, it is better to draw attention

to a particular kind of chunk, such as prepositional phrases, chunks which

help the reader through the text (discourse markers), verb + noun lexical

collocations and so on. As leamers become more proficient with chunks, they

can be asked as a class which collocations they think are of interest to the

group. Certain types of text contain huge numbers of collocations, so teachers

must learn to select some, rather than trying to draw attention to all. This is

the lexical extension of traditional vocabulary teaching where, as every

teacher knows, asking about every new word is counterproductive. The simple

message is to do with collocations what you previously did with words.

2. Reconstructing the content

Working in small groups, students read a (relatively short) text and then write

exactly 15 words which occur in the original text on a sheet of paper,

choosing the words and order carefully. They should choose the words so that

another group has the best possible chance of reconstructing the main

content of the original text, using only the 15 words as a framework.

Guide students by reminding them that, rather than 15 individual words, the

most helpful notes will usually be some 2- or 3-word collocations, and

perhaps only three or four individual words. Groups exchange papers and try

to expand the notes to recover the main content of the original text.

nnnnnnunnnnniltnnii i i i f t i inl i i ixunii i ini iM$ll l l l f l l l l l{

The siwhileICCONI

5.4 t

Manyby usiusing zessentladapte<and sui

In usinlbrowseentry t(words. lit is oftrvocabulrlearnersintermec

3. Recor

Encouralkind areway of e.in boxesto add otl

appl]be oufind ahunt freslgn

4. Essay pChoose a tr

If we ltt

Ask leameabout the tr

prrcon

Have leamradjectives zthey must r

)f any text.ctual rather

\ ou wish toord letter is

rderline the

a third timerllocation is

;ploited for

ake. Secondut down too

r part of the

,ior,i' all thel\\, attentl0n

Luntrls whichrlrllr lexical:runks, theyierest to the. so teachers

r all. This is'-. as every

The simple,,r ords.

rd then write:t of paper,i ords so thatrq the main

ork.

il rvords, the

cations, andipers and try

l \ t .

C las s ro om s trateg ie s, activ iti e s and. exe rc i s e s 99

The same activity can be done with a broadcast news item; groups make noteswhile listening, then reduce their notes to 15 words, then exchanee andreconstruct as before.

5.4 Activities - using a collocation dictionaryMany of the following activities work on the basis of the teacher,s intuition orby using the standard EFL dictionaries. Teachers wilr find, however, thatusing a collocation dictionary will be a great help, and such a dictionary isessential for some of the activities. Some of the activities can be easilyadapted for use with corpora and concordances if these are available to youand suitable for your class.

In using a collocation dictionary, teachers need to train learners to scan orbrowse the entry, ignoring unknown words in the collocates as they use theentry to remind themserves of known, and most importantly, half-known,words. Learners need to meet a word several times before they acquire it, andit is often more effective to work not on brand new, but on relatively newvocabulary if words which are known passively are to become available forlearners' active use. Altr of these activities are suitable for use in class withintermediate or more advanced learners.

3. Recording collocations

Encourage students to record words in a 5-1 box. The single most importantkind are verb + noun corocations which represent the standard, trrst-choiceway of expressing certain concepts. Encourage leamers to record new nounsin boxes such as these. you may want to leave one or two spaces for leamersto add other words which they meet later.

apply fbr a II

b e o u t o f a II

Irnd a I . tobhunt for aresign from a

a one-man Ia historical

Ia tounng I exhibitiona retrospectivea contemporary

4. Essay preparation

Choose a topic for a discursive essay, for example;IJ we had more prisons, we wourd have fewer criminars. Do you agree?

Ask learners to write down four or five nouns you think they will need to writeabout the topic, for example:

prrcon criminal crtme sentenceHave learners look up the nouns in their collocation dictionaries and chooseadjectives and verbs which they need to express their ideas. Emphasise thatthey must not wony if there are some words they do not know. Encourase

100 Classroom strategies, activities and exerctses

them to look quickly through the dictionary entry and notice the words they

do recognise. Help them to choose useful phrases which will help them to

write a good essay:

go to / send somebody to / sentence somebody to (7) years in prison

bom / dangerous / hardened criminalprevent I crack down on I petty lviolent crime

death lheavy I lite I severe I Q)-year sentence

Exploring collocations of key words with the class before they write will help

them to avoid mistakes and to express their idea better when they write.

Collocation is particularly important in texts about opinions and ideas; it is

nowhere near as common in the sort of short (120/180 word) descriptions and

narratives which ale common in, for example, Cambridge First Certificate

essays.

5. Find a better word

Using a collocation dictionary, look up the word idea and try to find a better

way of expressing each of these:

Here are some possible choices: innovative, ridiculous, striking, bizarre,

bright, imaginative. Now do the same with these words:

1. effect

a new idea

an unwswal idea a nice idea

a silly idea a

0

vetl interesting idea

very good idea

a big effect

an effect nobody expected

an effect that put things right

a very small change

a change that upset people

a change that pleased everybody

the basic problem

the most urgent problem

a problem that can't be solved

a bad effect

an effect which helps

a very funny effect

2. change

a very big change

a very very small change

a change that made you happy

3. problem

a very very small problem

the real problem

a problem that happens often

a problem that nobody expected a problem that makes you feel bad

When learners are writing, encourage them to use a collocation dictionary, to

look up the noun they want to use to find an adjective which expresses their

idea more precisely than the most common adjectives or phrases, which they

will tend to use if not guided towards more interesting alternatives.

6. Real

Some radjectilEnglishneed tohas a vtsuch as:

ACCO

CTTCI

disctt

metlt

progl

srtua)

VISrcI

As a siradjective

board, fc

cln eni

a bey'

a tricL

Ask learna sentenc

One reasrdifferent

each of th

rell a J,r u n a J

With manActivity 7provide a i

If yon t

flexible,only . .

One oJ'countn,

This activipossible coframe, thelikely to brlarger churlanguage th

\ ords theyip the,m to

r prtson

:e u,illhelp:he1' write.ideas; it isiptions andCertificate

Lnd a better

l

si-lt

e

rr body

rived

i feel bad

1ctlonary, tolresses their. u'hich theyJ \ .

Classroom. strategies, activities and exercises 101

6. Really useful words

has a very long entry in a collocation dictionary is suitable for this activitv.such as:

account, action, answet approach, argument, behaviour, change,circumstances, condition, consequences, decision, clffirence,discussion, effect, feature, idea, information, interest, issue, manner,method, move, performance, plan, policy, position, problem,programnxe, project, question, reason, relationship, result, scheme,situation, solution, state, stotj, sele, system, theme, theory, use, view,vision, way, work.

As a simple five-minute activity, choose one of these words. Take sixadjective collocations from a collocation dictionary and write them on theboard, for example:

an ernbarrassing situation n unique sitwationa bewildering situationa triclq sitwation

an extraordinary situationa tense situation

Ask leamers to think of a real example of each from their own lives and writea sentence or tell a paftner about some of the situations.one reason these words are so common is because they are used in manydifferent contexts. Specific examples suggest contexts; what context doeseach of these examples suggest:

tell a.funny story concoct an implawsible storltrun afront poge stoty believe somebody's sob storlt

with many of the nouns above, you may want to sort examples first (seeActivity 7), then put some of the collocations into sentence frames whichprovide a context, such as:

If you want to . . . , yoLr're more rikery to swcceecr if yow adopt a logicar/flexible/cawtious approach. If yow aclopt a more . . . approach, you,llon ly . . .

one of the most controversial issues which is being d.iscussed (in mycountry) at the moment is . . . . It's an isswe which tencls to divide. . . .

This activity rerninds us that teachers should keep language in the largestpossible context or frame, rather than trying to break it down. The larger theframe, the more useful information, including grammatical collocations, islikely to be retained. This, rn turn, means learners are more likely to storelarger chunks and that they will make fewer mistakes when re-usins theIanguage themselves.

102 Classroom strategies, activities and exercises

7. Sorting

Ask learners to work in groups and select items from a collocation dictionary

entry using a 'rule'. For example, look up the verb change and find collocates

which suggest 'quickly', such as: abruptly, immediately, overnight. Or look

up the word reason and find adjectives which are negative in different ways,

for example : far-fetched, friv olous, p erv ers e, s iniste r.

Here are some more general 'rules'which you can use with many different

words. Search for:. verbs or adjectives which seem positive or negative. adjectives which mean big / strong / serious. adjectives which mean small / slight / minor. verbs which mean something started / stopped. verbs which mean something changed in a certain way

Many of these 'rules' work well with these words:

crisis, style, rules, view, marriage, image, strike, reform, hope, search,

scheme. measures. solution, role, risk

8. Near synonyms

Take two or more words with similar meaning. For example:

iniutlt wound

Ask learners to look carefully at the adjective and verb collocates of both

words in a collocation dictionary. The difference in the way similar words are

used is often largely the difference in their collocational fields. Ask leamers

to translate some of the collocations into their own language; this will help

learners build an understanding of how the English words are used. More

advanced learners can use groups of words of similar meaning, for example:

1. answer, conclusion, explanation, result, solution2. mistake, eror, fault, problem, defect3. instructions, guidelines, rules, regulations, directives4. abllity, talent, gift, skill, aptitude5. pattern, shape, fotm, design, structure6. document, report, file, article, story, account7. task, job, work, career, occupation, profession8. number, quantity, amount, size, dimensions, proportions

9. Rapid sorting

Give leamers two nouns from a collocation dictionary, which they write on a

piece ofpaper. Read out a selection of about 10/12 collocates from the entries.

Students write the collocates in one or both lists as appropriate.

Try to choose relatively new, half-known words. If you choose words of

similar meaning, you must be prepared to discuss possibilities and sort outpossible confusion. Remember that collocation is about probabilities, not

black and

ANSSexpecthave, adetaile

If you waactivity b,with anstrthe verb c

10. Five-r

Look up ceach whrc

place.enter fi

You can das: problejob.

11. Coller

Learners ralready krknow. Whverbs whicollocatesfamiliar rrlist - andThis actirprovides aas do, tttc,perhaps irWith a _seeconotn\"

mone]'econor

12. Thans

When yoroften noti<modify tluattentron iunits. Dccollocatior

lCtlOnary

roliocates. Or look3nt ways,

different

e arch,

:s of bothrvords arek leamersn'i11 help

sed. Moreerample:

\\rrlte on athe entries.

: rvords ofrd sort outrilities, not

Classroom strategies, activities and exercises 103

black and white choices. Here is an example:

ANSWERexpect, supply, insist onhave, appropriate, completedetailed, final

REPLYexpect, send, insist onappropriate, audibledetailed, pointed

If you want to wake up a sleepy class, you can tum this activity into realactivity by having learners point to the left hand wall if the verb collocateswirh answer, the right hand wall if it collocates with reply, and, both walls ifthe verb collocates with both nouns.

10. Five-word stories

Look up order and examination in a collocation dictionary. Find five verbs foreach which suggest a 'story' if they are in a particular order like this:

place, get, process, despatch, receive an orderenter for, revise for, take, fail, re-sit an examination

You can do the same with any noun which suggests an extended process suchas: problem, product, relationship, research, system, lette4 wa4 negotiations,job.

11. Collecting collocations

Learners often do not realise how many words collocate with a word theyalready know. This means they do not get full value from the words theyknow. when an interesting noun comes up in class, read out a list of about 10verbs which may collocate with it and ask learners to note all the correctcollocates as you read. use seven or eight correct words, particularly half-familiar words - again a collocation dictionary will provide you with a helpfullist - and add two or three others which do not make correct collocations.This activity reminds us of the importance of negative evidence. It alsoprovides an opportunity to remind learners of words they often overuse suchas do, make, have, take. Make sure they note any relatively new words,perhaps in a 5-1 box. choose the words you practise for particular classes.with a general course you might choose money, or with a specialist groupeconomy, then use the following lists where the non-collocates are marked *:

money: bot:row, change, eam, *gain, invest, make, *reduce, save, spendeconomy: boost, *break, *do, expand, kick start, run, steer, stimulate

12. Translating collocations

when you are browsing a dictionary or reading a text with a class, you willoften notice verb + adjective + noun collocations such as eanx a proper wage,modifi the original proposal, take regular exercise. Draw these to students,attention and ask them to translate them into their own language as singleunits. Doing this regularly will help students become more aware ofcollocation and less inclined to translate word-for-word.

104 Classroom strategies, activities and exercises

13. As easy as possible

Learners work in small teams, two teams competing against another. Giveeach team a list of, say, 10 nouns which are headwords in a collocationdictionary. Choose these carefully, taking into account the class level, wordsmet recently etc. Each group has about 10 minutes to prepare, using thedictionary. They list 5 collocates from the dictionary for each noun. Team Athen say these one at a time for each headword to Team B who have to writethe words down and try to guess the noun. The interest lies in the fact thatcollocates should be chosen so that Team B's task is as easy as possible.

If they guess a noun from one collocate, Team A scores 5 points, if they needtwo collocates, 4 points and so on. If they do not work out (not, we hope,'guess') the headword when they have all five collocates, TeamA scores 0 forthat word. When Team A has gone though its 10 words, Team B does thesame.

Notice the game is constructed so that the team which uses the strongestand/or most frequent collocates is likely to win, so there is a systematicelement built into the design of the game. Here are some words which you canuse to demonstrate how to choose words:

examination: revise for, re-sit, pass, fail, takelanguage: foreign, spoken, written, sign, strongjob: apply for, look for, get, lose, hold downrules: obey, stick to, bend, explain, changesmell: delicious, disgusting, awful, terrible, horribleinterested: not remotely, extremely, seriously, vaguely, definitely

14. The collocation game

Choose a noun with a lot of verb or adjective collocates - again, a collocationdictionary is a big help. Tell the leamers that all the words you read outcollocate with the same noun, which they must try to guess. Learners writedown the collocates you read out. When they think they know the noun, theystand up. Continue till everyone is standing. Check guesses. Repeat with anew word.

This activity only works properly if you choose the order of the wordscarefully, moving from more general words to stronger collocates. Makesure before you start that there is one word that means everyone willrecognise the noun, so that the activity does not become unnecessarilyfrustrating for learners. Here are some examples:

1. plain, dark, white, bitter, milk, bar of2. collect, provide, volunteer, conceal, gather, withhold3. test, advance, build, outline, put forward, corroborate4. huge, growing, profitable, export, domestic, black5. year, loss, allowance, bracket, haven, evasion6. cut. calculate, cover, minimise, meet, recover, amort ise

chocolateinformation

a theorymarket

taxthe cost of

ExampleExample

You can r

7. fairl1.,8. exfex9. upstai10. carefu

After yordictionari

15. Noun

English rinouns ascomfortabthat thesewhich teardominoes.

blank cboard -

table rmana-geassrstar]

16. Explor

Peter Sundgroup of e:a pomt ma(

"I am incrgrammar leapproach biand teacherthe student:of langua_ee

An advancrrecognlse guses. Traditl

1. Traditior

glitter: sgleam: -eglisten: gshimmer

er. Givelocationl. wordssing theTeam Ato writeiact that;ible.

Le! need'e hope,res 0 forloes the

rongest;tematicvou can

Locationead outrs wnteun, theyt with a

: words;. Makene will

"^ssarily

rcolatenationlheoryrarket

tax:ost of

Classroom strategies, activities anrJ exercises 10S

Example 3 is suitabre for an English for Academic purposes group, andExamples 4-6 for a business English group.You can do the same thing with adverbs and adjectlves or verbs:7. fairly, relatively, ridiculously, comparatively, dead easy8. extremely, reasonably, remarkably, superbly, fighting fit9. upstairs, in luxury, alone, beyond your means, to a ripe old age live10. carefully, thoroughly, properly, closely, in minute detail examineAfter you have played this game several times, if you have a number ofdictionaries, students can do the activity independently in small groups.15. Noun + noun combinationsEnglish word classes are unusually flexible, so verbs can be used as nouns,nouns as adjectives and so on. Even advanced leamers do not arways feelcomfortabre using noun + noun combinations, and may need to be reassuredthat these are standard English. Here are two sequences of such combinationswhich teachers can easily ad.apt into a collocation game such as collocationdominoes.

blank cheque - cheque book - book club - club sandwich - sandwichboard - board room _ room servtce _ service charge _ charge cardtable top - top quality - quality rime - time manasemenr _management course _ course work _ workshop _ shop assistant _asslstant manager

16. Exploring examplesPeter sunderland (Arena, Issue 19) describes the advantages of exproring agroup of examples rather than looking for distinctions of J"anirrg, refrectinga point made by George Woolard in his chaprer."I am increasingly coming to see no distinction between vocabulary andgrammar lessons in my mind, replacing them with the belief that a lexicalapproach based on teaching chunks of language is of greater value to studentand teacher' correspondingly, the end product of my lessons is maximisingthe students'communicative power by exposing them to useful, real chunksof language.

An advanced class want to be able to use words other than shine. Theyrecognise gritte4 grow, gleam etc but have little idea of the distinguishinguses' Traditionaily, there have been four ways of distinguishing uses:1. Traditional standard dictionary definitions:

glitter: sparkle with lightgleam: glow or shine not very brightlyglisten: gleam or shimmer, as a wet, oily surface doesshimmer: gleam tremulously or glisten

106 Classroom strategies, activities and exerctses

These are of practically no use to EFL learners. As can be seen, the definitions

are interchangeable and rely on each other.

2. Typical EFL dictionary definitions:

glitter: shine in a sparkling waygleam: shine brightly as reflecting light or as very cleanglisten: shimmer brightly as smooth, wet or oily

shimmer: shine with a fairly unsteady light

These are slightly more helpful as all the definitions revolve around variations

of shine.

3. Typical EFL dictionary distinguishing information:

glitter: many little flashesgleam: reflect/cleanglisten: wet/oilyshimmer: unsteady, soft light

Better still; a little over-simplified, a sanitised version of the truth but more

user-friendly.

4. Typical EFL dictionary examples:

glitter: star, eyes, diamonds, career, prize, anaygleam: white teeth, car (new), (eyes) with excitement, hair, (gold/black)

glisten: sweat on the face, eyes (with tears), dew drops on grass

glimmer: lights (in the distance), of success/hope/interestshimmer: moonlight on waterglow: embers/ashes, skin/complexion with health, praise/tribute/

report/terms

This last approach is of greatest use. We go sffaight to the real, the probable,

the typical and the frequent; actual combinations of words as the starting

point. Students learn native-speaker phrases, and may or may not work back

towards distinguishing definitions, like those in 3 above. As with native

speakers, knowledge of the collocations may be enough to provide an instinct

for what is correct. The basis of teaching and leaming is observation of used

language. This procedure recognises that it is often collocational field which

distinguishes these groups of words which have similar meanings."

5.5 Exercises

L. Correcting common mistakes

There is a collocation mistake in each of these sentences. Correct them by

looking up the word in bold in a collocation dictionary. All the mistakes are

similar to those made by candidates in the First Certificate exam.

1 .2.

,1

5 .

6 .

7 .

8 .

9.

10 .

1 1 .

tz.This t1'done a IThe folrmodifieexerclserememtwhich isuch aslearnersbalancer

2.Yerb

Some r,(to comFdictionar

catelegit

1 . I ' m

2 . H e .

3 . O h i

4 . 1 . . ,

5 . I . . .

6. I dor

7. She <

8 . I . . .

9 . W e .

10. Coul

I v

wlwlThwlI ' n

I f :

Ge

I f l

To

I f :

I f l

initions

matlons

DUt more

Ublack)

probable,e startingrork backLth nativem instinctrn of usedeld which

t them bystakes are

Classroom strategies, activities and exercises 107

1. I was completely disappointed when I failed my exam.2. When I did badly in the exam it was a strong disappointment.3. when you decide what to study, you must make a planned choice.4. The holiday I went on last year was a full disaster.5. What happened next was a really disaster.6. I'm afraid I would like to do a serious complaint.7. If you want to lose weight, you need to make a diet.8. Getting on a diet will help you.

9. If you are too fat, you need to miss some weight.10. To improve your health you need to do some sacrifices.11. If you want to be really fit, you need to make more exercise.12. If you don't keep to your diet, you won't have the result you want.

This type of exercise is parlicularly useful as feedback after learners havedone a piece of written work.

The following six exercises all focus on collocations where one of the wordsmodifies the other, for example, verb + adverb, arlverb + adjective. Theseexercises are useful and comparatively easy to write. It is imporlant toremember, however, that activities and exercises which introduce collocationswhich identify or name a concept, for example, verb + noun collocationssuch as make a mistake ot propose a toast are perhaps more important ifleamers are to build their lexicons in a way which is both systematic andbalanced.

2. Verb + adverb

Some verbs collocate strongly with particular adverbs. Use each adverb onceto complete these sentences. If in doubt, check the verb in a collocationdictionary.

categorically confidently completely flatly fulblegitimately hardly readily strongly tentatively

1. I'm sorry, I . . . . forgot to pass your message on.2 . H e . . . . r e f u s e d t o h e l p .3. Oh it's you! I . . . . recognised you with your new haircut.4. I . . . . recommend we wait until we have more information.5. I . . . . admit I did not expect things to change so quickly.6. I don't think you . . . appreciate how serious the situation is.7. She can . . . . claim that she had the idea before anyone else.8. I . . . . deny that it was anything to do with me.9. We . . . . expect to make as much profit this year as last.

10. Could I . . . . suggest it might be beuer to wait?

108 Classroom strategies, activities and exercises

3. Alternatives to very

With many adjectives you want to use very,blut there are lots of other wordswith a similar meaning which are sffonger or more precise. For example:

highly qualified bitterly disappointed

Use a collocation dictionarv to add a word which means very to each of these:

8 . 7Ci

9 . rh

10 Ira)

An exto leaphrase

5. Adr

Someadverta collc

l

1. exhausted

2. disorganised

3. handicapped

4. disillusioned

Now do the same with these:

5 . . . . . . . . e n c o u r a g e d

6 . . . . . . . . u n e x p e c t e d

7 . . . . . , . . r e c o m m e n d e d

8 . . . . . . . . p r e p a r e d

7. grateful

8. impractical

9. offensive

10. ruthless

1 1. sure

12. unacceptable

your notebook, try to record a word with it

1 .

2.

4.

5 .

6 .

accept

reject

. greedy

. honest

. inaccurate

. remarkable

. sceptical

. theoretical

changesearch

prove refusespread think

When you put an adjective inwhich means very.

Often you can also find a word which means a bit, for example, slightly

inaccurate, s omewhat sceptical.

4. Verb + adverb phrase

Some adverb phrases sffongly suggest one particular verb. Can you add the

verb (in the correct form) to each of these? The clue is in the adverb phrase.

If in doubt, look up the verbs in a collocation dictionary. You need to use each

of these verbs once:

I

6

'l

I

livesign

Now cc

1. The Iparry

2 . T h e tthe fi

3. She'ssomo

4. The Irand tt

5. If yor

6. The d

7. His wdiffen

8. The Pso hel

1. The government . . . . point-blankto consider iritroducing new

legislation.2. The government has . . . . out of hand the possibility of

changing the law.Have you seen my briefcase anywhere? I've . . . . high and

low,but I can't find it.Everything's agreed; we're just waiting for them to . . . . on the

dotted line.When the news got out, it . . . . like wildfire.

This . . . . beyond all shadow of doubt that he did it.

IhopeIwi l l . . . . to a r ipe old age.

J .

4.

5 .6 .,7

vords.

hese:

,ith it

ightly

ld theilase.r each

the

Classroom strategies, activities and exercises 109

8. The band's tour of Japan . . . . in triumph witha sell_outconcert in Tokyo.

9. I see what you mean. We're obviously . . . . alonR the samelines.

10 It was years since I'd been there and the town had . . . . out ofall recognition.

An exercise like this can be used to encourage learners to see that it is betterto learn language in chunks. In this exercise, they need to leam the wholephrase, complete with the verb.

5. Adverb + adjective

some adverb + adjective collocations are often fairly strong. Match eachadverb in List 1 with an adjective in List 2.you should find allihe answers ina collocation dictionary by looking up the adjectives.

List I

1. delicately2. closely3. enthusiastically4. highly5. carefully

6. ideally7. badly8. dangerously

Now complete each of these sentences with one of the expressions:

1. The election is very . . at the moment. Eitherparty could win.

2 . T h e n e w p r o d u c t i o n o f ' H a m l e t ' w a s . . . . . . . . b ythe first night audience.

3 . She 's too . . . . . . . . fo r the job_we don ' t wantsomeone with a degree.

4. The house is . . . .and ten minutes to trr" -ounr;i;..

' ' ' ' ten minutes from the sea'

5. If you think I'm going to agree to that, you're

6 . Thed iscowas a l ready . . . . . . . whenthe f i res ta r ted .

7. His words were . . to ensure they appealed todifferent sections of the audience.

8. The President has been . . the idea from the start,so he's very anxious that it is a success.

List 2

a. associated withb. balancedc. chosend. mistakene. overcrowdedf. qualifiedg. receivedh. situated

110 Classroom strategies, activities and exercises

6. Adverb + adjective

Match the adverbs in List 1 with the adjectives in List 2. You should find allthe answers in a collocation dictionary by looking up the adjectives.

List 1

1. bitterly2. strictly3. lavishly4. eagerly5. generously6. widely7. heavily8. extensively

List2

a. anticipatedb. availablec. damagedd. disappointede. illustratedf. influenced byg.limitedh. rewarded

Now complete these texts using each of the expressions once:

1. Oasis's new tour was . . and tickets weresupposed to be . . but in fact they were

to two per person. I was .that I couldn't get any tickets all.

2. A new . . biography of Princess Diana has just

appeared. It seems to have been . . by interestin America. There are some new, rather personal photos, supplied byso-called friends ofhers who have, no doubt, been .for supplying personal details. Famous people often don't realise theirreputation can be . . by so-called friends. I'mglad I'm not famous.

7. Adverb + adjective

Use each of these adverbs once to complete the examples. If in doubt, look upthe verbs in a collocation dictionary.

absolutely densely generallynarrowlystrictly

'Lord of the Flies' is still . . . . considered to be Goldine'smost successful book.I'm . . . . tempted to keep the money - I could do with someextra at the moment.

3. Supplies at this low price are . . . . limited.4. Central California is one of the most . . . . populated parts of

the United States.5. I was . . . . appalled to hear they were discussing bringing

back the death penalty.6. The house is . . . . situated - on the coast. near the citv and

surrounded by beautiful mountains.

heavily

richly

hopelesslyseverely

fatallyideallysorely

1 .

z.

7. I realroun(

8. Everldeser

9. The t

10. Exporhandi

11. Al l rh

72. The pin the

8. Synonl

Use a collword in br

1 Rumour2. You can3. You grc4. News ca5. You can6. You can7. You can8. You can

This typesame thing

9. Opposil

Use a collthe one in

1. You cal

2. You car

3. We thor

JOUme).,4. If some

investi-e

5. Are you

6. John ishave evl

7. You can

8. I had anto the fr

:'iuid.find all

)Ie

has justrnlerestlied by

ise theiri s . I 'm

ubt. look up

' i n o ' q

h some

parts of

o l n o

! and

Classroom strategies, activities and exercises 1ll

7. I realised I'd taken the wrong road, and when I came to the secondroundabout , Iwas . . . . con fused.

8. Everyone was delighted at her success, which was . .deserved.

9. The theory tumed out to be . . . . flawed.10. Exporters who do not have foreign language skills are

handicapped.

l l . Al l the news coming from the region is. . . . . . . . censored.12. The polls suggest that the govemment will be . . . . def-eated

in the referendum.

8. Synonyms

use a collocation dictionary to find another word similar in meanins to theword in bold:

l. Rumours are rife trr . . . . . .2. Yotcan get into a row or get. . . . . . in one.3. You grow up in a neighbourhood or are . up in it.4. News can slip out or . . . . . out.5. You can see something clearly or . . . . . .6. You can make a guess or. . . . . . a guess.7. You can galvanise or. . . . . . public opinion.8. You can demand or. . . . . . certain minimum qualifications.This type of exercise, which gives leamers altemative ways of saying thesame thing, is only suitable for advanced learners.

9. Opposites

use a collocation dictionary to find a word which is opposite in meaning tothe one in bold:

1. You can dismiss or. . . . . . employees.2. Yolcan impose or . . . . . . an embargo on a counfy.3. we thought that crossing the Kalahari would be a fairly dangerous

joumey, but it turned out to be quite .4. If somebody is stealing things at work, you can instigate an

investigation and then it if it is causing too much troubre.5. Are you the sort of person who follows or . . . . . . instructions?6. John is the perfect guest, but Tony is one of the most guests I

have ever entertained.

7. You can either Ioosen your grip on something or . . . . . . it.8. I had an accident in my car rast week. There was some sright damage

to the front of the car, but the damage to the back was . .

2.

5.

112 Classroom str(ttegies, activities and exercises

Sometimes the opposite of weak ts strong; weaUstrong teabutthe opposite ofstrong cheese is mild cheese not *weak cheese, so once again remind learnersof the need to learn words in collocations or larser chunks.

10. The missing verb

What are the missing verbs in the following collocations? The same verbcompletes all three examples. If in doubt, check the nouns in a collocationdictionary. Notice how important it is to learn words in phrases rather thansingle words.

1 . . . . . . . . . a m i s t a k e 4 . . . . . . . . . p a n i ca statement a probleman observatiofl smbarrassmentto a complete standstill 5. . . . . . . . . dangerto an understanding an accidenttoadecision aquestionconcemembarrassmentfear

11. Interesting adjectives - L

Complete the sentences using each of these adjectives once. In each case oneofthe adjectives is the fairly obvious choice.

11. Theenth

12. Thetyou

12.lntet

You dorhouse/pnalways athe noun

Add onemore thal

1 . . . . . .2 . . . . . .

4 . . . . . . ,5

6

7 . . . . . . .

Exercisesused carefi

13. Odd vr

One verb iwhich does

l. accept, a

2. come up

3. build up,

4. deal wirtt

5. accept, a

6. describe,

7. crash, fin

8. arrange, <

Now try the

1. acclaim, r

2. come to, t

3. analyse, d

5

6.

t .8 .

bitter embarrassing extensive genuinesafe remarkable sound strict

inspired powerfulwide wild

1. It's a . . assumption that he will pass the exam easily.

2. Your parents gave you very . . advice. You'd be wise to listento them.

3. I found myself in the . . position of having to apologiseagain.

4. It was a. . . .. . . . disappointment when I couldn't get onto thecourse I liked most.

Our holiday in Iceland was an . . choice. We enjoyed everyminute of it.

It's a . . coincidence, but four out of five members of theteam come from the same village.

The old part ofthe town suffered . . . . . . . . damage in the war.

The team won the championship by a very . . margin, thebiggest ever.

He has a. . . . . . . . giftforhelping otherpeople.

If you're serious about losing weight, you need to go on a . . . . . . .diet.

9 .

10 .

)osite oflearngrs

ne verblocationher than

case one

rful

listen

rery

Classroom strategies, activities and exercises 113

11. The performance was absolutely wonderful and greeted withenthusiasm by a large audience.

12. There is a . . argument for spending a yeur at work beforeyou go to university.

12. Interesting adjectives - 2

You don't want to use the same few adjectives all the time: a bighouse/problem, an interesting job/person/book.When you leam a noun, it isalways a good idea to leam at least one adjective which you can use to makethe noun stronger.

Add one or more of these adjectives to each of the nouns below. Sometimesmore than one is possible. If you are in doubt, check in your dictionary.

complete

heavy

4 ban5 career

special strong

greatserrcus

1 1 . . . e m p h a s i s12. . . example

excellenttotalsuccessful

1 . . . . . . . . . a d v a n t a g e 8 . . . c o n s e q u e n c e s2 . . . . . . . . . a c c i d e n t 9 . . . d e f e a t3 . . . . . . . . . a g r e e m e n t 1 0 . . . d o u b t s

he

6 . . . . . . . . . c o m p l a i n t 1 3 . . . f e a t u r e7 . . . . . . . . . c o n f u s i o n 1 4 . . . f l a v o u r

Exercises like this, which do not have unique, 'correct' answers need to beused carefully so that they help rather than confuse leamers.

13. Odd verb out

one verb in each line does not collocate with the noun. cross out the onewhich does not fit.

1. accept, act on, disregard, follow, ignore, make, solicit, take ADVICE2. come up with, do, expect, get, require, supply AN ANSWER3. build up, close down, set up, put off, takebver, wind up A BUSINESS4. deal with, do, examine, ignore, reject, respond to A COMPLAINT5. accept, answer, come in for, give rise to, make,_reject CRITICISM6. describe, do, enjoy, have, recall, share AN EXPERIENCE

7. crash, finish, hire, park, repair, run, service, start, write off A CAR8. arrange, do, gatecrash, go to, have, throw A pARTy

Now try these more difficult words:

1. acclaim, disparage, exaggerate, praise, reduce AN ACHIEVEMENT2. come to, decide, endorse, implement, reach, sign AN AGREEMENT3. analyse, determine, establish, make, study, trace THE CAUSE

ll4 Classroom strategies, activities and exercises

4. cause, compensate for, outweigh, realise THE DISADVANTAGE(S)

5. classify, collate, deny, gather, organise, provide, withhold MATERIAL

6. acknowledge, answer, cteate, meet, put, respond to A NEED

7. announce, condemn, endorse, moderate, move, relax A POLICY

8. adopt, apply, do, establish, propose, test, work out A FORMULA

In No 8, which verbs suggesl a chemicctl/mathematical formwla, and whichsuggest a more general plan?

Notice that some of the most useful nouns are rather general words which donot caffy very much meaning: answer, changes, cause, policy. Words like thisare often used with a verb with a very precise meaning, and often with anadjective too in phrases llke act on professional advice, introduce radicalchanges, sign a provisional agreement, withhold sensitive material.

14. Short paragraphs

1. Look vp news in a collocation dictionary. Then ffy to complete this shorltext:

A hundred years ago news was slow to in. Today as soon asnews . . , it is flashed across the world by satellite. It is almostimpossible for govemments to . news. No matter what they dot o s t o p i t . . . . . . . , i t w i l l a l w a y s . . . . . . . o u t .

2. Look up emergency. Then try to complete this short text:

Emergencies can never be . . . . . . . . When they take . ., theemergency services swing into action. As part of their everyday work,they . for an emergency so that when one . . , they areready for all eventualities. Unfortunately, . . emergencies happenall the time and cannot be . . . even with the best planning.

3. Look tp hair. Then try to complete this short text:

Sandra had dull . . . . . hair. She had tried every kind of shampoo. Shehadtried. . . . . it a different colour. Shehad even. . . . . itpure whitejust like Annie Lennox. Eventually, she had it all . . . . . off - start fromscratch, she said. But it grew back, the same . . . . . straggly hair she hadhated even from childhood.

To prepare students to write an essay, first ask them to write a paragraphsimilar to those above using five or six collocations of an important noun theywill need for the essay.

15. Won

Match eeverbs in l

ana(

Group A:Group B:Group C:Group D:Group E:Group F:

Now do tl

fin,Group A:Group B:Group C:Group D:Group E:

16. SentenPut the foll

in fatn re)

1. It's a -eor2. I decidec

decision.

3. The desrrpoliticiar

4. There are

5. The situano choice

Remember.text - are olteaching mato develop a

.\GE(S)

ERIAL

I NE,ED)OLICY

{TMULA

J which

u'hich dols like thisn with an:e radical

this short

soon asalmost

they do

. . , t h er work,ihey arehappen1ng.

roo. Shere white:art fromshe had

a paragraphrt noun they

Classroom strategies, activities and exercises 115

15. Words into groups

Match each of these nouns to one of the groups of verbs. Remember, all theverbs in the group must collocate with the noun.

attack battle dispute fiSht struggle war

Group A: avoid, get into, pick, provoke, start, winGroup B: declare, go to, lead to, prolong, wage, winGroup C: be engaged in, continue, face, give up, join, take upGroup D: be vulnerable to, caffy out, launch, mount, resist, step upGroup E: fight, force, go into, lose, winGroup F: aggravate, get involved in, intervene in, put an end to, resolve

Now do the same with these:

fin" penalty punishment sentence discipline

Group A: heavy, lenient, suspended, life, long, reducedGroup B: harsh, heavy, severe, death, stiff, hugeGroup C: heavy, hefty, immediate, on-the-spot, stiff, tokenGroup D: effective, firm, strict, slack, poor, excessiveGroup E: appropriate, brutal, capital, fit, lenient, harsh

16. Sentence adverbs

Put the following sentence adverbs into the sentences below.

in fairnessm retrospect

1. It's a good idea but it will never work

2. I decided to leave school at sixteen. it was the wrongdecision. I should have stayed on and gone to university.

3. The destruction of the rain forests is a disaster, although,politicians are starting to take it more seriously.

4. There are many problems with the present Health Service.there are simply not enough hospital beds.

5. The situation is getting worse and worse. , we haveno choice - things have to change and change soon!

Remember, discourse markers - phrases which help the reader through thetext - are one kind of collocation which is frequently under-represented inteaching materials. Leamers need practice of this kind of language if they areto develop an adequate lexicon for writing.

in theorytin other words

in practice

in particwlar

116 Classroom strategies, activities and exerctses

5.6 Your own exercises

If you write your own exercises using a collocation dictionary and copyingone of the above formats, be wamed that collocation is never as simple as itseems - sometimes the adverb must come in front of the verb, sometimes itmust come after, and sometimes either position is possible with very similarmeanings. Some adjective + noun or verb + noun combinations are muchmore common if they are used in the negative; perhaps some of the verbs areused with the headword mostly when it is literal, others mostly when it ismore metaphorical. Very rarely are the lines between two 'diffetent'uses ofthis kind clear; one use tends to overlap and merge into another - that is howreal language works. Although writing exercises can be very frustrating, it isone of the best ways you can yourself develop a clearer understanding ofcollocation and in tum help your leamers to notice, record and leam languagefrom the texts they read in a way which builds their mental lexiconsefficiently and systematically.

Finally, two wamings. You need to pay special attention to:. General nouns, which are common and useful, which have little meaning ontheir own, but very wide collocation fields [See activity 6, p 101]. Learnersthink they 'know' these words, but they are a source of many mistakes whenleamers (mis-)use them in speech and writing.. De-lexicalised verbs such as do, make, put, keep, get, have, which learnersoveruse when they do not know the appropriate verb collocate. They need tolearn both which can be used with a particular noun, and, perhaps moreimportantly, which cannot be used with a parlicular noun (xdo a complaint,*make a hard diet).

In addition to the activities and exercises discussed in this chapter, many ofthe 45 Activities and 30 Exercise-types discussed in Chapters 6 and 7 ofImplementing the Lexical Approach focus on collocations, and many familiaractivities either already have, or can easily be adapted to have, a collocationalfocus.

5.7 SurnmaryAll of the contributors to this book stress the importance of making leamersmore aware of the phrasal nature of language. The single most important kindof multi-word item is collocation. The single most important kind ofcollocation is the type which names a concept, usually verb + noun (movehouse) or verb + adjective + noun (take the wrong turning). Finally, the singlemost important contribution the teacher can make to ensuring that inputbecomes intake, is ensuring that learners notice the collocations and otherphrases in the input language. This involves an important change ofperspective for many teachers, particularly those used to emphasising thelanguage that students produce. We now recognise that it is noticing the input

langua-eetlme, tealsuccessfuthese reabalancedwhich helactivitiesencouragrof input b

Discuss

Think of ait so that rt

Do you thlthe classrccollocatior

How woulrthe idea be

opymgrle as it:imes itsimilar: much:rbs areen it isuses ofis how

ng, rt rsding ofrnguageexicons

mrng on,earners:s when

learnersneed to

ls moremplaint,

many ofLnd 7 offamiliarrcational

Ieamerstant kindkind ofLn (movehe singlerat inputLnd othertange ofising thethe input

Classroom strategies, activities and exercises ll7

language which is crucial to expanding learners'mental lexicons. At the sametime, teachers and learners expect to produce language in class, and anysuccessful methodology needs to maintain involvement and motivation. Forthese reasons alone, productive activities and exercises are important. Abalanced leaming programme also involves quiet reflection and homeworkwhich helps to reinforce input. Teachers should remember, however, that allactivities and exercises should be designed to support the central activity ofencouraging leamers to notice language in ways which maximise the chanceof input being retained as long-term intake.

Discussion questions

Think of a vocabulary activity you use regularly in class. How can you adaptit so that it focusses on collocations rather than single words?Do you think your learners leam most of their vocabulary in class or outsidethe classroom? what do you do in class to ensure that they can acquirecollocations and phrases from the language they meet outside the classroom?How would you introduce the idea of collocation to a class who had never metthe idea before?

118 Calloway's code

Chapter 6Calloway's code

O. Henryt

As a light interlude before the more theoretical part of this book, readers mayenjoy this short story. It is about a hundred years old and, printed here in itsoriginal form, the vocabulary and style seem very dated. Surprisingly, however,it touches directly on the content of this book. There is a short commentary atthe end of the chapter, but initially readers are invited to enjoy the linguisticskills of two journalists, Calloway (the encoder) and Vesey (the de-coder).Between them, they put fixed collocations to highly creatiye use.

The New York Enterprlse sent H. B. Calloway as special correspondent to theRusso-Japanese-Portsmouth war.For two months Calloway hung about Yokohama and Tokyo, shaking dicewith other conespondents for drinks of rickshaws - oh no, that's somethingyou ride in; anyway he wasn't earning the salary that his paper was payinghim. But that was not Calloway's fault. The little brown men who held thestrings of Fate between their fingers were not ready for the readers of theEnterprise to season their breakfast bacon and eggs with the battles of thedescendants of the gods.But soon the column of correspondents that were to go out with the FirstArmy tightened their field-glass belts and went down to theYalu with Kuroki.Calloway was one of these.Now, this is no history of the battle of the Yalu River. That has been told indetail by the corespondents who gazed at the shrapnel smoke rings from adistance of three miles. But, for justice's sake, let it be understood that theJapanese commander prohibited a nearer view.Calloway's feat was accomplished before the battle. What he did was tofurnish the Enterprlse with the biggest beat of the war. That paper publishedexclusively and in detail the news of the attack on the lines of the Russiangeneral Zassulitch on the same day that it was made. No other paper printeda word about it for two days afterwards, except a London paper, whoseaccount was absolutely incorect and untrue.Calloway did this in face of the fact that General Kuroki was making hismoves and laying his plans with the profoundest secrecy as far as the worldoutside his camps was concerned. The correspondents were forbidden to sendout any news whatever of his plans; and every message that was allowed onthe wires was censored with rigid severity.The correspondent for the London paper handed in a cablegram describingKuroki's plans; but as it was wrong from beginning to end the censor grinnedand let it go through.

vtsf)

rttc

).

eg

b

e

e

na

o

dn

d

S

Jt1

I i I i

Calloway's code ltg

So there they were - Kuroki on one side of the yalu with forty-two thousandinfantry, five thousand cavalry, and a hundred and twenty-four guns. on theother side, Zassulitch waited for him with only twenty-three thousand men,and with a long stretch of river to guard. And calloway had got hold of someimportant inside information that he knew would bring the Enterprise stafraround a cablegram as thick as flies around a park Row lemonade stand. If hecould only get that message past the censor - the new censor who had arrivedand taken his post that day.calloway did the obviously proper thing. He lit his pipe and sat down on agun cariage to think it over. And there we must leave him; for the rest of thestory belongs to vesey, a sixteen-dollar-a-week reporter on the Enterprise.calloway's cablegram was handed to the managing editor at four o'clock inthe aftemoon. He read it three times; and then drew a pocket mirror from apigeon-hole in his desk, and looked at his reflection carefully. Then he wentover to the desk of Boyd, his assistant (he was usually called Boyd when hewanted him), and laid the cablegram before him.'It's from Calloway,'he said. 'See what you make of it.'The message was dated at Wi-ju, and these were the words of it:'Foregone preconcerted rash witching goes muffled rumour mine dark

silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mootedparlous beggars ye angel incontrovertible.'

Boyd read it twice.'It's either a cipher or a sunstroke,'said he.'Ever hear of anything like a code in the office - a secret code?' asked the ME,who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors come and go.'None except the vernacular that the lady specials write in,' said Boyd.'Couldn't be an acrostic, could it?''I thought of that,' said the ME, 'but the beginning letters contained onlv fourvowels. It must be a code of some sor1.,'Try 'em in groups,'suggested Boyd. 'Let's see - "Rash witching goes,,- notwith me it doesn't. "Muffled rumour mine" - must have an underground wire."Dark silent unfortunate richmond" - no reason why he should knock thattown so hard. "Existing great hotly" - no, that doesn't pan out. I'll call Scott.'The city editor came in a hurry, and tried his luck. A city editor must knowsomething about everything; so Scott knew a little about cipher-writing.'It may be what is called an inverted alphabet cipher,' said he. .I'll try that."R" seems to be the oftenest used initial letter, with the exception of ..m,,.Assuming "r" to mean "e", the most frequently used letter, we transpose theletters - so.'Scott worked rapidly with his pencil for two minutes; and then showed thefirst word according to his reading - the word 'scejtz ez, . ,Great!'cried Boyd.'It's a charade. My first is a Russian general. Go on, Scott.'

120 Calloway's code

'No, that won't work,' said the city editor. 'It's undoubtedly a code. It'simpossible to read it without the key. Has the office ever used a cipher code?''Just what I was asking,' said the ME. 'Hustle everybody up that ought toknow. We must get at it some way. Calloway has evidently got hold ofsomething big, and the censor has put the screws on, or he wouldn't havecabled in a lot of chop suey like this.'Throughout the office of the Enterprise a drag-net was sent, hauling in suchmembers of staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, byreason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length ofservitude. They got together in a group in the city room, with the ME in thecentre. No one had heard of a code. All began to explain to the headinvestigator that newspapers never use a code, anyhow - that is a cipher code.of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort of code - an abbreviation. rather- b u t . . . .

The ME knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long he hadworked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an Enterpriseenvelope for longer than six years.

Calloway had been on the paper twelve years.'Try old Heffelbauer,'said the ME. 'He was here when Park Row was a potatopatch.'

Heffelbauer was an institution. He was half janitor, half handy-man about theoffice, and half watchman - thus becoming the peer of thirteen and one-halftailors. Sent for, he came, radiating his nationality.'Heffelbauer,' said the ME, 'did you ever hear a code belonging to the officea long time ago - a private code? You know what a code is, don't you?''Yah,' said Heffelbauer, 'Sure I know vat a code is. Yah, apout dwelf or fifteenyear ago der office had a code. Der reborters in der city-room haf it here.''Ah!'said the ME,'We're getting on the trail now. Where was it kept,Heffelbauer? What do you know about it?''Somedimes,' said the retainer, 'dey keep it in der little room behind derlibrary room.''Can you find it?'asked the ME eagerly. 'Do you know where it is?''Mein Gott!' said Heffelbauer. 'How long do you dink a code live? Derreborters call him a maskeet. But von day he butt mit his head der editor, und- 'Oh, he's talking about a goat,' said Boyd. 'Get out, Heffelbauer.'Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resources of the Enterprise huddledaround Calloway's puzzle, considering its mysterious words in vain.Then Vesey came in.Vesey was the youngest reporter. He had a thirty-two-inch chest and wore anumber fourteen collar; but his bright Scotch plaid suit gave him a presenceand conferred no obscurity upon his whereabouts. He wore his hat in such aposition that people followed him about to see him take it off, convinced that

r t rwlt

cror t ut o lCXC

am(thal

Ves'co<

tou(Vesrprotlike' I t 's

'The

'The

somtGeelend

Vesecablr'Let '

' I be

H e uhis cwisdranotttheor

It tocode'I feHe'snew

Thu

ForePrecRaslWitrGoeMulRur

Calloway's code l2l

it must be hung upon a peg driven into the back of his head. He was neverwithout an immense, knotted, hard-wood cane with a German-silver tip on itscrooked handle. vesey was the best photograph hustler in the office. Scott saidit was because no living human being could resist the personal triumph it wasto hand his picture over to vesey. vesey always wrote his own news stories,except the big ones, which were sent to the re-write men. Add to this fact thatamong all the inhabitants, temples, and groves of this earth nothins existedthat could abash Vesey, and his dim sketch is concluded.vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffelbauer,s'code'would

have done, and asked what was up. Someone explained, with thetouch of half-familiar condescension that they always used towards him.vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the ME's hand. under theprotection of some special Providence, he was always doing appalting thingslike that, and coming off unscathed.'It's a code,' said Vesey. 'Anybody got the key?' .'The office has no code,'said Boyd, reaching for the message. vesey held to it.'Then old calloway expects us to read it anyhow,' said he. ,He's up a tree, orsomething and he's made this up so as to get it by the censor. It,s up to us.Gee! I wish they had sent me, too. say - we can't afford to fall down on ourend of it. "Foregone, preconcerted, rash, witching" _ h,m.,vesey sat down on a table comer and began to whistle softly, frowning at thecablegram.'Let's have it, please,'said the ME. ,We,ve got to get to work on it.''I believe I've got a line on it,' said Vesey. ,Give me ten minutes.,He walked up to his desk, threw his hat into a wastebasket, spread out flat onhis chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going. The wit andwisdom of the Enterprise remained in a loose group, and smiled at oneanother, nodding their heads toward vesey. Then they began to exchange theirtheories about the cipher.It took vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the ME a pad with thecode-key written on it.'I felt the swing of it as soon as I saw it,'saidvesey. .Hurrah for old calloway!He's done the Japs and every paper in town that prints literature instead ofnews. Take a look atthat.'Thus had Vesey set forth the reading of the code:Foregone - conclusionPreconcerled - arrangementRash - actWitching - hour of midnightGoes - without sayingMuffled - reportRumour - hath it

122 Calloway's code

Mine - hostDark - horseSilent - majorityUnfortunate - pedestriansRichmond - in the fieldExisting - conditionsGreat - White WayHotly - contestedBrute - forceSelect - fewMooted - questionParlous - timesBeggars - descriptionYe - correspondentsAngel - unawaresIncontrovertible - fact'It's simply newspaper English,' explained Vesey. 'I've been reporting on theEnterprise long enough to know it by heart. Old Calloway gives us the cueword, and we use the word that naturally follows it just as we use 'em in thepaper. Read it over, and you'll see how pat they drop into their places. Now,here's the message he intended us to get.'

Vesey handed out another sheet of paper.

Concluded affangement to act at hour of midnight without saying.Report hath it that a large body of cavalry and an overwhelmingforce of infantry will be thrown into the field. Conditions white.Way contested by only a small force. Question the Timesdescription. Its correspondent is unaware of the facts.

'Great stuff!'cried Boyd excitedly. 'Kuroki crosses the Yalu tonight andattacks. Oh, we won't do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison'sessays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!'FOOTNOTE

Mr Vesey afterwards explained that the logical journalistic complement of theword 'unfortunate' was once the word 'victim'. But, since the automobilebecame so popular, the correct following word is now 'pedestrians'. Ofcourse, in Calloway's code it meant 'infantry'.'Mr Vesey,' said the ME, with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-a-favourmanner, 'you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of thepaper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us thebiggest "beat" of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you areto be discharged or retained at alarger salary. Somebody send Ames to me.'Ames was the king-pin, the snowy-petalled marguerite, the star-bright loolooof the re-write men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-applecolic, cyclones in the summer zephyr,lost children in every top-spinning

urchirpotatchis Br

Amestherefingerrthe Yabrief nof thespeechdescritwhichffoopswhatAfoundahe gleefalse anArmy p

Only orju. Callshould lAmes '

descriptby theeffectiveguns thrthe 'conr

the Enrc

It was vcensor bidearlh owonderfrwith onepart.

On the serepofier \a coal-ho'The old'All rightsay - "Swhole it c

Calloway's code 123

urchin, an uprising of the down-trodden masses in every hurling of a derelictpotato at a passing automobile. when not rewriting, Ames sat on the porch ofhis Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-year-old son.Ames and the 'war editor' shut themselves in a room. There was a map inthere stuck full of little pins that represented armies and divisions. Theirfingers had been itching for days to move those pins along the crooked line ofthe Yalu. They did so now; and in words of fire Ames translated calloway,sbrief message into a front-page masterpiece that set the world talking. He toldof the secret councils of the Japanese officers; gave Kuroki's flamingspeeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry to a man and a horse;described the quick and silent building of a bridge at Suikauchen, acrosswhich the Mikado's legions were hurled upon the surprised Zussulitch, whosetroops were widely scattered along the river. And the battle! - well, you knowwhat Ames can do with a battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for afoundation. And in the same story, with seemingly supematural knowledge,he gleefully scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for thefalse and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese FirstArmy printed in its issue of the same date.only one effor was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator in wi-ju. calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word 'great' in his codeshould have been 'gauge', and its complemental word 'battle'. But it went toAmes 'conditions white', and of course he took that to mean snow. Hisdescription of the Japanese army struggling through the snow-storm, blindedby the whirling flakes, was thrillingly vivid. The arlists tumed out someeffective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the artillery dragging theirguns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first day of May,the 'conditions white', excited some amusement. But it made no difference tothe Ente rpris e, anyw ay.I1 was wonderful. And calloway was wonderful in having made the-newcensor believe that his jargon of words meant no more than a complaint at thedearth of news and a petition for more expense money. And vesey waswonderful. And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friendswith one another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them dopafi.

on the second day following, the city editor halted at vesey's desk where thereporter was writing the story of a man who had broken his leg by falling intoa coal-hole - Ames having failed to find a murder motive in it.'The old man says your salary is to be raised to twenty a week,' said Scott.'Al1 right,' said vesey. 'Every little helps. Say - Mr Scott, which would yousay - "we can state without fear of successful contradiction". or ,.on thewhole it can be safely asserted"?'

124 Calloway's code

Commentary

I am indebted to Jon Wright for drawing my attention to this splendid tale.Despite the laboured prose, some interesting comments on language emerge:

1. Journalism is, and always was, riddled with its own particular lexis andcollocations. Some of those used in the story have stood the test of time, whileothers simply do not 'sound right'for us, a century later. So, maybe the fixedelements of language are not as fixed as we might like to think.

2.The managing editor is quite clear thatVesey has 'cast a serious reflectionon the literary standards of the paper that employs you'. Like other educatedpeople he had been taught that clich6 - a word drawn directly from the worldof newspapers - was bad 'literary style'. There is still an in-built prejudiceagainst what is, in certain contexts, called clich6; but if non-native speakerswrite essays in non-standard language, they are told: that's not the way we saylr. Apparently, while some of us need to learn to avoid clich6, others need toacquire alarger phrasal lexicon, in other words, more clich6s.

3. The brilliantly creative 're-writer', Ames, needs 'just one smell of smokefor a foundation'before he can write a graphic description of something hehas not seen. What fires his account of the Japanese attack is a few centralideas - no, not ideas, but rather a few essential collocations provided byCalloway, once his message has been decoded. There is a message here forany teacher helping students prepare to write essays; it is not enough to havesome ideas, perhaps in your own language, what is essential is a fewcollocations central to the main themes. This reminds us of suggestions madeby Deborah Petty and Graham Smith in the previous chapter.

T

l l

Allchzhorthe,da]encrntr

Matthartheco f tacqlexte10 t iund<descway

whildevereseatheirof be

Part 2 - Background theory 125

Part 2

Background theory

All the contributors to the first part of this book - both the authors of completechapters and the many teachers quoted in Chapter 5 - repeatedly emphasisehow their own understanding of collocation has developed step-by-step asthey have made small, and then increasingly radical changes in their day-to-day classroom practice. Again, a deeper understanding of collocation hasencouraged them to extend and refine the modest changes they firstintroduced.

Many other teachers who have already begun to emphasise vocabulary ratherthan grammar would like to take their understanding further. Backgroundtheory is essential for such teachers. The first two chapters ofthe second partof this book provide a summary of recent research on language andacquisition - Chapter 7 on language, Chapter 8 on acquisition. Chapter 9extends the comments on texts, corpora and concordances in Part 1. Chapter10 takes up the question of how exams may change in the light of our changedunderstanding of the mental lexicon. Finally, in Chapter 11, the distinguisheddescriptive linguist Michael Hoey provides teachers with a glimpse into theway research'may soon take us 'beyond collocation'.

While PalrI 2 is more theoretical, its primary purpose is to help teachersdevelop their own understanding so they can initiate their own actionresearch. It provides frameworks within which they can evaluate the results oftheir observations, so that they can be sure the changes they make really areof benefit to their learners.

illlE

Filiis

126 Language in the lexical approttch

Chapter 7

Language in the lexical approach

Michael Lewis

This chapter looks at the way descriptions of English have improved as a result

of analysis of large amounts of natural spoken and written text on computers. It

explains the breakdown of the old distinction between vocabulary and grammar,

and emphasises how much of the language we use consists of multi-wordphrases. It clarifies the terminology which is used in the other chapters of the

book to discuss different kinds of rnulti-word phrasesl in particular, it explores

the many different kinds of collocations. It will help readers new to the idea to

develop their understanding of the different kinds of chunks of which lexis is

composed. Finally, it rerninds us that the improved descriptions of English now

available have radical implications for the language classroom.

7.1 Descriptions of English

In recent years, since the widespread availability of large computer-basedcorpora - collections of natural written and spoken text - which have been

statistically analysed, we have better descriptions of English available to us

than ever before. Although intuition has an important role to play, many

statements about how words are used, and the pattems which are typical of

some types of text can now be supported by empirical evidence. The repofts

of corpus linguists involved in this work sometimes confirm our intuitions,

but frequently provide overwhelming evidence contradicting some beliefwhich is widespread. Their work is essentially descriptive, but it is self-evident that if their descriptions show that English is not used in the waytraditional teaching has claimed, there are considerable implications for

classroom practice.

7.2 lnttition and evidence

Every teacher has said I've never heard that, which is usually interpreted tomean something very close to Nobody says that. But although everycompetent speaker of English has met many millions of words of the languagewhile reading, watching TV, conversing and so on, the sample of the languageyou personally have met is an absolutely minute fraction of the ever-changingentity we call 'English'. Suppose there are 30 million native-speaker adultsusing English in Britain every day; and that they each speak for a total of only60 minutes at a normal speed of about 120 words a minute - that is 220billionwords spoken every day in Britain by its adult population. Now pause toconsider the number of words of English produced worldwide every year. The

nuideLofig301S

lirrEncol

I 1corincteneml

Dowhi f vsayconmal,exalwheIare

Collexp(comlikelmff

thanthan

Althhelp;by aro f Ediffe

1 . W

2 . W

3. Thfrethi4 .

Language in the lexical approach 127

numbers are almost unimaginable, yet each of us believes we have a goodidea of what is and is not possible in the language. The editors of the newLongman Grammar of spoken and written Engrish (LGSWE) give somefigures which provide a perspective: a typical page of printed text is around3001400 words, so a 300-page book is around 100,000 words; a million wordsis 10 books. In their recordings of conversation, speakers typically speak at alittle under 120 words per minute, so a million words of informal spokenEnglish corresponds to about 140 hours of conversational interaction. youcould easily take parl in 15 million words of conversation a year. At my age,I have probably heard or spoken welr over half a billion words ofconversational English. Despite these huge numbers, like everyone else, I aminclined to think that I remember what I have and have not met before. we alltend to have confidence in our intuitions about language, but unfortunately theempirical evidence sometimes shows that our intuitions are seriously flawed.Do you recognise Too many cooks spoil the broth as a'common'proverb?when do you think you last used it yourself? when did you last hear it? Andif you did hear it, are you sure the person said an the words, or did they onlysay Tbo many cooks. . . 7 Do you recognise to make a mistake as a .common'

combination of words? If you answered res this time, you are yourselfmaking a mistake. To make a mistake is a dictionary-style generalisation fromexamples you may have heard such as I think we probably made a mistakewhen we. . . . The exact words to make a mistake are possible, but relativelyrare. We need to ask what we mean by a 'common,phrase

or word.collocation is about words which occur together more often than might beexpected if words were produced randomly; collocations are ,common,

combinations of words, so it is usefui to ask what we mean by expressionslike 'they frequently occur together'. The number of words used every day isimmense; the number of words and phrases you know is probably far greaterthan you would guess, so things you think are common are, in fact. much rarerthan you think.

Although this book is about collocation - the way words co-occur - it ishelpful to think about how individual words occur. First, check your intuitionsby answering these questions about a large corpus - say 10 million words -of English including spoken and written language and representing manydifferent geffes.

1. which is more common, a or the? (you can think this out logically.)2. WhaI are the 10 most common words used in English?3. Think of any one of the most common 250 words in English. How

frequent do you think it is? If it occurs once in every x words, do youthink x is closest to:a. 100 b. 1000 c. 5000 d. 50,000 e. 100,000

128 Language in the lexical approach

4. What percentage of the words in the l0-million-word corpus do you thinkwould occur only once in the corpus?a.50Vo b .25Vo c. l0% d" 57a e. less than 57o

5. We say that word A collocates with word B if the two words co-occur'frequently'. What do you think 'frequently' means here? On whatpercentage of occasions of occurrence of word A, do you think word Bco-occurs with word A? Is it:a .90Vo b .50Va c.25Vo d.. 10Vo e . 5 7 o

How confident are you of your answers? Here are the answers:

1. The definite article - the - occurs about twice as often as the indefinitearticles * a, an - combined.

2. The top ten are the, of, and, to, a, in, that, I, it, was according toCobuild's published list. Interestingly, the proportions fall very fast.Here are the relative frequencies related to every 100 occurrences of themost frequent word the:

of 50 and 50a 4 2 i n 3 2I 2 t i r 2 1

The 100th most common word, however, has a relative frequency of lessthan 2.In a million-word corpus it would occur about 800 times.

3. Words which we think are common, such as set, given as an example byJohn Sinclair in Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, occur onlv about onceevery 4000 words.

4. About half the words in a corpus of 10 million words will only occuronce. Words which we think of as rare or unusual, are very rarely used!

5. By now, you may have guessed that the answer is less than 57o. Evenvery common words have relatively low frequencies; collocationsinvolve two relatively rare things happening together, so they are evenless frequent. Our intuitions are very unreliable. To quote Sinclair again:The language looks rather dffirent when you look at a lot of it at once.

Words which we think of as common may only occur once in a million words;common collocations are much rarer even than that, and common expressionssuch as proverbs are rarer still. Chitra Fernando reports that when sheconsulted the Birmingham Collection of English Texts in 1990, it contained13 examples of the phrase red herring in the then total of 20 million words -in other words, this familiar expression occurred only about once in one-and-half-rnillion words. LGSWE suggests that words which occur once in everythousand occur about once every 8.5 minutes in speech, while a word whichis only used once in every 100,000 words will be heard once every fourteenhours (of non-stop conversation!). A mature language-user's mental lexicon ismuch larger than we previousiy thought, and the non-native leamer's task inmastering a sufficiently large lexicon correspondingly more difficult.

to 44that 22was 18

withir

uselimwhrChzreal

7.3

Alrlnhr rr _ " -

largrprocLingidiotthis lone ltheseproblthinkIntrotunhelwell-rcours

The pof thertemsphraseinto dllot ofcategogoalkea Greeof thesdescrila glverdescriblinguisrfor difexpressteachelunderstt

dnk

) b y

)curthatd B

nlte

! t oiast.the

less

SCUrJ Il l

,ven

LONS

)ventaln:e .

rrds;10nsshe

inedd s -and-veryhichteen)n ls;k in

Language in the lexical approach 129

limited duration. To do this, teachers need to develop their understanding ofwhich language really is useful. corpora and concordances [discussed inchapter 9f are a great help in testing your intuitions against the evidence ofreal language use.

7.3 Terminology

Although it has long been recognised that the mental lexicon had an importantphrasal element, it is now generally accepted that the phrasal element is muchlarger than was previously recognised. perhaps inevitably, this realisation hasproduced a proliferation of terms, with the resulting potential for confusion.Linguistic terms with which the reader will certainly be familiar are phrase,idiom, fixed expression, phrasal verb, adverb, proverb, and, in the context ofthis book, collocation. unfortunately, all these terms are used with more thanone meaning by people writing about vocabulary and the mental lexicon. In

The problem of terminology arises as soon as we recognise that a large partof the immediately accessible lexicon which we store consists of multi_word

of these is 'really' me, or how I am 'best' classified. All of these are coffectdescriptions of me, in different circumstances; which is more appropriate ona given occasion depends on your purpose in talking about me at all. wedescribe and categorise with a particular purpose in mind; this is as true forlinguistic description as it is for any other. The same piece of language may,for different purposes, usefully be described as an utterance, a fixedexpression, an idiom, a response etc. From the classroom point of view,teachers need to choose a limited range of terms,

"nrrr" that learners

understand them, and then use those terms consistently. But it is essential to

130 l-tnqunqe in the lexical approach

remember that leamers are learning a language, not information aboutlanguage; describing the language is not itself language teaching. The solepurpose of description in the classroom is to ensure that leamers can noticefeatures of the language they meet in ways which facilitate acquisition. Theyare language learners, not amateur applied linguists.

Some of the larger phrasal units are relatively uncontentious and familiar:quotations (A rose by any other name), proverbs (Too many cooks spoil thebroth), and - providing we avoid the argument about prepositions andparticles - phrasal verbs (The high cost put me off the idea). Some familiarterms do, however, need discussion, as different writers use them in differentways, so readers need to be constantly on guard against possiblemisunderstanding.

7.4 From idioms to idiomaticity

Most teachers probably think they have a clear idea of what an idiom is(Uncle George has finally kicked the bucket), even if they are in some doubtabout how the term 'collocation' is used. Many may be surprised thar, at amore theoretical level, 'idiom'and 'collocation' ate often seen as similar, evenoverlapping, terms. In order for us to get a clear idea of collocation, we needfirst to consider it as part, not of idioms, but of the wider concept ofidiomaticity. Whether something is regarded as idiomatic or not is not decidedby a single factor; most linguists recognise at least two factors - its positionon a spectrum with 'fixed' or 'invariant' and 'variable' as its end points, and asecond spectrum ranged between semantic'opacity' and'transparency'.

The compilers of The Oxford Dictionary of Current ldiomatic English use thefollowing categories to describe a cline of idiomaticity from most to leastfixed:

Pure idioms such as blow the gaff are at the most fixed end; they are almostinvariant and have lost any literal interpretation, so are semantically opaque -

you cannot guess the meaning of the whole from a knowledge of themeanings of the individual words.

Figurative idioms such as catch fire, a close shave are less opaque: inaddition to their non-literal meaning, they are also still used in their literalsense; they are fairly, but not quite, fixed.

Restricted collocations such as jog someone's memot! have one elementused in a non-literal sense and the other used in its normal meaning.

Open collocations involve elements which are (more or less) freelycombinable, with each element having its literal sense.

These examples make clear that two factors are involved in what we looselythink of as idioms - a cerlain degree of fixedness and a certain degree of non-literalness, leading to more or less difficulty in understanding the meaning ofthe whole expression from an understanding of its component words. What

moslf,rxedsmalcan sin itsperhzpafidescrwnte

Tthe5ll

tocol

the

. . . Jgragrathe

Wirhixtraditic

ThaWelI s eThktplalsigrtgoina v etakea h eheat

As exarshow, ctobserve:

Cowo

Chitra Facademirlower en

tut

Dle

lce

)ey

t A ( '

themdliar:entLble

n l s

rubta t ajven

Leed: o fdedtlonr d a

, theeast

nostu e -the

Tlent

reely

rselynon-ng ofWhat

) ; mteral

Language in the lexical approach 131

most teachers and students think of as idioms are those which are both fairlyfixed and non-literal. with a narrow definition like that, idioms are a fairlysmall part of the total lexicon, and from a language teaching perspective theycan safely be left to more advanced leamers. once we understand idiomaticityin its wider meaning - chunks which have some degree of fixedness, andperhaps some degree of non-literalness, it is clear that idioms are a centralpart of the lexicon and important for leamers at all levels. John sinclair,describing the early work by the team constructing the Cobuild dictionaries,wrrtes:

The principle of idiom is that a language user has available to him orher a large number of semi-preconstructed phrases that constitutesingle choices, even though they might appear to be analysable intosegments. ...The overwhelming nature of [the corpus] evidence leads usto elevate the principle of idiom from being a rather minor feature,compared with grammar, to being at least as important as grammar inthe explanation of how meaning arises in text.

...Just as it is misleading and unrevealing to subject of course togrammatical analysis, it is unhelpful to attempt to analysegrammatically any portion of text which appears to be constructed onthe idiom principle.

within this wider definition, all of the following, while not idioms in thetraditional sense, exhibit some degree of idiomaticity:

That's neither here nor there.Well, I mustn't keep you.I see what you mean.Thke il or leave it.playing for timesigned, sealed and deliveredgoing bachuard and forwardsa very cool receptiontake the earliest possible opportunity to . . .a heavy-handed approach to the problemheavy rain

As examples such as a cool reception, heavy rain, take the opportunity toshow, collocation is part of the overall specftum of idiomaticity. As Sinclairobserves:

collocation illustrates the idiom principle. on some occasionswords appear to be chosen in pairs or groups and these are notnecessarily adjacent.

chitra Femando, whose book ldioms and ldiomaticity is perhaps the bestacademic survey of this area of language, states: "collocations are at thelower end of the idiomaticity scale being only weak realisations of the idiom

131 L. . ; , : t t icse i r t t l te Ie.r ical approach

prrinciple." Very strong collocations, where you can hardly imagine any otheruse of one of the parlner-words, are a kind of idiom: We had a blazingrov,/argumenf. Some collocations permit very limited choice: The wholestorlevent was tinged with sadness/regret (and not much else). But the vastmajority of collocations, although part of the spectrum of idiomaticity, are notso restricted. Partner-words often combine freely with many other words, andthe slots in a collocation can each be filled in many different ways. The samegroup of words may, therefore, be treated as both an idiom and a collocationbut the focus of the two descriptions is rather different. Idioms focus mainlyon the meaning of the whole, while collocation is concerned withcombinations of words which do or do not occur.

This distinction is used in this book, but our main focus is firmly on 'wotds

and the company they keep', although it is helpful to remember that this ispart of the wider question of idiomaticity. We look now at how the term'collocation' covers many different kinds of multi-word items.

7.5 Collocation

Collocation is the way in which words co-occur in natural text in statisticallysignificant ways. It sounds an innocent definition, but one very imporlantpoint needs to be made: collocation is about the way words naturally co-occurin what David Brazll brilliantly called 'used language'. Collocations are notwords which we, in some sense, 'put together', they co-occur naturally, andthe first task of the language teacher is to ensure that they are notunnecessarily taken apafi in the classroom. If words occur togethet, leantersneed to notice that co-occuffence and, if they are to be recorded in avocabulary book, the words should be recorded together, a point already madeby several contributors.

In most classes learners will already know many individual words, so in thesecircumstances, they may need to learn about 'putting them together' instandard collocations, but this is part of the necessary artificiality of languageteaching. It would unquestionably be better if learners had acquired the wordstogether as a single chunk - a single choice - in the first place. If you learninitial reaction (one item) it is easy to split the chunk apart, and acquire initialand reaction, two more items. If you learn the two words separately, you mustalso learn a third item, the correct collocation. Separating collocations intotheir component words is easy; it is considerably more difficult to put wordstogether to form natural collocations. Peter Howarth has pointed out thatknowing which words do go with which, and which do not is a majorproblem for learners:

It may be claimed that the problem facing the non-native writer orspeaker is knowing which of a range of collocational options arerestricted and which are free. ...[the] significance [of the data] liesin the way in which specific collocations might be predicted by

LearThelteachto besynolbut tintrorto noindici

Whenbrokean mlbecauThe laof re-trbreakeven ilterms

Differi

If we dthe delCerlairrecognl

7 . a d2. sttb3. rad4. exa,5. extr6. reyi,7. the ,8 . T o p9. a fet

I0. tunt17. awa12. fire t73. back14. hooA15. On tt16. A sot

nertn8ole,ast

notmdLme

.10n

LnIyvith

rrdsLs iseffn

:a1lyrtantccur: nOtandnot

rTIEIS

r n anade

these:r' in

luagevordslearn'nitial

musts mtowords.t thatmajor

r

S

v

Language in the lexical approach 133

analogy, but are arbitrarily brocked by usage, and clearly they arethe kind of phenomenon likely to confound leamers. ...It is the gapsin collocability that are arbitrary.

introducing the term 'blocked collocation'to leamers, and encouraging themto note such 'impossible'combinations

by asking them to record and thenindicate their non-acceptability by crossing through or ,cancelling,them.

The larger the chunks are which learners originally acquire, the easier the taskof re-producing natural language later. The message to teachers is clear: don,tbreak language down too far in the false hope of simplifying; your efforts,even if successful in the short rerm, ate almost certainly counterproductive inlerms oI long-term acquisition.

Different kinds of collocation

If we define collocation as the way words occur together, it is easy to see thatthe definition is very wide, and will cover many different kinds of item.certainly, all of the following are colrocations in the sense that we readilyrecognise that these groups of words are regularly found together:

l. a dfficult decision (adjective + noun)2. submit a report (verb + noun)3. radio station (noun + noun)4. examine thoroughly (verb + adverb)5. extremely inconvenienr (adverb + adjective)6. revise the original plan (verb + adjective + noun)7. the fog closed in (noun + verb)8. To put it another lr;ay (discourse marker)9. a few years ago (multi-word prepositional phrase)

I0. turn in (phrasal verb)ll. aware of (adjeclive + preposition)72. fire escape (compound noun)73. bachnards and forwards (binomial)14. hook, line and sinker (trinomial)15. On the other hand (fixedphrase)76. A sort of . . . (incomplete fixed phrase)

134 Language in the lexical approach

77. Not half! (fixed expression)18. See you later/tomorrow/on Monday. (semi-fixed expression)19. Too many cooks. . . (part of a proverb)20. To be or not to be .. . (part of a quotation)From the language teaching point of view, many of these are familiar and haveformed a regular part of classroom teaching materials. The contributors to thisbook focus almost exclusively on those kinds of collocations which arerelatively new in language teaching and which are only now finding their wayinto materials. There is extensive discussion of types I to 7 in the above list,with some references to types 8 and 9, but relatively little mention of theolder, familiar types of multi-word item. George Woolard earlier suggestedreasons for restricting the use of the term 'collocation' for leamers to thenewer kinds. [See p 29.]

Lexical and grammatical collocations

Some writers distinguish between lexical collocations such as suggest onalternative, an evasive answer, and grammatical collocations such as awareof, step into. In this terminology, lexical collocations combine two equallexical components (open class words), while grammatical collocationscombine a lexical word, typically a noun, vetb or adjective, with agrammatical word (one open class word and one closed class word). Withinthis framework, phrasal verbs are neither more nor less than grammaticalcollocations. The main focus in this book is on lexical collocations, though itis worth noting that learners would often be well advised to record more thansimple two-word combinations. It is better to record phrases such as put themeeting off until. . , so they include both lexical words and grammaticalwords which are often used together.

Similarly, recording grammatical collocations such as aware of, interested inis unsatisfactory as these combinations are never used without at least onemore word, so it makes more (collocational) sense to teach combinations suchas awore of the problems, interested infootball, choosing typical examples ofhow the words are used in a slightly larger context. Throughout this bookteachers are repeatedly urged to encourage students to record language inlarger chunks, and to keep at least part of the context in which the wordactually occurred as part of what is recorded. A comment of Svetlana Ter-Minasova's (Language, Linguistics and Lift) is typical:

Foreign leamers must keep in mind that they should learn wordsnot through translations of their meanings (that is, reference to bitsof reality and concepts), but in their most natural, habitual contexts,typical of the target language.

Collocations are often idiomatic

Some collocations appear superficially 'logical' - open the window, play

tentthinmeaearlmakcollrmetzothe

Did 1is eascouldstrong

BecauwhenHowathave ccombr:probletShe hameanlrSwedisstructulchild; tcloser tbaby isso that ilearner.

Ter-Mirof Engllgate asthe doacommer

irislre,aY

rst,thetedthe

anare

lualons1 A

thinical

;h irhanthe

.ical

d i none;uch:s oflookle ln

vordTer-

play

Language in the lexical approach 135

tennis, breakyour leg -butmany, although very familiar and which we easilythink of as 'obvious' or 'sounding right', are conventional. Notice how themeanings of the verbs in the following differ considerably from the threeearlier examples: open a meeting (why not start), play some music (why notmake), break the silence (why not interrupt or explode).In fact, very fewcollocations are truly self-evident or literal; there is a partially non-literal,metaphorical or idiomatic element to most collocations. This means that, likeother idioms, they are not fully predictable from their component words.

TEsr

Think of three nouns which can follow the verb answer whichintermediate leamers are unlikely to know and which they probablywould not guess.

Think of three nouns which can be used with the adjective strong butwhere the meaning of strong is quite different in each case.How many things can yor open where the opening is not like openinga door?

Did you think of answer an enquiry, a letter, the door the charge that . . .? rtis easy to see that the translations of these expressions into another languagecould very well involve a different verb in each expression. Similarly, withstrong opinions, wind, coffee, cheese, or opening a bottle, a lette4 a meeting.Because some collocations are so familiar, it is easy to think they are obviouswhen they are, in fact, highly idiomatic. In an article on phraseology, peterHowarlh refers in passing to 'completely transparent collocations such ashave children' but although there may be little difficulty guessing what thiscombination of words means, it may present learners with considerableproblems from a productive point of view. Note first the difference betweenshe has a baby and she's having a baby; changing the grammar changes themeaning of the verb. If you consider the expression from the perspective of aSwedish leamer, for example, the first is Hon har ett barn mircoring thestructure of the English exactly, although baru is closer to the English wordchild; bil the second is Hon vcinta barn,literally she is waiting for (a) child,closer to English she's expecting a child, though even here she's expecting ababy is closer to the Swedish. Grammar and words are in complex interplay,so that apparently transparent collocations hold many potential pitfalls for theleamer.

Ter-Minasova gives another example from the perspective of Russian leamersof English: the introduction to the BBI Combinatory Dictionary sees open thegate as a free collocation, allowing substitutions such as lock the gate, openthe door, etc which should cause few problems for leamers, but shecomments:

136 Language in the lexical approaclt

Many word-combinations look deceptively free within their ownlanguage, and their non-freedom only becomes obvious when theyhave to be translated into another language. The free, variable openthe gate is, indeed free and variable within its own - English -

language. However it looks much less free in the eyes of a Russianlearner who tries to express the equivalent meaning. ...The Russianequivalent of to open is presented by quite a variety of verbs inRussian-English dictionaries open, discover cleat bare, reveal . . .and the Russian word for gate has only the plural form.

The point for teachers is that even the simplest of collocations may containdifficulties for learners, and some comment to make leamers aware ofproblems, including the 'blocked' collocations discussed earlier, may benecessary. It may even be that unexpected combinations of familiar words aresome of the most important and useful collocations from a pedagogical pointof view. George Woolard makes the point that it is helpful to ask leamerswhich words they are surprised to find used together. Teachers need to keepin mind that they may be surprised at what surprises their leamers.

We note in passing that this has one very important classroom implication -

asking leamers if they 'know' a particular collocation is quite definitelytesting, not teaching since the idiomatic nature of many collocations meansthey cannot be predicted with confidence from knowledge of the individualcomponent words. Teachers who forget this risk frustrating learners by askingquestions which the learner can only answer by guessing.

One final potential source of confusion should be mentioned. In corpuslinguistics the term 'collocation'tends to be used in a different way from theway it is used in this book. Jean Hudson describes it as follows:

In corpus linguistics it is more often used in the abstract sense of ageneral tendency for linguistic items to co-occur (not necessarily inimmediate proximity): 'I didn't get that job, by the way. Theapplication was in too late.' The words 'job' and 'application'

collocate quite strongly, whether or not they are adjacent.

Much corpus work to date has in fact focused on reportingcollocability and patterning, towards the ultimate goal ofestablishing the most frequent collocates of specific items, withinformation about the co-occurrence probabilities of words.

This more abstract definition is used in this book onlv bv Michael Hoev. whois, of course, a co{pus linguist.

7.6 Colligation

Although many teachers are just beginning to incorporate the explicitteaching of collocation into their teaching, research is also concerned with the

moreterm.coliig(granparncproncrespo

Somebut fo(direcout, lt

Such Iit hasthat rlmalnti

man)'than jL

I t i s nStruCTUgramnbetweedegreeare pccollocacollocaso gen(we cottNow thexceptlwhichexplana

Insteadlanguagfixednerrts ownlexis, nprinciplare tr)/rgeneraiithey arepedagogEnglish.explicit I

a1nofbearertntEIS

rep

n -elylnsualmg

lus

the

rho

icitthe

Language in the lexical approach 137

more general idea of colligation. Again, there are different ways of using theterm. collocation is the way one word co-occurs with another word,colligation is the way one word regularly co-occurs with a particular(grammar) pattem, so, for example some verbs typically occur with aparticular tense, or a noun might typically appear preceded by a personalpronoun, rather than an article (pass my/your driving test, It's my/your/ourresponsibility to . . . , bil I'il take the responsibility for . . .).Sorne descriptive linguists use the term 'colligation'not for word + pattern,but for the more general pattern + pattern. An example is (verb of motion) +(directional particle), which covers all combinations such as run away. rushout, hurry down etc.

Such terminology and research may seem a long way from the classroom, butit has a serious, classroom-orientated purpose. It is now generally acceptedthat the separation of vocabulary from grammar was an artificial one, andmaintaining it causes a great deal of confusion and, more importantly, meansmany interesting and helpful features of how words are actually used - ratherthan just 'what they mean'- are overlooked.

It is now generally accepted that language does not consist of a few ,big'

structures with slots which are filled with individual words. The wholegrammar/vocabulary dichotomy is invalid. All language lies on a specrrumbetween what is fixed and what is variable, and there are many differentdegrees of fixedness and, corespondingly, different degrees of generalisationare possible. colligation generalises beyond the level of individualcollocations, so a bunch of grapes/bananas/flowers ate three separatecollocations, but the last one can be generalised to a bunch of (flowers), and,so generate a bunch of roses/daffodils/(any other kind offlower). In general,we commit (crimes), and until quite recently suicide was a crime in Britain.Now the law has changed, so the collocation commit suicide has become anexception to the colligation commit (crime).It is just this kind of fossilisationwhich produces idioms which, over long periods, seem to defy ,logical'

explanation.

Instead of a few big structures and many words, we now recognise thatlanguage consists of many smaller patterns, which exhibit varying degrees offixedness or generalisability, each based on a word; in a sense, each word hasits own grammar. It is this insight - that language consists of grammaticalisedlexis, not lexicalised grammar - which is the single most fundamentalprinciple of the Lexical Approach. It is within this framework that researchersare trying to find accurate descriptions of English. obviously, the moregeneralisable the patterns they find are, the more useful, at least in principle,they are. But teachers are right to be a little suspicious, for description is notpedagogy. It is not self-evident that the best, most accurate description ofEnglish, will be the most pedagogically usefur, any more than the fully-explicit scientific descriptions provided by relativity and quantum mechanics

138 Language in the lexical approach

would be appropriate to school science classes. On the other hand, scienceteachers need to be aware of these great theories, and of how and why thecontent of their classes represents particular simplifications of them.

Language teachers need to accept and fully intemalise the idea that dividingthe language into a lot of individual words and a few big structures such asthe present perfect and the passive represents a discredited description of anylanguage, and a dangerous distortion of the true nature of language. Theemphasis of classroom materials should move flrmly onto the middle groundof language, the grammar of words. That means taking colligation seriouslyas a real attempt to provide insights, initially at least for the teacher. It alsomeans making collocation a central part of language teaching for all learnersnow. [For more on colligation, see p 233.]

7.7 Other multi-word expressions

There are many kinds of fixed and semi-fixed expressions in addition tocollocations. Here, we look at some which may be new to readers but webegin with a simple extension to a familiar term.

1. From adverbs to adverbials

In traditional grammar 'adverb' was (with noun, pronoun, verb, adjective,preposition, conjunction) one of the word classes. Even then it was the mostproblematical class as it was used as the dustbin for all the words which didnot seem to fit into the other, neater classes. As Stig Johansson puts it:'Adverbs are no doubt the most heterogeneous of the traditional wordclasses." It is difficult to see why all of frankly, almost, extremely, just, neve4carefully all belong in the same class, especially as they have clearly differentfunctions in examples such as:

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.He almost failed, so he was extremely pleased that, in the end, he justmanaged to scrape through.I never did anything more carefally in my lfe.

Adverbs were recognised as having different functions such as qualifying averb (do it carefwlly), intensifying an adjective (extremely pleased), orqualifying a whole sentence (Frankly, . . .). When we think of multi-wordphrases - adverbials rather than adverbs - we need to have different uses inmind in a similar way:

On the other hand, there is a significant saving with the older model.I'll get it in the post as soon &s possible.He expected to pass easily, and he did pass but only by the skin of his teeth.

Observation of real language shows our mental lexicons are particularly richin multi-word sentence adverbials that are used for structuring what we say orwrite, what David Brazll neatly called 'talk about talk', as in these examples:

ThToThyol

Wespeaptrrterlim

ThemolTeateacalmandcaff

simiprepsuchhaveto dr

2. Nr

Annespealspealexprelargej'state

chararthe u:This rsimilaspeakt

The cl. func. lexic

AS .C

. seml

Thesesort of

Her daseparat

tnce' t h e

dingh a sanyTherunduslyalsoners

n t o

r w e

t1ve,nosti d i ds rt:vord?veti

)rent

just

n g a

, o rvord)s ln

eth.

richry orrles:

Language in the lexical approach l3g

The above examples all seem to suggest . . .Tb go back to the point I made earlie4 . . .That may be so, but the point I particularly want to emphasise/stress/remindyow oJ .

we immediately notice that the first seems to be usable in both (academic)speech and writing, while the second two are typical of speech and notappropriate for writing. secondly, because we are dealing with multi_worditems, there is the possibility of one or more ,slots, whichlay ue filled by alimited number of alternative words or phrases.The multi-word lexicon is more complex, with more possibilities, and oftenmore restrictions, than traditional vocabulary teaching has recognised.Teachers need to be aware that unless they consciouJy avoid the trap,teaching learners 'new words' too often means ignoring the adverbial lexiconalmost completely. If leamers are to have the ability to structure what they sayand write, the importance of developing their multi-word adverbial lexiconcannot be over-emphasised. (In passing we may note that leamers need asimilar extension to their prepositional rexicon; there are very fewprepositions of place and time, but an enormous number of multi_word itemssuch as immediately opposite the . . . , earry in the New year, someof whichhave a strong tendency to collocate with particular verbs. Again, teachers needto draw these multi-word items to reaniers'attention, in context.t

2. Negotiating Ianguage

Anne williams (Arena,Issue 19) has analysed a substantial corpus of nativespeakers doing simulations of negotiations. unsurprisingly, she has noted thatspeakers regularly rely on a large repertoire of fixed and semi-fixedexpressions. These have two main advantages: firstly their meanings arelargely conventionalised so they ensure all parties to the negotiation know the'state of play' at any moment, and secondly, as they are largely pragmatic incharacter and produced as prefabricated wholes, they free processing-space inthe user's brain so (s)he can concentrate on the content of the negotiation.This may itself have a high percentage of standard collocations which serve asimilar purpose. Such prefabricated language is frequently used by nativespeakers who are in relatively complex situations.The chunks can be divided into three catesories:

functional stems such as If we were to . . . , would be prepared to . . .lexical chunks linked to the specific subject matter [which she describesas 'of little interest'. See comments below. Ed.l

' semi-lexical chunks such as what sort of, something that we.These last, she points out, are frequently used with interesting notns: whats ort of p erc entage/time s c are/b enefit/dis c ownt/mov ement/re p io; .

a

Her data, therefore, reinforce the viewseparatmg grammar from vocabulary

expressed throughout this book thatviolates the nature of language, and

140 Language in the lexical approach

makes the conversion of input into intake more difficult. She goes on to

discuss the implications for teachers:

"Chunks may be prefabricated, but the chunks in my data are not

grammatically simple: What sort of volume are you looking for? If we were to

give you that commitment, what sort of discount would yow be talking abowt?

Even when the language is complex, however, it appears to require littleprocessing - the chunks are simply used additively.

The interest for teachers is that if we can teach students a restricted range of

extremely flexible chunks, we can provide them with a tool to aid fluency

when they are focussing on their negotiating objectives. Such chunks are of

interest because:

. They are short and manageable.

. They are high frequency because they are often invariable forms(infinitives, modals, were to, eIc).

. They can stand alone or be embedded, eg There is one point that I'd like

to clarifi.. They combine flexibly: If you were to . . . , we'd be prepared to . . .. They allow avoidance of grammatical decisions while concentrating on

meaning, yet do not suggest a simplified grammar, eg We'd be looking forsome signif cant movement.

. They encourage a focus on the richness of de-lexicalised language, eg It's

a side issue / real concent."

The only point which requires a comment is her apparent dismissal of lexical

chunks. Her article is specifically a discussion of the essentially pragmatic

chunks which facilitate fluency in negotiations. The lexical chunks are, of

course, primarily used to express the all-important content of what is said, so

learners need an adequate lexicon of this kind too. Her point is simply that all

too often language teaching concentrates on content language and ignores, or

at least under-emphasises, the lexical chunks which all language users,

including native speakers, rely on to provide fluency. Using these frees

processmg capaclty, so you can think about what you are doing, rather than

how you can say it. [See Deborah Petty's comments p 96.]

3. Utterance launchers

Anne Williams' examples are taken from an apparently specialised area of

spoken English, but the Longman G:rammar of Spoken and Written English

shows that a very similar phenomenon exists in ordinary conversation. Thegrammar lists about 100 five-word clusters - see below - which are commonin their colpus of conversational English. Most of these begin with 1, and mostof the expressions are what they term utterance launchers - expressions

used to introduce the content of what you want to say. A small selection gives

an immediate feel for this kind of language:

I dc

Idc

I rh,I v'tyoLt

Selfwillefferthenexprlmmare lunnalmpcwillawarin thr

4. CrComlstudiirtem.groulpunctclustekinds

I dortwhat',

in thein the

The riconvelprovidtext t)'this t1'for ancchapteif leanlevel.

SomeidentifiIronicaeven b

I don't know what toI don't know whether youI rhink it might beI won't be able toyou won't be able to

I don't know what I thought that waswhat's the matter with how do you know

in the case of thein the present study

Language in the lexical approach l4l

I don't know how youI don't think you canI'm going to have toI was going to sayyou see what I mean

self-evidently, anyone racking an adequate repertoire of these expressionswill have trouble taking part in natural conversation. Note, too, that theeffective use of these expressions is intimately bound up with pronouncingthem as units [as Jimmie Hill suggested, see p 55]. Although presenting suchexpressions is no guarantee that learners will acquiie and use themimmediately - on the contrary, teachers are well aware of the factthatleamersare more likely to rely on tried-and-tested expressions even if these areunnatural - there is a strong case for presenting them, explaining theirimportance, and engaging in a little controlred pru.ii"" - not so that leamerswill immediately add them to their productive language, but as part of theawareness raising which does seem to contribute to tuming input into intakein the medium term.

4. Clusters

computers are exfemely good at doing mindless sorting. Recent corpusstudies have therefore provided us almost by accident *ltt u new kind ofitem, the cluster (called lexicar bundles in LGSWE). clusters are smallgroups of words which appear consecutively in text without regard fbrpunctuation marks, or even changes of speaker. Needless to say, many suchclusters are of little interest for the classroom, but it is interesting to note thekinds of phrase that do occur. Here are a few reported in LGSWE:

I think I mightgoing to be a

it should be noted that on the basis ofthe way in which the extent to which

142 Language in the lexical approach

may not be immediately relevant to the classroom, they demonstrate forteachers how easy it is to be so focussed on the content of a text, that thephraseology which holds it all together - what we may call the text*grammaror discourse-grammar - is all but invisible to both teachers and learners.Increased awareness of the language of which the text is composed will helpteachers to guide learners more effectively towards the language they need tonotice, and which will almost certainly be unnoticed without teachermterventron.

7.8 Words

The single most important insight provided by the new corpus-baseddescriptions of English is that the whole vocabulary/grammar dichotomyneeds to be replaced by a spectrum of pattems which exhibit different degreesof restriction and generalisability. Words are used in patterns which learnersneed to notice; structures are subject to constraints which were frequentlyignored in traditional EFL teaching; the new descriptions mean we need torevise our views of both vocabulary and grammar - words and structures.

It is increasingly clear that treating all 'new words' in the same way is awholly inefficient way to expand leamers' mental lexicons; indeed, eventhinking in terms of 'new words' is unhelpful. While learners do need toacquire new words, particularly through extensive (pleasure) reading, theyalso need to expand the phrasal element of the lexicon, acquiring hundreds ofuseful combinations of familiar words. We have already seen that an

adequate lexicon, in addition to individual words, involves large numbers ofadverbial and prepositional phrases, idiomatic expressions, collocations and

colligational patterns.

Although the emphasis in this book is on the co-occurrence of words in

collocations, it is also becoming increasingly clear that regarding all singlewords as frindamentally similar is a grossly misleading over-simplification.Words from the closed classes - pronouns, prepositions, question words etc -

have traditionally been regarded as belonging to the 'grammar', rather thanthe 'vocabulary' of the language but analysis of computer-based corporareveals that these words are not different in kind in quite the way that has

usually been assumed. Once again, the traditional vocabularylgrammardichotomy breaks down; there is a spectrum upon which all words can beplaced; how the words behave is a matter of degree, rather than differentwords belonging to clearly different categories.

At one end are rare words - mostly nouns - which caffy a lot of meaning, andwhich have small collocational fields; at the other end are the most frequent

words of the language which caffy very little meaning in themselves, but

which are elements in many different pattems - which is, of course, why theyare among the most frequent words.

ThrEnrincare

80(

A grev(truecoliwormu(fielcandDothesof itworTrarhigt

Cor

1 . 7the

mea

is vr

) fort thermarters.help:d tocher

asedomyreesNCIS

)ntly

:i '1 5 a

SVen

d t otheyis oft a nrs ofand

ls innglet1on.

thanpora. haslmaI

n b elrent

anduent. butthey

Language in the lexical approach 143

The Cobuild data clearly reveal that most of the most frequent 100 words inEnglish are what were traditionally thought of as 'grammar' words; theyinclude as, which, these, our; most.Yery few of the 100 most frequent wordsare those traditionally thought of as 'vocabulary': time, people, man, little,good.

TasrWe can explore this idea from a slightly different perspective.Write down 10 adjectives that you think are likely to be used fairlyfrequently with each of these nouns: wit, plea, guest, position, idea.For which word is the task easiest, and for which almost impossible?

A glance at a dictionary such as The LTP Dictionary of Selected collocationsreveals that some words have many more collocates than others. It is broadlytrue that the less frequent a word's overall frequency, the smaller itscollocational field, so it is easier to think of collocates of more commonwords. Many nouns which are frequent and which do not themselves havemuch meaning - situation, idea, position, way - have huge collocationalfields. It makes little sense with such words to ask exactly what they ,mean',

and even less to ask learners if they 'know' the word; it is similar to askingDo you know the word 'to'? Although traditionally thought of as vocabulary,these words are more part of the grammar of the language than they are partof its lexicon. In each case there is a great deal to be leamed about how theword is used - the collocations and expressions of which it forms part.Traditional vocabulary teaching has largely overlooked the central role thesehighly frequent words play in the language.

TlsrDifferent words exhibit different kinds of pattem, which impliesdifferent kinds of treatment in the language classroom. write two orthree sentences for each of these words - try to think of exampleswhich are 'typical'uses of the words: telescope, cat; speak, beautiful,strange, sometimes.

which of the words do you think are easiest for learners to acquire andwhich are most difficult?

Which do you think they are most and least likely to ask vou about inclass?

Commentary

1. Telescope. Perhaps surprisingly, the rarest is the easiest for the learner andthe teacher; once the leamer has understood the word - and in this case thatmeans knowing the corresponding word in the leamer's own language - thereis very little more to be said about telescope.

144 Language in the lexical approach

2. Car. But a relatively common noun like car is a different matter; it wouldbe useful to introduce it together with some of its common adjective and verbcollocates such aspowet'ul, second-hand, family, hire, start, (not*begin), thecar broke down. Nouns which are more common have larger collocationalfields, so some collocates should be introduced from the earliest possiblepoint in courses.

3. Speak. This verb poses different problems; it is one of a group of verbswith similar meanings - say, speak, tell. The difference between these doesnot need to be explained, so much as explored, because the differencebetween them lies not so much in their meaning, more in the way they areused - in other words their different collocational fields. They should beintroduced with a small family of real examples which show some typicalcollocations and their families compared and contrasted. [Compare the listson pp 34 and 61.1 It is important for the teacher to draw attention to patterns:s ay ( actwal w o rd s ) : H e llolThank y oilS orry : t e ll John/me/ s ome one/the c las s to(do something). The teacher should also provide the 'negative evidence' ofwhat is not actually possible: *say me/John/someone to . . . . Say is notfollowed by a name, person or personal pronoun in this structure (althoughcompare He said John wowld help.)

4. Beautiful. This adjective is only the opposite of ugly in a small range ofexamples. The opposite depends on the following noun.

5. Strange. Here is a word with at least two very different meanings. Likemost adjectives, as soon as it is taken out of context, much of the informationabout how it is used is lost. Such adjectives should be introduced as part ofnaturally occurring collocations, and possible alternative collocations shouldbe explored with learners immediately and attention drawn to importantblocked collocations. As soon as simple word-for-word translations are in thelearner's mind, acquisition of the patterns in which they are actually used willbe impeded.

6. Sometimes. This apparently simple word presents a different problemagain. One currently popular coursebook teaches it on a scale:

DVo ............. 50Va ........... l00%o

never rarely not often sometimes oJten usually always

but is this helpful? Write down two or three natural sentences which containone of neve\ sometimes or always. Now try substituting one of the otherwords. Try these examples:

I sometimes wish I lived in France.xI never/always wish I lived in France.

I've always wantedto live in France.(?)I've sometimeswantedto live in France.

Sometimes I think I should move.*Never/Alwats I think I should move.

It scwithsotT'lteaclavolgranviolzfrust

Thinslmpand cnotrc

So, rclassrin coafterlearni

One rdealtphras

7.9

Lookione fethe 'u ,

Tradrtthat o,manyrelatecat bestpossesroof, t)producthe Kir

MCCi

C i

frr

)uld/erb, thernalible

:rbsloes

arel b e,ical

listsrns:is to' o f

notugh

: o f

.ikel10n

t o fruld

lant

theivill

lem

taln

.her

Language in the lexical approach 145

It soon becomes clear that the words are rarely substitutable for each otherwithout the sentence seeming odd, absurd or plain wrong. And doessometimes ever suggest 50Ea, and if it does, 50vo of what? As long as theteaching of grammar and vocabulary are separated, this kind of problem isavoided until the learner actually tries to use the language. vocabulary andgrammar interact at every level, in language of all kinds; separating themviolates the nature of language; it also helps introduce confuslon, eror andfrustration into the whole process of learning a second language.Thinking about these few words clearly shows that telescope canbetaught bysimple translation, but in all the other cases, some exploration of collocationand context is essential if important features of how the word is used are to benoticed by leamers.

so, different kinds of words require different kinds of treatment in theclassroom, but rnost need to be met and acquired together with other wordsin collocations, expressions or other chunks. words taught on their own will,after all, have to be put with other words if they are ever to form parl of theleamer's active vocabulary.

one word above all others demonstrates both that different words need to bedealt with differently and the importance of acquiring words in completephrases.

7.9 The central role of o/Looking at language though a narrow grammatical perspective has obscuredone feature of English of staggering importance - the central role played bythe 'word'of

Traditional grammar has very few word-classes, so it was perhaps inevitablethat of was classified as a preposition. Sinclair points out, however, that inmany exampTes - aware of the problem, much of the time - of is closelyrelated to the word which precedes it rather than the word that follows it, soat best the term 'preposition'is highly inappropriate. Nor is it typically aboutpossession, although in a few cases there is a deceptive similarity: the car'sroof, the roof of the car. rn most cases, however, this kind of ,transfbrmation'produces bizane results; ffy it, for example with these: a breach of the peace.the King of Sweden, the price of a ticket.

TlsrMake a list of a dozen expressions containing the word of.Can you find different pattems of use?Can you find one particularly important pattern?Can you see why of might be one of the most useful and mostfrequent words in English?

146 Language in the lexical approach

In fact, o/is the second most common word in English, second only to the.

This immediately suggests it either has many different roles in English, or it

has a use which is all-pervasive. Sinclair's corpus-based studies show that it

does have different uses, but that its frequency is largely a result of a single

use, unemphasised in large academic glammars, and almost completely

ignored in pedagogic grammars and teaching materials. It is the single most

important way of building a pafiicular kind of multi-word noun phrase, and

therefore central to any consideration of collocation'

Most traditional grammar lessons involve patterns of the verb phrase, loosely'the tenses'. Traditionally, little or no attention has been paid to the grammar

of the noun phrase. However, examination of naturally occurring (non-

narrative) texts shows that one of the defining features of such texts is the

preponderance of complex noun-phrases :

Recent technologichl developments in the management of financially sensitive

information have demonstrated the importance of finding ways of controlling

the means of access to such information.

Knowledge of data management is essential for graduates of any discipline

who hope to work in those areas of the economy which currently have the

greatest chance of growth during the first half of the next decade.

Look back at those examples; does one word jump off the page? The

examples contain 65 words, the most frequent of which are of (9) and the (6).

There it is, staring us in the face, the most common word in the examples -

the second most common in the whole language, hardly mentioned in

traditional ELI grammar teaching; o/ is the key to the construction of noun

phrases in English.

Sinclair gave a clear explanation of the function and importance of of in

Corpus, Concordance, Collocation"

The simple structure of nominal groups is based on a headword which

is a noun. Determiners, numerals, adjectives etc. come in front of the

noun and modify its meaning in various ways. Prepositional phrases

and relative clauses come after the noun and add further strands of

meaning.

The function of of is to introduce a second noun as a potential

headword:

this kind of Problemthe axis of rotationthe botrle of Port

Each of the two nouns can support pre-modifiers'

As I write this, there is a heated debate about the name of one of the 'zones'

of London's Millennium Dome; religious gloups did not like the name spirit

zone, so it was chang edto the faith zone. This prompted some complaints that

it sor.on thwill lproblbecarpre-n

Althcwaysthat icategthey I

spequaconnou

Theycontaglves

AS (t

in t)

t n i l

in rJ

at tl

I t i s u

to ear

more l

they nprobal

7.10

Sinclamay stTEVlSCI

the falangualexis -

althouof this

Althorapprollinguiscatego

\e .

: r tt 1 I

lie' l r r

)stnd

lve

n o

rhe

1nrun

1n

)lylar)n-he

he6)

S -

es 'LrLt

hat

Language in the lexical approach 147

it sounded as if one faith had priority - the faith, so the organisers have settledon the ungrammaticalnamefaith zone, although when anyone asks for it, theywill presumably say Where is the faith zone? The ambiguity, and hence theproblem, could have been solved by calling it the zone of faith, preciselybecause o/ separates the two nouns so that each is separately available forpre-modification without ambiguity.

Although LGSWE rightly points out that noun phrases are made in manyways, and that such noun phrases can be very long, it also endorses the viewthat different kinds of phrases containing of are one of the largest sub-categories of noun phrase. Here are a few of the dozen or so types of phrasethey list:

species nouns:quantifying collectives:comparable to genitives:nouns with -/z/:

these kinds of questionsa set of booksthe brutal murder of a childa mouthful of food

They also list well over a hundred short phrases - lexical bundles - whichcontain of, and which are typical of academic writing. This small selectiongives a flavour of how central such phrases are to this kind of writrns:

as a result ofin the case ofin the direction of

as afunction of from the point ofview of

in the context of the similar to that ofat the time of the at the level of

It is worth noting that this language is precisely the kind of language referredto earlier which is likely to be invisible to learners, whose attention is muchmore likely to be focussed on difficult content words. If they are to write well,they need to add both kinds of lexical item to their mental lexicons. This willprobably not happen without proactive intervention by the teacher.

7.10 GrammarSinclair has argued that once we have sufficient corpus-based evidence we

of this book.

Although there is considerable disagreement about what categories are mostappropriate for different purposes, the consensus of opinion among appliedlinguists is that the separation of grammar ,and vocabulary as distinctcategories is simply wrong. As long ago as 1990, Sinclair claimed:

in tenns ofin the case of a

in the formation ofin a number of wayswith the exception ofat the time of writing

148 Language in the lexical approach

The evidence becoming available casts grave doubts on the wisdom ofpostulating separate domains of lexis and syntax.

In similar vein, the authors of the monumental LGSWE observe in theirintroduction:

Syntax and lexicon are often treated as independent components ofEnglish. Analysis of real texts shows, however, that most syntacticstructures tend to have an associated set of words or phrases that arefrequently used with them.

There is general agreement that there is a spectrum between what is particularand what is general; single words, sffong collocations, certain idioms andfixed expressions are invarianl, or at least almost invariant, while opencollocations, colligations and traditional grammar structures representvarying degrees of generalisability. In other words, we do not simplyremember every bit of language we have ever met and list it; we also sort it insome way and make generalisations about it. Michael Hoey has commented:Grammar is the product of the colligations you have noted in the languageand Sinclair claims: Grammatical generalizations do not rest on a rigid

foundation, but are the accumulation of the pattenxs of hundreds of individualwords and phrases. Implicit in these comments is the importance of learnersmeeting large amounts of input which they can use as the basis for their owngeneralisations. Equally, of course, this view denies that when learnersproduce correct sentences these are based on abstract 'rules'the learner hasbeen taught; the rules are neither more nor less than various provisional andpartial generalisations, based on understanding and breaking down indifferent ways and to different degrees, input which is essentially lexical.

Grammar often over-generalises

Different 'levels' of language generalise to different degrees. We have seenthat words do not occur with other words at random, some words regularly co-occur with other words - lexical collocations such as strongly suggest, proveconclwsively. Sometimes grammatical features such as articles or prepositionsmay be part of a pattem - grammatical collocations such as take theopportunity ro. Colligations are even more general - they relate word topattern, or pattern to pattern: I'll see you (time expression); There's no needb (asUwarn/tell/remind etc) (John/your mother/me/ etc). Grammar sffucturesgeneralise further, but here a word of warning is necessary. We have alreadymet the idea of blocked collocations; although such collocations aregrammatically well-formed and could be sanctioned by the native-speakercommunity, they are not. A source of frustration to learners and teachers alike,they are arbitrarily deemed 'wrong': We don't say that. At least this is familiarto teachers, but there has been a tendency to believe that the generalisationsof grammar really are true generalisations; Chomsky claimed that a grammarshould produce 'all and only' the coffect sentences of a language. We now

realistherenatl\/l

Althc'pote

least

Manr,generthat n- theset olpronain secactualgenermefiapeoplbegin:bring

The cPeter

I t i. . . 1 1

t1fi

InC

Dou-elof difman)'

7.t l

Withiremphaat the ilanguafixedgenera

A mor

We mrrealiseEFL rcolloc

)fc'e

f

Ltreir

:ularand

open)sentmplyt i t i nnted:'uage

rigididual,mersown

LINETS

:r hasL1 and/Il llt

rl.

) seenly co-prove;itions:e therrd tot needctureslreadyrS AIE

peaker;alike,rmiliariatlonslmmarre now

Language in the lexical approach 149

realise, however, that grammar frequently over-generalises in the sense thatthere are many possible grammatically well-formed sentences to which thenative speaker's natural response is You could say that, bwt you wowldn't.Although these sentences may be 'correct', and are what we may call'potential English', they do not seem to be part of the language as it is, or atleast has been, actually used.

Many recent studies of used language have shown that some of the long-heldgeneralisations provided by grammar are in practice over-generalisations, andthat many supposedly general pattems are subject to restrictions of some kind- the pattem is only used in a particular genre, or is typical of only a restrictedset of verbs, or is almost invariably used with, for example, a personalpronoun, occurs naturally in first person sentences in speech, but hardly at allin second or third person, or some other similar restriction. Looked at as anactual utterance rather than a sentence, it is difficult to make grammaticalgeneralisations from I'll see you tomorrow -varrations such as You/He'll seeme/you/him tomorrow, although 'coffect' are not entirely convincing as whatpeople do, rather than what they might, say. This is true of many utterancesbeginning I'll, where the 'equivalent'with loz seems likely only if tagged: I'llbring it on Monday. Yow'll bring it on Monday, won't you?

The current theoretical position is represented by these typical comments byPeter Skehan (A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning):

It is likely that the growing existence of large corpora together with...increasingly sophisticated text analytic software ...will for the firsttime reveal ways in which there is a lack of regularity and rule muchmore of the time than previously thought.

Douglas Biber and his colleagues have analysed many different sub-corporaof different registers and draw the general conclusion that: [These] showmany generalisations have limited domains of applicability.

7.ll Lexis

Within the traditional grammar/vocabulary dichotomy, teaching collocationemphasises vocabulary rather than grammar, but this is the wrong way to lookat the issue. The dichotomy is invalid; language is fundamentally lexical, andlanguage pattems are arranged on a spectrum from those which are absolutelyfixed and non-generative, to those which provide a high degree ofgeneralisation, though usually with some restrictions.

A more'grammatical' approach

We may summarise simply by saying that words are more generative than wasrealised earlier, and structural pattems are more restricted than traditionalEFL rules acknowledged. Every word has its own grammar; teachingcollocation means giving attention to a much wider range of patterns which

150 Language in the lexical approach

suffound individual words; this means many mole patterns than those of any

traditional structural syllabus. In this respect, it is a more 'gfammatical'

approach than the traditional structural syllabus precisely because it avoids

the problems which arise from separating grammar from vocabulary"

7.L2 Collocation and testing

It is now clear that any learner's mental lexicon is larger than we have

previously recognised and that much of it consists of multi-word items rather

than individual words. The higher the student's level, the more this is true' As

Michael Hoey remarks in his chapter, there are a lot of words to know, and a

lot to know about each word. If the size of the leatnet's mental lexicon is more

to do with the number of phrases and collocations the learner knows than we

have previously recognised, it is clear that we need to reconsider the ways in

which vocabularY is tested.

As Peter Hargreaves' paper clearly demonstrates, collocation is being

recognised increasingly explicitly by examining boards as an element in

assessing a leamer's overall proficiency. Examinations such as the Cambridge

First certificate (FCE), Certificate of Advanced English (cAE) and

Pro f ic iency(CPE) ,nowencou lagethes tudyofco l loca t ionaSpar to f theexampfeparation'Here,forexample'a.tresomecommentsfromtheFCEandCAE examiners:

Learningcol locat ionsisausefulprepalat ionfor[Paper3]sincetheseare f requent ly tes ted . . . . I t i sa lsova luab le tos tudy thed i f fe rencesbetween words of a similar meaning such as voyage, iowrney, trip and

excursrcn.

It is in fPaper 3] that knowing a whole phrase rather than just an

individual word is particularly important. candidates need to know

what structure follows a verb (an infinitive or gerund for example) and

whatprepos i t ion i tgoeswi th .Co l loca t ionsarea lsoan impor tan tfeature of Part 3. It is useful for candidates to know thatreach goes with

agreement or tell wrth lies, for example'

Recommendation for candidate preparatlon

This is particularly relevant to Question 1 [in CAE] in which an

extensive knowledge of collocation is a great asset'

Bearing in mind the enormous vocabulary load which we now recognise the

leamers need, it is clear that rather than leaming individual collocations in

preparation for the exam, learners need a clear introduction to the whole idea'-rt

tt"y are to gain maximum benefit from any language they meet, they also

need to acquire the ability to notice and record collocations. Testing

collocation is superficially easy, using questions such as:

The government is trying to close the """' between rich and poor'

A. sPace B.gup C' distance D' door

But illeametakenHowa

In Chtest c(

Teachsimplcomblearnetest ltrcollocboth t

1. WtMi

2 . WA

h

C .

A

3. Hcw(A

b,C ,

d.

Evenbetwegenerknow

7.13

This <in the

Ot

co

pr(m1ofkn

of anyLatical'avoids

e have; ratherrue. Ast. and a1S morehan wen,ays in

; beingnent mntrridgeE) andt of therCE and

heseJNCES

r and

st an(now

) and)fiantwith

gnise theations inLole idea.they also

Testing

Language in the lexical approach 151

But if such testing is to avoid arbitrariness, simply demonstrating that theleamer either does or does not know a particular collocation, steps have to betaken to ensure that the test items are devised in principled ways. As PeterHowarlh has observed:

One drawback (of finding out how many subjects know a givencollocation) is the difficulty of establishing the validity of anypredehned list of target collocations, since, as many EFL teachersmight agree, this component of a learner's linguistic competence is oneof the least predictable, making it hard Io generalize from subjects'knowledge or ignorance of a small number of individual items.

In chapter 10, Peter Hargreaves takes up the question of how difficult it is totest collocation in principled and sustainable ways.

Teachers who devise their own tests need to be conscious of the danger ofsimply making the lexicon seem like a confused mass of arbitrary wordcombinations. Two possible ways forward are to use test items which askleamers to recognise both acceptable and unacceptable collocations, or to usetest items which require learners to write either a specified number or as manycollocates as they can for a particular word. Here are example test items ofboth types:

1. Which of the following are acceptable:My a) car b) health c) income d) marriage e) holiday was damaged.

2. Which of the following contain correct uses of the verb break?a. I have broken my watch.b. It broke his confidence.c. A sudden cry broke the silence.d. You said you'd help. You can't break your promise!e. Shall we break the meeting now?

3. How many nouns do you know which can go immediately after thesewords:a. market (research, price, penetration, etc)b. price (rise, stability, promise, etc)c. football (match, stadium, player, etc)d. train (timetable, ticket, crash, station, times etc)

Even with items of these types, however, care must be taken to distinguishbetween testing what has been formally taught in the course, and moregeneral testing. Care must also be taken to ensure that the words chosen areknown to be appropriate to the learners'level.

7.13 Necessity for change

This chapter has been about language, and in particular about recent changesin the way we describe language. corpus linguistics and computer corpora are

152 Language in the lexical approach

powerful tools, and regularly produce new, and unquestionably better,

descriptions of English than we have ever had before. Competent teachers

need to be up to date with these descriptions in the same way that a competentdoctor needs to know about new drugs and treatments. But it is not self-

evident that improvements in description necessarily imply changes in

methodology.

In the earlier years of this descriptive revolution, Henry Widdowson wrote:

Swch analysis provides ws with facts, hitherto Ltnknown, or ignored, but they

do not of themselves cartj any guarantee of pedagogic relevance. Guy Aston

has pointed out that basic factors such as availability, teachability and

classroom needs are at least as important in designing language courses as

strictly linguistic criteria. Ron Carter, deeply involved in new descriptions of

the spoken language, has similarly observed There is a tension between truth

to the langwage and pedagogic judgement. He goes on to argue, for example,

that there may be a case for specially designed language teaching materials

which simulate some of the features of 'real' language; such materials maybe more effective than real material, or materials which replicate exactly thelinguistic features revealed by accurate description.

In an article assessing the importance of corpora and the descriptive insightsthey offer for all language teachers, Ivor Timmis writes:

Where corpora seem to be telling us something about the nature oflanguage or the nature of language processing, I feel it incumbent uponus to take this on board. If the evidence is accumulating that it is nottenable to make a sharp distinction between lexis and grammar and thatspeech involves, to a large degree, the assembly of prefabricatedchunks, this must affect the way we approach our teaching.

Maggie Baigent, writing of her experience in trying to implement a lexicalapproach (Modern English Teacher, Vol. 8 No. 2) suggests various activitiesand concludes with a very balanced assessment of both the opportunities anddifficulties presented by our present understanding of the nature of language:

Michael Lewis says in Implementing the Lexical Approach that whatwe actually do in the classroom may not change very much as a resultof our own change in thinking about the centrality of lexis in thelanguage and the language learning process. Unfortunately, to an extenthe is right, as long as we are constrained by coursebooks and syllabusesbased primarily on a list of discrete grammar points with vocabularysections which are little more than lists of single words. However, good

teachers always adapt their course materials and I would like to believein the 'cumulative effect' of small but unremarkable changes inclassroom practice which Michael Lewis also hopes for inImplementing the Lexical Approach.I would like to think that we canbring about a gradual change in learners'perception of the language

at,clrm

Teaclradictchan5betterCOUIS

Maggvocablearnesingle

7.14

W e ndescriman),thin-sspreclsll n a l e

compltheon-chaptein conis fundprincigcompaon disexpefll

their tr

It is ncor coulactionthe hoprovidibefore.change

This bcWe mtteachatwe har.ishall smethod

)ttel,

hers)tentself-s l n

-ote:

theystonandS A S

s o frtth

Y ' r '

ralsnaythe

ghts

icaltresandI O e '' 5 " .

t

t

t

t

I

t

t

and lead them towards greater autonomy inchunks in language they are exposed to, andmore part of their communicative repertoire.

Language in the lexical approach 153

identifying multi-wordmaking these more and

Il

i

t

I

Teaching colrocation does not mean a radical upheaval, but it does mean aradical change of mindset for the teacher, *irirt proar"", many smallchanges in the activities they focus on in the classroo-. L"urrr"rs do becomebetter at noticing' storing and using lexical chunks. We must hope that in duecourse syllabuses and textbooks will change and the constraints mentioned byMaggie Baigent will become less. Lexis - the merging of gru--u. uncvocabulary, or better still, a refusal to separate them _ has more to ofl,erlearners than any sylrabus based on a limited list of structures and lists ofsingle words.

7.14 SummaryWe may summarise the position: given that we now have much betterdescriptions of English than we have ever had before, and,thatthis reveals thatmany of the 'rures' previously taught are either wholiy

", pur,iuirv inaccurate,things in the classroom must change - no change r, noi un option. This isprecisely the position proposed sorne years ago in The Lexicar Approach, butin a recent article Scott Thombury (Moderu English Teacher; yor. 7,No. 4)complains that The Lexicar Approach does not have a coherent leamingtheory. In many ways, this is true and the implications are taken up in the nextchapter, but a lexical.view of language does point to a number of deficienciesin conventional syllabuses. As Karr Fopper hu, ,o conclusively shown, thereis fundamental asymmetry between proof and disproof; we can never, even inprinciple, prove general statement, to be true, but we can, often withcomparative ease, demonstrate their untruth. change una p.ogr;rs are basedon disproving the currently accepted view, prompting new theories andexperiments, which will provide further evidence urri n"i" theories, which intheir turn will be disproved.

It is not by any means clear how best to mcorporate lexical views into booksor courses; at the sarne time, teachers need to be wilring to engage in mini_actlon research programmes, which thethe holy grail of a ,comprehensive

l,providing leamers with a more effecti,before. The improvement may be subrchange is not an option.This Lrook is specifically about teaching, rather than describing, collocation.we must, then, ask what rnay o. -uy not make material more or lessteachable, and more importantly still, what aids or impedes leaming. So farwe have looked at the use of new descriptions of English but, rike Timmis, weshall suggest that there are considerable imprications for classroommethodology. That is the subject of the next chaoter.

154 Language in the lexical approach

Discussion QuestionsDo you usually teach new words alone, in collocations or in completecontexts? Why do you follow the procedure you do? Do you think a differentprocedure might be more effective or more efficient?

Which of the following do you regularly draw to leamers' attention: newwords, traditional (opaque) idioms, fixed expressions. grammar structures,collocations, clusters?'Description is not pedagogy.'What implications, if any, do you think thephrasal nature of language has for your classroom?

C]

Lei

Micl

ThiswhatmeetllearnrecogabilitcruciimpotsurprFinallchanlchanX

8.1

Overus betwe n(impinthougagarnthe a'teach

know'learn

and arseparzsortirand ctconsicfeedbrunderrwho v

Teachiexperichallerknowwhy sr

rplete':erent

newlures,

k the

Learning in the lexical approach 155

Chapter 8

Learning in the lexical approachMichael Lewis

This chapter considers what we knowwhat circumstances learners are mostmeet, both in class and outside. It intrlearning. It emphasises the importancrecognised on many-.teacher trainirrg .oo.."r,' ;"Jil;r;;*'ri"'r"u"t

".,,ability to select and direct rearners'atiention to particurar r.i.ra. or exampres is

ideas of syllabus and level. It emphasises theI mor: than once, and, perhaps to ther,e unimportance of controlled practice.understanding of learning suggests realand how collocation is central to these

8.1 Introductionover the last ten years or so, the analysis of computer-based corpora has givenus better descriptions ofEnglish than have ever been availabre befbre but, aswe noted in the previous chapter, it is not self-evident that these descriptionsimpinge directry on the language crassroom, and if they do, it requires carefulthought to determine-how best to modify cunent crassroom procedures. onceagain, it is herpfur to begin by thinking ctearty about terminology, particularlythe area covered by the broad terms 'knowredg"'

unJ-:i"arning, andr two kinds of knowledge _ declarative

;;#tTn,T:HTil::jH.",ruseparate processes involved *t

"., t"#sh

input from intake; identify threJ

sortin g, and des cribing we di, rinsri ;h ;hr'J;?:fi:r':x?11""; 1"",1?and complexity - which contribute tL the overall idea of ,level,. we shall alsoconsider the non-linear nature of acquisition, and the rmptications offeedback for the acquisition process. Fa, f.om unnecessary theory, a clearunderstanding of these ideas provides an essential framework for teacherswho wish to develop their own understanding.

Teachers sometimes dismiss theory on the grounds that they know fromexperience that something works. Henry widdowson trus irsr"o rwo potentchallenges ro this posirion - firstry, even if-something *";il,;"* do youknow something else wourd not wtrk better? Secondli ,f y; io not knowwhy something works, you may be unable to replicate the success, or share it

156 Leaming in the lexical approach

with others. So there is a strong case for understanding why some classroom

activities seem to be more effective than others. Everything that happens in

class should be consistent with what we know about the nature of both

language and learning; equally importantly, nothing which happens in class

should violate the nature of either. The previous chapter looked at what we

now know about language; this chapter looks at what we now know about

learning i.n general, and language leaming in particular.

It is comparatively easy to study what teachers do in class and specify what

particular activities are intended to achieve. It is, however, difficult to know

what use learners, individually or collectively, make of the language they

meet in class and almost impossible to evaluate the effect any particular

activity has on learners' long-term language acquisition. However much

teachers dislike the idea, the relationship between teaching and learning

remains mysterious. Some, like Krashen, even question the value of explicit

leaming. Less controversially, it is clear that no teaching can guarantee

acquisition. As Diane Larsen-Freeman has so eloquently expressed it, we

constantly need to remind ourselves that teaching does not cause leaming.

We also need to lemind ourselves that teaching is never an end in itself; its

sole purpose is to facilitate acquisition. Is traditional language teaching likely

to achieve this end? If not, what teaching strategies are likely to be rnore

successful?

Teacher training coulses often examine what the teacher does, but if we want

to understand what is most effective in the language classroom, it is with

learning, not teaching, that our analysis should begin.

8.2 Two kinds of knowledge

We look first at knowledge in its widest sense. Two different kinds of

knowledge have long been recognised - declarative and procedural

knowledge. The first is knowledge that, and involves stating facts or rules -

the date of the Declaration of Independence, the exchange rate of the pound

against the dollar, the past participle of go. The second is knowledge how to,

the ability to actually do something - selve at tennis, drive a car, give a short,

witty speech of welcome to a group of visitors.

The two kinds of knowledge are different in important ways. With declarative

knowledge, you either know it or you don't; you can remember it (correctly

or incorrectly) or forget it; you need to look it up or be told it, directly or

indirectly, by someone else; there is nothing to understand, it is simple

information, each item separate from each other item. Importantly, the lack of

a single piece of such knowledge may be frustrating, or make you look

slightly silly, but it will not render you unable to do what you want - if you

say Ever since the Declaration of Independence, whenever that was,

seventeen whatever, America has . . . ; or I think the company has goed on the

nnifmmmiftut I

wrorr n a

Procaddrknoldiscrproc(we cito leadeclasuchwhiclin theslowlbalanrcanno

The trwe acIndepiat thalis declknowlexcharthe cubut una grafitthis la:or you

DeclarzWith avocabulsystemmodifiepositiorcomplelgramma

T

Hkr

sroomens inI botht classrat weabout

'' whatknow

e theyticularmuch

ammgxplicitranteeIt, we

lng.

"^lf; its

likelyI mole

o want

s with

rds of:duralrrles -

poundow to,: short,

arativeffectly;tly orsimplelack ofr lookif youI was,on the

Learning in the lexical, approach lS7

wrong line this year . .. , your message may be badly expressed, but you still,in a more global sense, achieve your purpose.Procedural knowledge is about global ability; each bit of learning is notadded to what you already 'knew', but is integrated into your earrierknowledge, modifying it in some way. procedurai knowleoge rs not simplediscrete items, but, as its name suggests, sets of comprex piocedures. Newprocedural knowledge, once properly acquired, is not;forgttten' in the waywe can forget a date or a new word. Lack of procedurar knowredge is likelyto leave you unable to do something; if you cannot ride a bike, no amount ofdeclarative knowledge about how to ride a bike will help. you cannot look upsuch knowledge, and no one else can tell you or explain it to you in a waywhich ensures you wil|know'it. watching someone else ride may help; butin the end, you have no altemative but to get on, try, fall off, try again and,slowly, you will acquire an integrated set of skills which are to do withbalance, speed and so on. once you have acquired the ability to ride, youcannot forget it - it is yours, part of you.The two kinds of knowredge are not totally separated, but the ways in whichwe acquire them are. In the examples earlier, the date of the Declaration ofIndependence is declarative knowledge, why America decrared independenceat that time is complex procedural knowledge; learning why in High Schoolrs declarative; understanding why and relating that undersianding to a wideknowledge of American history and politics is procedural. similarry, theexchange rate on any day is a matter of fact; understanding the movements ofthe currency market is procedurar; the past participre of go is a simple fact,but understanding how it is used fluently and accurately is procedural. Statinga grammar rule is declarative knowledge; the ability to useit is procedural. Asthis last example makes clear, you can 'know,the

rule but be unable to use itor you may have mastered the point without being able to state the rule.

ThsrCan you give three examples of procedural knowledge you have andexplain how you acquired the knowledge?

How does this knowledge differ from the ways you reamed decrarativeknowledge?

158 Learning in the lexical approach

intrinsically procedural. Any discrete bit of language which is leamedpurely additively cannot contribute to, indeed is not part of, the leamer'smental lexicon; although in some sense 'known', it is not available for use.This immediately brings to mind Stephen Krashen's distinction betweenleaming and acquisition.

Learning and acquisition

ln The Natural Approach Krashen introduced the distinction betweenlanguage learning, which is conscious, and language acquisition, which isunconscious. He has controversially claimed that only language which isunconsciously acquired is later available for spontaneous use. He claimsacquisition is essential, and leaming has no value, as what is leamed does notcontribute to what is acquired. We shall examine this view in some detail, butfor the rest of this chapter the term 'learning' is used only in the sense of whatis consciously learned; similarly the term 'acquired' is confined to languageto which the learner has immediate access for purposes of comprehension orproductive use.

If Krashen is right, formal teaching, which is explicitly directed at consciouslearning, is effort wasted. Even if he is wrong, and formal presentation andpractice of specific items does aid acquisition, our new awareness of the sheersize of the mental lexicon raises immense problems. Any suggestion thatteachers could formally 'teach' a lexicon which runs to many tens ofthousands (or, for competent native speakers, many hundreds of thousands) ofitems is clearly unrealistic. If each of 20,000 items took 2 minutes to teach,that is already over 600 classroom hours, more than the total duration of manylearners' entire formal language instruction.

This new understanding of the size of the learners' lexical task implies radicalchanges to the teacher's role. Either teachers must select and teach a restrictedlexicon - but on what criteria, for students of general English? - or they mustadapt classroom activities so that, rather than teaching individual items, theyprovide learners with strategies which ensure the leamers get the maximumbenefit from all the language they meet in and, mote importantly, outside theformal teaching situation.

8.3 Acquisition and noticing

The basic position of all the contributors to this book partly agrees withKrashen's position, and partly modifies it (in a way he would not accept).Acquisition is accepted as of central importance, but it is suggested that theconscious noticing of features of the language that learners meet doesfacilitate acquisition. These ideas need to be explored in more detail.

Acquisition and input

Krashen's claim that we acquire language in one and only one way, by

undetexam- lanmentimeetr'knov

so tha

Not r'a lessthat 1,you \\and u'

Comnfundatlanguzemphathe orrright iexceptproducall timmlsun(produc

Acquisknowlemake ,

routini:invoivelexicon

From i

In addifurtherThe ceronly onthere mlanguagto for s1linguisti'noticinl

is perhq

lmed

TIEI'S

: use.ween

weench isch islaims)s not1, butwhatruageon or

clousr andsheerL thatrs ofls) ofeach,nany

Ldicalrctedmustthey

mumle the

with:ept).lt thedoes

y, by

Learning in the lexical approach 159

understanding messages, provides a clear starting point from which toexamine our presuppositions about how leamers do learn - in the loose sense- language. His position is that a learner's interlanguage (the learner's totalmental representation of the target language at any moment) is modified bymeeting new language which lies on the edge of what the learner already'knows' in such a way that it is incorporated into the learner's interlanguageso that it is available for spontaneous use.

Not very long ago language teaching emphasised grammar structures and toa lesser extent vocabulary ('new words'). The fundamental assumption wasthat you first needed structures and, having mastered some central structures,you would move from accurale but halting production, to more fluent speechand writing.

communicative approaches rightly tumed this system on its head. Thefundamental emphasis of communicative approaches was and remains thatlanguage is about the expression and communication of meaning. Thisemphasis on 'communicating'inevitably

values fluency above accuracy, sothe order of priorities is reversed. while this is unquestionably a step in theright direction, it has one unintended side-effect, unless the teacher isexceptionally careful - it places great emphasis on the language that learnersproduce, so it has a tendency to encourage production, particularly speech, atall times, even in the earliest stages of a course. At the risk of being badlymisunderstood, I must point out that you cannot acquire a language byproducing it.

Acquisition involves taking in new material and incorporating it into theknowledge or skills you already have. Producing language - speech - maymake you more confident or may make your speech more automatic orroutinised, but that is not the same as expanding your language resources; thatinvolves integrating new language into your intergrammar and mentallexicon.

From input to intake

In addition to introducing the leaminglacquisition distinction, Krashen hasfurther claimed that there is only one way in which learners acquire language:The central hypothesis of the theory is that language acquisition occurs inonly one way: by understanding messoges. (The Naturar Approach). whilethere may be much truth in this, it is also true that if you wish to turn thelanguage learners meet - input - into language they acquire and have accessto for spontaneous use - intake - they almost certainly need to notice thelinguistic wrapping in which the message is delivered. Exactly what this'noticing'might involve, and what may help or hinder input becoming intake,is perhaps the most important of all methodological questions.

160 Learning in the lexical approach

TnsxEvery teacher knows that some of what you teach seems to be acquiredvery easily by leamers but some things that you teach again and againstill cause problems for learners.

What factors do you think influence whether input becomes intake?

Do you think it depends mostly on the input language or mostly on theleamer's current knowledge?

How important do you think factors such as motivation, tiredness, ageor the temperature of the room play?

In this chapter we are mostly concerned with the kind of language input whichis needed. It is important to realise that the input which is used in thecomprehension of the message may differ from the input which is the rawmaterial for the acquisition of language. Many applied linguists and mostteachers believe that, at least to some extent, focussing leamers' attentionexplicitly on some aspect of the linguistic form of the input is helpful inaccelerating the acquisition process. We need to examine this belief in detail.

You probably make a daily journey from your home to your place of work;the route is completely familiar, and you could give someone else directionsfor the journey. But do you know the names of all the streets you drive orwalk down? In all probability you know the route, but you have simply notnoticed the names of some of the sffeets - they are irrelevant when you canachieve your global purpose without attending to such details. The globalpurpose of language is the communicating of messages; but the medium fordoing it is language items - words and phrases - which may need to benoticed if they are to be acquired.

In normal language use, we are usually so predisposed to focus on themessage, that the language in which it is delivered is frequently ignored, or,if presented in writing, transparent to the point of being invisible.

TlsrWhat sorl of language which would be useful from an acquisitionalpoint of view do you think your students might fail to notice unlessyou provided guidance?

Experiments have shown that even quite advanced and motivated learnersoften do not see the difference between their own effective but inaccurate orunnatural language and a similar correct, natural version which expressesexactly the same content. If they do not notice - see or hear - the differencesbetween the language they used to express something and the correct naturalversion expressing the same content, then that input cannot contribute tointake. Activities which encourase learners to notice certain features of the

mplan

I r ih"ltis tlprointa

8.4SecrprecbroatherrthevocaFor rthe r,are cstudesuchmem

Noticthe tealso tsomeioccasAwarrwary lin theexpen

Givenhelpfu(withounderskinds <This islangual

DiscusFreeme

Isevwillltemvalu

rhichr theraw

mostrtronul inetail.

''Ofk;

irons/e ori notr canloball foro b e

L thei, or,

NCTS

le or)SSES

nceslurale t o: the

mput probably contribute to the valuelanguage acquisition point of view.

Learning in the lexical approach 161

of the input specifically from the

It is essential to remember, however, that the belief that deliberate noticinghelps is by no means an established certainty; the current -uin.t."u- positionis that it probabry has at least a facilitative, helpfur effect. Explicit noticing is

,or?J.::tt a necessary, bur nor sufficienr condirion ro ensure that input becomes

8.4 NoticingSecond Language Acquisition researchers are somewhat divided overprecisery what factors influence what part of input becomes intake. There is abroad consensus that ranguage that is not noticed does not b""o-" intake, butthere is no agreement on the precise meaning of the word ,rroir."o,.

Even inthe most traditional grammar-orientated crassrooms, leurn".s acquirevocabulary which must result from accidentar, or at reast incidental, noticing.For example, while ostensibly studying a structure, rearners acquire some ofthe vocaburary used to exemplify and p-ractise the grammar. Equally, teachersare only too aware that formally teaching a number of *ordr, or requiringstudents to 'learn these words for homework' is not sufficient to ensure thatsuch items w'l be committed even to short-term, much ress long_term,memory.

Noticing is not quite the straightforward matter it might seem on first meetingthe tem' In everyday use, the word can refer to both accidental awareness andalso to the results of.deliberate focussing of attention. It is also the case thatsometlmes we are able to recall what we accidentally noticed, ,'t il" on oth",occasrons we cannot recall something to which we paid a"tiu.rut" attention.Awareness of the potentially wide mJaning of the word, shoutc mate us verywary about attaching too much importanc! to any particular kind of noticingin the language class. As always, caution and an open-minded willingness toexperiment, and revise our vlews on effective methodology, is essential.Given the present stage of our knowledge of acquisition, it is likely to behelpful to make learners explicitly u*urJ of the Lxical nature of language(without using that terminology). This means helping leamers deverop anunderstanding of the kinds of chunks found in ttre teits ,rr"y -""r, and thekinds of prefabricated groups of words which are the prerequisite of fluency.This is one part of the teacher's task in encouraging rearners not to break thelanguage they meet down too far.

Discussing the value of instruction, of which noticing is a part, Diane Larsen_Freeman comments:

[several researchers] have pointed out that explicit grammar instructionwill not likery result in immediate mastery of specific grammaticalitems, but suggest nevertheless that explicit instruction does have avalue, namely, facilitating input.

162 Learning in the lexical approach

Although her comments relate specifically to 'grammar' instruction, they

Sulelyapplyequallytoinstructionwhichensufesleamersnoticeanykindofpatteming in the inPut theY meet.

Sorting and describing

A word of caution, however. There is a world of difference between the

teacher asking Did you notice . . . ?, and asking What did you notice? Being

able to describe - verbalise - what you noticed is completely different from

giving the (supposed) rules. It would be a tragedy if further time was wasted

u"rtatitlttg complex descriptions of lexical patteflrs, especially when there is

no evidence that such descriptions would help acquisition. It could well be

that concentrating on such descriptions is an activity which may appeal to

teachers, but which is of no benefit to, and indeed may intimidate and

confuse, learners. Noticing language helps; sorting it into categories or

pattems may help (see below); describing the categories almost certainly

does not.

Directing learners' attention

Despite any doubts about precisely how noticing helps, it is safe to say that

learners frequently do not notice the precise way an idea is expressed'

sometimes even if their attention is drawn to it' Some training in the sorts of

chunks which make up the texts they read or hear increases the chance of

them noticing useful language, rather than many other features which are

irrelevant from an acquisition point of view. In A Cognitive Approach to

Language Learning, Peter Skehan observes:

Input contains many alternative features for processing, and the

learner's task is to extract relevant features which can then be focussed

on fruitfully. ...Instruction can work ...by making salient less obvious

aspects of the input, so that it is the leamer that does the extracting and

focussing, but as a function of how he or she has been prepared'

Reporting a major study of noticing by Richard Schmidt, Skehan continues:

The consequence of Schmidt receiving instruction was that what had

been unstructured, undifferentiated input (but whose non-

understanding had not impeded understanding very much) became

noticeable and analysable, leading to future progress'

In his article (The Role of Consciousness in Second Language Learning,

Applied Linguistics Vol. 11 No.2) Schmidt points out the crucial difference

bet,

{1

II

Aft<mln

II

ll

l',]r

1l

l(1er(

fctnisf.

prbt

b iin

In suteachwhiclearninput

8.5Notilangrexail

theyr d o f .

r theieingfromiomenewyou

I youJlessat ls,lsted:re isli beal toand

)s orainly

, tha t

ssed,rts of:e ofI are:h to

te:d] S

rd

rues:

rdn-

ning,rence

Learning in the lexical approach 163

between information that is perceived and information that is noticed:When reading, for example, we are normally aware of (notice) thecontent of what we are reading, rather than the syntactic pecutiaritres orthe writer's style,.ihe style of type in which the text'is set, musicplaying on the radio in the next ioom. ...However, we still perceivethese competing stimuri and may pay attention to them if we choose.

After a long discussion of the role of conscrousness he concludes (the bold ismine):

I have claimed that subliminal language learning is impossible and thatintake is what rearners "ottr"io.,Jy

notice. This'requirement ofnoricing is meant to lqlv equalry to all aspect, or rungffi (lexicon,phonology, grammatical form, piagmatics)-, and can u-" ii"orpo.ur"ointo many different theories of second language acquisition. ...Whatlearners notice is constrained by a number of factors, but incidentalleaming is certainly possible when task demands focus attention onrelevant features of the input.

...Incidental leaming in another sense, picking up target languageforms from input when they do not carry information crucial to thetask, appears unlikely^foradults. paying attention to Ianguage formis hypothesised to be facilitative in aillases, and -t;-";""essaryfor adult acquisition of redundant grammatical features. ...Recentpsychological theory suggesrs that implicit learning t forriOr", Urt i,best characterized as the gradual accumulation of associationsbetween frequentry co'occurring features, rather than unconsciousinduction of an abstract rule system.

rut which they do not understand, butrg leamers toward the input languageonal point of view; the more awaretext is made, the more likely that the

(e.

8.5 The importance of examplesNoticing examples of language in context islanguage, which raises the difficult questionexamples.

central to the acquisition ofof what we mean by good

Tasx

You are presumably fairly confident that you can identify a chairwhen you see one but can you define ,uihuir,ZDo you think your definition is precise, so that it includes at chairsand excludes benches, stools and other things you might sit on?

164 Learning in the lexical approach

Some chairs seem to be better examples of the category 'chair'than others and

you almost certainly found while doing the task that the boundaries between

,ilnlt* categories are always fttzzy.It is worth looking more closely at what

we mean by a 'good examPle'.

until the mid-2oth century, it was generally assumed that categorisation was

aprob lem- f reeprocedure 'bu t i t i snowrecogn isedasapr inc ipa lsourceofconfusion and error in many disciplines. Philosophers, notably the later work

of Wittgenstein, amply demonstrated why this is so' Previously it was

assumed that all the members of a category shared a group of characteristics;

these could be listed, and membership of the category or class was thus a

matter upon which definite and indisputable decisions could be made'

wittgenstein demonstrated that this was not so by considering the concept of

'a game'.

What is 'a game'?

Most of us happily agree that SoCCer' patience, solitaire' chess' poker, golf,

baseball and Tomb Raider (a computer game) are all games. It is difficult,

probably impossible, to make a list of criteria so all the games satisfy all the

criteria; despite this difficulty, we are happy to call all the activities 'games''

The difficulty arises from our initial assumption, that all the members of a

class must share all the defining characteristics of the class. In fact, a class is

more l i kea fami ly ;a l l thememberssharesome,perhapsmost ,o fa l i s to fd e i i n i n g c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s : i t m a y e v e n b e t h e c a s e t h a t t h e y m u s t s h a r e o n e o rmore or the characteristics to count as a member of the class. with 'game" for

example, criteriainclude: you can p|ay it, there are rules, it is played between

two individuals or teams, it is played in a special place' there is a score' a

result, and a winner. We immediately see that some games' which no one

doubts are games, do not fulfil one oI more of these criteria. The implication

is that not all members of a category or class are equal; some are better

exemplars of the class than others. In the case of 'game" perhaps surprisingly,

the only criteria all games seem to fulfil is purely linguistic, you play all of

them according to rules; the only necessary characteristics are collocational!

In general, a class is a collection of items all of which share enough of the list

of defining characteristics to count as members of the class; but some are

better examples than others, some of the characteristics may be essential,

some important but not essential and some of relatively marginal importance'

The most important fact we need to note is that membership of a class is not

the simple matter earlier analyses supposed it to be' In the early days of the

Cobuiid project Sinclair wrote:

grammatical generalizations do not lest on a rigid foundation, but are

the accumulation of the patterns of hundreds of individuai words and

phrases. ...The main simplification that is introduced by conventional

grammar is merely the decoupling of lexis and syntax'

PetecorIb e ft o agen(lmp(be trwidew e cexancomlexancateE

The ijustilof bc

Lang

Sinclipailer

frequrand ridifferr

Unforsuppomoreneed aoften :

1234.5 .\\

s andvr/een,what

t wasce ofworkwas

stics;lUS a

nade.:pt of

golf,icult,ll themes ' .; o f aASS TS

ist ofIne oI

:" for.weenlle, a

) onelatlon

betteringly,all ofional!

he listIe are:ntial,lance.

ls notof the

ndaal

Learning in the lexical approach 165

Peter skehan endorses this view when he suggests that the more we examinecorpora, the more we realise that the generalisations which we thought couldbe formulated as 'rules' tend to be more parlial or more restricted - perhapsto a particular genre - than has usually been believed. colligations are parlialgeneralisations; collocations exhibit pattems, but the blockeJ collocation is animportant reminder that even quite modest linguistic generalisations need tobe treated with caution. Description of a category - a rule - rarely apply aswidely as you first think. Learners (and teachers) need to accept that the bestwe can hope for are helpful but provisional descriptions. Similarry,,typical,examples need to be given with both care and caution. The language is morecomplex, with more sub-palterns than we like to think, so truly typicalexamples are elusive, unless they are typical of only a very small sub-category.

The difficulty of choosing typical examples, should not, however, be used tojustify inventing examples - as Sinclair has remarked, one does not study allof botany by making artificial flowers.

Language examples for learnersSinclair has pointed out that, paradopatterns are, in fact, difficult to identfrequent. This is because the words arand what is a good example from ondifferent types of texts.

Unfortunately, language teaching has a history of inventing examples to fit thesupposed rules. The more we know about how ranguag" i, a"tuaity used, themore unsatisfactory this process seems. It is increasingly clear that teachersneed a sensitivity to examples, so they can direct l"arrreisi attention to natural,often spoken, examples which are most rikery to promote acquisition.

TlsrWrite down each of the following:

i. a good example of the present continuous.2. a good example of the present perfect.3. a common expression containing I'm going to.4. some verbs that go with the noln exam.5. some examples to show the difference between speak, talk, say.What makes you think that your examples are good examples?

Tnsr'As far as possible, teachers should try to avoid inventing examples inclass." Do you agree?What justification can you offer for inventing examples?

I166 Learning in the lexical approach

In doing the task, did you go and find real examples or did you invent them?

After Sinclair's warning, surely you didn't invent them? If you did, what

makes you so sure that they are good examples? It is almost certain if you

invented examples consisting of a one-clause sentence that they are very poor

examples, particularly those which exemplify grammar structures. It is also

very likely that for the structure examples you chose untypical vocabulary,

and for the vocabulary examples you chose untypical grammar. If this

judgement seems harsh, use a computer concordance and compare your

examples with their authentic examples. Even with authentic examples,

howevet, choosing examples which are the most appropriate for a particular

group of leamers is not easy. You will become better at it with experience

particularly if you pay attention to the co-text which surrounds the language

point you are interested in.

The importance of real examples also has implications for what language

should be recorded in learners'notebooks and how this should be done.

Recording examples

From a classroom point of view, we have to remind ourselves that

collocations are not words which are put together, they are words which

naturally occur together; when we 'build' collocations in the language

classroom the process is artificial, the reverse of how language is used in

normal circumstances. This means the teacher needs to be alert to the fact that

the larger the unit she can identify, and which leamers can be encouraged to

notice and fecord, the more likely it is that this language will become part of

the leamers'intake complete with certain grammatical features, accessible

for future use.

If the intake is accurately noticed and stored, certain grammatical eIroIS afe

likely to be eliminated, or at least their number reduced, in the learners'own

output. When language is used naturally, grammar and words interact in

complex ways; both teachers and learners have a sffong tendency to take new

words out of context - the emphasis is on understanding the meaning. But

taking words out of their natural context leaves behind important information,

not concerned with what the word means, but with how the word is used.

Every word has its own grammar, and, therefore, separating grammar from

vocabulary is unwise. Sinclair puts the position clearly and strongly:

Many of those people who are professionally engaged in handling

language have known in their bones that the division into grammar and

vocabulary obscures a very central area of meaningful organisation.

The decoupling of lexis and syntax leads to the creation of a rubbish

dump that is called 'idiom', 'phraseology', 'collocation' and the like. ...

The evidence now becoming available casts grave doubts on the

wisdom of postulating separate domains of lexis and syntax'

Peomu(co-cregu'mei

shol

SOml

madeasilAStoo f m

Exal

If teiautorroute+ no i

teachi

gramrthen rmuch

I t i s dleamesomet)kind 1'wouldThere'languathat u,iacquirrimmedrush htStop fchave anidea isproductsomebowhich IAssumilanguag(abstracgeneralihas meobservat

nem?what,I youpoorr alsorlary,' thisyour

rples,icularlenceIuage

luage

thatvhich

luageed inrt that

;ed toart ofssible

rs are' o w n

act me new

;. ButLation,used.

' f rom

IngLnd

ish

Learning in the lexical approach 167

People are most comfortable in the company of friends and acquqintances,much less so surrounded by strangers; words are very similar. words do notco-occur in random ways, but in pattems which exhibit varying degrees ofregularity and generalisation. Around each word there is, in sinclair,s phrase,'meaningful organisation'. This means language does not need to be _ indeedshould not be - 'cleaned up' before being recorded by learners and, if forsome reason the teacher manufactures an example, every effort should bemade to ensure it is a natural example which simulates real use, rather than aneasily-made but highly artificial EFL example with which we are all familiar.Astonishingly, the best known students' grammar appears to consist entirelyof manufactured examples.

Examples given by the teacherIf teachers find it necessary to create an example in class, it should beautomatic for them to create a context for the use, probably following theroute from word (usually a noun) to collocation - perhaps verb + (adjective)+ noun - to a complete phrase which evokes a situation, and then for theteacher to draw attention to the most typical group of words, includinggrammatical collocations such as prepositions and articles, which leamersthen record. Storing phrases in this way builds the learners'mental lexiconsmuch more systematically than simply learning ,new words'.

rush had died down.

somebody to do something ne generalisations from real-world exampleswhich become abstractions which most of us have never actually heard.Assuming that such generalisations can be taught as the basis for innovative

168 Learning in the lexical approach

8.6 Acquisition is non-linear

If understanding input and noticing elements of the input sufficiently often are

the two defining characteristics of the way we improve our linguistic ability,

there are radical implications both for syllabus specification and classroom

methodology. We consider first how the nature of acquisition challenges the

conventional idea of a sYllabus.

Non-linear phenomena

The history of science, and particularly of its essential tool mathematics, was,

until20 yeals ago, exclusively the story of solving linear equations. This was

inevitable, as linear equations could be solved by analytical methods, while

non-linear equations could not. The advent of computers meant non-linear

equations could be solved and a whole range of new questions could therefore

be tackled. Many phenomena such as population changes' the spread of

diseases and predicting the weather ale now recognised as non-linear; non-

linearity seems to be nature's notm.

Before the computer revolution, mathematicians produced idealised versions

of a problem so that the equations wefe linear, and could therefore, at least in

principle, be solved. Often the answels were good enough to be of enofmous

practical use, but, and this is the crucial point, although they were powerful

and useful approximations, they wele not accurate descriptions of nature'

Mathematics professor Ian Stewart describes the situation in mathematics

until very recently as follows:

In classical times, lacking techniques to face up to non-linearities, the

process of linearization was carried to such extremes that it often

occurred while the equations were being set up. Few asked tbemselves

what the long-term future might be for a method which - to be brutal -

solyes the wrong equations. 'Give me an answer!'is the demand. So

linear theory obliges, hoping that nobody will notice when it's the

wrong answer. ...Today's science shows that nature is relentlessly non-

linear. ...So ingrained became the linear habit that by the 1940s and

1950s many scientists and engineers knew little else'

Traditional teaching and syllabuses were linear. Later the syllabuses became'cyclicaf in the sense that some gfamma.r was explicitly visited more than

once, but this is only a different form of linearity - a predetermined seqluence,

followed by the teacher on the assumption that the leamers are following the

same sequence. Like the scientists of the 40s and 50s, language teachers

wanted a syllabus, and could hardly imagine anything other than some form

of linear syllabus; after all, teaching is linear, going from lesson to lesson,

week to week, term to term. But what if acquisition, which after all is another

natural process, is fundamentally, irredeemably non-linear?

Fee

Thewhibeciby tlsystsystrproc

ChaiandsurppredmlcI

withweelsmal

It ncwhawhatwhicEverforgrwhallinea

SomsuchI donbir f'undr

quesl

A m rcoultunderunderalonlSimuwordpast ltheseexistiand t<leamrmem(

ln ale

bility,room:s the

, was,S WAS

whileiinearreforead ofnon-

rsions)ast mmousl'erfulature.natics

:heien,res

l -Sorhe)n-md

lcamee thanlence,ng theachers: formesson,nother

Learning in the lexical approach 169

Feedback means acquisition is non-linearThe simplest way to get an idea of non-linearity is to think of systems inwhich feedback is an intrinsic part of the phenomenon - objects slow downbecause offriction; the speed is affected by friction, but the friction is affectedby the speed, which is affected by the friction and so on. The behaviour of anysystem which has in-built feedback is difficult to analyse and predict, but suchsystems are all around us, and language acquisition is self-evidently a naturalprocess in which feedback plays a central role.chaos theory is the modern disciprine which studies non-linear phenomena,and it provides some surprises compared with classical science. Among itssurprises is one of particular interest to us - although you may be able topredict the macro-behaviour of a system, you may not be able to predict themicro-behaviour of the same system. we can, for example, predict the climatewith considerable accuracy, but we cannot predict the weather fbr nextweekend with anything like the same certainty; the big picture is clear, but thesmaller, more local picture is much less subject to accurate prediction.It now appears incontrovertible that acquisition is a non-linear phenomenon _what you acquire is a function of the intergrarnmar you have already acquired,what you notice in the language you meet, which modifies your intergrammar,which affects what you notice and so on; feedback is intrinsic to the process.Even this description is oversimprified, for we must add factors such asforgetting, misunderstanding, successful guesses which were not based onwhat the learner had fully acquired, and so on. If acquisition is non-linear, nolinear syllabus can be adequate.

Sometimes teaching is conducted on the (covert) assumption that examplessuch as: It could have been a lot worse, if it had happenecl during the night.I don't understand how it could have taken three weeks are assembled bitrby_bit from a knowledge of bits of grammar such as ,uses of could, and'understanding the present perfect' but this assumption is, at best, veryquestionable

A more plausible explanation is that the individual learner meets a number ofcould have + past participle examples and understands, or partiallyunderstands examples of that colligation used in context. Slowly, anunderstanding of the nature of colligation itself begins to develop, andalongside this, increasing awareness that it can be broken down.simultaneously, the leamer has a developing understanding of other multi-word chunks which involve could, and other chunks which contain have +past participle.The leamer begins subconsciously to analyse some or all ofthese; over a period, with both increased understanding and backsliding co-existing, the leamer acquires the ability to analyse several different chunks,and to syntactisise, so that, in due course, there is a permanent change to thelearner's interlanguage. Gradually, language which was part of the formulaicmemory-based element of the leamer's knowledge is transferred to the

170 Learning in the lexical approach

analytic, rule-based pafi, thus becoming available to genelate new language

based on syntactisisation. At this stage real acquisition has taken place.

This non-linear model, which is almost certainly still an over-simpliflcation,

is much more likely to represent acqursition than any linear, oI even cyclical

progression. It could be summarised as 'everything affects everything else',

ro ii is as far as possible from any linear model. This kind of model of gradual

but permanent change in complex phenomena is curently discussed in many

fields. In the study of language itself, it is now a commonplace that when a

language is used, it changes; the phenomenon can be summarised in the

phrase When you play the 7ame, you change the rules'

As Ian Stewart reminded us, fol centuries mathematics solved the wrong

equations because it clung on to linear models of phenomena which were' in

fact, non-linear. It now seems incontrovertible that acquisition is a non-linear

phenomenon, so only a non-linear model of acquisition has any chance of

representing it adequately. The implication is that linear teaching can never be

"ong-"rrt with non-linear acquisition, explaining Larsen-Freeman's dictum

quoied earlier that teaching does not cause learning. She discusses the

relationship of non-linear systems and language acquisition in an extended

paper (Ciaos, Complexity, Science and Second Language Acquisition in

Applied Linguistics, vol. 18, No.2). Her comments largely endorse the above:

The purpose of this article is to call attention to the similarities

u-ong complex non-linear systems occurring in nature and

language and language acquisition. while the value of the analogy

may be only metaphoric, sometimes 'you don't see something until

you have the right metaphor to perceive it'' It is my hope that

learning about the dynamics of complex non-linear systems will

discourage reductionist explanations in matters of concem to

second language acquisition researchers'

Further, learning linguistic items is not a linear process - learners

do not master one item and then move on to another. In fact, the

leaming curve for a single item is not linear either. The curve is

filled with peaks and valleys, progress and backsliding'

As we saw in the previous chapter, traditional grammar 'rules'often represent

over-seneralisations, similar to the phenomena noted by gestalt psychology'

In order to process information, you will be tempted to 'see' the above

diagrams as a circle and a square, but careful observation shows they are both

incomplete. In order to process information we have a natural tendency to

totilgnatteofttrevLittTCS(

I

I

Thepo\rdesr

8.7

SylJrntr(undrthe r

Ourcomlean

commOrl

o n rWirlhelp

I t mpracwouapprstreaapprcont(

ComformgeneN o . ,says:

uage

tron,:lical:Ise' ,Ldualnanyten aI the

'fong

re, 1ninear;e ofer bectums thernded)n tnDOVE:

resentiogy.

abovee both1cy to

Learning in the lexical approach l7l

totalise, and thereby simplify our perceptions. This is highly efficient, but itignores details and implicitly assumes that the details are unimportant. In anattempt to explain everything with a few big generalisations, grammar rulesoften encourage us to ignore variations which corpus linguistics increasinglyreveals are important features of how the language is actually used. In CorpusLinguistics, Doug Biber, reporting the results of a massive corpus-basedresearch programme, observes :

... a finding that is common in corpus-based research: that overallgeneralizations of a language are often misleading, because theyaverage out the important differences among registers. As a result,overall generalizations are often not accurate for any variety, insteaddescribing a kind of language that doesn't actually exist at all.

The kind of over*generalisation familiar in grammar is very reminiscent of thepowerful, but ultimately unsatisfactory mathematical simplificationsdescribed above by Ian Stewart.

8.7 Which is fundamental - lexis or structure?

Syllabuses were traditionally structural, and later the multi-syllabus wasintroduced, usually based on grammar, vocabulary and skills, but our currentunderstanding of language and learning suggests we may need to re-evaluatethe role of grammar in the syllabus.

Our present understanding of the sheer size of the mental lexicon of acompetent user of English is deeply dispiriting from the point of view of theleamer (or teacher) of English as a second language. It seems the leamerneeds not several thousand words, but at least tens of thousands ofcombinations of words and mini-patterns. The task seems overwhelming, themore so when we consider how much language production seems to be basedon memory, rather than the ability to generate from a few general rules.Within this framework it is essential to re-evaluate what is both oossible.helpful and efficient in the classroom.

It must be immediately apparent that any attempt to formally teach andpractise the lexicon item by item is impossible, and any attempt to do thiswould completely overwhelm learners. Fortunately, this is not what a lexicalapproach suggests. Traditional grammar teaching, with a strong behaviouriststreak, emphasised repeated practice as a way of fixing pattems; a lexicalapproach suggests that it is repeated meetings with an item, noticing it incontext, which converts that item into intake.

Communicative competence is dependent on two parallel systems, aformulaic exemplar-based one and an analytic one, based on generativegeneralisations or 'rules'. Scott Thornbury, (Modern EnglishTeache4 Vol. 7,No. 4), joining the debate on how best to implement the Lexical Approach,says:

I72 Leaming in the lexical approach

A lexical approach provides a justification for the formulaic,

unanalysed ffeatment of a lot more language than has been the case

since the advent of the high-analysis era. ...Clearly, the Lexical

Approach is work in progress... more research needs to be undeftaken,

particularly with regard to the part memory plays in second-language

learning, and whether (and under what conditions) memorised

language becomes analysed language.

He is correct in asserting both that little is yet known about what turns

unanalysed language into analysed language, and that this is an important

question. What does seem clear is that any analysis performed by the learner

is based on inductive generalisation on the basis of language which is already

part of the learner's unanalysed intake, rather than formal descriptions or

rules. Earlier in the same article, he criticises the Lexical Approach:

Phrasebook-type learning without the acquisition of syntax is

ultimately impoverished. ...Fossilization is likely to occur when the

learner becomes dependent on lexicalised language at the expense of

engaging the syntactisization processes. ...In short, the Lexical

Approach lacks a coherent theory of learning and its theory of language

is not fully enough elaborated to allow for ready implementation in

terms of syllabus specification.

TnsrImagine an intermediate learner talking to a native speaker who has no

experience of teaching her native language' Now imagine yourself

talking to the same learner. How would the language you use be

different from that used by the inexperienced native speaker?

Which would be of most benefit to the learner? Why?

If you have been teaching for some time, do you think you have got

better at changing your language to make it more useful to learners? If

so, how have you changed your language?

Do you think the language you use to learners is very precisely

targeted or do you use a rather broad range of structures and

vocabulary?

How important is paraphrasing and recycling new words and

collocations in helping turn the input you provide into intake?

It is an act of faith to assume that it must be possible to specify a syllabus in

linguistic terms; indeed, because of the non-linear nature of acquisition

discussed above, I do not believe it is possible to do so in any other than very

broad terms - the input needs to be (largely) comprehensible and the learners

need to be engaged rather than intimidated by the language they meet. It is, I

fear, difficult to be more specific than that, bearing in mind that learners in the

SA

mlquIS

I t iner

ofstacotthaen{thecor

has

Notacqmal

8.8

Thenatrthe

Acc

Perlchalruleithefluerprefzadeqa prcworka sulfluenlongachietheircomtrthe gr- m a l

accel

l

I

I

ITTIS

tantIIIer

:adys o r

ls lnt10nverynersis, Ir the

1ij

Learning in the lexical approach 173

same class are all at different levels and that they make differential use of anyinput. This suggests Krashen is broadly right in suggesting that it is thequantity of roughly-tuned input which is the key to acquisition, and that thisis in itself the best we can do in specifying a linguistic syllabus.

It is also worth reminding ourselves that most learners of a second languagenever progress beyond some sort of intermediate level. In other words someof their language is, and always will be, fossilised - a repertoire of usefulstandard prefabricated items together with other language which may becommunicatively effective even if it contains 'grammar mistakes'. The factthat their syntactisisation processes have not been fully and successfullyengaged, rather than invalidating the Lexical Approach, merely acknowledgesthe inevitable. A combination of islands of reliability'which can be used withconfidence [see p 1751, and language which is communicatively effectiveeven if defective, is surely better than anything any structure-based approachhas been able to offer.

Not only does the lexical nature of language and the non-linear nature ofacquisition challenge received views of syllabus, however, it also challengesmany widespread ideas about methodology. It is to these that we now turn.

8.8 The lexical challenge to methodology

The challenge to conventional syllabuses is based mainly on the non-linearnature of acquisition, while the challenge to methodology is based mainly onthe lexical nature of language.

Accuracy and fluency

Perhaps surprisingly, the lexical nature of language represents a considerablechallenge to conventional language teaching. Traditionalists value grammarrules and accuracy, believing more or less explicitly that fluency results fromthe ability to construct first accurately, then accurately and increasinglyfluently. An acceptance and understanding of the enormous number ofprefabricated chunks of different kinds, implies fluency is based on anadequately large lexicon, and that grammar 'rules' are acquired by learners bya process of observing similarities and differences in the way different chunkswork. This reverses our traditional understanding completely - first you needa sufficiently large number of words and larger chunks; this allows somefluency and some generalisations ('rules'). This situation continues for a verylong period, and those relatively few second-language learners who do finallyachieve a very high standard - that is, they achieve 'accuracy'- do this late intheir leaming careers as a result of being able to break down chunks intocomponents, and reassemble this in novel ways. This involves both respectingthe generalisations represented by the rules and avoiding over-generalisations- many sentences which are grammatically well-formed are not sanctioned asacceptable by native speakers, so accuracy involves knowledge of what is

174 Learning in the lexical approach

sanctioned and what 'ought' to be but, in fact, is not. The inevitable

conclusion is that accuracy is based on fluency, not, as was believed for so

long, the other way round.

8.9 What do we mean by 'level'?

Fluency and accuracy have traditionally been seen as the two components

within the idea of '1eve1'. Communicative approaches, which are the

unquestioned standard in many places, rightly recognise that accuracy is

inevitably late-acquired, so learners are encouraged to communicate

effectively, albeit defectively, and then to set about improving their production

so that it becomes more accurate.

Recent, more precise analysis of the idea of 'proficiency' suggests, however,

the more proficient leatner uses language which exhibits three rather than

two distinct characteristics: accuracy, fluency and complexity.

The recognition of complexity gives teachers a framework within which to

ask How can I best help my learners to improve their language? It is

immediately clear that different emphases may be appropriate for different

leamers.

Firstly, awareness of the phrasal nature of the mental lexicon also modifies the

idea of a leatner's level. An increased lexicon involves different elements:

. Adding new words.

. Expanding knowledge of the collocational field of words already known

(including awareness of blocked collocations)'. Increased awareness that 'a word'may have more than one meaning, or be

usable as, for example, both a noun and a verb. This corresponds to

awareness that a word may have several different, overlapping or even

independent collocational fields.. Knowledge of more colligational pattems - that is, greater knowledge of

the grammar of the word, and a correspondingly greater ability to use it

fluently, accurately and in more complex pattems.

Secondly, the ideas of prefabricated language in speech and complex noun

phrases in writing are parlicularly helpful in improving the complexity in

quite different ways at different levels.

Improving complexity in speech

Modern computer-based studies of spoken and written language confirm,

indeed emphasise, what we have long suspected - that fluent speech consists

largely of rapidly produced short phrases, rather than formally correct'sentences'. This is as true of relatively formal, educated speech as of any

other variety; it is characteristic of all (unscripted) speech, and in no sense

substandard. Many of the phrases are relatively fixed, prefabricated lexical

items. Access to a comprehensive mental lexicon of such prefabricated units

I S

ad

spu4ofchr

Focoicei

CSI

eve

theintilearr ^ P

andwnbotlrESCmeIclas

Kncthecomfluer

Imp

A t rtertiialsoconssawnumlmostb y apassa

NwthbeintSU

rbler s o

)ntsthe

/ 1 3

)atetl0n

han

r t ot l s

rent

.the

n

r b e

rft

oun/ i n

trTn,;1StSrectany)nseicalnlts

Learning in the lexical approach 175

is the basis of fluency in speech. This means learners must be exposed to anadequate amount of natural spoken language. Fluency needs to be based onspoken input, and it is the quantity and quality of that input, not languagewhich learners themselves produce - which is the basis of an adequate lexiconof essential phrases, providing, as we have already seen, that the languagechunking is noticed.

Formulaic chunks have been called 'islands of reliability' by severalcommentators. Chunks which leamers are sure are accurate and convey thecentral meaning of what they wish to say are immensely reassuring,especially when contrasted with the intimidating prospect of constructingeverything you want to say word-by-word, on every occasion. Initially, then,the prospect of the lexicon being much larger than we previously thought, isintimidating for learners and teachers alike. However, if teachers can reassurelearners, and encourage them to see the value of larger chunks - (semi-)fixedexpressions, sentence heads or frames for the pragmatic element of speech,and collocations for the central information content of both speech andwriting - these islands of reliability provide important psychological supportboth in helping leamers express themselves within their present linguisticresources, and, equally importantly, as starting points in expanding theirmental lexicons. The activity described on page 91 provides a detailedclassroom procedure for building on these islands.

Knowledge of fixed items also means additional brainspace is available, sothe leamers are more able to process other language, which enables them tocommunicate more complex messages, or simple messages with greaterfluency or accuracy.

Improving complexity in writing

At more advanced levels good writing, in particular the kind required oftertiary level students, is characterised not only by accuracy and fluency, butalso by complexity. This is largely dependent on the writer's ability toconstruct noun phrases which are high in informational content. This, as wesaw in the previous chapter, implies the text will contain a relatively highnumber of nouns, which in turn implies frequent use of the word of, the singlemost powerful tool in constructing noun phrases. This is clearly demonstratedby a few sentences from Brian Magee's confessions of a philosopher; rhepassage contains 172 words, including no fewer than 13 uses of the word of

Near the heart of the mystery of the world must be something to dowith the nature of time. Neither the time of common-sense realism northe time of Newtonian physics is given to us in experience, nor could itbe, since it stretches forward and backward to infinity, and nothinginfinite can ever be encompassed in observation or experience, Anysuch time has to be an idea, something thought but never observed orexperienced, a construction of our minds, whether it be a mathematical

l7 6 Learning in the lexical approach

calculation or an imaginative assumption presupposed by thedeliverance of our senses. The same considerations apply to space: thespace of common sense, stretching as it does to infinity in alldirections, is not a possible object of observation or experience - it toois a projection, a construct of some kind, as must also be the three-dimensional Euclidean space of Newtonian physics... The time andspace of our experienced reality are forms of our sensibility, and it is inthat capacity that they appear as dimensions of experience.

Notice that most of the afphrases would be entirely absent from oroverlooked in regular EFL classes, including those for English for AcademicPurposes. Traditional grammar has concentrated on the verb-phrase to such anextent that the construction of complex noun phrases has been largelyignored.

It must be self-evident that for many more advanced learners, the study ofnoun phrases and expressions with of of the kind discussed in the previouschapter are at least one of the keys to learners writing both more fluently andat a greater level of complexity.

Competence

Chomsky introduced the terms 'competence' and 'performance'in discussinghow the human mind masters and produces language. Performance waslanguage actually produced by people, and thus subject to empiricalinvestigation. Competence was a rather mysterious ability involvingknowledge of the rules of (the grammar of the sentences of) a language.Chomsky claimed all performance was based on competence, an abstractionreminiscent of the 'pure forms' of Greek philosophy, and by definition notdirectly accessible and not subject to empirical investigation. It is astonishingthat he got away with inventing a supposedly scientific distinction, one half ofwhich was, by definition, not a scientific concept. (To be scientific, an ideamust be testable, and therefore, at least in principle, falsifiable.)

At the beginning of 'the communicative age', Hyams pointed out thatlanguage was not an abstract system to be studied by grammarians, but asymbolic system used by real people to achieve real, non-linguistic, purposes.Language was a communicative tool. Both words are important - it is a toolin the sense that its purpose lies outside itself, it is a means, not an end; theend is communication. If you can communicate anything you wish to on everyoccasion and do not in the process also communicate things you do notintend, you may be said to possess communicative competence. This is afeature not of the language, but of people or, in classroom terms, learners.Communicative competence can be analysed, specified and form a basis forpedagogical decisions. It replaces Chomsky's rarefied abstraction with aconcept which is entirely concrete and practical.

We can now go one step further, and ask What is the basis of communicative

conl)

bY ('wishprodinvollexiccaller

A s uone flnput(syntllangumputthan tialreadidea t'reassi

descrilquote(Comprt

suggesby evetto humtheoriewrong.Ianguaspeculthrn-esmean\compragams'Acqut

new \rbreakiinto u'not ls iand thi

8.10

The Pmuch IObsenthis bo

t)

II

r o rjmic

h a ngely

y o f10usand

;singwasricalvinglage.ctlon1 not;hingrlf ofidea

thatDUt a

OSES.

r tool1; theeveryc noti l s a

rners.is forrith a

:ative

Learning in the lexical approach 177

competence ? This is an alternative version of the question what do we meanby (very) advanced learners - people who can communicate anything theywish, without communicating things they do not intend. Such learnersproduce language which is fluent, accurate and stylistically appropriate. Thisinvolves the learner having a sufficiently large and sufficient phrasal mentallexicon, where many single choices are multi-word items. Jimmie Hill hascalled this ability collocational competence.

As we have already noted, proficiency in a language invorves two systems,one formulaic and the other syntactic, and unless the learner can break downinput language (analyse) and re-assemble it in novel combinations(synthesise, or syntactisise, using a knowledge of syntax), the rearner'slanguage will remain 'impoverished'. The argument in favour of collocationalinput is that it is easier to break down groups and learn to reassemble them,than to start from isolated words which then have to be combined. As we havealready seen, however, language acquisition is a non-linear process, so anyidea that we 'start' with groups, and then 'break them down' and then'reassemble' them, is very unlikely to be anything other than a partialdescription of part of acquisition. In the article on The Lexical Approachquoted earlier, Thornbury complains that Lewis does not have acomprehensive learning theoty, and to some extent the criticism is fair. Isuggest, however, that few people do. Stephen Krashen has, but it is rejectedby everyone to at least some degree. It is also the case that the greatest damageto human understanding has not been caused by those without comprehensivetheories, but by those with comprehensive theories which turned out to bewrong. A certain humility is required - we simply do not know precisely howlanguage is acquired, and no so-called comprehensive theory is more thanspeculation. we do, however, have partial theories and evidence that certainthings do not work. As Thombury suggests, we need more research;meanwhile we must avoid turning the limited knowledge we do have into acomprehensive theory prematurely. we must guard even more carefullyagainst turning theory into dogma.'Acquisition' almost certainly involves a non-linear combination of acquiringnew words, acquiring new multi-word items, becoming more proficient atbreaking large wholes into significant pafis (words into morphemes, phrasesinto words etc), combined with developing awareness - whether explicit ornot is a subject of heated debate - of the 'rules' of permitted re-combinationsand the restrictions which exclude certain re-combinations.

8.10 Teaching paradigms

The Present-Practise-Produce (P-P-P) paradigm remains a central part ofmuch teacher training. rn The Lexical Approach I suggested the alternativeobserve-Hypothesise-Experiment paradigm, and many of the suggestions inthis book endorse and expand this paradigm.

178 Learning in the lexical approach

Present-Practise-Produce is intrinsically incoherent as a learning theory.

Presentation is done by the teacher; Practice by leamers, moving from

controlled to free practice under the direction and time-consffaints imposed

by the teacher; Production is wholly within the learners' domain. The

implicit assumption is that teaching does cause leaming, a view which we

have already seen is mistaken.

Any paradigm should, as a minimum requirement, state what the learners are

doing at different phases of the process. The non-linear nature of acquisition

means that different parts of the plocess may be occurring before' after, or

simultaneously with other parIs, with different parts of the process being

applied by different learners to different parts of the input at the same time.

Within this framework, any adequate paradigm is a simplifled idealisation of

how any individual leamer may be dealing with some part of the input in any

given phase of the lesson. However unnerving that is for teachers, or teacher

trainers who urge teachers to plan lessons - hence the attraction of the P-P-P

paradigm - that diversity is what is happening at any moment in a language

class; any theorising to the contrary simply ignores the nature of either

language or acquisition.

With those explicit caveats, it is clear that learners do experience a sequence

which may be summarised as meet-muddle-master. This is essentially the

same as Observe-Hypothesise-Experiment. Observe: new language must be

met and noticed. It is precisely on this point that we differ from Krashen's

Natural Approach. Hypothesise: means sorting the input on the basis of

appafently significant similarities and differences - as we have seen, this can

be done without necessarily being able to describe the categories or sorting

process explicitly. Experiment: involves using the language on the basis of

the learners' current intergrammar (that is, his or her current best

hypothesis), thereby stimulating new input at the appropriate level to provide

examples which confirm or contradict some part of the learners' current

hypothesis. Mastery happens - if ever - when new input serves only to

confirm the leamers' intergrammar'

Within this paradigm, the importance of noticing the difference between what

is communicatively effective, and what is formally 'correct'is clear' Leamers

who believe their output is completely successful will see no leason to modify

any of their current intergrammar. Unnoticed deviancy may confirm rather

than modify leanters' culrent intergrammar. In addition' teachers have a

valuable role to play in predicting problems and providing the negative

evidence necessary for effective hypothesis formation, as we see when we

consider how the teacher intervenes to direct leamers in ways which they are

unlikely to use without helP.

Teacher intervention

The fact that text - spoken or written - consists largely of multi-word chunks

of dilundeindir

1 . I twordis the

2 . I t talrea<InESSZ

3 . I t rrnten.

Consiviolatrsaw j

underrto app

The lethe frone larunlessare likithan thIf leanindividhave br

This is(Lisrett

TheStIO

su-slb , . "

bearpaIt(

We arephrasalcommelin whicpattemsare thus

This corstore thzthis boo

lory.fromosedThe

n w e

's areiltlon

)r, orlelngtlme.on ofn anyacher]_P-P

luageeither

ty the;st be;hen'ssis of15 Can

ofimg

Lsis of

bestrovideuffentn1y to

n what)amersnodifyrather

lave a

:gativeIen weley are

chunks

Learning in the lexical approach 179

of different kinds, does not stop teachers asking Are there any words you don,tunderstand? This question - at least implicitly directing leamers' attention toindividual words - is misguided for three reasons:1. It encourages learners to believe that language consists of structures andwords, and that single words have unique meanings (and implicit within thatis the idea that word-for-word translation is possible).2. rt treats input as if comprehension is the whole story, although as we havealready noted, input for acquisitional purposes may differ from simplemessage-catrying input.

3. It means learners frequently do not invite teacher intervention when thatintervention would be immensely useful.

considering the first point, nothing done in the language classroom shouldviolate the nature of either language or learning, and this question is, as wesaw in the previous chapler, based on an out-dated and misguidedunderstanding of the nature of language. It also implicitly encourages learnersto approach both text and 'leaming'in an unhelpful way.The learners' intuitive belief that single words are the units of meaning andthe frequently mistaken belief that if there is a single word for something inone language, then there must be a single word for it in another, means thatunless noticing chunks is explicitly taught, learners left to their own devicesare likely to break the text into single words or into chunks which are smallerthan the optimal units needed to convert input into maximally useful intake.If learners break the text down into individual words, which they then store asindividual words, they make re-encoding much more difficult than it wouldhave been if they had stored the language in larger chunks from the start.This is also true in the area of pronunciation; twenty years ago Gillian Brown(Listening to Spoken English, p 49) suggested:

There is a certain amount of evidence that native speakers rely verystrongly on the stress pattern of a word in order to identify it. It issuggested that we store words under stress patteflls, so if a word of agiven stress pattem is pronounced, in processing this word, we bring tobear our knowledge of that part of the vocabulary which bears thispattern.

we are now more likely to speak of phrases than individual words, and of aphrasal mental lexicon, rather than someone's 'vocabulary', but otherwise hercomments remain valid and relevant. It is very likely that one important wayin which we store and access lexical items is by the ,shape' of their stresspatterns. Short phrases which have patterns and can be stored with a ,tune,,are thus likely to be more memorable than patternless monosyllables.This counter-intuitive insight, that larger chunks are more useful and easier tostore than small chunks, lies at the heart of every idea or activity discussed inthis book.

180 Leaming in the lexical approach

Moving on to the second point, as every classloom teacher knows, it is

difficult to move the lesson forward if learners do not undefstand, so

understanding is impoftant. For language to contribute to acquisition it must

be (at least pafily) understood. But the purpose of input is for it to become

intake, and that in turn, must be available for productive use. The ultimate

pulpose of input is learner output. From this pelspective, it is clear that

understanding, though necessary, is not sufficient; in addition to

understanding the input the leamer must notice the chunks which carry the

meaning. Each chunk is a single choice of meaning; if chunks are not noticed

as chunks, they cannot be stored in the way which facilitates their availability

as output. If input is to become optimal intake, understanding and noticing

the chunks are both necessary (though perhaps still not sufficient)

conditions.

Which brings us to the third point - teacher interrrention. Understanding the

lexical nature of language makes it increasingly clear that some aspects of

language learning ale countel-intuitive: phrases are easier to remember than

single words; breaking things into smaller pieces does not necessarily make

them simpler, and, as we have just seen, understanding is not enough to

ensure that input becomes intake. This means teachers need to be proactive in

helping learners develop an increasing understanding of the lexical nature of

the language they meet and be more directive over which language is

particularly worth special attention. This point was exemplified earlier by

Morgan Lewis [p l8l .

When a patient visits the doctor, the task of diagnosis is exclusively in the

hands of the professional. The patient's role is to describe his or her

symptoms honestly and clearly, and to take responsibility for following the

doctor's advice by, for example, taking the prescribed medicine at the

appropriate times, perhaps even choosing between alternative treatments, but

the choice of medicine, the choice of which alternatives are offered to the

patient is exclusively the responsibility of the professional. So it should be

with the language classroom - by all means adopt a leamer-centred approach,

encouraging learners to take responsibility for their own learning, and

allowing choices, but teachers cannot, or at least should not, abdicate

responsibility for the syllabus, for deciding which language is worthy of the

learners' attention in a particular piece of input, which should in turn have

been chosen as suitable for that class. After teacher-directed language activity,

it may be appropriate to ask Is there anything else you would like to ask

about?, but the question Are there any words you don't understand? should

be banished for ever from the classrooms of competent teachers.

Negative evidence

Because generalisations may be subject to restrictions, language which

learners may think is possible, if not actually 'wrong', may be non-standard

or maaccepsomeunderSwan'of therbut otlskiing,

Similapossibis thewhichmeetill

teache

this nethose t

8.11

Both cWhereconsci<help. \\the conas chunprefabrprefabrthe learmiss mrthat thethe Natthat for(except

Curren

If therecase thausuallycontrollstatemersome teothers stafter thea numbe

1S

SO

lstneIterattoheedrtyng1r)

heofanketoln

of1S

by

he

ler

he

.he

)ut.heberh,ndate

"hetve

t \ /

tsk

rld

ich

rd

Learning in the lexical approach lg1

or markedly 'foreign'. It follows that leamers need to know not only what isacceptable, but also what is not. Knowing the restrictions which apply tosome pattem or generative rule is an important part of exploring andunderstanding that rule. At the beginning of many paragraphs of MichaelSwan's Practical English (Jsage he gives examples of typical mistakes. Someof these are traditional grammar mistakes such as *one if my friencl is a pilot,but others are more like collocational errors: +I oftenfellyeste"rday when I wasskiing. *Let's have one drink and then I'Ir bring yow back home.Similar problems apply to collocation; learners need to know both what ispossible and what is not. As we saw in the previous chapter, a major problemis the blocked collocation, the one learners think ,ought'to be correct, butwhich is not in fact accepted by the native speaker community. No amount ofmeeting English naturally will provide evidence of what is not sanctioned, soteachers need to predict problems and once again be proactive in providingthis negative evidence, warning learners of blocked coilocations, particularlythose they anticipate by (false) analogy with their own language.

8.11 The Lexical Approach and the Natural ApproachBoth of these approaches value large quantities of comprehensible input.where they differ is that in the Natural Approach Krashen claims thatconscious activity does not aid acquisition and therefore that noticing does nothelp. we believe that noticing features of the input, in particular the nature ofthe component chunks of the text, has a facilitative vaiue. Noticing languageas chunks, aids storage as chunks. It therefore aids acquisition, as some ofthisprefabricated language is then available to the learner both for use asprefabricated items and as raw material for syntactic analysis, raw material forthe learners' intergrammar. without guidance from a teacher, learners maymiss much that is of value from this acquisitional point of view. Ensuringthat they do notice certain language may (but will not necessarily) help. Boththe Natural Approach and the Lexical Approach are in complete asreementthat formal pract ice of what is not iced does not contr ibute to acluisi t ion(except that it may, of course, incidentally result in noticing).

Current practice

If there is such a thing as standard practice at the moment, it is probably thecase that most teachers believe in presenting a particulu, gru---u, pornt,usually a feature of sentence grammar; then encouraging some sort of bothcontrolled and free practice. opinion is divided on whether some fbrmalstatement of a 'rule' is helpful, and among those who do believe rules help,some teachers give a rule and examples as part of the presentation, whileothers summarise, or ask leamers themselves to summarise, refospectively,after they have practised the point in question. These procedures are based ona number of more-or-less explicit assumptions, including at least these:

182 Learning in the lexical approach

1. Important features of what learners need to know are often exemplifiedwithin a single sentence.

2. It is possible to select what (all of a group of) leamers are going to learnnext.

3. Practising a particular bit of language helps learners retain it.4. A formal description of a language pattern helps learners to see it.

And for those who believe in rules:

5. A formal description of a pattem helps learners retain the pattem in sucha way that it becomes available for their own use.

It is now clear that all of these assumptions are either untrue, or at best verylimited half-truths. If classroom procedures are to be changed, we need tounderstand why these assumptions are wrong, and establish a clear set ofprinciples, the basis for a leaming theory.

8.12 Towards a learning theory

1. Grammar and vocabulary are not separable in the way assumed in mostlanguage teaching materials. Observation of real language data reveals thatlanguage consists of many more pattems than was previously believed. Manyof these depend on the genre of the text and extend over sentence boundaries- they are discourse grammar, not sentence grammar. Many pattefirs areintimately bound up with specific vocabulary - they are word grammar, notsentence grammar. One of the implications of the new descriptions we haveat our disposal is that simply lumping together half a dozen examples of, forexample, the present perfect, because they are examples of the presentperfect, may violate the nature of language, bringing together items which arenot similar in the way the teacher assumes. At the same time, this emphasison structure may discard information which is an essential part of the realpattern. Taking language out of context in order to teach it, may,paradoxically, make it less available for acquisition.

In general, learners are more likely to acquire new language in such a way thatit is available for spontaneous use if it is incorporated into their mentallexicons as an element of some comparatively large frame, situation orschema. Presenting larger units in class, such as a complete text, an episodeof a soap opera or a self-contained part of a dialogue increases the possibilityof learners transferring items to their mental lexicon within these globalorganising schemata. In contrast, it is increasingly clear that the tradition ofpresenting lexis as individual words, or practising individual decontextualisedsentences is at best inefficient, and at worst actively unhelpful. Groupingthose sentences according to some arbitrary linguistic feature seems also to becounterproductive, as it in no way mirrors what we know about theorganisation of the mental lexicon.

2. Acquisition is not a linear process; at any moment learners in the samegroup have different intergrammars; different learners will make different use

of tlteaclmucackn

3 , AnecediffuEITOI

makttermfocurempllangrlangrexamand ,

translleamrlisten

Succenot olproduwondwas -

perfornottcemole

The Pframethe trabook cprodu<they drIn thislanguaactivitimottvaleamerlnstrucview naccuralplayerprocedtconditir

iuch

veryrd toei of

mosti thatt4anyIariess arer, nothavef, for'esent

:h arerhasis: realmay,

y thatrentalln oI,isode,bility

;lobalon ofalisedupmgr t o b eLt the

sament use

Learning in the lexical approach 183

3. Although using language may help the learner retain it, this is notnecessarily so. Using language is stressful - in speech, it involves thedifficulty of articulation, working under time constraints, the possibility oferror and many other factors which take up brainspace in ways which maymake the brain less able to process language, so that it is moved from short-terrn to long-term memory. communicative approaches were intended tofocus on meaning, but have often been interpreted in ways which haveemphasised production, particularly speaking, from the earliest stages oflanguage learning. This runs directly counter to what we know about first

learner's confidence; they do not acquire new language by speaking, but bylistening and reading, subject to making good use of the input they meet.successful production may, indeed probably does, help retention, but inputnot output is the key to long-term improvement in learners'ability. Successfulproduction does not even guarantee retention, as anyone who has hit awonderful tee-shot while learning to play golf knows. However good the shotwas - perfect production - it does not ensure that you can reproduce theperformance ever again. classroom activities which ensure that leamersnotice input in ways which convert it, or help to convert it, into intake, aremore likely to be valuable in the long-term.The Present-Practise-Produce (P-p-p) paradigm is unrealistic unless the timeframe is weeks or months rather than a single lesson or day. Teachers used tothe traditional P-P-P paradigm may feel uneasy with the concentration in thisbook on awareness raising and noticing activities, and the comparative lack ofproductive practices, perhaps asking - so when they've noticecl it, what dothey do with it then?In this book all the contributors accept that helping learners to notice usefullanguage accurately, helping them avoid wasting their time on unhelpfulactivities, guiding their choice of materials and activities, and maintainingmotivation may be the principal contributions the teacher can make tolearners' acquisition. This is what is meant by seeing the teacher not as anlnsftuctor, but as a leaming manager. Teachers who feel unhappy with thisview may like to consider the way a sports coach operates - it is precisely byaccurate observation of a player's performance and the ability to make theplayer more aware of his or her performance. Sports, like language, involveprocedural knowledge and the ability to 'put it all together'under real-worldconditions and time-constraints, so that there is often too little mental

184 Learning in the lexical approach

processing space left to observe your own perfomance - hence the need forcoaches. Knowing what is important, to that playerflearner, and ensuring thatthe playerflealner notices what is most likely to benefit him or her at thatparticular time is a real and valuable role.

4. As we have already noted, understanding the message is not sufficient toensure that input becomes intake; learners can fail to notice the chunks ofwhich a text is made. Ensuring that they are familiar with the idea of chunks,and developing their ability to identify the chunks they need to expand theirlexicons at that particular point in their leaming, will help turn input intointake. It is no1. however. necessary to give a formal description of any pattem- it is sufficient that learners notice the words, in the correct chunks.

5. Explicit description of the pattems is not necessary and indeed a great dealof time could be wasted labelling patterns. We can all recognise a hugenumber of colours and sort them into families without necessarily being ableto name the families in any precise way. Sorting into finzy-edged categoriesis both all that is needed, and probably all that is possible. The mental lexiconstores items in patterns; more than the few traditional EFL structures, fewerthan a vast number of separate lexical items we know - a large number ofcomparatively restricted pattems. This is done by noticing similarities - weearlier quoted Michael Hoey's observation that grammar is the product of thecolligations you have observed. Sorting, consciously or unconsciously, isessential; the ability to describe the sorting categories is not.

8.13 SummaryIn this chapter we have noted several imporlant features of acquisition:. Meeting and (at least partially) understanding the same new language on

several occasions is a necessary but not sufficient condition for acquiringthe new language.

. Noticing the language chunks which make up the text is again a necessarybut not sufficient condition for tuming input into intake.

. Noticing similarities, differences, restrictions and examples arbitrarilyblocked by usage all contribute to tuming input into intake, but formaldescription of the categories into which input language may be sorted -

descriptive 'rules'- probably does not help the process of acquisition, andmay hinder it by intimidating some, perhaps many, learners.

. Acquisition is not based on the application of formal rules which generatecorrect examples, but on an accumulation of examples about which ever-changing provisional generalisations may be made by the individuallearner. These generalisations may be the basis for the production oflanguage which is novel for that learner, but all such production isultimately the product of previously-met examples, not formal rules.

. No linear syllabus can adequately reflect the non-linear nature ofacquisition.

ThediscfaciltheiconSthe Iw e lmor(sylla

Dis

Is thstron

Is tht

Hou-befor

Whatpomt

Thinlb) les

forthatthat

rt tOs o fnks,heirrntotem

dealrugeablerriestcon)weIr o f' w e

the/, rs

)nn q"D

iary

and

rater l -

Learning in the lexical approach 185

These factors, together with the lexical description of language alreadydiscussed, give a clear indication of the teacher's role - it is to constantlyfacilitate the accurate observation by learners of appropriate parts of the inputthey meet. Put simply, teaching should encourage learners to searchconstantly for many different small patterns, rather than repeatedly practisingthe few large patterns of traditional grammar. This serves to remind us that, aswe saw in the previous chapter, the Lexical Approach is in important waysmore grammatical - that is, pattern-centred - than traditional structuralsyllabuses.

Discussion QuestionsIs there one idea in this chapter which is new for you and with which youstrongly agree?

Is there one point about which you strongly disagree?

How often, in your experience, do leamers have to meet a new bit of languagebefore you can be fairly sure they will have acquired it?

What role, if any, do you think controlled practices, particularly of grammarpoints, play in aiding acquisition?

Thinking of your own teaching, to what do you think you will give a) moreb) less emphasis as a result of reading this chapter?

186 Materials and resources

Chapter 9

Materials and resources for teaching collocation

Michael Lewis

This chapter explores the importance of choosing texts with the right type ofcollocational input for particular groups of learners. It also provides a simpleintroduction to language corpora and concordancing for teachers new to thesetools. Although recommending the use of real data, it suggests caution is needed,particularly if learners are to be exposed to raw data. Finally' the chaptercomments briefly on dictionaries, particularly collocation dictionaries, as aresource for learners.

9.1, Choosing texts

Collocation is to be found in texts of all types, but different kinds of text haveradically different collocational profiles, so two of the teacher's mostimportant skills in the teaching of collocation are choosing the right kinds oftext, and then guiding the leamers' attention so that they notice those itemslikely to be of most benefit in expanding those particular leamers' lexicons.

In general, fewer words of written English are needed to express the samecontent than are needed in the spoken mode. This is partly because writtenEnglish contains many more complex noun phrases and phrases using o/suchas The choice of texts of dffirent types is conditioned. . . . Collocations of asmall number of key nouns tend to re-occur throughout discursive prose textsuch as academic writing or a magazine or newspaper article. Newspaperreports (as opposed to articles) contain large numbers of often quite largecollocational groups, but many tend to be largely confined to journalism.

Although there are motivational advantages to using stories, narratives suchas novels or readers are much less collocationally dense, so the use ofnarrative texts is often an inefficient way of expanding learners' mentallexicons.

Speech, naturally richer in semi-fixed expressions and multi-word adverbials,contains comparatively few of the verb + (adiective) + noun combinationswhich learners need if they are to write essays or reports, and indeed recentresearch (see particularly the Longman Grammar of Spoken and WrittenEnglish - referred to below as LGSWE) suggests major differences not onlybetween speech and writing, but between different genres of speech, ordifferent geffes of writing. If learners have immediate specific needs, far fromneeding a 'balanced' diet of different types of text, the texts to which they areexposed should be skewed in the direction of their needs. For learners ofgeneral English, a balance of different text-types is of major importance in

builrrem(rnpufor I

Text

Hot'(toba<ls gr(we \\contr

If duaccelOsterthe crCalai

Text

It rntaand tanrmiknou'huma

Text

The Iits fudistin'imag

MESSi

otherinfonnot g(but tlpartic

re ofnpleheseded,ptera s a

lave

nostls ofemsns.

ametten;ucho f atextlperrrgetsm.luch: o fntal

ials,tonslentttenrnly

' o I

romare

s o fe l n

Materials and resources lg7

building their mental rexicons in a balanced way; no one .type, of English isremotely adequate to represent the whole. when choosing texts for leamer_input, it is important to choose not only from an interest poi.rt of ui"*, but alsofor linguistic, and specifically collocational, reasons.

ThsrRead each of the following texts and:. Ask what kind of text it is.. Underline any items which you think are probably stored and

produced as multi-word items.. Now, refine that selection to include only those items

suitable for drawing to the attention of a particular class thatyou know well.

Text 1

Hoverspeed retail director David King said: .,with duty rates on alcohol andtobacco continuing to rise in the uK, the market for cross-channel shoppingis growing all the time. our first store in Scandinavia also demonstrates thatwe will be looking to expand in other markets where differential tax regimescontinue to provide a major incentive for travel retail opportunities.',If duty-free sales are abolished within the EU next year, the firm plans toaccelerate its expansion into shops located near ports. plans for outlets inostend' Belgium and Fredrikshavn, Denmark are already well-advanced, andthe company expects to expand its retail operation, with additional outlets inCalais and Dieppe.

Text2

It was a bitter winter. The stormy weather was followed by sleet and snow,and then by a hard frost which did not break till well inio February. Theanimals carried on as best they could with the rebuilding of the windmill, wellknowing that the outside world was watching them and that the envioushuman beings would rejoice and triumph if the mill were not finished on time.Text 3

The key to understanding the modem analysis of advertising is to understandits functions as a purveyor of messages and information. it is important todistinguish between adverts which provide specific information and those'image adverts' which present what may be termed non-informationalmessages. Specific information may relate to price, physical characteristics orother aspects of goods or services mentioned. Such adverts are obviousryinformation-providing. some adverts, however, such as Marlboro Man, arenot generally perceived as providing information except in the broadest sense,but they may still have an important role to play in the marketplace,particularly in relation to the competitive process.

188 Materials and resources

Text 4

After an unsuccessful attempt to win the vice-presidential nomination on theticket of Adlai Stevenson in 1956, Kennedy began to plan for the presidentialelection of 1960. He assumed the leadership of the Democratic party's liberalwing and gathered around him a group of talented young political aides,including his brother and campaign manager, Robert F. Kennedy. He won thenomination on the first ballot and campaigned with Senator Lyndon B.Johnson of Texas as his running mate, against Vice-President Richard E.Nixon, the Republican nominee. The issues of defense and economicstagnation were raised in four televised debates in which Kennedy's poisedand vigorous performance lent credence to his call for new leadership.

9.2 GenreIf you instantly identified these extracts, it can only be because different typesof text - genres - have markedly different linguistic profiles, even if it isdifficult to say exactly what makes the profiles different. If learners are toacquire effective and balanced mental lexicons, the range of types of inputtext to which they are exposed is clearly of great importance.

Text 1, with its mixture of reporting and quotation, luse of job + name - retaildirector David King - and explicit detail, is typical of newspaper reporting.

Text 2 is a shofl paragraph from Animal Farm. I am indebted to ChitraFemando for drawing attention in ldioms and ldiomaticiQ to somethingGeorge Orwell wrote in 1946 in Politics and the English Language:

This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the

foundations, acquire a radical transfonnation) can only be prevented ifone is constantly on guard against them, and every such phraseanaesthetises a portion of one's brain.

Considering Orwell's strictures about the use of clich6, it is amusing to notethat in as unusual a work as Animal Farm he cannot avoid collocations andfixed expressions: bitter winter, stormy weathet a hard frost, carried on asbest they could, the outside world, finished on time. The point is simply thatthese items, despite apparently consisting of several words, are in fact singlechoices in any mature native speaker's mental lexicon - even Orwell's. Inshort, there is no other convenient way of expressing these concepts, however'creative'you may wish (or claim) to be. Even the famously creative openingline of l9B4: It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were strikingthirteen, while undoubtedly creative, is based on the collocation the clockstruck. Collocation is a feature of all kinds of text, both spoken and written,though different kinds of text contain different kinds of collocation.

Text 3 is obviously from an information-bearing, text. It includes:. lexical collocations: the modern analysis of advertising, the competitive

process

' gri. lot

d^

All osuchobser

lr€papo

Text iIt conwrite i

ASS

lent

on

can

a n l

The sa

are larl

highesl

LGSWthat ainadeqrof a piereportir

Effectirmore nparticulvery pcorresp(creativeof wordor at lewriting,informatstandardprerequi

9.3 SrEveryonrrealises 1

r thentialleralLdes,r ther B .d E .rmicrised

ypeslt ls:e to

nput

etailn 0. ' D '

hitrahing

eife

noteand

n 0 sthat

ngles. InCVET

nmgk i r u g'lock

. grammatical collocations: what may be termed,

. longer expressions: The key to understandinp .distinguish between . . .

All of these linguistic features aresuch as modfu the theory. In anobserves:

assume the leadership of . . .lend credence toon the first ballotcampaign with . . . as (his) running mate

Materials and resources lg9

such adverts. . , It is important to

typical of the genre, as are collocationsarticle on collocation peter Howarth

the liberal wingv i g o row s/p o i s e d p e rfo rmanc ecallfor change

lexicar collocations of the type transitive verb + object areJ a smalrpart of the whole framework, but of considerabre imptrtance from thepoint of view of the propositional content of an academic afgument.Text 4 is from a computer encyclopaedia entry of only just over 100 words.It contains at least the folowing useful colrocations foi arryon" who needs towrite about politics:

an unsuccessJul attempt to win the nominationThe samples clearry show that the language of fiction and newspaper reportsare largely unsuited as input for leamers, except, perhaps those at the veryhighest levels. Factual, information-bearing texts a'e much more suitable.LGSWE, in which fiction is one of the four geffes, crearly endorses the viewthat a simple distinction between written and spoken English is whollyinadequate as a basis for choosing materials; at leasi u, i-po.i*t is the genreof a piece of writing. Factuar writing, including n"*rpup", u.ticles rather thanreporling, is most suitable. Fiction is the least suitable _ it is easy to see why.

Effective language is a combination of familiar, prefabricated chunks andmore novel, innovative combinations created by the language_user for aparticular occasion. The advantages of prefabricated chunks"are"that they arevery precise, require little processing by the listener/reader, andcomespondingly carry rittre danger of being misunderstood. unsurprisingly,creative writing such as novels may contain many non-standard combinationsof words, as the author literally creates character and mood by creating new,or at least unfamiliar, combinations of words. In contrast, in academicwriting, where the focus is almost exclusively on accurate communication ofinformation' among colleagues with a shared background in a particular topic,standard words, phrases, colocations and other chunks are an essentiarprerequisite for effective comm unical ion.

9.3 Subject-specific IanguageEveryone who changes jobs or has to read in an unfamiliar disciprine quicklyrealises that every discipline has subject-specific language. Sometimes such

190 Materials and resources

language is dismissively characterised as 'jargon'but in fact it is a precise andnecessary tool for anyone who uses English for a specific purpose; suchlanguage should be criticised only if used to non-specialists. The followingspecification of business goals and strategies from a company document is inno sense jargon, but note that the whole content of both the goals andstrategies is expressed in 2- or 3-word collocations which are both conciseand precise.

Goals StrategiesIncrease profit margins Introduce more added-value productsImprove cashflow Tighten credit terms; reduce average collection

Reduce overheads

periodReview stock levels; outsource seruices

Put simply, it is clear that no amount of English literature will help you writea good paper in economics, and, less obviously, a course in general 'academic

English' will be of very limited use to students who have to read and write ina particular academic discipline.

In a fascinating paper at TESOL Intemational1999, Patricia Watts describedthe difficulties of teaching students from different cultural backgrounds theuse of source material 'in your field in the US'. Firstly, she recognises that theconventions differ from subject to subject; secondly, that the conventions maybe US-specific. Two other obserrrations are, howevet, of particular interest.She points out that in her experience non-US students have a sffong tendencyto over-quotation, so their assignments are dominated by source materialsrather than the student's own ideas. Fufihermore, that what is plagiarism inone culture may be a compliment in another - as one of her students observed:In my country it is a compliment to the author to use someone's exact words.Most interestingly from our point of view, however, is the observation that alllearners have trouble introducing quotation or citation. This is because theyhave a wholly inadequate repertoire of the kind of fixed and semi-fixedexpressions which are used in these - often subject-specific - academicgenres; it is a highly specific lexical, collocational deficiency.

Svetlana Ter-Minasova (Language, Linguistics and Lfe) observes:

Teaching communication for special purposes must be based on theprevious linguistic analysis of special texts resulting inrecommendations for teaching those grammar forms and structureswhich are most characteristic of these texts.

The store of units of this kind (prefabricated blocks) form a certainstable system of linguistic means which are constantly in use in theprocess of scientific communication, which form a shared code of theparticipants of the communication.

Despite the difficulties faced by applied linguists in Russia, particularlyduring the Soviet period, they recognised long before EFL in the West that the

concficticn c r f l

Thel onq_-^_-cont(subjeconc(almo

9.4

Althcmuchplonethe bithreeof teilangutporenl

Corpr

Cobuicorpuidata-dfully zwhichadditiclanguaprovrdi

Other 1a basisand exrmillionthat itshas leapart otimpresrWhile Iteachinl

The prdescriptreferencwhich r

ise and:; sughilowing:nt is inrls and;oncise

ection

u wrlteademicvrite in

icribedrds thehat the15 maylterest.rdencyLterialsrsm in;erved:r,vords.:hat all;e theyi-fixedLdemic

:ularlyrat the

the

1n

res

a1n

the

the

Materials and resources l9l

concept of 'academic English'might be no more than a language-teachers'fiction, and that something more specific to the kind of texts students of aparticular discipline met regularly, may be required.

The time when teachers were restricted by the texts in their text books haslong gone. It is now easy and cheap to find material which will present fullycontextualised examples of collocations relevant to writing about a particularsubject. As Michael Hoey points out in detail, any factual text is a disguisedconcordance of some of its key words; such texts are now readily available onalmost any subject, at the click of a mouse [See below].

9.4 Language corpora

Although the idea of collocation in linguistics goes back at least 60 years,much of the current interest for language teachers began about 1990 with thepioneering work of John Sinclair and his team at Cobuild. Sinclair describesthe background to this work in Corpus, Concordance, Collocation and thethree ideas are closely linked. All three are well worth exploring in the contextof teaching collocation; they provide potentially powerful tools for thelanguage teacher, but unless used with proper discrimination, there arepotential pitfalls which may confuse rather than help leamers.

Corpus size and balance

Cobuild's purpose in developing the first really substantial computer-basedcorpus of real texts, both spoken and written, was lexicographic - to make adata-driven dictionary, where every example was taken from the corpus as afully attested example of 'real English'. It was essential to build a cotpuswhich was sufficiently large to give useful information about rarer words. Inaddition, many rarer words are almost exclusively confined to the writtenlanguage, so large amounts of written data were needed if the corpus was toprovide adequate evidence of the use of such words.

Other publishers later established their own corpus-based projects, usually asa basis for their own dictionaries. Any corpus which is to be used to defineand exemplify words in a dictionary, needs to be very large - at least severalmillion words - if it is to provide sufficient examples of rarer words to ensurethat its information and examples are both comprehensive and typical. Thishas lead to publishers proclaiming 'based on a corpus of x million words' aspart of their promotional material. This has left many people with theimpression that the larger the cotpus, the better the information it provides.While this may be true if your purpose is lexicographic, from a languageteaching perspective, this is, at best, a rather misleading half-truth.

The primary purpose of such massive corpora was to be the basis ofdescriptions of English which in turn would form the basis of comprehensivereference works. It is the purpose for which they were devised, and this alone,which meant the corpora needed to be so large.

192 Materials and resources

In a similar way, the lexicographic corpora are often described as 'balanced',

but a moment's thought reveals how careful the reader needs to be whencoming across the term. It is again essential to ask for what purpose thecorpus was designed; any idea of 'balance' is intimately bound up with thepurpose. Suppose that 90% of all English produced is spoken and l)Vo iswritten; how should a balanced corpus be designed? Perhaps 90% spoken and70Vo writlen to mimic the relative frequency of the two modes of languageuse? Or would 50Vo-50Vo be a better balance so each mode is equallyrepresented? If you want a balanced cor?us of spoken English, how wouldyou decide on the relative proportions of, say, informal conversation, formallectures and business meetings; and what about the age groups to berepresented? Corpora need to be constructed for specific purposes, and forlanguage teaching purposes a huge balanced corpus is, surprisingly perhaps,often not the most appropriate, as Biber points out below.

In 1990, in Corpus, Concordance, Collocation Sinclair stated unequivocally:We are at a very primitive stage of understanding the character of corpora.Since then, considerable progress has been made and small scale corporainvestigating particular genres, or comparative corpora such as those used asthe basis for LGSWE have been developed and analysed. What is essential forlanguage teachers, however, is an understanding that only when the corpus,the way it is analysed by the software and the purpose for which it is beingused are 'in harmony', willit be the powerful tool it can and should be.

Corpora for learners

Learners are not amateur applied linguists and raw unedited corpus data islikely to overwhelm many ordinary learners. If teachers are going to usecor?us data with their leamers, they may need to edit by making a suitableselection of examples. At the same time, they must not edit the examplesthey do include. The whole point of using naturally occuring examples is toensure thatthe examples really are examples of how the word is used; editingor 'cleaning up' destroys the value of using corpus-based evidence. Thedifficulties of choosing examples was discussed earlier. [see p 163]

One warning is necessary whenever you are reading about corpus-basedevidence. In the talk at the 1998 IAIEFL conference on which Chapter 11 isbased, Michael Hoey consistently said: My corpws shows On oneoccasion he explicitly reminded the audience and in my corpus - it isimportant to emphasise that it is only the evidence of my cotpusUnfortunately few lecturers or authors are as careful as this. A typical(deliberately anonymous) example is: . . . will show a simple numerical listingof the most common collocations of the word you are interested ln. This quoteis taken from a serious commentary on corpus-based materials. I haveexplored the materials in question, and can assure readers that they did notprovide 'the most common collocations' of the words I was interested in. A

conprolb e so f fparlconlobse

Gen

Bib€1998the ucorp{parn(

T]ar)

mranCO

oflATT]

ac(doi

It is clto selelikell,t

Teache- alatcorpusso the lthat a :and colonce aEcorpus l

Corpor

So, doepurposetstudentsappropneach grcpatternscalled 'a

rnced") when)se theith thel)Vo is:en andlguage:quallywouldformalto be

md forrrhaps,

ocally:)rpora.)orporarsed asLtial forro{pus,; being

data is[o useuitableampleses rs toeditinge. The

;-based: r 11 is)n one- i t i s

typical' listings quoteI havelid notd i n . A

Materials and resources 193

Genre-specific corpora

Corpora for specific purposes

194 Materials and resources

Think of the subject mattel - chemists regularly describe processes under the

conffol of the experimenter, while students of fine alt tend to describe long-

term historical plocesses outside the control of any individual; a supelficial

functional similarity - describing plocesses - masks a significant difference

of lexical and glammatical content. Such differences are reflected in the

language which is typical of the particular discipline, so the differences from

subject to subject are much more important than previously recognised.

This question can now be investigated empirically. All that is needed is a

comparatively small computer-based corpus of the kind of texts the chemistry

students will need to understand or produce during their course, and a similar

corpus for the fine arts students. Both corpora can be balanced to take

account of what the students will need to do - read academic texts, attend

lectures in their special subject, write an extended dissertation or whatever. A

concordancing ploglam will then reveal in a matter of minutes, the words the

learners most need and the patterns in which those words typically occur in

texts related to the particular subject. It will also reveal whether the needs

of the two groups of students can be best met using general 'academic

English' materials or whether the groups would benefit considerably more

from materials particular to their own field of study'

Biber and his colleagues leport just such a study, comparing research articles

in ecology and history. They introduce the results by commenting:

To this point, the analyses in this book have made use of existing

corpora to analyze general register categories, such as conversation and

academic prose. For studies in ESP, however, a broad sample of texts

from academic prose is too general.

Their analysis shows that both academic article-types differ considerably

from general fiction, and both share certain features compared with fiction,

but it also reveals many important linguistic differences, for example: history

articles are more narrative than ecology articles. This means history texts use

more past tenses and ecology articles mole plesent simples (for stating

generalisations). Ecology articles use mole impersonal style, but certain

parts of history articles also use impersonal style. Their analysis reveals

many more details, but in summary it shows that good ESP courses do need

to be subject-specific, and that 'academic English' is indeed a language

teachers' fiction.

It would be professionally incompetent to offer students studying English for

specific or academic purposes a diet of general English. It is equally

incompetent (though, sadly, it remains not uncommon) to offer them material

from magazines devoted to 'popular' science, archaeology or whatever. A

decade or more ago John Sinclair stated unequivocally: At present, selections

tof ESP textsl are made on an intuitive basis, and there is no guarantee that

afragment of a text is representative of the book or paper it came from. Quite

oftentext.becarthat.moreacadtprepa

Profecontncompyoun(

T}5 L t

tanoTetscrnet

An erthat thaboutuse authe onclosel3themse

Focus

Mark Ispecialtheir slThis nspondyease thtas $tre|

and thtimportato corrxsuppliet

Buildin

The so1comparidisciplir

' t he

)n q-" 'D

icial)ncethe

IOm

l S a

rstryrilarlaketend:r. A; therr ineeds)mlc

nole

Lcles

5Au

.S

ablyI1On,itoryi useltrng'tain

;'ealSneeduage

h for.rallyerial:r. Attot'LS

tltat

)uite

Materials and resources 195

often, what appears to be introductory motter is offered as typical technicaltext-He was criticising the use of introductory rather than bodj text, preciserybecause the two are linguisticalry so different. It is seriously worrying to findthat, a decade later, popular joumalism on academic subjecis - which is evenmore different from real academic writing than the introductory part of anacademic article - is being offered to students of a disciprine as suitabrepreparation for their studies of authentic discipline-specific Lxts.Professor Steve Jones who is both a highly esteemed scientist and a regularcontributor of scientific articles to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, advisescompetitors (Daily Teregraph, Dec g 1999) in the paper's competition foryoung writers on science:

The rules of science writing differ utterly from those of writing aboutscience. To a scientist, alr that matters is to convince an audiencetrained to pick holes in his argument. Every sentence must be weighednot for style, but for accuracy, every "if' matched with a ..but,,.Terseness is all and elegance much frowned on. ...Writing aboutscience demands skills that most of the subject's actuar practitionersnever bolher to acquire.

An expert at both science writing and writing about science, he makes clearthat the two genres are radically different. Any teachers tempted to use writingabout science as input material for science students need to ensure that theyuse authentic science writing instead. It should now be abundantly clear thatthe only suitable material for such students is material which resembres asclosely as possibre the kind they will have to understand or producethemselves.

Focus on osub-technical'collocation for ESp learners

Mark Powell has pointed out, from extensive experience with learners withspecialist backgrounds, thal they frequently know the technical vocabulary oftheir subject in English, but may welr not know the sub-technical vocabulary.This means medicar students who know cardio-vascurar and. antcyrosingspondylitis may not know collocational items such as straighten your arm,ease the pairz. They may also need to be wamed of impossible collocates suchas *trectt the pain. This sub-technical vocabulary lies between general Englishand the technical vocabulary of a particular specialis-, Jrd is of greatimportance to ESP learners, as it is precisery this ranguage which they needto communicate about their speciarism to non-specialists, such as patients,supplier or customers.

Building a corpus for your learnersThe solution to the ESp teachers'problem is nowadays rerativery easy. Acomparatively small corpus consisting of research articles in the samediscipline can be gathered by asking departmental members to supply a recent

196 Materials and resources

paper on disk. As little as a dozen articles will probably reveal key words, and

some of their most common collocates in that genre' and thus provide an

excellent basis for expansion. This can be done by the teacher providing other

collocates, with the help of a lafger, mole general, corpus, a collocation

dictionary, or conscious scanning of other subject-based material. Later,

students can add further examples from their subject-specific reading.

While searching the intemet for material on the Lexical Approach, I found a

site listing prepositional phrases from a colpus of material on fine art. Again'

a brief sample demonstrates how useful a relatively small subject-specific

coryus can be in identifying language that students of that subject will need:

INin common, in comparison to, in contrast to, in ffict, in private, in

progress, in search of, in stYle

ONattention on, debate on, ffict on, emphasis on, eye on, focus on,

impact on, influence on, reliance on, section on, series on,

on display, on exhibition, on show, on loan

Such language will probably not be noticed by learners in their reading unless

they have been trained to recognise its importance for their own wdting. It is

also clear that many of the items would have benefited by being quoted with

one or two more words of the original context. It is a good maxim to

remember that there are more chunks than you think, and the chunks are often

bigger than you first think.

If learners of general English have a particular interest, it is comparatively

easy to download a reasonable quantity of text relating to that interest to form

a small corpus, and then use the same techniques to provide a core lexicon of

wofds, collocations and expressions relevant to both the particular subject and

the particular leatner. In time, learners can be trained to do this themselves.

Here is a kind of 'vocabulary teaching'which equips leamers to expand their

individual mental lexicons in a way which is relevant, personal and a skill

which can be taken away as a tool for life.

Caution is needed with raw data

A corpus provides incontrovertible evidence of language which has actually

been used but such data needs to be interpreted and used with caution,

particularly when used for language teaching. If teachers are going to

encoulage leamers to use corpora themselves, training and even more caution

are both needed. One principle of enormous importance is that teachers must

become so familiar with authentic examples that they can select out unhelpful

examples - however interesting or amusing these might be to the teachers

themselves - and direct their learners' attention to a selection of authentic

examples chosen with a particular pedagogic purpose in mind. By all

means introduce learners to authentic examples, but select such examples

fil

rhqr

Sr

Hea

SO

C C

to1ol ^utr

clr

Fapalc7aofared l c

1nc

sat,

Tei

SAI

m0

upcorfinrshccorselro f ipro

and

e a n)ther

rtlon

ater,

n d a

Ialn,cific

eed:

nlessIt iswithm t orften

ivelyformcn oft and:lves.theirskill

ually

rtlon,

lg to

ut10n

mustdpfulchersLenticly allnples

Materials and resources 197

first, so leamers can explore without being overwhelmed. Avoid 'cleaning up'the examples you do select and, above all, do not present learners with vastquantities of unedited data without careful preparation over a period of time.

Sorting a corpus

Having assembled a co{pus, it needs to be sorted to provide evidence of howeach word is actually used. This poses two problems - what do we mean by'each word' of the language, and how do we carry out the immense task ofsorting a corpus? The second task only became feasible with the advent ofcomputers with sufficiently large memories and sufficient processing capacityto sort a huge amount of data. The computer still needs to be programmed tolocate and list together every occurrence of a particular word, which involvesdeciding what we mean by 'a parl'icular word'. Is hit 'a word'? What aboutclose? Some examples might help:

1. The Beatles'firsthit was . . .2. He was hit by a motorist who failed to stop.3. If you hit ittoo hard, you'll break it.4. If he hits it too hard, he'll break it.5. There's no point in hitting it like that - it's already broken.6. Only close friends of the couple . . .7. We close at 8pm on Sundays.8. Bull's-eye? - No wayl You weren't even close.9. He's impossible - he's got a completely closed mind.

Far from helping, the examples simply make you less sure what the phrase 'a

particular word' means. corpus linguistics introduced two new terms toclarify the situation: the term word form, is used to mean every occurenceof exactly the same group of letters, so the first three examples of hit aboveare examples of the same word form. A lemma is different word forms whichare all related to the same 'underlying' word, so examples 1-5 above are allincluded in the lemma 'hit' and all of save, saves, saved, saving, savings,saver, sayers are included in the lemma 'save'.

Teachers need to be aware that it is quite possible that different parts of thesame lemma may show different pattems, so it may be necessary to look upmore than one word form in exploring a single 'grammar point'. If you lookup feel you will inevitably find examples of the present simple, notcontinuous; to find the latter you will need to lookup feeling, which will alsofind examples of the word as a noun. corpus evidence of the word formshould could be very helpful for leamers, but it is also potentially veryconfusing unless the teachers has selected the examples, and in particular hasselected out ('zapped') any examples which will only confuse. The advantageof a corpus is the range and naturalness of the examples, but that does presentproblems if used without due care.

198 Materials and resources

9.5 Concordances

Nowadays computer concordance programs which find and display all theexamples in a corpus of a particular word are widely available and relativelycheap. The most common use the so-called KWIC (Key Word In Context)system to display results. Each line displays an example of the selected word,with the text arranged so that all examples of this word are printed under eachother in the centre of the screen. Text is displayed on either side of the keyword, and often arranged alphabetically according to either the wordimmediately before or the word immediately following the key word. [Thereare examples on pp. 40142.1

Using concordances with learners

This format allows the user to explore the collocates and colligations of aword with comparative ease. It is usually most helpful to draw learners'attention to the words which immediately follow a word they have selected asof particular interest. If the key word is a noun, howevet, it is also likely to behelpful to note any adjectives or verbs which occur within a few words to theleft of the key word. With adjectives or verbs, words to the right of the keyword often show grammatical collocations such as a typical preposition oradverb. It may be helpful to note that a particular verb is always, or nearlyalways, followed by a time phrase or some other grammatical feature.

The two main benefits of concordances for the classroom are that theexamples are always contextualised and, most importantly of all, Ieamers cansee a large number of examples of the same item very quickly. Researchsuggest that we need to meet a new item several times - somewhere aroundseven to ten times - with at least parlial understanding before it is acquired.In normal reading or EFL textbook vocabulary recycling, it may take weeks,even years, before a leamer meets a particular lexical item, particularly amulti-word phrasal item, seven times. With wisely-used concordancing thiscan be achieved in a couple of two-minute sessions in consecutive lessons.Some caveats are, however, in order.

Some programs show words as collocates if they occur within a small numberof words (usually about five) of the chosen word. While this can be revealingto a researcher, it can confuse learners unnecessarily. Consider, for example,these collocates (in the broad, descriptive linguist's sense of that word) ofCASE:

He said he was just netvoLts, in case things did not turn out as he expected.Just in case things don't turn out as we expect . . .I'm just doubtful that, in this case, it is the best way to . . .I'm doubtful, and just in case things do go wrong . . .

There are several useful patterns here: just + (adjective), in case. . . , the fixedphrases jzsr in case, in this case and the cluster in case things.It seems most

unl,tindiedit

Mal

worpartsirnimucthanusrnmosthat

Bria

It(S (

\l

ql- 'olSC) -ut

th

Whilrprobl

AS

kntht

sot

This ,

contel

Usin-e. The

follc. The,

notr(fluer

. TheCAUS

. ObseexanMOI€

therely

)rd,achkeyordIere

r f a; I S

l a sr b ethekeyt o rrly

thecanLrchundt t r u .- t - ^-r\.S,

) ' athis)ns.

Lber,mgn ler l : '

i o f

'd.

. - ^ l,\CU

IOSt

Materials and resources 199

unhelpful, however, to present all of these to learners at the same time in anindiscriminate, albeit authentic, list of real examples. Teachers will need toedit concordances for all except advanced leamers.Many leamers still find it difficult to skim text without stopping at everyword, and such learners need to be taught dictionary skills so they can find aparticular meaning of a word. working with computer concordances is

that learners are not overwhelmed.

Brian Poole describes using concordances with a group of university students:I find that the use of computer concordances of key verbs, in additionto improving their knowledge of subject and object noun collocates,seems to improve their 'feel' for the finely-differentiated senses of averb, and hence the range of nouns with which it can co-occur. ...Thegreat virtue of concordances is that they provide leamers with theopportunity to see lots of examples of a particular word all at once - notsomething available in day-to-day target language exposure - and toderive from this not only an awareness of frequent collocates but alsothe kind of lexical word with which it has the potential to combine.

while cautioning that some learners will find concordancing ,too dry and theproblem-solving aspect not to their taste,, he concludes that:

This view endorses the suggestion in chapter g that noticing examples incontext without formal practice helps turn input into intake.Using concordances in this way has several benefits:' They often answer straightforward questions such as .what word usually

follows dffirent? Is it to,from or than?,' They sensitise learners to the fact that text does consist of chunks and that

noticing these accurately does help them produce language more easily,fluently and accurately themselves.

' The process both confirms your intuitions and, more disconcertingly,causes you to revise statements such as I've never heard/seen it.

' observing real data should quickly persuade you of the danger of takingexamples away from the natural contexts in which they occur and, evenmore, of the danger of inventing examples in the classroom. [see p 167]

200 Materials and resources

Teachers who are interested in using coryora and concordancing will find an

extensive discussion of the issues in Biber's Corpus Linguistics, which alsohas an extensive list of commercially available co{pora, analytical softwareand on-line senrices.

There are three major websites at the time of writing which are relevant toteachers interested in concordancing in the classroom:

. An extensive bibliography on classroom concordancing on Tim John'swebsite: htp:/isunl.bham.ac.uk/johnstflbiblio.htm.

. Free sample concordances on either of:

The British National Corpus (BNC) at http: I I info.ox.ac.uk/bnc/C OBUILDd ir ect at http ://www. cobuild. collins. co. uk/direct info. html

9.6 Reference materials

Teachers interested in teaching collocation may like to look again at thedictionary they recommend to their leamers, asking themselves how, if at all,

it deals with collocation. Dictionaries are usually used for decoding - finding

the meaning of unknown words - but there is no reason why such bookscannot be designed to be useful as encoding tools too. Most of the standardEFL dictionaries provide information about collocation, sometimes explicitly

as pafi of the definition, more frequently as part of the examples. This is often

of limited help because only a few collocates are given, and these are often

the most frequent, and therefore the ones learners are most likely to have metin their language input.

1. Conventional EFL dictionaries

We tested the main EFL dictionaries available from Cobuild, CUP, Longmanand OUP using the following questions:

1. What do you call the paper you need before you can drive a car?2. What verb goes with exam to mean you did well and the opposite?3. What verb goes with time to say you did something in a good, quick way?4. Can you say very magnificent? If not, what is the corect expression?5. Is it say the truth or tell the truth? And what is the opposite?6. Is there another verb which means about the same as admit (a crime)?7. How do I use the verb confess?8. What is the usual verb before a confession?

All of the dictionaries provided some help and quite often the answers to our

specific questions were contained in the dictionary entry. Unfortunately,however, the information was often difficult to find, as the entries could bevery long and the specific information was often buried late in the entry in oneof the examples. None of the dictionaries answered question four,highlighting again the importance of the teacher being proactive in providing

nesative evidence of this kind.

Sev. T l

wo f u

lathepafinhei

. SeiexlinfA I

all<looadji

. UntHotdicryoudictwhewhir

. Thecoll<abeacollclexic

In shodifficul- medi

It is wiabovesamplequestlolthan drtto comrnegativt

2.Prod

Tbe Lonproducti

d a nalsoruare

rt to

,trn's

: thet o l l

dingooksdardcitlyrftenrftenmet

a.,.?

I OUr, * - 1 .

t l L *[u Lr5

I t r l l -

tour.idins

Materials and resources ),el

Several features of the dictionary entries became apparent:' The emphasis was very clearly on helping the learner understand unknown

words or expressions.' rncreased awareness in modern dictionaries of the phrasal nature oflanguage means entries contain long lists of phrases containing theheadword. while this is helpful for decoding, it inevitably makes finding aparticular bit of encoding information more difficult. Try, for example, tofind whether you should say to spare time or to save time by looking up the

headword time.' Searching for a specific piece of information to help you produce the corect

expression involves patience and the confidencl to ignore a lot ofinformation not related to your query. often, the user also ieeds to think ina rather abstract way about ringuistic relationships. All the dictionariesallowed us to find driving ricence, but onry if you-realised you needed tolook up not drive but crriving, which was not always an immediatelyadjacent entry.

' unsurprisingry, the dictionaries are no help in answering questions such asHow do you say 'nycke| in Engrish? For this sort of qr-"riion, a bijingualdictionary is needed - you need to know the name in bnghsh of a conceptyou have in your own ranguage (nycker = key).In the ri-" *uy that thedictionaries do not help when you do not know the word, they do not helpwhen you do not know the kind of medium-strength rexicai collocationswhich learners are most likely to need.

' The examples, while natural and helpful, tend to give the most frequentcollocations which are often those which rearners are most likely to knowalready. They are much less good at giving those medium-strength lexicarcollocations which are one of the keys to expanding learners, mentallexicons effectively.

In shorl, the conventional dictionaries provide help, but it is frequentrydifficult to access the information you want and the most usefur information- medium strength lexicar collocations - is unlikely to be there.It is worth mentioning that the sampler on the cobuild website mentionedabove provided answers to an the questions except number six, and thesample of exam did not provide an exampre of faii an exam. For the firstquestion, as with the dictionaries, it was necessary to look up crrivingratherthan drive. Most usefulry from a reamer's point of view, however, its failureto come up with very,magnificent or say the truth provides vefy sftongnegative evidence that these collocations are not sanctioned by usage.

2. Production dictionaries

The Longman Language Activator,described on its cover as ,the world,s firstproduction dictionary', tries to solve this problem. But it proved no more

202 Materials and resources

successful in our tests than the conventional dictionaries. The main problem

was accessing the information, which involves a fairly sophisticated view of

semantic fields.

The later Longman Essential Activator, which has a comprehensive

alphabetical index, proved a great deal more successful and provided the

answers to most of our questions quickly and easily. It also begins to provide

important negative evidence so that, for example, the entry fot true contains

the clearly marked warning 'Don't say she's saying the truth. Say she's telling

the truth.' Once again, however, it is less successful in tackling the all-

important area of medium-strength lexical collocations. For these, the

relatively new collocation dictionaries are much more useful.

3. Collocation dictionaries

There are now two collocation dictionaries which provide evidence of words

which co-occur. They are of most use to leamers who wish to activate

language which they half-know as they fulfil a role similar to the way native

speakers use a thesaurus - the printed lists serve to remind you of potential

altematives to your original word. The dictionaries are, therefore, similar to

concordances in that they need to be skimmed rather than studied, with

leamers trained to ignore unknown words and to search for words which they

recognise but which have not yet passed into their active lexicons. This

process is endorsed by Skehan (A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning)

when he suggests:

It is proposed that very often the pedagogic challenge is not to focus on

the brand new, but instead to make accessible the relatively new.

Of the two collocation dictionaries currently available: The BBI Combinatory

Dictionary (BBI) places mole emphasis on the total lexical and grammatical

environment of a word, which can make the entries look rather intimidating.

It is therefore probably more useful for more academic leamers who are used

to using reference materials and for whom grammatical acculacy is a priority.

The LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations (DOSC) focuses on precisely

the noun + verb, adjective + noun, verb + adverb lexical collocations which

have been referred to so often in this book. Its layout resembles a conventional

thesaurus and is designed to help learners activate half-known items in the

way Skehan suggests. [For a sample entry see p 38']

Celia Shalom of the University of Livetpool, in a survey review of these two

collocation dictionaries (Modern English Teache4 April 1999) writes:

If we are in favour of a more coherent approach to the teaching and

leaming of collocation, we need to go beyond incidental treatment in

the language classroom and help the learner really become familiar

with collocations. I think such familiarity develops best when the

learner is consciously aware of this tendency of words to go together'

Explicit teaching about collocation can help students to develop a feel

I

i

1

'1

I n rCobcollcollishoranl\"

diffr1 071

freqlexirfor c

9.7

If lelexic. Tel. L e

ust. Lei

lexexaele

Disr

Whatperce

Wharof theuse tl

Whar

If leateachispoke

ilve

the,ide

tlnsl in o

all-the

tem

/ o f

xds\,atetlve

Ltial

r t o

,'ith

L N J

hisl o )

ot1;icaln o* _ D '

^ ^ lJ C U

'1t\i.

, o l . '

Lich

)nai

the

[\\ O

Materials and resources )e!

for it. ...There is still a long way to go in the teaching and learning ofcollocation. [Some recent] research on collocational awareness foundthat half of a sample of English teachers in Switzerland talked aboutcollocation to their students while only gvo taughtit explicitly.The publication of these collocation dictionaries marks an excitingmoment in the teaching of vocabulary: one in which the companywords keep is being put firmly on the agenda for teacher and studentalike.

In contrast, one colocation resource which I have found disappointing iscobuild's English collocations on CD-R)M. It lists the twenty most commoncollocates of 10,000 headwords. The user can suppress some grammaticalcollocates such as the, is, in, bfi even having aone that, the program onlyshows the 20 highest frequency collocates, which often include words such asany, own, new. A furtherproblem arises if you look up a word with severaldifferent meanings such as order or right, as all uses of the word form [see pr97l are dealt with together. This means you may onry get one or two high_frequency collocates for any particular use and very few medium-strengthlexical collocates. Finally, the examples, although ,"u1, huu" not been chosenfor classroom use, so they are sometimes less than helpfur for learners.

9.7 SummaryIf learners are to move off the intermediate plateau, they need substantiallexical input. This win be predominantly collocational. This means:' Texts need to be chosen with their collocational content in mind.' Learners need to be trained to search authentic materiar for key words,

usually nouns, and to notice the collocational features of the .t-r"*,.' Leamers need to be taught the particurar importance of medium-strengthlexical collocations and shown how to use the texts they meet. theexamples in conventional dictionaries, collocation dicti,onaries andelectronic resources as sources to enrich their own productive language.

Discussion Questionswhat percentage of the input in your crasses is written English and whatpercentage is spoken English? Do you think the current balance is right?what kinds of different listening activities do you use? what use do you makeof the tapescripts which are often printed at the back of coursebooks? Do youuse them as spoken input, even though they are printed in the book?What kind of narrative texts would you consider using for input?If leamers need a rot of spoken input, do you think you shourd increaseteacher talking time? If not, how can you ensure they are exposed to enoughspoken input?

204 Materials and resources

Can you see a use for corpora and concordancing in your classes? If so, inwhat way do you think you would need to prepare the material?

In what way would you need to prepare your leamers?

Once learners can use a resource such as the COBUILDdirect sampler, theycan check many things for themselves which they have previously had toconsult the teacher about. Can you see your own role changing so that you

train students to use such resources even if it means you spend less time'language teaching' in the narrow sense?

Cc

Pett

PeteUnirEFLrela{implscri!apprdevil'unai

how

coltrovocalpage

10.1

Thosclasstempllanguof miparti(wnteon thr

A f cExamlevelsbe abexpecseries. Horr. D o

gIan. D o l

conlabili

. D o llean

SO; 111

, theyad tot youtlme

Collocation and resting 205

Chapter 10

Collocation and testing

Peter Hargreaves

Peter Hargreaves is head of the English as a Foreign Language part of theuniversity of cambridge Local Examinations syndicate, responsible for theEFL exams administered by the syndicate. rn this paper he examines therelationship between a learner's vocabulary and a learnerts level, and itsimplications for testing. He explains how the Syndicate is using a corpus ofscripts produced by learners to ensure that vocabulary testing in the exams isappropriate to the learner's level. He explains how extending chomsky's idea ofdeviance can give a clearer picture of what we mean by a language item being'unacceptable'. The paper is more theoretical than most in this book and showshow the establishment of valid and reliable tests is a complex matter, in whichcollocation now plays an important role. Readers new to the theoretical study ofvocabulary 'level'and testing may find it helpful to read peter's summary onpage22I before reading his detailed discussion ofthe issues.

10.1 Introduction

Those who come into contact with language learners, whether in theclassroom - their teachers - or outside the classroom - for example, theiremployers, need to have as accurate a picture as possible of the learner'slanguage ability or proficiency. This language 'proficiency' actually consistsof many different but related abilities, such as the ability to read texts forparticular purposes, the ability to listen for factual information, the ability towrite letters of a formal or informal nature, the ability to respond to enquirieson the telephone, etc.

A formal examination system such as the cambridge Main SuiteExaminations attempts, through a series of question papers at five differentlevels, to gather enough information about a candidate's language abilities tobe able to relate them (through the award of graded certificates) to what isexpected of learners ar each of those five levels. This immediately suggests aseries of important problems:. How do we assess a learrer's level?' Do items which test particular items of vocabulary or particurar points of

grammar give a representative picture of leamers' general language level?' Do more 'global' forms of testing such as tests of spoken interaction or

continuous writing provide us with enough information about learrers'abilities?

' Do specific tests of vocabulary give an accurate and precise picture of alearner's vocabulary resource, and, equally importantly, how do such

206 Collocation and testing

measures relate to what a learner can actually do if required to use

language in real situations outside the classroom, for example, at work?

Such questions are part of the everyday concerns of my staff at the University

of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) who are responsible

for the five Cambridge Main Suite Examinations ie the Key English Test(KET), the Preliminary English Test (PET), the First Certificate in English(FCE), the Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) and the Certificate of

Proficiency in English (CPE). In this article I want to discuss some of the

factors which influence how levels of language ability can be differentiated,particularly in the area of vocabulary, and questions such as what it means to

say a learner 'knows' a word. In the process, I will demonstrate the increasing

importance which collocation plays in differentiating language ability at the

upper levels, not just in relation to formal examinations such as the FCE, CAE

and CPE, but also for teachers who work with students in the area of

vocabulary, prepare students for examinations, and may themselves need to

construct tests of vocabulary.

L0.2 How do we define different levels?

A leamer's level of language proficiency can perhaps be described most

usefully for 'lay' users such as employers, sponsors or parents, in terms of

what the learner can do with the language at different levels, for various

purposes and across the different language skills - listening, reading, writing,

speaking. A great deal of work has been done on the general definition of

language levels under the auspices of the Council of Europe (see, for

example, Modern Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. A Common

European Framework of reference - Council of Europe, Strasbourg 1998),

and some of these levels are already well-defined by detailed specifications of

language objectives, ie the Waystage, Threshold, Vantage levels. As a tool for

the comparison of levels of proficiency across languages, and as an aid to the'lay' user, a series of CAN-do statements are being developed by the

Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALIE).

These CAN-do statements cover typical language functions in three

categories: Social and tourist, Work and Study. They encompass the four

language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing, and span five levels

of language proficiency from ALTE level 1, corresponding to KEI to ALIE

level5, corresponding to CPE.

Below is an example of a typical set of CAN-do statements developed by

ALTE (still in the process of being validated) covering a specific level for a

particular domain and function. This set is for level 5 in the domain of Study

and the function of essay-writing:

Can write an essay that shows an ability to communicate with few

difficulties for the reader. The essay shows a good organisational

t

Whtlevebrolperfr'unit

pun('1a) ' '

refergraflleanrdefupartl

In ththe iithe cthrouimplibaser

Whatlan-erpsyclyou ilanguUSEI (

In inUCL]projerpurpaEFLAmerFCE,over Iby le,

v

J L

h)feI

o

D

E)fo

i t

)fi S

I .

)f)rt1

i .

)f)r

e

etr:E

a

Collocation and tesring )eJ

sffucture, which enables the message to be followed without mucheffort.

Can present and support arguments well.rs unlikely to make more than occasionar errors of grammar,vocabulary or punctuation.

can write with understanding of the style and content appropriate tothe task.

can produce text which is proof-read and laid-out in accordance withthe relevant conventions.

when it comes to assessing formally whether a leamer has achieved a targetlevel of cAN-do in the language, statements like the ones above have to bebroken down into standardised tasks, so that it is possible to generalise fromperformance on such tasks the extent to which, for example, the learner is'unlikely to make more than occasional errors of grammar, vocabulary andpunctuation'. From a linguistic analysis point of view, rather than that of the'lay' user, the learner's language proficiency can be characterised byreference to a set of interrelated competences: communicative, lexico_grammatical, socio-cultural, strategic, etc. How ,proficient' the languagelearner is can be translated into: where does the leamer come in a range ofdefined levels for these competences appropriate to the use of the language forparticular purposes?

In the cambridge Main Suite EFL examinations ,knowledge and control of

the language system'are viewed as underpinning the learne-r's proficiency inthe different language skills and are tested explicitly - at the upper levelsthrough a separate use of English or English in use paper - in addition to anyimplicit testing of knowledge and control of the language system in skills_based papers such as Reading and Writing.what exactly (or even inexactly) is involved in 'knowledge

and control of thelanguage system' at different levels is not simpty an interestingpsycholinguistic question; it is a crucial one if, u. un E*u-inations Board,you are attempting to make generalisations about the extent or level of alanguage learner's 'knowledge and control' on the basis of what words thatuser either recognises or produces in carrying out certain test tasks.In investigating this whole area of vocabulary testing we are fortunate atUCLES to have access to the cambridge Leamer corpus (cLC), a jointproject with cambridge University press (cup), foi internal researchpurposes. The cLC is a corpus of written material produced by cambridgeEFL candidates of several different nationalities irom Europe and LatinAmerica in response to tasks in the composition or writing papers in eitherFCE, cAE or cPE from 1993 onwards. At the time of *.ltl.rg,it consists ofover 8 million words with additions planned. The corpus

"u'L" subanalysed

by level of examination (FCE, cAE, cpE), and also by candidates, first

208 Collocation and testing

language. Because the CLC cunently has more scripts from CPE than eitherCAE or FCE, and more from FCE than CAE, frequencies quoted in thisarticle have been weighted to facilitate comparison.

Invaluable though the CLC already is - and we expect it to becomeincreasingly more useful in the future - it is important to bear in mind at alltimes that the data has obvious limitations. Firstly, it is entirely based on whatstudents have produced, not what they can recognise. Secondly, even as asample of what students have produced, it is constrained by the fact that thescripts are a response to specific composition tasks, which inevitably have astrong influence on the language of the topic areas.

10.3 Testing vocabulary knowledge

At the lower levels of proficiency, there may be some justification for a simplequantitative approach to defining levels of 'knowledge and control' of thelanguage; that is, you could simply count the number of grammaticalconstructions and headwords that a leamer is expected to be familiar with interms of recognition or production at a given level. So an elementary levelleamer might be expected to be familiar with, say, 1300 words such as a goodvocabulary book might present and practise, while an intermediate learnermight need these 1300, plus perhaps another 1200 or so 'more difficult' (ieless frequent or more complex) words.

The simple quantitative approach may be studied by comparing the frequencyof occurrence of headwords across CPE and FCE in the CLC and also withlarge corpora based on native-speaker use. These comparisons reveal someobvious facts:. CPE students use significantly more different words than FCE students.. CPE students use more low frequency words than FCE students where

'low frequency' relates to citations in native-speaker based corpora.

1. Counting headwords

Perhaps more interestingly, however, the conclusions that can be drawn aboutlearners' lexical knowledge at different levels from simple frequency ofoccurrence of headwords are distinctly limited. A search of the CLC for anumber of randomly chosen words which occur at either CPE or FCE level inthe CLC and have a low frequency in native-speaker corpora (designation,unfavourable, snag, circulate, whine, stretcher, earthy, lik(e)able, puny,barmaid, self-supporting, pin-stripe) reveals the following: three occur atboth FCE and CPE level (unfavourable, stretcher and lik(e)able) and sevenoccur only at CPE level (designation, snag, whine, earthy, puny, self-suppofting and pin-stripe) bttt two occur only at FCE level (circulate,bannaid) - which perhaps tells us more about the social habits of FCEstudents than about their vocabulary level!

Testiinforresolfhc o

CLCknonlearnMairlearnrelat'i

Houknou

2 . P a

Evenu,hetlgamas deCPE(withcavealearnrto dal

The Ithe goccurclaintrefere

Orsel

A

Hrrel

I f a l ein borBearirresporthe lei

Analvfollouand nr

rerlls

neallrati a

he

, 4

r1ehe:alln^ lc l

od

reI

nitne

ruI

of' a

1nrfi.

1'r:

at

en

: r

--

Collocarion and testing )e)

Testing familiarity with a number of different headwords can provide us withinformation about the 'quantity' of headwords in a l"ur.r".,s vocabularyresource, and even some limited information about the learner,s knowledge ofthe grammatical significance of those words. At ucLES we will be using thecLC to develop the quantitative aspect of the characterisation of vocabularyknowledge further as part of the definition of what is typicalry expected oflearners at a given lever. we will also continue to include tests in the ucLESMain Suite examinations which are designed to probe how extensive thelearner's knowledge is in terms of knowing cumulatively more headwordsrelated to the appropriate language functions.However, there is crearry much more to the jigsaw of a learner,s vocabularyknowledge than simply familiarity with more or fewer headworos.

2. Parts of speech in vocabulary knowledgeEven on the lever of simple familiarity with headwords, it is possible to probewhether the leamer has acquired some vocaburary knowLdge which hasgrammatical significance. Take, for example, words in th" ,a-'" family suchas deny and denial.In the cLC, the weighied frequencies of denyat FCE andcPE levels respectivery arc 46 and,720; deniat(s) occurs onty at cpE revel(with a weighted frequency of 2). From this we might deduce, with the usualcaveats about the sampling limitations of the CfC, that both FCE and CpElearners are familiar with what is meant by ,denying,but

there is no evidenceto date that FCE level learners are able to produce the nominal form deniar.The leamer's knowredge of what 'part of speech, a word is - whether it hasthe grammatical property of being a verb (deny) or a noun (deniar), oroccunence as either a noun or a verb depending on the co-text (for example,claim) - can in fact be tested directly without, of course, involving anyreference to terminology such as noun or verb, as in this example:

only one of the folrowing words can occur in both branks in thesentence below. please circle the appropriate letter:A assert

He had therepudiated

B claim C insist D presume

nerve to . . . that we all agreed with him, but I totallyt h a t . . .

If a learner's answer demonstrates that (s)he knows that only craim can occurin both slots, what does this tel us about her/his vocaburary knowledge?Bearing in mind that we would need to have the evidence of a number ofresponses to such items before making any generalisation, we can deduce thatthe learner's knowredge goes beyond simple familiarity with the headword.Analysis of citations in the FCE and cpE subcorpora in the cLC indicates thefollowing weighted frequencies for verbal (craim, craims, craimed, craiming),and nominal forms (claim, claims)of the ,word, claim:

210 Collocation and testing

Weighted CLCVerbal forms of claimNominal fonns of claim

FCE382

CPEr321 8

On the evidence of the large native-speaker based corpora, verbal uses of

claim appear to be about one and a half times as frequent as nominal uses in

the writing of native-speakers. As can be seen from the above table, in the

CLC the nominal uses of claim arc generally much less frequent than the

verbal uses when compared to the native-speaker data, but are also much rarer

at FCE level than CPE. The evidence suggests that we might expect leamers

at CPE level, but not FCE level, to be able to use and recognise claim both as

a verb and as a noun.

One of the many caveats that needs to be mentioned here in connection with

derivationally related words like deny and denial is that there can be no

assumption of priority of one particular grammatical form of a word over

another grammatical form. For example, because the noun form denial is

found in CPE citations of CLC, one could not automatically deduce that

forms of the verb deny world necessarily be found or be more frequent - or'less difficult'- than the noun form deniaL Looking through the CLC for

forms of the verb insinuate, and the noln insinuation, which I will be

referring to later on, I noted that only the form insinuating is found in the

CLC, and at CPE level. This minors the fact that in large native-speaker

corpora insinuating is more frequent than any of the other verb forms of

insinuate or of the noun form(s) insinuation(s).

3. Dependent grammar patterns in vocabulary knowledge

The grammar of words clearly extends far beyond the basic level of whether

a word occurs as a verb or noun or both; it also involves the word's dependent

pattems and constructions, and this is one of the most significant areas in

differentiating a leamer's knowledge of vocabulary at various levels. At the

risk of stating the obvious, I am distinguishing here, on the one hand, the

knowledge of a grammatical pattem oI construction (eg how to form a that-

clause) from, on the other hand, the knowledge that a particular vocabulary

item occurs with that pattem or construction (eg thatclaim occuls withathat-

clause). The latter is what I mean when I refer to knowledge of the grammar

of words.

We already know that familiarity wtth claim as a noun but not as a verb is a

likely distinguishing feature between FCE and CPE leamers in the area of

production at least. We might now wish to probe whether there are

grammatical pattems which occur with claim as a verb which might provide

more subtle distinguishing features of the knowledge of the word claim. CLC

evidence indicates thaL26 of the 38 weighted occuffences of the FCE citations

of claim as a verb have a following that-clartse, (They claim that road

conditions aren't safe) b:ut only 2 have a following ro-infinitive construction

(She

OCCT

cltat

Knoitem

Simiretlte

such

obl

A

SNSIS1

TheCXAIN

sin-eiiCUML!

by repropeaccep

This i15 not

itemsbetu'eas harSuch Iproficwhichincluditem r,is likepattenwith bdread

Cil

-iq

S

Collocation and testing lll

(she claimed to have afish bone in her throat). These figures contrast with 6goccuffences of claim + that-clause and l7 of claim + ra_infinitive in the cpEcitations.

Knowledge of these two grammatical pattern s of claim courd be tested initems such as the following:

only one of the following words can occur in both of the blanks in thetwo sentences below. please circle the appropriate letter:

A believes B tends C boasts D claimsShe . . . that she is more accurate than her sister in her work.She . . to be more accurate than her sister in her work.

Similarly, words with more comprex patterning, such as the three patterns forremember, which all occur at cpE level in cLC, could be tested with itemssuch as:

only one of the words in A, B, c, D is appropriate in all three of theblanks in the three sentences below. please circle the appropriate letter:A remember B agree C suggest D admitShe didnot. . . . . . . . posting rhe letter.She did not. . . . . . . . topost the letter.She did not. . . . . . . . rhat she hadposred the lerter.

The difference between multiple co-text test items such as those in theexample above and traditional test items based on choosing a word to fit asingle sentence, is that the implicit assumption that knowlJge of a word iscumulative as the leamer reaches a higher level is made explicit. This is doneby requiring the leamer to demonstrate greater knowledge of a word,spropefties and patterns, signalled by selecting or producing a word which isacceptable in a range of different co-texts.This is not to underestimate the fact that testing pattems in depth in this wayis not entirely straightforward. Take, for example, the question of level. Testrtems constructed for a particular level of examination need to discriminatebetween learners clustered around that level with a view to classifying themas having adequate, good, exceptional, etc ability in relation to that rever.such tests are not designed to discriminate across widely separated levels ofproficiency. Hence, since claimfollowed by a that clause is a feature of claimwhich is expected to be known at FCE level, it is probably redundant toinclude this pattern as a cpE lever test item. For a cpElevel test, a vocabularyitem which occurs in cLC only at cpE and cAE levels and not at all at FCEis likely to discriminate better. For example, knowledge of the grammaticalpatterns of the verb dread, which is found in cLC at cpE and cAE levelswith both to-infinitive (old people dread to go) and with verb + ing (I evendread thinking about the winter), might be tested instead of claim:

212 Collocation and testing

Only one of the following words can occur in both of the blanks in the

two sentences below. Please circle the appropriate letter:

A avoid B refuse C dread D hesitate

I. . . . . . . . to contemplate the future.

I . . . . . . . . contemplating the future.

The beneficial effect on vocabulary learning of such items is the way in which

they illustrate the layers of grammatical patterns which make up knowledge

of the grammar of words. An equally important teaching point that should be

made is that it is comparatively rare for apparently parallel constructions to be

freely interchangeable without some change in meaning or some restriction

on use. An obvious example, repeated from above, is the difference between

She did not remember to post tke lettef Ske did not remember posting the

letter, and She did not remember that she had posted the letter,where the first

entails that she did not post the letter, in the second it is an open question

whether she posted the letter or not, and the third entails that she did post the

letter.

There are also more subtle differences associated with grammatical

properties, to which I shall return when discussing collocation below. For

example, when dread is followed by ro-infinitive the verb in the infinitive is

usually in the semantic field of imagination such as contemplate, see, think

and under the control of the subject of dread. For something out of the

control of the subject such asfall ill, the verb + lrzg construction with dread

seems much more natural. For example:

? I dread to fall ill while I am travelling.I dread falling ill while I am travelling.

There are practical problems associated with such test items with regard to

sustainability, by which I mean the difficulty of constructing such items over

a sustained period, so as to ensure consistent and adequate sampling of the

learner's knowledge of the grammatical properties of words, and not just

testing what is relatively easy to test.

4. Collocations and vocabulary knowledge

So far I have dealt with three important pieces in the jigsaw of the leamer's

lexicon - simple familiarity with a quantity of headwords used in connection

with the functions and topics appropriate to a particular level of language

proficiency, and two aspects of familiarity with the grammatical properties of

words: their word category and dependent pattems and constructions. That

still leaves a lot of uncharted or unpredictable territory in the jigsaw, and this

is where collocation enters the frame.

The term 'collocation' has been well established in the description of

language since the days of Firth. It is usually contrasted with 'colligation' as

in the definition in Robins (1964:234):

(

d

To rlto-rncolli

AlthxnpcThespecla grawe elend r

At thgenelrefer1965'gran

( 1

Chonborde

t ' l\ !

( 11

The 1deviarillustr

(3r(31

Accorof wotbecauhave tthe rigbut hzsubjec

The drrules iinvolvChomr

'hich

edge

ld be

to be

ltron

teen

i the

frststl0n

it the

tical

Forr,e is

think

f thetread

rd toOVET

f the

Just

net'sctronuagees ofThatI this

n o fn ' a s

Collocation and testing 213

Groups of words considered as members of word-classes related toeach other in syntactic structures have been called colligations to bedistinguished from collocations which refer to groups of wordsconsidered as individual lexical items irrespective of their grammaticalclasses and relations.

To illustrate the distinction, consider the examples discussed earlier: verb +/o-infinitive is a colligation, dread + think a collocation which exemplifies thecolligation.

Although the colligation/collocation distinction is a valid and useful one, it isimportant to keep in mind that there is no sharp dichotomy between the two.The description of English involves very general rules at one end of thespectrum, which we call grammar, and from these very general rules there isa gradual move through a continuum of more and more qualified rules untilwe end up with particular statements about words at the lexical or vocabularyend of the spectrum.

At the grammatical end of this continuum, the gradual move from highlygeneralised rules to more qualified rules can perhaps be usefully illustrated byreference to chomsky's discussion of deviant sentences (chomskyI965:l52tf). Having spent 40-50 pages of the densest analysis on the' grammatical ' sentence:

(1) Sincerity may frighten the boy.

chomsky then discusses the sentences in (2), which he describes as havins ,a

borderline character' :

(2a) The boy may frighten sincerity.(2b) Sincerity may admire the boy.

The fact that these sentences have a 'borderline' rather than a ,clear-cut'

deviancy is explained by chomsky in terms of hierarchy of ,violation'

illustrated in (3):

(3a) Sincerity may virtue the boy.(3b) Sincerity may elapse the boy.

According to chomsky, (3a) is most 'deviant'because it involves a violationof word category -virtue is a noun where a verb is needed. t3ul is less deviantbecause elapse is a verb but it has the wrong syntactic feature as it does nothave the pattern verb + noun (object). (zb) is least deviant because admire isthe right word category (verb) with the right syntactic feature (+ object noun)but has the wrong 'selectional features' because admire only occurs withsubject nouns which are human, such as boy, not abstract ones like sincerie,The degree of 'violation'becomes less as we move from the highly generalrules about word categories or parts of speech to the more qualified rulesinvolving what chomsky refers to as 'selectional features'. However,chomsky's 'hierarchy of violation' does not deal with the vast area of

214 Collocation and testing

'deviancy' resulting from using unacceptable collocations which ale not

covered by violations of'selectional featufes'. Just because a verb has the'selectional feature' of occurring with abstract subjects and human objects,

this does not mean that all abstract subjects are appropriate with such verbs.

As can be seen from the examples below, both seize and consume, unlike

admire, do occur with abstract subjects, but not, it seems with sincerity:

Fear may seize the boy.? Sincerity may seize the boy.

Envy may consume the boy.? Sincerity may consume the boy.

While vocabulary knowledge may involve a number of qualified rules of the

kind Chomsky calls 'selectional features', which exclude some combinations

of words, most of that knowledge involves simply having acquired or leamed

specific combinations of words - collocations - which are acceptable, while

others are not.

A second point to note in relation to the colligation/collocation distinction is

that knowledge of a collocation, if it is to be used appropriately, necessarily

involves knowledge of the pattenis or colligations in which that collocation

can occur acceptably.

When Robins (see above) refers to collocations as 'individual lexical items

irrespective of their grammatical classes and relations', he is highlighting a

key characteristic of collocations which is that they can cut across

grammatical relations. So, for example, the collocation slow-walk is equally

evident in the colligation: verb + adverb, walk slowly, as it is in the

colligation: adjective + noun, slow walker. However, it is important to keep in

mind that the colligational options for a particular collocation are not

unlimited, and vocabulary knowledge includes knowing what the options and

limitations are. For example, the collocation short-walk as in he went for a

short walk, does not occur acceptably in the colligation verb + adverb - ?walk

shortly or with the -er form of the noun as in ?he is a short walker. To suggest

that there is a different walk here from the walk in slow walk merely begs the

question as to what constitutes the meaning of a word and what role

collocation has in defining that meaning.

It is particularly evident that many noun collocations are consffained with

respect to whether they occur in subject or object relation to a collocating

verb; many nouns collocate with particular verbs or subclasses of verb either

as subjects or as objects, but not both. Hence, as they develop their knowledge

of collocations, leamers need to be aware that this knowledge must include

the grammatical patterns or colligations in which the collocates can occul

Referring again to the verb claim, with few exceptions this only collocates

with subject nouns which are 'human', reflecting the real-world situation that

it is generally the case that 'people claim things', not the other way round.

Bocol\ \oant l l 4

u'hOC(

corCOT

n / nr " "

cla

coi

10A I

\\ 1t

- f' oc

cas

Ththe

A "botre\ranco{' n u

u h lproCOI",

fror

TheeXtc

I

OI

tei q

)s.

heNS

edile

1S

lv

0n

NS

I A

I S S

l l vhe1n

rotnd' a

tlk3S I

her1e

ithn o

u*i

: _t u g

I C \

hrarnd .

Collocation and testing /lJ

There are, however, exceptions such as these based on examples taken fromthe CLC:

There were many things that claimed my attention.. . . plague and tuberculosis, which claimed many lives . . .

Both of these examples, as it happens, illustrate the extended nature ofcollocations. In the first, we fail to record something significant about theword claim if we note simpry that it occurs with thing"asisubject noun; it isan important fact about the collocationar characieristics lr chim thatinanimate subjects such as thing canoccur in subject relation wrth craim onlywhen claim occurs with the noun attention as object. In other words, thingoccurs as subject with the extended collocation ctaim_attention (cf thecomparabre extended collocations : merit-attention, deserve_attention,command-attention). Similarly 'diseases' and other ,ills, substitutable forplague and tuberculosis collocate with craim as nou, ,rbi*s only whenclaim is in the extended collocation craim-rrfe (ct tne comiarable extendedcollocations : take -life, ac c ount for_ life).

10.4 Grammaticar patterns and corlocations in testing; able to produce a particular collocaterishing separate meanings of that wordo be shorthand for somethins like:

cases also conerare with disrinc,,"".";T::;;in:["rTons' which in som"

A word rlke correspond, for example, has (at least) two distinct meanings _both attested in the cLC - 'exchange letters' and 'match,

, a factwhich isrevealed by the occurrence of the word correspond withtwo very differentranges of colligations and associated collocaiions. with its first meaningcorrespond can occur in the progressive form and is typically restricted to'human' collocates: The two frieirt, hor" been corresponding for some time,whereas with the second meaning correspond typicalry does not have aprogressive form but has a greater variety of collocaies exemplified in:correspond to/with (the) truth/needs/advertisement/reality/expectations (allfrom the CLC).

The distinctive features of a word rike correspond couldbe used to test theextent of a leamer's knowledge of this word at different levels:Fill the blanks by using each of the following once only:A correspond with C correspond toB correspond D are correspondingl' I am happy to say that things have quietened down in the hostelnow that Louisa and pablo . . regularly again.2. It is interesting that your views and mine . . much

more closely now than they ever did in the past.

216 Collocation and testing

3. You can hardly call yourselves pen friends when you

each other about once aYear.4. It's handy that your expectations of what you will get from a

good ho l iday . . . . . . . . m ine .

Apart from such examples where colligation and collocation features can

distinguish basic meanings of a headword, it is the distinctive andlor

overlapping ranges of the collocating items with each word which map the

detailed contours of knowledge of that word. Above I referred to the

continuum from grammatical to lexical information about words. At the

lexical end of the continuum there is also a gradation of relationships that

collocating items have with a word - a gradation which moves from loose to

close or vice versa.

This is brought out in an article by Howarth (1998): Phraseology and Second

Language Proficiency and illustrated in the table below, based on native-

speaker data. Using a variety of formal criteria, Howarth categorises

collocations according to their degree of restrictiveness, thus identifying

degrees of conventionality, in particular the use of a verb in figurative,

technical or de-lexical senses or according to the degree of limitation on

permitted substitutions. He stresses the imporlance of seeing the categories as

forming a continuum rather than discrete classes'

combination category

COMPARE behaviourl levels, results, size

EMPHASISE autonomy, concept, link, rights

INFLUENCE content,culture.groups

free collocations

INTRODUCE bill, amendment, motion restr icted col locations Level I

PAY attention, heed

MAKE decision, imProvements

restricted collocations Level 2

GIVE credit to sb, Preference to sb restricted collocations Level 3

DRAW line figurative idiom

SET srore by srh pure idiom

I have attempted in the table on the next page to illustrate how such a

continuum might apply to a single vocabulaly item such as the word claim,

already used extensively above in discussing glammatical pattems and

extended collocations. Most of the examples in the table involve claim as a

verb, so the words listed occur as nouns in object relation to claim; two of the

examples involve the noun form of claim. All the examples apart from the

figurative category are taken from the CLC'

Co

lug:

coff

amel

1ir e

5t i l

la)

N o d

leveI

the rconit

mto.

HouI

collorI J . - -

spCO

cohir

10.sOne rcollochighelar ailaexamFcaullopurpolneeds

M 1 ' s e+ L ^ ^ ^t l l c 5 g I

one \\ {absolustandatany ocnon-dename1,1'some,:

I also lverb+lrthat wc

rn)I

IE

IC

atto

td

3

) S

l q

)n1S

l

e'iL

l i j

a

neU f

Combination with claim

compensation, benefit, allowanceattention, creditlives

stake (stake a claim)lay (lay claim to - not *lay a/the claim to)

Restricted collocations levet 1Restricted collocations level 2Restricted collocations level 3Figurative idiomPure idiom

Collocation and testing )lJ

Howarth suggests that learners'lexical difficulties lie chiefly in the restrictedcollocations 'since idioms and free collocations are largery unproutematrc,.He concludes:

A comparison between fNative-speaker] performance and fNon-native_speaker] errors suggest that at an advanced level leamers are lexicallycompetent and rrave successfully internalised the more restrictedco'ocations and semi-idioms. There remains, however, the vasthinterland of less restricted combinations . . .

10'5 sources - native-speaker corpora and dictionariesone of the most fertile sources for sampring the grammar of words andcollocations appropriate to different levels of proficiency, especially thehigher levels, are the large native-speaker co{pora, part of which a'e nowavailable in some limited form via th. Int"*"t. These provide a range ofexamples and useful frequency data but they must be used with considerablecaution - it is always necessary to bear in mind the differences between thepulposes for which colpora were produced, and the students, vocabularyneeds in relation to the specific sylrabus or rearning gout. tn"f -e following.

My searches of the large native-speaker corpora to date have confirmed thatthese corpora provide only a parlial selection of all the pattems or collocatesone would expect to find for a given rexical item - rro. do tt "y".o-"

with anabsolute guarantee that what you do find in them would Le accepted asstandard English. Searching through the occurrences of sincerityto check onany occurrences of ,rinceriQ as subject noun with frighten as in chomsky,snon-deviant sentence above, I was amused to find thatlhere was one citation,namely chomky's own sentence quoted from a book on languug" a, a'somewhat peculiar example'.

I also found among the dependent pattems of sincerfiy an example of for+verb+ing as in he had no -sinceriQ forfincring sorutions- not, I think, a pattemthat would be judged to be standaid English. And as a diversion, I stumbled

218 Collocation and testing

on a special kind of millennium bug in the large native-speakef corpofa: it

appears that about one sixth of the large number of citations of millennium are

spelled with only one 'n'. Should we take the fact that this spelling with one'n' occuls in significant numbers of native-speaker citations as sufficient

proof that millenium is an acceptable altemative spelling?

If occurrence of a dependent pattern oI collocation in the large native-speaker

corpora does not necessarily gualantee that the pattem or collocation is

standard English, it is also true that non-occulrence of a particular dependent

pattem or collocation in the colpora (or occurrence in less than a statistically

significant frequency) is by no means a gLrarantee that such a pattem or

collocation is non-standard or unacceptable.

Retuming to an earlier example, here is the entry for insinuation in the LTP

Dictionary of Selected Collocations (DOSC):

INSINUATIONV: defend oneself against, deny, make, (dis)prove, reject -

A: horrible, nasty, serious, unfair -

Where V: indicates that the cited verbs or verb phrases collocate with

insinuation as object, and A: indicates that the cited items collocate as

adjectives wttt insinuation. Examining large corpola' however' I compiled

the following:

V: ooze. resent. wince at -

A: astronomical, clear, disparaging, filthy, foolish, heinous,

hidden, indirect, silent

Intuitively, the DOSC list of collocations looks to be a familiar selection of

verbs and adjectives that one might expect to come acloss or use with

insinuation, but the overlap with the comparable collocations in the cotpora

happens to be minimal.

Native-speaker corpora are clearly very valuable as sources of authentic

learning and testing material, and for checking on frequencies, and typical co-

texts of lexical items, such as the fact that deny, referred to above, is almost

invariably used negatively - I cannot deny . .. - or in question form such as

Who would deny . . . ? UCLES' approach to producing items for testing

English in use at various levels, whether with a grammatical or lexical focus,

is what is sometimes referred to nowadays as 'corpus-informed" not corpus-

based. When it comes to dependent pattems and collocations, the native-

speaker corpora need to be used in conjunction with other reference material

such as advanced grammars and collocation dictionaries.

L0.6 Sources - the learner corpus (CLC)

As I have suggested above, the CLC is already proving invaluable in helping

us at UCLES to build up a picture of the vocabulary knowledge associated

(albeit in productive medium) with different levels of proficiency (FCE, CAE,

CIlerwccol1evan(

1 \ l

an(coldifitheACI

' " Y

a t acol

Gol\4'et

acc

a-crlaskcha

con

""1-

fonrg1\-t

har-ilmphllr

offestai(TheDOI

moa

The

oprn

DOI

justiobjeresplsharivalurFron

CI

isntly0r

.P

it

1e

nt

ofrhrIa

t1c

o-)stAS

ngl q

ts-

ial

n q_ _ D

edF

rhAS

ed

Collocation and testing )l)

cPE), for example, in terms of number and frequency of headwords at eachlevel and evidence of the range of grammaticar patterns used with particularwords at each lever. It is certain to prove equally valuable as a source ofcollocations which might be expected to be known by students at differentlevels, especially when used in conjunction with the native-speaker corporaand well-researched collocation dictionaries.A particularly interesting and fruitful area of collocations for both teachingand testing pulposes, emerging from searches of the cLC, are thosecollocations which are made up of words which individuany have a verydifferent frequency from their frequency as collocations. Take, for example,the word opinion' As one might predict, opinion is very frequent in the cLCacross all three levels FCE, cAE, cpE because composition tasks frequentryrequire the candidate to express opinions. The verb/o rm also occurs in cLCat all three levels, least often at FCE (10 weighted occurrences). However, thecollocation/orm-opinion occurs only at CpE level (9 occurrences).Going through all the verbs listed in DoSC with opinion as object, theweighted frequencies in CLC are as follows;

CPEaccept 5agree with 6ask (for) 6change 10confirmexpress 10form 4

CABL

z

6/1T

z

40

a t3+

J+

L

FCE

4788

4494

10

have 70rmpose 1influence 1offer 1state 1There are no entries in the cLC at any level for the following verbs listed inDosc as collocates of opinion: air; convey, discount, dissenT from, encrorse,modify, mould, seek out, stick to, sway, trust, venture, voice.The verbs from DOSC are not, of course, the onry verbs which collocate withopinion as object. Here are some other examples from the cLC not in theDOSC entry for opinion:

glve

justifyobject torespectsharevalueFrom this

t 1

CPE

1192

kind of data

CAE2

9

FCE1

_t

2I2

we may be able to staft building up a picture of

220 Collocation and testing

incremental ranges of collocations which are significant in characterising

lexical knowledge at different levels of proficiency, especially those involving

vocabulary items, which, looked at in isolation, have frequency profiles which

would not automatically lead us to associate them with different levels of

proficiency.

10.7 Approaches to testing collocation

Tests involving recognition of appropriate collocations are a standard part of

UCLES' examinations. Some typical examples of collocations from CPE

Paper 1 are listed below together with the relevant test item. The test focus

parl of the collocations is in bold:

1. breach-code (of ethics)Any doctor who . . the medical profession's code of

ethics is severely rePrimanded.

A fractures B cracks C ruPtures

2. pursue-pointShe obviously didn't want to discuss the matter so I didn't

. . the Point.A maintain B follow C Pursue D chase

3. lend-weight (to)These documents lend . . to the reporter's accusations'

A depth B weight C volume D gravitY

4. power-waneThis is the author's tenth book and it is clear that her creative

p o w e r h a s . . .

A waned B dissolved C suspended D dispelled

It should be noted here that in selecting the appropriate collocation, the

leamer also decides that the so-called distractors, when inserted in the gaps,

actually form deviant expressions, such as *to rupture a code of ethics, *to

chase a point, *to lend gravity to something. It is worth noting, therefore, that

successful performance on such test items involves knowing both what is

possible and what is not.

Testing collocations in this way has worked well enough over the years in that

performance on such tests correlates well with other measures of high-level

language ability used in the CPE. As part of the process of developing a

revised version of cPE (due to be introduced in Decembet 2002), work is

being carried out on colpora to check on frequencies, among other criteria, for

establishing appropriate difficulty levels of such collocations.

Experimental test formats are also being trialled, which attempt to probe the

cumulative nature of lexical knowledge as evidenced by the learner's ability

D breaches

t o rcunOne

Iderthatthe Iotheblana pr{selet

L

{ t

I C

It shrcandinot aqa ranlfor erler-elsi r r r r t }

ASSUN

on the

10.8

So. hcattemlframrprodul

1. Fancriteriiin la1'For exlevels rcorpor

ngn o' _D

chof

of)E

US

heps,

I U

rat1S

rat, ^ ti E t

i S

tbr

. L ^

. 1 1 C

rtY

Collocation and testing /)l

to recognise not just one collocation (as in the examples above from thecurrent cPE Paper i), but a range of collocations in which a word occurs.One of these formats is illustrated below.

Identifying the most appropriate answer for this item involves recognisingthar opinion collocates in suitable contexts with impose, with popular, and inthe phrase in a matter of opinion, all of which are taken from Dosc. Theother nouns (fashion, feeling, will) fit appropriately in one or two of theblanks, but not all three. A variant on this type of item is also being trialled asa productive test, where the candidate has to produce, rather than recognise orselect, the appropriate word that fits two or three contexts.

Circle the word which fits in alt three sentences:A fashion B opinion C feeline

(a) You cannot simply come in to an existing situation andlmpose your . . on everyone like that.

(b) Though he may have good reasons for introducing suchmeasures, popular . . is likely to prevent them fromworkins.

(c) She may insist on such a dress code in the office, but whetherit's correct to do so is a matter of

It should be noted that if this type of item is going to be used to testcandidates'vocabulary knowledge at one particular level, such as cpE. and

just the one that is at the appropriate level, given that it might reasonably beassumed that the two lower level collocations should be known to the leameron the basis of correctly identifying or producing the higher level collocation.

10.8 Summary

So, how imporlant is collocation in testing the learner's proficiency? I haveattempted to answer this question by placing collocation within theframework of vocabulary knowledge - whether for recosnition orproduction pulposes - summarised below:1. Familiarity with increasing numbers of headwords which can on somecriteria be classified as appropriate to incremental levels of proficiency (or,in lay terms, more difficult).

D will

'appropriate' to highernative-speaker

For example : puny and snag. These are described aslevels only on the criterion of low frequency in bothcorpora and the CLC.

222 Collocation and testing

2. Familiarity with distinct but related lexical items which are part of

families of words.For example: the noun denial andverb deny.

3. Ability to distinguish different grammatical categories of the same

word.For example: knowing claim occrtts as both a verb and a noun.

4. Ability to distinguish colligations of words'

For example claim + ro infinitive and claim + that-clatse.

5. Ability to differentiate basic meanings of a word using knowledge

of its colligations and collocations.For example'. correspond (a = write letters; b = match)

6. Incremental knowledge of collocations of a word including different

degrees of restrictiveness, and the ability to recognise idiomatic uses.

For example : claim-bag gage, claim- c omp ensation, claim- c redit,

claim-lfe, stake a claim, lay claim to.

I have also discussed in this article soulces which UCLES is making use of to

ensure systematic and consistent sampling of vocabulary knowledge,

especially at the upper levels of proficiency.

The importance of collocation in the framework of vocabulary knowledge

should be clear; the extent of the contribution which knowledge of

collocations makes in differentiating incremental levels of proficiency is still

an area for further research. At UCLES we will be continuing our

investigations into the area and how to test it validly and consistently, making

use of a variety of sources, including collocation dictionaries and both native-

speaker and learner corpora. At the same time, validation projects are

continuing under the auspices of ALTE to link leamers' performance in the

formal testing situation with their CAN-do abilities outside the classroom.

Discussion QuestionsIf you make a 'vocabulary test' for your class, would it concentrate on

anything other than words they have studied recently?

How can you ensure learners don't only think of 'new words'in the input they

meet?

From a teaching perspective, Peter Hargreaves points out how complex the

idea of 'knowing a word' can be. Which of these aspects of vocabulary

building do you emphasise in class:

a. new words b. word grammar c. collocations

Do you think different vocabulary building strategies are important at

different levels? If so, what strategies are most important at these levels:

a. elementary b. intermediate (FCE) c. advanced (CAE) d. mastery (CPE)

IcE

E11

R

Collocation and testing /)!

References

Chomsky A. N. (1965) Aspecrs of the Theory of Syntax, MIT pressHilI, J. & Lewis, M. (Eds) (1997) LTp Dicrionary of Selecred Collocations, LTpHowarth, P. (1998) phraseology and second Language proficiency, Applied Linguistics, vol.19, No.1 pp 2444Robins, R. H. (1964) General Linguistics: an introductory suruey, Longman

ot .

)fIItr(r-t-

]3

te

:V

te

n'

224 A world beyond collocation

Chapter 11

A world beyond collocation: new perspectives onvocabulary teaching

Michael Hoey

Michael Hoey is Professor of English at the University of Liverpool and author

of the award winning Patterns of Lexis in Text, ouP 1991. He is a descriptive

linguist rather than a language teacher. In this more theoretical paper, based on

the talk he gave at IATEFL Manchester 1998, he discusses his own language

learning in the light of his theoretical insights into lexical patterning. Teachers

may find it interesting to see how research, which initially appears remote from

the classroom, can have practical consequences, particularly for the content of

teaching materials. He suggests that learning individual words is relatively

inefficient; that learning collocations is more efficient, but as our understanding

of text increases, it may be that colligation will play an increasing role in

classroom materials and teaching.

11.1 Learning new words

Despite being the head of a language unit dedicated to Applied Linguistics, I

am not myself an experienced language teacher. The little experience I have

of language teaching is well out of date and forms no basis for giving practical

advice to anyone. I am, it is true, surrounded by staff who daily renew the

connection between linguistic theory and chalk-face teaching and I learn from

them, but this does not alter the basic fact that I carry no authority as a

practitioner of TEFL. Before my honesty leads you to skip this chapter, let me

quickly add that I do, however, have another kind of experience that may

partially compensate. I may have no language teaching experience, but I do

have daily experience of being a language learner.

Every weekday, more or less without exception, I attempt to leam a language.

I give a minimum of 20 minutes a day to the task and often more. I work

meticulously through sets of materials, listen to tapes, read the passages set

(occasionally going beyond the textbook), tackle the exercises suggested,

memorise lists of words, and engage in painful conversation with anyone

competent to listen and reply. My motives are a genuine desire to command

another language, a wish to speak something of the language of any country

I may be visiting, and a determination to put myself through the hoops that

language lealners go through in order better to understand their problems.

Sadly, I am not a successful learner - there is no language that I could

truthfully say I have a command of, though I am an adequate reader of a

couple. My first goal has therefore not yet been met and my second only

paflma5o f pb e lpra(avel

Thecom( a Bo n lHugthoucoutrsulteandu-homadrvoca

Suenthemof scactl\

OccrACTOI

accon

archi

carpE

Num

one

two

three

SlXt\

slxt) -

Suefircomfl

Colloexaml

it, thaimmeandto the

reneS

0

f

vcn

t -

; L

L,

d

vt L

o

a

v

A world beyond collocation 225

partially so. Paradoxically, my failure to become a super-leamer, capable ofmastering languages with consummate ease, means that my third objective -of putting myself in the shoes of the average language learner - continues tobe fruitfully met. The experience I bring to a book like this, aimed at thepractising language teacher, is that of the typical well-motivated but onlyav er agely competent leamer.

The materials I use vary greatly in style. Some are structural in style, somecommunicative, some eclectic. over the past year I have worked with Sueiios(a BBC course on spanish) , A vous la France (another BBC course, this timeon French), swedish in Three Months (an optimistically titled course fromHugo), Cantonese: A complete course for beginners (a Teach yourself Book,though a far cry from the courses they used to publish) and a Routledgecourse entitled Colloquial czech. All of these have merits; none is perfectlysuited to my needs. I come to them with research expertise in text linguisticsand lexical studies. I find nothing that relates to the former in any of them; thewhole discourse perspective might never have existed for all the impact it hasmade on the authors of these materials. They cannot, however, avoidvocabulary, so the question arises: how do they choose to teach vocabulary?suefios, A vous la France and to a lesser extent Colloquiat Czech favourthemed word-lists, by which I mean that the lists are constructed on the basisof some common semantic property, such as colour, measurement or sportingactivity. Abbreviated examples from Suefios (pp 254-5) are the followine:Occupations

actor/actressaccountantarchitectcarpenter

Numbers

onetwothree

sixtysixty-five

sesenta

sesenta y cinco etc.

suefios also uses unthemed lists (lists made up of words that have nothing incommon) to accompany taped examples. Both reachyourself cantonese andcolloquial czech use such lists as their main way of teaching vocabulary, forexample, from page 16 of Colloquial Czech:

actor/actrizcontable ( Sp ) ; contador/oraarquitecto/acarpintera eIc.

uno/un; unadostres

it, that, this toimmediately, at once hnedand ato the left vlevo

very velmito the right vpravothen potum

226 A world beyond collocation

What holds such a list together is simply its relevance to a piece of taped

dialogue that the leamer is expected to be attempting to make sense of. The

list's main virtue is that each item it contains is readily contextualised by

reference to the tape. On the other hand, as can be seen, the items leamed

form no system.

The lists tn Swedish in Three Months are of both the kinds mentioned, but in

addition some are structurally oriented. An (abbreviated) example is:

Here is a list of some of the most common deponent verbs:

to breathe andqsto be, to exist finnas

N o hTher

HavTherr

I susli t i s rto er

Thisof elrsomeundoleris lCONS{

u ithc

conil

becau

the ca

usage

e-\prel

then t

tr.2In diflfrom trof rl hrL

that nl

a u-0rl

made

empla

You nr

list ir

words

emplo

possiheach rrevealrbelou'lprofesdistingyesteftcollocl

to hopeto vomrtto succeed

hoppaskrrikaslyckas

In so far as Cantonese, Colloquial Czech and Swedish in Three Months tely

on lists of this kind, they are clearly adopting a conservative strategy for

vocabulary teaching, one tried and trusted for centuries but one that takes little

account of what this book has been about, of what we now know about the

way words work.

Suefios and A vous la France are more adventurous in this respect. Both

employ shaded sections that talk about the way one says something. These are

sometimes useful, for example:

To ask for a ticket you can say:

Quisiera (comprar) un billete para (ir a) Valencia.I'd like a ticket to (go to) Valencia.

For the type of ticket you want, say:

wn billete de ida (y vuelta)a single/return ticketun billete de fumadores/no fumadoresa smoker/non-smoker

Sometimes, on the other hand, these sections are more contrived:

To ask about seasons, say:

Cudntas estaciones hay ?How many seasons are there?

Cudndo es el invierno/verano/etc?When is winter/summer I eIc?

And to answer, say:

El invierno es de diciembre a marzo.Winter is from December to March.

H a y . . . e s t a c i o n e s .T h e r e a r e . . . s e a s o n s .

)edlhebyred

t l n

L I-Y

for

ttle

the

orhd l g

A world beyond collocation )/J

No hay estaciones definidas.There aren't well-defined seasons.

Hay una temporada lluviosa y una temporada seca.There is a rainy season and a dry season.I suspect that many leamers want to know how to buy a train ticket, but thatit is only ecologists and geographers who have a burning need to know howto enumerate the seasons.

This does not exhaust the strategies these coursebooks use - there is use alsoof exercises to encourage guessing on the basis of similarity of sound and alsosome discussion of related words - but the strategies I have illustratedundoubtedly dominate. How successful, then, are these methods of teachinglexis? I can only speak for myself as a very average reamer, but I amconscious of quickly forgetting themed lists. Because the words are learnedwithout reference to any context in which they might be used, they tend to getconfused with each other. unthemed lists work somewhat better fbr mebecause the accompanying tape contextuarises the words I am rearning, butthe contextualisation is apparently accidental and varies in usefulness. Theusage notes likewise vary in usefulness - if an opportunity to use theexpressions arises reasonably soon after they have been leamed, then theseexpressions tend to stick, but if on the other hand no such opportunity arises,then they drift out of memory.

11.2 Why word lists are dangerousIn differing degrees, all the methods for teaching lexis I have mentioned sufferfrom two weaknesses, one of which I shall mention immediately and the otherof which I shall spring upon you later. The first and immediaie weakness isthat none show any awareness of the importance of collocation, the companya word keeps, an important matter, as previous chapters in this book havemade abundantly clear. with that in mind, look again at the list of types ofemployment quoted above from Swefios.You might reasonably suppose that you would encounter all the words in thislist in very similar contexts. you might reasonably predict that employmentwords llke architect and accountont would share many collocates -employ(ed), work(ed), good, trained as spring to mind as obviouspossibilities. Yet, as you would now predict having read the rest of the book,each word also has its own collocates. sometimes examining large corporareveals some surprises: actor, for example, has these collocates: [see notebelowl best, former, (perhaps an indication of the insecurity of the actingprofession), director, and, most surprisingly, sir, in examplls soch as Thedistinguished actor sir lan McKellan was invited to Downing streetyesterday-.. . In contrast, accountanl does not have sir as one of its majorcollocates; carpenter, which is considerably less common than the other

228 A world beyond collocation

words in the list, has aged, father, son, among its main collocates. Thesedifferences can be explained in terms of the word's characteristic grammaticalpattems, of which more below. For the moment, we can note that the

collocates of carpenter do not refer to the job, unlike the collocates of all theother words on the list.

[Notice that this paper uses a different, more technical, definition of collocation than most of

the others in this book. It defines collocation as 'words which occur within a few (six) words

on either side of the headword in naturally occurring spoken or written text': under this

definition actor and Sit; carpenter mdfather are collocates. Although this technical definition

seems a long way from the classroom, it can reveal pattems which are helpful for teachers and

materials writers, see Chapter 7. Ed.l

What all this suggests is that themed lists hide great variety of use in a

spurious conformity. It is reasonable to assume that the collocates of all thesewords will similarly vary in Spanish (or any other language), though of coursethat remains to be proved. If they do, learning the words in a list will not guide

the learner into producing natwal-sounding sentences: more imporlantly andless tendentiously, list-learning will not help recognition of the words in

reading, nor will it help with guess-work for accompanying words.

So is this weakness also evident in EFL textbooks? The answer is a modified'Yes'. If we look at Headway, it avoids lists as such and sometimes goes well

beyond them. One strategy used (New Headway English Course:Intermediate Student's Bookp 30) is to encourage guesswork:

Work in three groups.

Iihltrsfio0sa

Group AGroup BGroup C

Read about the writer.Read about the painter.Read about the musician.

Read your extract and answer the questions about your person. Try toguess the words underlined from the context. Then use your dictionary

to check the words.

This activity is inherently good, encouraging as it does sensible guessing in a

natural reading context and inviting the learner to make use of collocationalinformation. The dictionary is only brought in as a checking device.

Much of the time, though, the strategies for teaching lexis are less natural.

Often the effect of the chosen method is similar to that of using an unthemed

list. Consider the following example, also from New Headway Intermediate:

You will hear Bert Atkins, who was born in 1919, talking about his

school days [Accompanying tape]. Check these words in your

dictionary:

to knit a cloth a slate chalk

Apart from giving the leamer practice in using a dictionary, this activity

serves no different purpose from the list from Colloquial Czech. A similar

charge can be levelled against the following activity from the same book:

ThinlthrcI(

lea

sealle

le

ofdstls

ln

rd

a

se1erdm

)d

r11

A

. Id l

[ .

:

f!-

ar

A world beyond collocation //)

VOCABULARY Art, music and literature

Use your dictionary to look up any new words.Look at the nouns below and write them in the correct column.

composer poeminstrwment bandchapter tunebrush banjodrawing novel

ART

author painter oil paintingpalette sketch orchestrabugle biography detective storyportrait fiction playpianist pop group

MUSIC LITERATURE

This strategy encourages the leamers to build up themed lists for themselves,but while this gives the leamers ownership of the lists they create, the liststhemselves have the same weaknesses as any other kind of list. Sometimes thestrategy adopted is one that seeks to combine the themed list withcollocational information. consider the following further example from thesame book:

VOCABULARY AND LISTENING: SpoTt

Make a list of as many sports and leisure activities as you can think of.Use the pictures to help you. [Pictures omitted]

WiIe in play, go, or do. There are three of each.

. tennis . athletics . football

. exerctses . volleyball

. jogging . aerobics

Can you work out the rules?

choose some of the sporls or activities from your list and fill in thecolumns below. use your dictionary to look up any new words that youneed.

sport/activity play, go, people place equipmenror do?

football play goalkeeper stadium ball, bootsfootballer footballpitchreferee

The effect of this sfategy is to get the leamer to organise his or her knowledgeinto themed lists and of course supplement that knowledge with the help ofthe dictionary. If that was all it did, it would be no more than a fussy way ofcreating themed lists. But what of course it does in addition is invite thelearner to investigate the common collocates associated with each of the items

fishing

skiing

230 A world beyond collocation

in the list. Furlhermore, it recognises that each of the items in the list will havedifferent collocates; it reminds the learner, implicitly at least, that such listscannot be treated as homogeneous.

11.3 The importance of context

So far, so good. But so far is not quite far enough. To begin with, vocabularydefinitely takes a back seat to grammar in Headway and, as already noted, thevocabulary activities vary in value. But there is a more fundamental problemhere, which is a direct product of the fact that vocabulary items need to betaught with their most common collocates. It has always been impossible toexpose learners to mote than a fraction of the vocabulary that they might befelt to need. How much more impossible it must be to teach them thenecessary vocabulary in context! Ifwe assume that every item has on averagearound ten important collocates, we have in effect multiplied the vocabularyleaming task by ten. Admittedly some of the words which make up thecollocations will be items we might want the learner to acquire anyway, andleaming items in context may be easier than learning them out of context, butfor all that the problem will not go away. There is a greal deal of vocabularyto be learned, and a gteat deal to be learned about each item ofvocabulary.

One strategy adopted increasingly in recent years is that of developingspecialised material for the purpose of teaching vocabulary. One such work isEnglish Vocabulary in Use by Michael McCarthy & Felicity O'Dell. Thiscontains 100 sections, all but seven of which are directly concemed withteaching classes of words, mostly semantically organised, though in somecases morphologically organised.

In an early section (p 2), they offer the learner advice that is so eminentlysensible that it is worth quoting extensively:

What does knowing a new word mean?

. It is not enough just to know the meaning of a word. You also needto know:(a) what words it is usually associated with(b) whether it has any particular grammatical characteristics(c) how it is pronounced

. Try to learn new words not in isolation but in phrases.

. Write down adjectives together with nouns they are oftenassociated with and vice vetsa, e.g. royal family; rich vocabulary.

. Write down verbs with the structure and nouns associated withthem, e.g. to add to our knowledge of the subject; to express anopinion.

. Write down nouns in phrases, e.g. in contact with; a train set;shades of opinion.

ThBu1 - -l f J

thethrrb1un&- .+,AU

u h

-1 i

1 - _ _1\Cl

- \ r

noiA'in

kin

narl

mrsthewitlI O i

con

s191

clil

s1_s1

[ve

StS

ry:helm

betobe. L ^. t l c

o e

ll.y

:he

nd

lut

rry

n o

: I S

frisirhTle

tl]'

4 world beyond collocation 231

Write down words with their prepositions, e.g. at a high level;thanks to your help.

Note any grammatical characteristics of the words you arestudying. For example, note when a verb is irregular and when anoun is uncountable or is onlv used in the olural.

. Make a note of any special pronunciation problems with wordsyou're learning.

(Quoted by permission of the publisher, Cambridge University press.)

This is excellent advice and deserves to be etched into any learner's memory.But there are two points that need to be made about it. First, it is very muchleamer-advice, not teacher-advice. Indeed it might even be seen as advice tothe learner on how to minimise the damaging effects of strategies such asthose we were earlier considering. Second, it is advice that is much harder tofollow than it seems, and from a materials writer's point of view it is virtuallyimpossible to provide what is needed. The very next sentence in the Mccarthy& o'Dell book unwittingly provides clear evidence of this. They follow theiradvice with the following activity designed to make the reader think aboutwhat they have just said:

How would you record the following?

a) chillyd) wp to the ears

b) dissuade c) kinge) independent f) get married

A perfectly worthwhile task - as long as the learner does not check the answerkey at the back of the book! Here we are told that some possible answers are:

a) a chilly dayb) to dissuade someone from doing somethingc) a popular king / to crown a kingd) up to the ears in worke) independent of someone I an independent cotntryf) get married to someone

At first sight these answers seem reasonable. But on closer inspection they donot in most cases ring true. In my corpus, for example, in lz00 instances ofking, there is only one case of popular king - as opposed to thirteen of pornking. Nearry 40vo of instances of king actually occur in conjunction with aname often followed by a number, for example King charles II, and tharmight well be the most natural form in which to record the word. If, though,the lower case k invites a non-naming response, the most common adjectiveswith king are new, former, last, .future. Likewise the most common collocateto the right of independent is state, not country, though country is also acommon collocate. Even a chilly day, though an acceptable combination, issignificantly outnumbered in my corpus by a chilly wind, a chily night, achilly evening and, above all, a chilly receptiont Moreover, and perhaps moresignificantly, a chil\, day is outnumbered by multiple-word phrases such as a

232 A world beyond collocation

chilly May day or a chilly damp overcast day. Notice also the significant butcovert collocation in lt's pretty chilly this morning.

But these are minor matters. The real problem lies in the fact that theseanswers do not reflect serious generalisations about the way these words areused. I noted above that all the methods for teaching lexis we have beenlooking at suffer from two weaknesses. Firstly, they take insufficient or noaccount of collocation. Secondly, there is a world beyond collocations. Wehave got so fixated on collocations that we do not see that they sometimesgroup in generalisable ways and these groupings then account for examplesof word combinations that are not collocations.

11.4 Semantic prosody

The frst important point 'beyond collocation' is that words don't justcombine with chosen other words, they combine with chosen meanings. Theidea is associated with John Sinclair (1991) who commented: Many uses ofwords and phrases show a tendency to occur in a cefiain semanticenvironment For example, the verb happen is associated with unpleasantthings - accidents and the like.

This phenomenon has been labelled 'semantic prosody'. Semantic prosody asI am defining it occurs when a word associates with a particular set ofmeanings. So, for example, in principle, almost anything can be chilly; peopleand food can, afler all, both be cold so why should they not be chilly? Yet wefind in fact that the word occurs in the company of certain kinds of meaningrather than others. The table below shows the semantic prosodies of chilly.For the sake of contrast I have included the frequencies of people Nrdfood,below the line in the table below, just to show up the significance of the truesemantic prosodies.

Semantic prosody frequency(out of 352)

Percentage Example

unit of timeplace

weather

afi

temperarure

ill people

watery things

[metaphorical]

795830zo

l 4o

896

22Vo

l6Vo

97o

7Vo

4Vo

37o

2Vo

27%

a chilly overcast aftemoon

chilly Comwall

it's pretty chilly

the chilly breeze

a decidedly chilly -10C

a chilly patient

a chilly bathtub

a chilly reception

people

food

6I

27o a chilly lavatory attendant

chilly rolls with Iceberg lettuce

Excepting the metaphorical use of chilly, which does not strictly involvesemantic prosody, the prosodies listed above the line in this table account for86Vo of the occurrences of chillv in mv data. What this means is thal if a

learnecertaiiproso(all gorbeenpprosodwords,revealothersoccur Iof textrchilb-they ctr

These15 tlue

prosodnot col'time'

Morec4yet allpoint hfor theas indivocabulthe wqprosodl

This lalthe virlassocraor typiccharactlfrom lerarbitra{for leanof the Ito ask dcourseb

11.5 I

Even stwords anamelylist fron

A world beyond coilocation )JJ

leamer wants to learn chilly they would do best to learn that it occurs incefiain kinds of context rather than all contexts. Seen like this, semanticprosody is a kind of generalisation based upon the collocates a word has. Likeall good generalisations, it covers word combinations that might not havebeen picked up as collocations. For exampre , a chilry decadefits the semanticprosody of 'unit of time' but is not a particularly common combination ofwords' on the other hand, as we will see, it is u purtiul generalisation, as datareveal that some coilocates which we might expect to occur actually do whileothers do not. It is particularly interesting, foi example, that chilty does notoccur much as a literal descriptor of people, since peopre are a common topicof texts and talk. It would appear that ir you say of a person that they arechilly, you mean that they are ill or have an unattractive temperament, not thatthey could do with sitting near a fire.These semantic prosodies are more than the accumulation of collocations. Itrs true, as you wourd expect, that there are lots of collocations in eachprosody' Thus chilly coilocates with morning, night, evening, day; butit doesnot collocate with minutes or decades, yet both of these are examples of the'time' prosody. chilly also collocates with mountain but not with tent orMorecambe (despite what visitors to the north-west of Engrand might think),yet all three words exemplify the 'place'prosody.

Don,t miss the importantpoint here: such semantic prosodies are potentially powerful generalisationsfor the language learner. It is no longer n"."ruu.y to leam endless collocationsas individual combinations, which as I remarked earlier seemed to makevocabulary learning harder. Instead, what the leamer needs to do is to learnthe word in combination with an absolutely typical representative of theprosody as long as (s)he also knows that it IS typical.This last point is crucial. I commented earlier that unthemed word-lists havethe virtue for me of being contextualised by the texts with which they areassociated. But, I added, I was never sure whether the contexts were naturalor typical. unless one knows that the collocation one is leaming is absolutelycharacteristic of the way the word is used, more than half the value one getsfrom learning the word in its context disappears. [As we saw on pp r32r3, thearbitrary gaps in what we might expect by generalisation.un

"uu." problems

for leamers. Edl Mccarthy and o'Dell may not reflect the semantic prosodiesof the words they seek to teach, but at reast they are encouraging the leamerto ask the right questions. you would scan the pages of most if iy languagecoursebooks in vain for the slightest hint that words have semantic prosodies.

11.5 Colligation

Even semantic prosody, however, is insufficient to account fully fbr howwords are used. There is a world beyond colocation and semantic prosody,namely that of colligation. Let us return for a moment to the ,employment,list from suefios discussed earrier. At first sight, as a set ofcountable, concrete

234 Alryorld beyond collocation

nouns sharing quite a lot of meaning, we might expect words lke architect,actor accountant, carpenter to share quite a lot grammatically as well. So wemight expect them all to take definite and indefinite articles (the Finnisharchitect, a church architect). We might expect them all to take classifiers(church architect) and possessives (the Academy's architect). We mightexpect them also to occur within possessive constructions (the whims of anarchitect; the architect's bombastic ego). We might expect them to occur inparentheses (WeUs Coates, the architect of Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead)and apposition (British architect Will Alsop). Any good grammar wouldencourage us to have all these expectations, and in so far as every item ofthelist is grammatically capable of appearing in all these constructions, suchexpectations are all entirely reasonable.

But 'capable of appearing' is not the same as 'likely to appear'. Grammarsover the years have got obsessive about recording what the language iscapable of doing, and there has been all too little attention givengrammatically to what it actually does, or, more accurately, what we dowith it. This is where the concept of colligation comes in. Colligation can bedefined as 'the grammatical company a word keeps and the positions itprefers'; in other words, a word's colligations describe what it typically doesgrammatically.

The following table, based on occulrences in my corpus, shows that the wordsaccountant, actot actress, architect, carpenter differ grammatically amongstthemselves, despite our expectations they should all behave alike; they have,in other words, different colligations. Notice the particularly high numbers inbold and the particularly low ones underlined in the table.

Grammaticalconstruction

accountant(1045 instances)

actor(3re4)

actress(1710)

architect(2020)

carpenter(24s)

indefinitearticle

26Vo 22Vo lSVo l6Vo 42Vo

classifier 26Vo l27a l0Vo 8Vo 4Vo

tpossessort

constructionie 's & o f NP

6Vo 8Va LTVo 8Vo 16Vo

tpossessedt

constructionlOVo lVb 0Vo 5Vo 2Vo

apposition l4Vo 27Vo 3lVo lSVo 2%o

parenthesis I'lVo 87a l27o 13Va 26Vo

A 1urrli n rwlI

NalikrliktltetbutharflCtt

tha

wol

con

car,

coa

AId

ahgar

thal

fr€(Act,rne;l

Gc(|m

I

. - t

Yort o (

pr0

sefl

odd

sirl

haq

coll

To l

and

Mc1pr€x

A world beyond collocation 235

A glance at this table shows that 'employment' words do not behave in auniform fashion when it comes to the grammatical constructions they occurin and with. The word carpenter has a much higher likelihood of occurringwith an indefinite article or in a parenthesis (Mr Morland, a carpenter fromNofting Hill . ..) than does, say, architect. The word accountant is much morelikely to occur with a classifier (a wages accountant) and actress is morelikely to occur in apposition (actress Debra Winger) than any of the otheritems in the list. It is quite possible to possess an accountant (my accowntant)but virtually impossible to possess an actress (as dreamy-eyed teenage boyshave long known). An actress may however be a possessor (the mother of theactress Fay Compton) as may a carpenter. What the table does not show isthat even with regard to this similarity between actress and carpenter the twowords actually differ. Whereas carpenter occurs in 's constructions and of-constructions in roughly equal proportions (the son of a Lithuaniancarpenter; the catpenter's apron), actress occurs almost exclusively inthe of-constructlon.

Alone amongst all the employment words, architect is not distinguished in theabove table by its unusually high or unusually low association with one of thegrammatical patterns mentioned - but it is distinguished from the others inthat, as the supplement to the table below shows, it is alone in beingfrequently used as a metaphor (He was the main architect of the peace plan).Actor is the only other word in the list with any significant record ofmetaphorical use.

actor actress architect carpenter(3re4) (1710) (2020) (24s)5Vo none 22Va 17o

You might imagine that colligation and semantic prosody are applicable onlyto concrete nouns. One of the other lists quoted from Suefios is that of thenumbers. You might be forgiven for thinking that at least these could safely belearned out of context because these, surely, would not have collocations,colligations and semantic prosodies. No such chance, I'm afraid. It is possibleto show thal sixty has a strong semantic prosody with time (e.9. sixty years),occurring with a unit of time 23Vo of the time but that sixty-five has no suchprosody, occurring with a unit of time only 8Vo of the time. Slxfl also hassemantic prosody with markers of imprecision (over sixty, almost sixty, sixty-odd), occuning with such markers 2l%o of the time, but I have no instance ofsixty-five occurring with a marker of imprecision in my corpus. On the otherhand, while both words have a great preference for beginning a sentence, thatcolligation is much sffonger for sixQ-five (86Vo as opposed to Tl%o).

To show how it applies to vocabulary leaming, let me again pick on McCarthyand O'Dell's sample answers. (I stress again lhat I am not picking onMcCarthy & O'Dell because they are bad, but I am discussing their examplesprecisely because they are about as good as it currently gets.) The sample

Grammatical accountantconstruction (1045instances)metaphor none

236 A world beyond collocation

answers they give for married and up to the ears both creak somewhat, and itis worth looking at why. For these words they offer in their answer key thefol lowing suggest ions:

a) up to the ears in workb) get married to someone

In my corpus there are only 14 examples of wp to ... ears, used metaphorically,and twelve of these show a collocation tttithin.In this respect, then, McCarthy& O'Dell's answer is typical of the way of the word is used. But a stillstronger pattern is overlooked. Thirteen out of fourteen of the examples in mycorpus colligate with possessive pronouns. rather than a definite article, forexample: wp to his ears in exasperation, wp to my ears in debt.

So McCarthy & O'Dell's answer is colligationally untypical. Furthermore,ten of the occurrences in my corpus manifest semantic prosody with badthings (such as treason and narrow and sterile rwles) and five of these badthings are instances of debt. McCarthy & O'Dell's work is a marginal case ofthis and not one that reflects the prosody clearly. Thus a proper description ofup to ... ears is the following:

possessive (131

subjecn1arril,

ra,hich

to ihe

v'as p)

are lc

nlarnt

some l

oI }t (?t

L5 U - L I

fuller

uirh t ir

posl I f - :

Obr ioon uhltu o frrphra-<enrc!'r'[N

subie';r','ith irsome

Againmore l

l c 1

7Jr,r

I n a uongmlconhnlin-euirapartpreparteache

with (1)

COLLIGATION

COLLOCATION

SEMANTIC PROSODYgood (3)

debt (5\ miscellaneous (5) COLLOCATION

Put more straightforwardly, wp to his ears in debt has a one in five chance ofoccuring when you use up to ... ears; up to the ears in workhas a one in 800chance of occurring. Guess which one I think a leamer should learn.

[A word of caution may be needed here. If the corpus Michael is using is heavily skewed, forexample towards news reporting, its most typical examples, although typical of that genre, maynot be typical of the whole language or, for example, another genre such as informalconversation. It can never be repeated too often that statements based on corpus evidence, whileundoubtedly evidence of what is in, that corpus, may not be as typical of the language as awhole as we are tempted to believe. From a pedagogical point of view, in addition to raw colpusevidence, factors such as immediate usefulness or relevance to the needs of particular studentsmay need to be taken into account when choosing the examples which will be most helpful fora particular class. Ed.l

A similar picture applies to get married. Of 257 instances of clausescontaining the verbal group get married, at least 92 (36Ea) have as their

u p t o . . . e a r s

y1vr

lIff

A world beyond collocation 237

subject a reference to the couple ( "Why did Awntie Elaine and Uncle Marc getmarried?" asked Olivia.) A further 26have an indefinite subject, ustally you,which may be referring to a couple. Another 97 GSqa) have one of the partiesto the marriage as subject but no mention of the other pafty (Monica Zanottiwas planning to get married this spring.) On the other hand, only five (ZVo)are followed by a prepositional phrase starting with to. The phrase germarried is far more likely to occur with a positive time or place expression ofsome kind (though not usually both), such as planned to get married one dayor wanted us to get married in church - 28vo of instances of the expression doso - but this is twice as likely to happen when the couple is subject. Thus afuller description of get married would be:

COLLIGAIION

posit ive (42) negative (0)

with time/place expression (29) SEMANTIC PROSODY

. / \/ \

poSitive (20) negative (9) SEMANTIC PROSODY

obviously, the exact distribution of these characteristics may differ dependingon whether get, getting or got is selected, but informal inspection of the othertwo forms suggests no great variation. For example, the past tense form of thephrase got married shows the same tendencies. Out of 172 instances of golmarried, 4l (27Ea) have the couple as subject; a further six have an indefinitesubject, and only eight (5Vo) are followed by a prepositional phrase beginningwith to, three of which are separated from the verbal group by punctuation ofsome sofi.

Again, what all this means is that sentences such as the following are muchmore likely than McCarthy & O'Del|s get married to someone:

I cried when I watched Jill and Mark get married on Tuesday.They're planning to get married at last, in Monaco.

In a way, this analysis only confirms the wisdom of McCarlhy & O'Dell'soriginal advice to record every new word in its grammatical context. It alsoconfirms, however, that intuition, even the intuition of the best lexical appliedlinguists, is likely to be flawed. And if it is true of McCarthy & O'Dell, who,apart from being steeped in lexical knowledge, also had time aplenty toprepare their book, how much more true must it be of the poor languageteacher, rushed off his or her feet, preparing materials with inadequate

get married

238 A world beyond collocation

resources and asked about words in class without the chance to check theanswers out!

ll.6 Concordancing

So what can the language teacher do? How can (s)he teach vocabulary so thatthe naturally occurring colligations and semantic prosodies are picked up?Haven't I actually made the teacher's task still worse?

The answer to the last question is'Yes and no'. Certainly, I have redefinedwhat it is to leam a word well. But the features of words that I have mentionedare naturally occurring features and there are strategies that can be used 1oensure that words are learned wilh maximum usefulness. The first thing tonote is that words acquire colligations and semantic prosodies, as well ascollocations, by being repeated in similar contexts. As we leam our firstlanguage, we build up in our heads a profile of the words we are leaming. Theso-called Language Acquisition Device in a baby's head is more likely to bea set of concordancing 'software' that enables us to find regularities andrecuffent features in our linguistic experience, rather than any abstractgrammar-making device. So the first necessity is, unsurprisingly, exposure toas much naturally occurring language as a learner is capable of attendingto. If learner or teacher has access to computer concordances, so much thebetter; Tim Johns at the University of Birmingham has shown for years howmuch a learner can pick up from simple, small concordances.

But what if learners or teachers have no access to a computer? In suchcircumstances, there are still useful strategies that can be adopted for theleaming and teaching of vocabulary. Most texts can be shown to be networksof repetitions, for the obvious reason that texts tend to be about something andwhatever that 'thing' is, it is likely to be repeated many times in the course ofthe text. In addition, because it is impossible to say everything at once, asEugene Winter once noted, we often pick up something we said earlier inorder to add something to it that we could not say on the first occasion.

Take this chapter as an example. My computer tells me that the most commonlexical items in the chapter so far ate words, language, learner and word,which is hardly going to come as a surprise to you, The word words occurs 49times up to the end of the previous paragraph; word occtrs 26 times, language21 times and learner 28 times. This means that you have had more than 20opportunities to see each of these words in action, to absorb their collocations,colligations and semantic prosodies. Without realising it, every time youencountered one of these words, my text was subtly reinforcing or modifyingyour mental lexicon, which already contains collocational, colligational andsemantic prosodic information about these words, though you may well notbe particularly aware of having that inforrhation. So, my chapter is in fact akind of linearly organised concordance of the words words, word, languageand learner (as well of course as many others).

i.

the

hatrp?

redredtotoAS

|rsthebeLnd

act

tong:he

f,\\I

Lch

:he- 1 . ^R 5

ndof2 q

t n

onrd.49gel0us.oun,gndiotr 2

ge

A world beyond collocation 239

So what will you subconsciously have absorbed about the word words in thecourse of reading this chapter? well, firstly you will have absorbed that itoccurs repeatedly with certain other words, putative collocates in fact: theseare: use(d) (3 times - 67a of possible occasions), learn(ed/s) (7 times -l4Te,list(s) (5 times - l)Vo), and new (3 times - 6Vo). Examinarion of my 100-million-word corpus shows that all these words are bona fide collocates ofwords and one of them, use(d), is the commonest lexical verb wordsassociates with, occurring almost 5Vo of the time in my corpus.

You will also have unconsciously absorbed the fact thaL words occurs in anidiom - in other words - twice in my chapter. of course, this idiom proves tobe very common in the language as a whole, occurring 1774 times in my 100-million-word corpus.

So much for the collocations. You will also have noticed, probably withoutnoticing that you are noticing it, a significant colligation, namely that it iscommon for the word words to be immediately followed by some form ofspecification, for example, the words 'actor' and 'actress'; this happens sixtimes in this chapter (l2vo of the time). This is a putative colligation of words- and examination of the large corpus confirms that this is so. Specificationoccurs after words 1731 times (lIEo) in the 100-million-word torpus, ofwhich 1259 (over 8o/o) are individual words or phrases or sentences less thanfour words long. So my chapter has inadvertently reinforced a very commoncolligation of words.

The same is true of word, only even more so in this chapter. In apposition withsome other item, for example, the word 'accowntant'

, the word 'carpenter', iIoccurs a fifth of the time in my chapter. This reflects its use in the languageas a whole. Out of 12,839 instances of word in my lOO-million-word corpus,272I occw with apposition, that is 27Vo or, as in this chapter, one occurrencein frve.

Another colligational feature of word you will have unconsciously absorbedis that it functions as a classifier in my chapter three times: wordcombinations, multiple-word phrases, word-lists; this happens almost ljTo ofthe time in the 12,839 examples. You will also have absorbed the fact thatword collocates in my chapter with use(d), occurs, learn, and - as thissentence illustrates - collocates; these four collocates account for 58Vo of allinstances of word in my chapter. As for words, the collocate use(d) is verycommon in the language as a whole; one of the forms of use occurs withword1051 times or 87o of the time. The collocate occur(s) is much less frequent,barely registering ar O.lvo of the time. on the other hand, if one looks at thesemantic prosodies of occwrs in a general colpus we find that it occurs nearly4vo of the time with a linguistic term as subject (or with a pronoun as subjectwhich has as its reference a linguistic term) - a very high percentage, giventhat my corpus is taken predominantly from the Guardian newspaper, notnoted for its extensive linguistic discussions. Add to this the fact thar occurs

240 A v)orld beyond collocation

when is used as shorthand for can be defined as what occurs when two and ahalf per cent of the time, and the fact that on another two and a half per centof the time it takes a mathematical or musical subject (quasi-linguistic, both)and you have strong evidence that rny chapter's use of the combination ofword and occurs is entirely natural. So, this chapter has subconsciouslyreinforced the semantic prosody that occwrs takes a linguistic or quasi-linguistic subject.

Notice that the last collocate of the four just mentioned is not one that wouldbe picked up in a large general corpus. The writers of this book have all beenworking to change your perception of the way words work and part of whatthat has involved has been the adding of collocates to your mentalconcordance of word. So the way a word is used and understood is modifiedas well as reinforced by the texts we encounter.

The point is clear: a short natural text is already creating the collocations,colligations and semantic prosodies of the words we encounter. For nativespeakers, most of the time what happens is simple reinforcement ofcollocations and other pattems that we already know and recognise, but as theexample of the word collocates shows, it is also possible for a text to modifyor add to the collocations and other language features that we recognise.

For the leamer, of course, all encounters are like this. So what we need areways to intensify the leamer's encounters with words. As I warned at thebeginning, I am a descriptive linguist, not a practising language teacher, andit is likely that any advice I give here can be bettered by you. But twoapproaches might be suggested. The first comes from Jane Willis who, in afascinating paper on materials development, showed how she had got herlearners to use a text to produce a manual concordance. She took a group ofwords that occuned commonly in the text and got her students to go throughthe text looking for one or more of these keywords. In her case, the keywordswere grammatical in nature, but the activity can be used with equal effect onlexical items, as long as you have verified in advance that the words beingsearched for have occurred a sufficient number of times to prevent the searchbeing boring or frustrating. The students then had to copy the keywords downin the contexts in which they found them, lining the keywords up under eachother just as is done automatically on a computer concordance. She then gotthem to reflect on what pattems they were finding. Obviously, for full effectthe students should be linguistically sophisticated even if not linguisticallyadvanced, though value could be gained by any group willing to go beyondbeing force-fed.

Another way of using the vocabulary - the hidden concordances of the text -is to have students look for words that group together and then search forother sentences with the same group of words in them. For example the firstsentence of this chapter: Despite being the head of a language wnit dedicatedto Applied Linguistics, I am not myself an experienced langwage teacher.

A

dt

ot

TU

hr

I I

I1n

raI

Gi

c l t

str_l

] i l

Thhe

T]

fffXnn!-tt rr],rti{ir llJlllil!

A world beyond collocation )!l

A number of lexical items occur in this sentence: head, language (twice), wnit,dedicated, applied, linguistics, experienced, teacher; since it has a referentoutside the text, the pronoun l could be added to the list. The student is thentold to look for another sentence with three of these words in it. Thev don'thave far to search: the very next sentence fulfils the condition:

The little experience I have of language teaching is well out of dateandfomns no basis for giving practical advice to anyone.

The student can then look for pattem and variation. (S)he will certainly spot:

language teacherlangwage teaching

which point to the possibility of a colligation whereby language is nounmodifier to a noun derived from a verb (cf language learning, langwageacqwisition). At the same time, (s)he may note the variations:

and, if (s)he is really sharp and linguistically on the ball:

experienced

experience I have of

I am not myselfI have little

experiencedexperience I have of

experience of being a

language tectcher

language teaching

experienced

experrcnce

language teacher

language teaching

language teaching

language learner

The student then looks for another sentence with the same lexis, trying notto read the intervening sentences but simply searching for the cluster ofwords. Lo and behold, (s)he will find one at the end of the paragruph: I mayhave no langwage teaching experience but I do have daily experience ofbeinga language learner I should say here that I have made no changes to my textwhatsoever in order to illustrate the point I am making, nor did I write it withthe intention of using it as an illustration.

Now the tentatively identified colligations are reinforced. We have:

expertence

The learner now has encountered one of the colligations of langwage fowtimes in a manner likely to reinforce the learning, but (s)he has encountered arange of ways in which experience (and its related adjective) can be used.Given the parallelism of learner wilh teacher, it could be added to the wordcluster being sought. If 1 is included in the search, the next sentence that thestudent will find is the very next sentence'. Every weekday, more or lesswithout exception, I attempt to learn a language.

The main point here is the confirmation of the fact that the previous nounheads were derived from verbs:

learn a languagelanguage learner

!J1

242 A world beyond collocation

If however 1is not included, the next sentence to be found will be at the endof the third paragraph: The experience I bring to a book like this aimed at thepractising language teacher is that of the Qpical well-motivated but onlyavera ge I y compet e n t I ea rne r.

It will be seen that this sentence reinforces what the learner has picked upabout experience, and by now the leamer will also be picking up thatexperience is always associated with someone, in this case L It also reinforcesthe noun-modifying quality of langwage as well as showing that the nounheads it accompanies can occur on their own (averagely competent learner).And so on.

There is one other point to be made about the sentences the student will havebeen looking it, namely that they will characteristically - if the text is non-narrative - make sense together, as will be seen below:

Despite being the head of a language unit dedicated to AppliedLinguistics, I am not myself an experienced language teacher. The littleexperience I have of language teaching is well out of date and forms nobasis for giving practical advice to anyone. I may have no languageteaching experience but I do have daily experience of being a languageleamer. The experience I bring to a book like this aimed at thepractising language teacher is that of the typical well-motivated butonly averagely competent learner.

Thus the students get two benefits at the same time. They have a controlledtask to perform that will result in the raising of their consciousness about thenature of the collocations, colligations and semantic prosodies of a group ofwords - though I hope I do not have to add that there is absolutely no needfor them to ever hear whisper of such terminology. At the same time they havegot sense from authentic text without having had to read everything in thetext. In this context I should emphasise that the text does have to be authentic;inauthentic text may distort the features I have been describing.

11.7 Summary

The features I have been describing, as well as those described elsewhere inthis book, are the natural result of the way we encounter and acquire our firstlanguage. Word-lists, despite the promise they offer of allowing the learnersto correlate their first language with the language being learned, deprive themof much of the information they would naturally have if learning those samewords in the language community. The strategies I described in the last fewpages are not the only, and probably not the best, ways of enhancing theleamers' vocabulary so that they learrr not just the meanings of the words butthe environments they occur in. But they sure beat word-lists!

No wonder I have never succeeded as a language learner: the courses I havetaken have not only denied me access to the collocations of the words I have

A world beyond collocation ){J

learned, but they have hidden from me the whole rich world beyondcollocation that underlies what it r"atty -"u.r. to know a word.

Discussion euestions

#:iHf;"tr have vou noticed when learners learn lisrs of individual words

Michaer Hoey is ress happy with many themed word lists, such as lists ofsporrs or fumiture, than with unthemei fisrs drawn from a;;;", dialogue.ffi: #ii:,classroom

experience reflect his assessm"nt or-rn.." differenrDo you anticipate any probrems implementing the suggestion, made byseverar contributors to this uoot, oi"n"ouraging learners to record newlanguage in multi_word items, l"

"orrt"^t,^;ithout ,cleaning

it up,first?

244 Bibliography

BibliographyBaigent, M. (1999) Teaching in Chunks: integrating a lexical approach,'inModern English Teacher, Vol. 8, No. 2

Biber, D., Conrad, S. and Reppen, R. (1998) Corpus Linguistics,Cambridge University Press

Brown, G. (1917) Listening to Spoken English, Longman

Bygate, M. (1996) Effects of Task Repetition: appraising the developinglanguage of learners, in Willis and Willis

Coady, J. and Huckin, T. (1991) Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition,Cambridge University Press

Fernando, C. (1996) Idioms and Idiomaticity, Oxford University Press

Hill, J. and Lewis, M. (Eds) (1997) LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations,UTP

Hoey, M. (1991) Patterns of Lexis in Text, Oxford University Press

Hoey, M. (Ed) (1993) Data, Description, Discourse, HarperCollins

Howarth, P. (1998) Phraseology and Second Language Proficiency, inApplied Linguistics Vol. 19, No. 1

Hudson, J. (1998) Perspectives on Fixedness, Lund University Press

Johansson, S. (1993) "Sweetly oblivious": some aspects of adverb-adjectivecombinations in present-day English, in Hoey, 1993

Krashen, S. and Terrell, T. (1983) The Natural Approach, Pergamon

Larsen-Freeman, D. (1977) Chaos, Complexity, Science and SecondLanguage Acquisition, in Applied Linguistics, Vol. 18, No. 2

Lewis, M. (1993) The Lexical Approach, LTP

Lewis M. (1997) Implementing the Lexical Approach, LTP

Lewis, M. (1996) Implications of a Lexical View of Language, in Willis andWillis

Lewis, M. (1991) Pedagogical Implications of the Lexical Approach, inCoady and Huckin

Nattinger, J. and DeCarrico, J. (1992) Lexical Phrases in LanguageTeaching, Oxford University Press

Poole, B. (1998) Corpus, Concordance, Combinability, in IATEFLNewsletter, Feb-March 1998

Rudzka, B., Channel, J., Putseys, Y. and Ostyn, P. (1981) The Words youNeed, Macmillan

Schmidt, R. W. (1990) The Role of Consciousness in Second LanguageLearning, in Applied Linguistics, Vol. 11, No. 2

SJ

S]L

S1

Sr

TrR

TEI

T\ t

vtT]

1,1

v!

\1H

,

o

l .

Bibliography 2,{g

sinclair, J. (1991) corpus, concordance, colrocation, oxford university pressSkehan, P. (1998) A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning, OxfordUniversity Press

Stewart, I. (1990) Does God play Dice?, penguin

Sunderland, P. (1998) Lexical Chunks, inArena, Issue 19Ter-Minasova, S. (1996) Language, Linguistics and Life: A view fromRussia, Moscow State University AssociationTimmis, r. (1999) Language corpora: what every teacher should know, inELI News & Views, year 6, No. 1Thornbury, S. (1998) The Lexical Approach: aModern English Teacher, Vol. 7. No. 4

joumey without maps. in

watts, P. (1999) using textual analysis to teach source use, paper, 33rdTESOL Convention

Wilberg, P. (1987) One to One, LTpWilliams, A. (1998) Negotiating in Chunks, in Arena, Issue 19willis, J. and winis, D. (1996) chailenge and change in Language Teaching,Heinemann

I S B N 1 - 8 9 9 3 9 6 - 1 1 - X