Teaching collocation further developments in the lexical approach

Contents Contents 3.7 INTRODUCTION PART - IN THE CLASSROOM Chapter 1: 1.1 I.2 I.3 I.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 Introduction Learnersdon'tleamwhatteachersteach Knowingawordiscomplicated Theintermediateplateau The grammar-vocabularydichotomyisinvalid AdvancedEnglish Leave'used'languagealone Someclassroomactivities Actionresearch Cdnclusion Chapter 2: 2.I 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.lI 10 11 I2 .14 15 .17 18 .20 .27 .21 Collocation- encouraging learner independence 28 GeorgeWoolard Introduction Collocation Raisingawarenessofcollocation Highlightingandteachingcollocation Choosingkey words The independentlearnerandleamerstrategies R e s o u r c edsi:c t i o n a r i e s Resources:corporaandconcordancers Lexicalnotebooks Wordgrammar Summary Chapter 3: 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4, 3.5 3.6 There is nothing as practical as a good theory 10 Morgan Lewis 28 .28 30 31 32 33 36 39 .43 .44 " 46 Revising priorities: from grammatical failure to collocationalsuccess Jimmie Hill Languageandlexis Languageandlearning Whatiscollocation? Collocationalcompetence Collocations,idiomsandphrasalverbs Collocationsandsrammar \\ tr J.6 Lol 3.9 3.10 3.1i 3.12 Tea Chc Ped Sun Chapter.l 4.1 ^ +.2 Bac 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 Etp The The \Iak Reri Con Con I ne Chapter 5: 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.1 Intro Gene Actil Actii Exeri Your Sumr Chapter 6: PART Chapter 7: .47 .47 48 48 49 .50 52 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 Descr Intuiri Termi From Collor Collig Other Contents 10 3.1 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 Whyiscollocationimportant? Collocationintexts Teachingcollocation Choosingwhich collocationsto teach Pedagogicalimplications 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 Chapter 4: 10 1 t2 14 15 17 18 27 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.1 4.8 4.9 e 28 Chapter 5: 28 30 31 - 32 33 36 39 43 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.5 5.6 5.7 53 56 59 63 65 67 Integrating collocation into a reading & writing courseT0 Jane Conzett Background The needto build vocabulary Explicitvocabularystudy Themissinglink:collocation The needfor guidancefrom the teacher M 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 Reviewandtesting Concordancesforteachersandstudents Conclusion 70 7I .72 .73 j4 .-15 .83 .85 .86 Classroom strategies,activities and exercises 88 Jimmie Hill, Morgan Lewis and Michael Lewis Introducingcollocationtoleamers Generalstrategies Activities-exploitingatext Activities-usingacollocationdictionary Exercises Yourownexercises Summary Chapter6: Calloway'sCode A short story by O Henry .88 90 98 99 106 116 .116 .118 LL 46 ) PART - BACKGROUND THEORY Chapter 7: 4'7 41 " 48 48 49 50 52 7.1 7.2 1.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 Language in the lexical approach Michael Lewis D e s c r i p t i o nosf E n g l i s h Intuitionandevidence Terminology From idioms to idiomaticity Collocation Colligation Other multi-word expressions 126 126 126 129 130 I32 136 138 Contents 7.g 7.9 7.10 1.tI 7.12 1.13 7.14 words T h e c e n t r a l r o l e o f ' o f.' Grammar Lexis Collocationandtesting Necessityfor change Summary Learning in the lexical approach Michael Lewis i55 Introduction Twokindsofknowledge Acquisitionandnoticing Noticing Theimporlanceofexamples Acquisitionisnon-linear Which is fundamental- lexis or structure? Thelexicalchallengetomethodology' '1eve1'? What we meanby Teachingparadigms The Lexical Approach and the Natural Approach Towardsaleamingtheory Summary .155 156 .158 161 -163 '.168 ' I7I ' '.173 I14 177 181 ' 182 '.'.184 Chapter 8: g.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 142 .I45 .147 .I49 ' "150 151 ' 153 Materials and resources for teaching collocation 186 Michael Lewis 186 Choosingtexts 188 Genre i89 Subject-specificlanguage 191 Languagecorpora .198 Concordances '.2O0 Referencematerials '203 Summary Chapter 9: 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 205 Chapter L0: Collocation and testing Peter Hargreaves 205 10.1 Introduction 206 I0.2 How we define different levels? .208 10.3 Testingvocabularyknowledge 215 10.4 Grammatical patterns and collocations in testing - '217 and dictionaries corpora 10.5 Sources native-speaker ZI8 10.6 Sources the learnercorpus(CLC) - - - - -220 10.7 Approachesto testingcollocation -.'.22I 10.8 Summary Chapter 11 11.1 11.1 11.3 ll.+ 11.5 11.5 I1,7 Lear \\ hr The Sem ColU Con Surr Bibliograpl Contents r42 ,.145 t47 t49 150 151 153 155 5 156 158 161 163 168 flr r13 174 r77 181 182 )n 186 186 188 189 , 191 198 200 203 .205 205 206 208 215 2t7 2t8 220 z2r Chapter LL: A world beyond collocation: new perspectiveson Yocabularyteaching 224 Michael Hoey 11.1 llz 11.3 11.4 11.5 ll.6 ILl Leaming new words Why word lists are dangerous T h e i m p o r t a n coef c o n t e x t Semanticprosody Colligation Concordancing Summary Bibliography 224 227 230 .232 233 .238 .242 244 Introduction Introduction 'Without grammar little can be As David Wilkins observedmany years ago, conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.' The single most important task facing language learners is acquiring a sufficiently large 'vocabulary' consists of vocabulary.We now recognisethat much of our prefabricated chunks of different kinds The single most imporlant kind of chunk is collocation Self-evidently,then, teachingcollocation should be a top priority in every languagecourse The centrality of lexis Increasingly, languageteachershave turned to the question of how language is stored in the brain If native speakersstore large amounts of language in chunks, what strategiesshould language teachers adopt if they are to help learnersbuild mental lexicons which are similarly phrasal? From a teaching point of view, argumentsabout exactly what types of multiword item make up the mental lexicon are unfruitful It is clear that the learners'taskin acquiringa sufficiently large mental lexicon is considerably greaterthan we previously thought Although grammar remains an important part of language acquisition, the lexical memory load, even for an intermediate leamer, is enormous We now recognise that the principal difference between intermediate and advanced leamers is not complex grammar, but the greatly expanded mental lexicon available to advanced learners.Failure by some teachersto recognisethis simple fact can condemn their learnersto a lifetime on the intermediateplateau A modified role for grammar The centrality of lexis means that the teaching of traditional grammar sffucturesshould play a less important role than in the past Recognising that every word has its own grammar,however,meansthat any approachbasedon the central role of lexis is in many ways more grammatical than any traditional grammar syllabus Three themes Three themesre-occurregularly in this book: The mental lexicon is larger than we previously thought The prefabricatedchunks stored in our mental lexicons ready for use are often larger than previously recognised Really 'knowing a word'involves knowing its grammar- the patternsin which it is regularly used The contributors all argue that expanding learners'phrasal lexicons and knowledge of word grammar are the two most important elements of any languagecourse.There is a seriouschallengefor teachersif our new insights rnto ihe size or-eru'hein-l 'r'ocabuian' Er en thing ir teachersen,i Developing I Tlrc Le:;!tt;i language iru; \\'as as 1is l1 lin_euistics.T arise not tton are alreadr I radical inrol chan_ses ln , Increasing ur Ser eral conr:i The basic rdr rr ar.s.B ul a gt da-r'r.is quit; most liequen-j: u'ho have a cl to heip leamel teachersder er From pracfic Books of rhis order Ihe aur as a result rf Part I descntt lan_eua_ue and I Part and i', ! to Chapters teaching or ttri first belore rei The contrihrLlt ' learirers nrenli ranse oi liti-ct l,Iiclrce! Le.,rr: Introduction iittle can be srngle most :iently large consistsof tant kind of ould be a top orv language languagein are to help pes of multilear that the considerably an important 'ven for an the principal not complex to advanced can condemn into the size, importance and nature of the mental lexicon are not simply to overwhelm students Mike Mccarthy once eloquently described the 'vocabulary'part of languagelearningasmastering'the chaosof the lexicon' Everything in this book is designedto help bring order to that chaosfor both teachersand, more importantly, their learners Developing the Lexical Approach The Lexical Approach (1993) was a combination of applied linguistics and languageteachingmethodology.Implementingthe Lexical Approach (199j) was, as its title suggests,more practical; methodology,rather than applied linguistics.The first half of this book is even more practical The chapters arisenot from what teacherscould in their classrooms,but from what they are already doing Some of the suggestionsare modest; others are more radical, involving a reversal of traditional priorities Introducing modest changes,in a climate of action research,is surely the best way forward Increasing understanding Severalcontributorsstresstheir own increasingunderstandingof collocation The basic idea is extremely simple - some words co-occur in interesting ways.But a greatdeallies behindthat formulation.Frequentcollocation(nice day), is quite different from strong collocation (wage war); bfi neither the most frequent nor the strongestare the most useful for learners.only teachers who have a clear understandingof different kinds of collocation will be able to help learnersin the bestpossibleway part of this book is designedto help teachersdevelop this clearer understanding From practice to theory nal grammar :ognisingthat rachbasedon cal than any for use are : pattems in iexicons and lments of any r new insights Books of this kind tend to go from theory to practice; this book reversesthat order The authors in Part describe how what they in class has changed as a result of their developing awarenessof the lexical nature of language Pafi describes in more detail the present state of our understanding of languageand acquisition.Teacherswho havetried someof the suggestionsin Part l, and want to take their understandingfurlher, should turn particularly to chapters and Teacherswith a lot of experienceof lexically-based teaching,or thoseon in-servicecoursesmay prefer to read thesetwo chapters first, before returning to the more detailed practical suggestionsof part The contributors to this book have one principal objective - to develop learners'mental lexicons, and with that, to give those leamers a far wider rangeof life-choices.It is a worthwhile objective Michael Lewis, Hove, January 2000 10 There is nothing as practical as a good theorl Chapter I J ' - There is nothing as practical as a good theory - ' J 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 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 assumedthat the chapter was written by an applied linguist who will lemove you from the classroominto the far off land of academia.In fact, I am a regular classroom teacher with about ten years' experienceof teachingmostly multi-lingual classesin the UK Perhapslike you, after afew yearsin the classroom,I beganto question some of the received wisdom of my initial training The Present-Practise-Produce paradigm I startedwith seemedsuch a neat, tidy and sensibleway to go about teaching.I increasingly found, however,that leaming did not follow the same tidy model I seemedto have less control over what studentswere learning than my initial training had led me to expect.I beganasking myself questions - some more explicitly than others- such as: Why is it that what my studentsleam doesn'tmore closely resemblewhat I teach? Should I spend so much time trying to achieveaccurateglammar from my students? Shouldmy lessonplan 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 for those 'intermediate plateau' studentswho need a breakthrough and a feeling of progression? What can you for advancedstudentsafter they have met the third 'advanced'English anyway? conditional?And what is 'l , t - : - - Thereis nothing as practical as a good theory reory him to value I a good lesson lt his students result of more to change his he gives much Ierstanding of nto every class, rarners will eacherswith a re chapterwas :lassroominto n teacher with ciassesin the questlonsome rctise-Produce /ay to go about r11owthe same u'ere leaming l,self questions 'esemblewhat nmar from my mance, given entswho need the third 11 I beganan extendedperiod of extra study free from the constraintsof day-today lesson planning and thinking about my particular students.This allowed me to stop being preoccupiedwith my teaching for a while and as a result, I found myself drawn more and more to considering the nature of language itself and the nature of languagelearning - what the processin which I was engagedand for which I was trained was really all about Surprisingly, my initial training had not included study of this at all It was concerned exclusively with how the teacher should teach; learners and leaming were hardly discussedat al- Tlsr Whatpercentage of thetimein yourtrainingwasspentlookingat teaching and what percentage was devoted to learning? After a lesson now, you tend to think mostly about what you did, or about the leamers? I very soon came to two broad conclusions.Firstly, there was no guarantee thai leamers learn what teachersteach Secondly, the grammar/vocabulary '3ichotomywas spurious, and the central role of grammar, at least as defined ,',,ithin my training, probably neededto be re-evaluated \faking slight methodologicalchangesin the light of theseconclusionswould not have satisfied me I neededto get below the surface, explore the theory ,'*,hich lies behind classroom procedures, and decide what the real implicationsfor the classroomcould be Let me explain in more detail how I rame to these conclusions and show how they relate to the importance of teachingcollocationin the classroom 1.2 Learners don't learn what teachersteach {lthough it is hard for many teachersto accept,it simply is not true that our srudentsnecessarilylearn what we teach them Teachingis, on the whole, organised,linear and systematic,but it is a mistake to think that leaming is the same.Leaming is complex and non-linear, and although the result may be a s] stem,its acquisition is far from systematic.We cannotcontrol what students ieam in what order they will learn and how fast they will learn As Diana Larsen-Freemanwrites in a disconcertingfootnote to an article in the journal -\pplied Linguistics: 'I am constantly reminding students, audiences and rnr self that teaching does not causeleaming.' This has had an important implication for the way I teach: I no longer expect srudentsto masteran item or items of languagebefore 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 teachthem If they do, they mav acquire it immediately, later or only partially 12 There is nothing as practical as a good theory Tlsr item or areabefore Shouldlearnersmore or lessmasterone new new points being exposedto more, or are you happy introducing confusing? more this find evenif learnersmay, ln the shortterm, Whathasthistodowithteachingcollocation?Imagineastudentproduces the student with the t'"19*i He's a strong smoker'You could simply supply ideal opportunity to activate collocate _ heavy - and move on But an languageontheedgeofthestudent'slexiconhasbeenmissed.Itrequiresvery chain and non as more little extra time or explaining to add: occasional' know whether students will collocates of smoker' Given that you cannot as well give them three more' remember and use heavy smoker, you might or all of them' Adding They might remember none' one' two of them introducing one or two new collocation to your teaching by consciously in this way increasesthe words and re-activating other half-known words you cannotbe at all sure what the chanceof acquisition titi"g place, though acquisitionencouraged(bu"tnot.caused')bythisparticularbitofteaching willbe oneofthequestionslposedformyselfafterteachingforanumberofyears wastheextenttowhichmylessonplanshoulddominateproceedings.These the languageaims in my plan and days, I am less concemed about achieving to opportunities like the more concerned about spotting and responding - whether prompted by a heavy/occasional/chain/nin- smoke' scenario to which I can add a handful of studenterror or finding a collocation in a text capturedby Peter wilberg's other useful collocateslThis mindset is perfectly andquoted by Michael Lewis at discussion of responsibility in One to One' thebeginningofTheLexicatApproach: Theteacher'smainresponsibilityis response-abilitY." means indi\ have alreadl learner re-ot not realh simple and t thesediffere isolation frc pafiicular tel it used or n tenses The same B 'negative' c alternatives- can be undet fine until th assesswhat teacherma1the dffircnc training - lr difference bre are at best dictionary d< injury, and t collocationa or rather mor Tnsx Look at lt'Of Tlsr what your students How much control you think you haveover learn? rigidly? Do you still try to follow your lessonplan fairly respondspontaneously How willing areyou to forget your plan and with unpreParedinPut? L.3 Knowing a word is comPlicated Relatedtothepointthatlearnersdon'tnecessarilylearnwhatweteachisthe step-by-step in nature, whereas fact that teaching tends to be linear and time' This is becausenew input learning is holistic, cyclical and evolves over I hou und, Can yor Can 1,or want to concord Which r or the li From the cX evolving the lexis, it follor met will wic 232 A world beyond collocation chilly May day or a chilly damp overcastday Notice also the significant but covert collocation in lt's pretty chilly this morning But these are minor matters The real problem lies in the fact that these answersdo not reflect serious generalisationsabout the way these words are used I noted above that all the methods for teaching lexis we have been looking at suffer from two weaknesses.Firstly, they take insufficient or no account of collocation Secondly,there is a world beyond collocations We have got so fixated on collocations that we not see that they sometimes group in generalisableways and these groupings then account for examples of word combinations that are not collocations 11.4 Semanticprosody The frst important point 'beyond collocation' is that words don't just combine with chosenother words, they combine with chosenmeanings The idea is associatedwith John Sinclair (1991) who commented:Many usesof words and phrases show a tendency to occur in a cefiain semantic environment For example, the verb happen is associatedwith unpleasant things - accidentsand the like This phenomenonhasbeenlabelled 'semanticprosody' Semanticprosodyas I am defining it occurs when a word associateswith a particular set of meanings.So, for example,in principle, almost anything can be chilly; people and food can, afler all, both be cold so why should they not be chilly? Yet we find in fact that the word occurs in the company of certain kinds of meaning rather than others The table below shows the semantic prosodies of chilly For the sake of contrast I have included the frequenciesof people Nrdfood, below the line in the table below, just to show up the significance of the true semanticprosodies Semantic prosody frequency (out of 352) weather 79 58 30 afi zo temperarure ill people l4 watery things 96 unit of time place [metaphorical] people food o I Percentage 22Vo l6Vo 97o 7Vo 4Vo 37o 2Vo 27% 27o Example a chilly overcastaftemoon chilly Comwall it's pretty chilly the chilly breeze a decidedly chilly -10C a chilly patient a chilly bathtub learne certaii proso( all gor beenp prosod words, reveal others occur I of textr chilbthey ctr These 15 tlue prosod not col 'time' Morec4 yet all point h for the as indi vocabul the wq prosodl This lal the virl assocra or typic charactl from ler arbitra{ for lean of the I to ask d courseb a chilly reception a chilly lavatory attendant chilly rolls with Iceberg lettuce Excepting the metaphorical use of chilly, which does not strictly involve semanticprosody, the prosodieslisted above the line in this table account for 86Voof the occurrencesof chillv in mv data What this means is thal if a 11.5 I Even st words a namely list fron A world beyond coilocation )JJ leamer wants to learn chilly they would best to learn that it occurs in cefiain kinds of context rather than all contexts Seen like this, semantic prosodyis a kind of generalisationbasedupon the collocatesa word has.Like all good generalisations,it covers word combinations that might not have beenpicked up as collocations.For exampre a chilry decadefits , the semantic prosody of 'unit of time' but is not a particularly common combination of words' on the otherhand,as we will see,it is u purtiul generalisation,as data revealthat somecoilocateswhich we might expect to occur actuallydo while others not It is particularly interesting, foi example, that chilty does not occurmuch as a literal descriptorof people,sincepeopre are a commontopic of texts and talk It would appear that ir you say of a person that they are chilly, you mean that they are ill or have an unattractive temperament,not that they could with sitting near a fire Thesesemanticprosodiesare more than the accumulation of collocations.It rs true, as you wourd expect, that there are lots of collocations in each prosody' Thus chilly coilocates with morning, night, evening,day; butit does not collocatewith minutesor decades,yet both of these are examplesof the 'time' prosody chilly also collocateswith mountain but not with tent or Morecambe(despitewhat visitors to the north-west of Engrandmight think), yet all three words exemplify the 'place'prosody Don,t miss the important point here: such semanticprosodiesare potentially powerful generalisations for the languagelearner.It is no longer n"."ruu.y to leam endlesscollocations as individual combinations, which as I remarked earlier seemed to make vocabulary learning harder Instead, what the leamer needs to is to learn the word in combination with an absolutely typical representativeof the prosody as long as (s)he also knows that it IS typical This last point is crucial I commentedearlier that unthemed word-lists have the virtue for me of being contextualisedby the texts with which they are associated.But, I added, I was never sure whether the contexts were natural or typical unless one knows that the collocation one is leaming is absolutely characteristicof the way the word is used,more than half the value one gets from learningthe word in its contextdisappears [As we saw on pp r32r3, the arbitrarygapsin what we might expectby generalisation.un problems for leamers.Edl Mccarthy and o'Dell may not reflect "uu." the semantic prosodies of the words they seek to teach, but at reastthey are encouragingthe leamer to ask the right questions.you would scanthe pages of most if iy language coursebooksin vain for the slightesthint that words havesemanticprosodies 11.5 Colligation Even semantic prosody, however, is insufficient to account fully fbr how words are used.There is a world beyond colocation and semanticprosody, namely that of colligation Let us return for a moment to the ,employment, list from suefiosdiscussedearrier.At first sight,as a setofcountable,concrete 234 Alryorld beyond collocation nouns sharing quite a lot of meaning, we might expect words lke architect, actor accountant,carpenter to sharequite a lot grammatically as well So we might expect them all to take definite and indefinite articles (the Finnish architect, a church architect) We might expect them all to take classifiers (church architect) and possessives(the Academy's architect) We might expect them also to occur within possessiveconstructions (the whims of an architect; the architect's bombastic ego) We might expect them to occur in parentheses(WeUsCoates, the architect of Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead) and apposition (British architect Will Alsop) Any good grammar would encourageus to have all theseexpectations,and in so far as every item ofthe list is grammatically capable of appearing in all these constructions, such expectationsare all entirely reasonable 'likely to appear' Grammars But 'capable of appearing' is not the same as over the years have got obsessive about recording what the language is capable of doing, and there has been all too little attention given grammatically to what it actually does, or, more accurately, what we with it This is where the concept of colligation comes in Colligation can be defined as 'the grammatical company a word keeps and the positions it prefers'; in other words, a word's colligations describewhat it typically does grammatically The following table, basedon occulrencesin my corpus, showsthat the words accountant, actot actress,architect, carpenter differ grammatically amongst themselves,despite our expectationsthey should all behave alike; they have, in other words, different colligations Notice the particularly high numbersin bold and the particularly low ones underlined in the table Grammatical construction accountant (1045 instances) indefinite article 26Vo classifier 26Vo actor (3re4) 22Vo actress (1710) architect (2020) lSVo l6Vo carpenter (24s) A urrl inr wlI Na likr likt ltet but har flCtt tha wol car, coa AId ah gar thal fr€( Act, rne; G c(| m Yor to( I 42Vo l27a l0Vo 8Vo 4Vo tpossessort construction ie's & of NP 6Vo 8Va LTVo 8Vo 16Vo tpossessedt lOVo lVb 0Vo 5Vo 2Vo apposition l4Vo 27Vo 3lVo lSVo 2%o parenthesis I'lVo 87a l27o 13Va 26Vo construction pr0 sefl odd sirl haq coll Tol and Mc1 pr€x A world beyond collocation 235 'employment' A glance at this table shows that words not behave in a grammatical the constructionsthey occur uniform fashion when it comes to in and with The word carpenter has a much higher likelihood of occurring with an indefinite article or in a parenthesis(Mr Morland, a carpenterfrom Nofting Hill ) than does,say,architect.The word accountantis much more likely to occur with a classifier (a wages accountant) and actress is more likely to occur in apposition (actress Debra Winger) than any of the other items in the list It is quite possibleto possessan accountant(my accowntant) but virtually impossible to possessan actress (as dreamy-eyedteenageboys have long known) An actressmay however be a possessor(the mother of the actress Fay Compton) as may a carpenter What the table does not show is that even with regard to this similarity betweenactress and carpenter the two 's words actually differ Whereas carpenter occurs in constructions and ofconstructions in roughly equal proportions (the son of a Lithuanian carpenter; the catpenter's apron), actressoccurs almost exclusively inthe ofconstructlon Alone amongstall the employmentwords, architect is not distinguishedin the abovetable by its unusually high or unusually low associationwith one of the grammatical patterns mentioned - but it is distinguished from the others in that, as the supplement to the table below shows, it is alone in being frequently 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 of metaphorical use Grammatical construction metaphor actor accountant (1045instances) (3re4) 5Vo none actress architect carpenter (1710) (2020) (24s) none 22Va 17o You might imagine that colligation and semanticprosody are applicable only to concrete nouns One of the other lists quoted from Suefiosis that of the numbers.You might be forgiven for thinking that at least thesecould safely be learned out of context becausethese, surely, would not have collocations, colligationsand semanticprosodies.No suchchance,I'm afraid.It is possible to show thal sixty has a strong semanticprosody with time (e.9 sixty years), occurring with a unit of time 23Voof the time but that sixty-five has no such prosody, occurring with a unit of time only 8Voof the time Slxfl also has semanticprosody with markers of imprecision (over sixty, almost sixty, sixtyodd), occuning with such markers 2l%oof the time, but I have no instanceof sixty-five occurring with a marker of imprecision in my corpus On the other hand, while both words have a great preferencefor beginning a sentence,that colligation is much sffonger for sixQ-five (86Voas opposedto Tl%o) To show how it appliesto vocabulary leaming, let me againpick on McCarthy and O'Dell's sample answers (I stress again lhat I am not picking on McCarthy & O'Dell becausethey are bad, but I am discussingtheir examples precisely becausethey are about as good as it currently gets.) The sample 236 A world beyond collocation answersthey give for married and up to the ears both creak somewhat,and it is worth looking at why For these words they offer in their answer key the followingsuggestions: a) up to the ears in work b) get married to someone In my corpusthereareonly 14 examplesof wpto ears,usedmetaphorically, and twelve of theseshow a collocationtttithin.In this respect,then,McCarthy & O'Dell's answer is typical of the way of the word is used But a still strongerpattern is overlooked.Thirteen out of fourteen of the examplesin my corpus colligate with possessivepronouns rather than a definite article, for example: wp to his ears in exasperation,wp to my ears in debt subjec n1arril, ra,hich to ihe v'as p) are lc nlarnt some l oI }t (?t L U - L I fuller So McCarthy & O'Dell's answer is colligationally untypical Furthermore, ten of the occurrencesin my corpus manifest semantic prosody with bad things (such as treason and narrow and sterile rwles) and five of these bad things are instancesof debt.McCarthy & O'Dell's work is a marginalcaseof this and not one that reflects the prosody clearly Thus a proper description of up to ears is the following: upto ears uirh tir (131 possessive COLLIGATION with (1) COLLOCATION good (3) debt (5\ miscellaneous(5) poslIf-: SEMANTICPROSODY Obr io on uhl tu o frr phra-< COLLOCATION nrc!'r'[N Put more straightforwardly, wp to his ears in debt has a one in five chanceof occuring when you useup to ears; up to the ears in workhas a one in 800 chanceof occurring Guesswhich one I think a leamer should learn [A word of caution may be neededhere If the corpus Michael is using is heavily skewed,for example towards news reporting, its most typical examples,although typical of that genre,may not be typical of the whole language or, for example, another genre such as informal conversation.It can never be repeatedtoo often that statementsbasedon corpus evidence,while undoubtedly evidence of what is in, that corpus, may not be as typical of the language as a whole as we are tempted to believe From a pedagogicalpoint of view, in addition to raw colpus evidence,factors such as immediate usefulnessor relevanceto the needs of particular students may need to be taken into account when choosing the exampleswhich will be most helpful for a particular class Ed.l A similar picture applies to get married Of 257 instances of clauses containing the verbal group get married, at least 92 (36Ea) have as their subie' r','ithir some Again more l l c1 7Jr Inau ongml conhn lin-eui apart prepar teache A world beyond collocation y v r 237 subjecta referenceto the couple ( "Why did AwntieElaine and Uncle Marc get married?" askedOlivia.) A further 26have an indefinitesubject,ustally you, which may be referring to a couple.Another 97 GSqa)have one of the parties to the marriage as subject but no mention of the other pafty (Monica Zanotti was planning to get married this spring.) On the other hand, only five (ZVo) are followed by a prepositional phrase starting with to The phrase ger married is far more likely to occur with a positive time or place expressionof somekind (though not usually both), such asplanned to get married one day or wanted us to get married in church - 28voof instancesof the expressiondo so - but this is twice as likely to happen when the couple is subject Thus a fuller description of get married would be: get married l I f f COLLIGAIION with time/place expression(29) positive(42) negative(0) / / poSitive (20) \ \ negative (9) SEMANTIC PROSODY SEMANTIC PROSODY obviously, the exact distribution of thesecharacteristicsmay differ depending on whether get, getting or got is selected,but informal inspection of the other two forms suggestsno great variation For example,the past tenseform of the phrase got married shows the same tendencies.Out of 172 instancesof gol married, 4l (27Ea)have the couple as subject; a further six have an indefinite subject,and only eight (5Vo)are followed by a prepositional phrasebeginning with to, three of which are separatedfrom the verbal group by punctuation of somesofi Again, what all this means is that sentencessuch as the following are much more likely than McCarthy & O'Del|s get married to someone: I cried when I watched Jill and Mark get married on Tuesday They'replanning to get married at last, in Monaco In a way, this analysis only confirms the wisdom of McCarlhy & O'Dell's original advice to record every new word in its grammatical context It also confirms, however,that intuition, even the intuition of the best lexical applied linguists,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 to prepare their book, how much more true must it be of the poor language teacher, rushed off his or her feet, preparing materials with inadequate 238 A world beyond collocation resourcesand asked about words in class without the chance to check the answersout! ll.6 Concordancing So what can the languageteacherdo? How can (s)he teachvocabulary so that the naturally occurring colligations and semantic prosodies are picked up? Haven't I actually made the teacher'stask still worse? The answerto the last question is'Yes and no' Certainly,I have redefined what it is to leam a word well But the featuresof words that I have mentioned are naturally occurring features and there are strategiesthat can be used 1o ensure that words are learned wilh maximum usefulness.The first thing to note is that words acquire colligations and semantic prosodies, as well as collocations, by being repeated in similar contexts As we leam our first language,we build up in our headsa profile of the words we are leaming The so-called LanguageAcquisition Device in a baby's head is more likely to be a set of concordancing 'software' that enables us to find regularities and recuffent features in our linguistic experience, rather than any abstract grammar-makingdevice So the first necessityis, unsurprisingly,exposure to as much naturally occurring language as a learner is capable of attending to If learner or teacher has accessto computer concordances,so much the better; Tim Johns at the University of Birmingham has shown for years how much a learner can pick up from simple, small concordances But what if learners or teachers have no access to a computer? In such circumstances,there are still useful strategiesthat can be adopted for the leaming and teaching of vocabulary.Most texts can be shown to be networks of repetitions,for the obvious reasonthat texts tend to be about somethingand whatever that 'thing' is, it is likely to be repeatedmany times in the courseof the text In addition, becauseit is impossible to say everything at once, as Eugene Winter once noted, we often pick up something we said earlier in order to add something to it that we could not say on the first occasion Take this chapteras an example.My computer tells me that the most common lexical items in the chapter so far ate words, language, learner and word, which is hardly going to come as a surpriseto you, The word words occurs 49 times up to the end of the previous paragraph;word occtrs 26 times, language 21 times and learner 28 times This means that you have had more than 20 opportunitiesto seeeachof thesewords in action, to absorbtheir collocations, colligations and semantic prosodies Without realising it, every time you encounteredone of thesewords, my text was subtly reinforcing or modifying your mental lexicon, which already contains collocational, colligational and semantic prosodic information about these words, though you may well not be particularly aware of having that inforrhation So, my chapter is in fact a kind of linearly organisedconcordanceof the words words, word, language and learner (as well of course as many others) i A world beyond collocation the hat rp? red red to to AS |rst he be Lnd act to ng :he f,\\I Lch :he -1.^ R5 nd of 2q tn on rd 49 ge l0 us ou n,g nd iot r ge 239 So what will you subconsciouslyhave absorbedabout the word words in the course of reading this chapter?well, firstly you will have absorbedthat it occurs repeatedly with certain other words, putative collocates in fact: these are:use(d)(3 times - 67aof possibleoccasions),learn(ed/s)(7 times -l4Te, list(s) (5 times - l)Vo), and new (3 times - 6Vo).Examinarionof my 100million-word corpus shows that all these words are bona fide collocates of words and one of them, use(d), is the commonest lexical verb words associateswith, occurringalmost 5Voof the time in my corpus You will also have unconsciously absorbedthe fact thaLwords occurs in an idiom - in other words - twice in my chapter.of course,this idiom proves to be very common in the languageas a whole, occurring 1774 times in my 100million-word corpus So much for the collocations You will also have noticed, probably without noticing that you are noticing it, a significant colligation, namely that it is common for the word words to be immediately followed by some form of specification,for example,the words 'actor' and 'actress';this happenssix times 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 Specification occurs after words 1731 times (lIEo) in the 100-million-word torpus, of which 1259 (over 8o/o)are individual words or phrasesor sentencesless than four words long So my chapter has inadvertently reinforced a very common colligation of words The sameis true of word, only evenmore so in this chapter.In appositionwith someother item, for example,the word 'accowntant', the word 'carpenter',iI occurs a fifth of the time in my chapter.This reflects its use in the language as a whole Out of 12,839instancesof word in my lOO-million-wordcorpus, 272I occw with apposition,that is 27Voor, as in this chapter,one occurrence in frve Another colligational feature of word you will have unconsciously absorbed is that it functions as a classifier in my chapter three times: word combinations,multiple-wordphrases,word-lists;this happensalmost ljTo of the time in the 12,839 examples.You will also have absorbedthe fact that word collocates in my chapter with use(d), occurs, learn, and - as this sentenceillustrates - collocates; thesefour collocates account for 58Voof all instancesof word in my chapter.As for words, the collocate use(d) is very commonin the languageas a whole; one of the forms of use occurswithword 1051 times or 87oof the time The collocateoccur(s) is much less frequent, barely registering ar O.lvo of the time on the other hand, if one looks at the semanticprosodiesof occwrsin a generalcolpus we find that it occurs nearly 4vo of the time with a linguistic term as subject (or with a pronoun as subject which has as its reference a linguistic term) - a very high percentage,given that my corpus is taken predominantly from the Guardian newspaper,not noted for its extensivelinguistic discussions.Add to this the fact thar occurs 240 A v)orld beyond collocation when is used as shorthandfor can be defined as what occurs when two and a half per cent of the time, and the fact that on another two and a half per cent of the time it takesa mathematicalor musical subject(quasi-linguistic,both) and you have strong evidence that rny chapter's use of the combination of word and occurs is entirely natural So, this chapter has subconsciously reinforced the semantic prosody that occwrs takes a linguistic or quasilinguistic subject A dt ot Notice that the last collocateof the four just mentionedis not one that would be picked up in a large generalcorpus The writers of this book have all been working to changeyour perception of the way words work and part of what that has involved has been the adding of collocates to your mental concordanceof word So the way a word is used and understoodis modified as well as reinforced by the texts we encounter T] TU hr The point is clear: a short natural text is already creating the collocations, colligations and semantic prosodies of the words we encounter.For native speakers,most of the time what happens is simple reinforcement of collocations and other pattemsthat we already know and recognise,but as the exampleof the word collocatesshows,it is also possiblefor a text to modify or add to the collocationsand other languagefeaturesthat we recognise For the leamer, of course, all encountersare like this So what we need are ways to intensify the leamer's encounterswith words As I warned at the beginning, I am a descriptive linguist, not a practising languageteacher,and it is likely that any advice I give here can be bettered by you But two approachesmight be suggested.The first comes from Jane Willis who, in a fascinating paper on materials development, showed how she had got her learnersto use a text to produce a manual concordance.She took a group of words that occuned commonly in the text and got her studentsto go through the text looking for one or more of thesekeywords In her case,the keywords were grammatical in nature, but the activity can be used with equal effect on lexical items, as long as you have verified in advancethat the words being searchedfor have occurred a sufficient number of times to prevent the search being boring or frustrating The studentsthen had to copy the keywords down in the contexts in which they found them, lining the keywords up under each otherjust as is done automaticallyon a computerconcordance.She then got them to reflect on what pattems they were finding Obviously, for full effect the studentsshould be linguistically sophisticatedeven if not linguistically advanced,though value could be gained by any group willing to go beyond being force-fed Another way of using the vocabulary - the hidden concordancesof the text is to have students look for words that group together and then search for other sentenceswith the same group of words in them For example the first sentenceof this chapter:Despitebeing the head of a languagewnitdedicated to Applied Linguistics,I am not myselfan experiencedlangwageteacher I I I1n raI Gi clt str_ ]i l Th he fffXnn!-tt rr],rti{ir llJllli 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 referent outside the text, the pronoun l could be addedto the list The studentis then told to look for another sentencewith three of these words in it Thev don't have far to search:the very next sentencefulfils the condition: The little experience I have of language teaching is well out of date andfomnsno basisfor giving practical advice to anyone The studentcan then look for pattem and variation (S)he will certainly spot: language teacher langwageteaching which point to the possibility of a colligation whereby language is noun modifier to a noun derived from a verb (cf language learning, langwage acqwisition).At the sametime, (s)hemay note the variations: experienced experience I have of language tectcher language teaching and, if (s)heis really sharpand linguistically on the ball: I am not myself I have little experienced experrcnce The student then looks for another sentencewith the same lexis, trying not to read the intervening sentences but simply searching for the cluster of words Lo and behold, (s)he will find one at the end of the paragruph:I may haveno langwageteachingexperiencebut I havedaily experienceofbeing a language learner I should say here that I have made no changesto my text whatsoeverin order to illustrate the point I am making, nor did I write it with the intention of using it as an illustration Now the tentatively identified colligations are reinforced We have: experienced experienceI have of experienceof being a language language language language teacher teaching teaching learner expertence The learner now has encounteredone of the colligations of langwage fow times in a manner likely to reinforce the learning, but (s)he has encountereda range 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 word cluster being sought If is included in the search,the next sentencethat the student will find is the very next sentence'.Every weekday, more or less without exception,I attempt to learn a language The main point here is the confirmation of the fact that the previous noun headswere derived from verbs: learn a ! J1 language languagelearner 242 A world beyond collocation If however1is not included,the next sentenceto be found will be at the end of the third paragraph:The experienceI bring to a book like this aimed at the practising language teacher is that of the Qpical well-motivated but only averageIy competent I earner It will be seen that this sentencereinforces what the learner has picked up about experience, and by now the leamer will also be picking up that experienceis alwaysassociatedwith someone,in this caseL It alsoreinforces the noun-modifying quality of langwage as well as showing that the noun headsit accompaniescan occur on their own (averagelycompetentlearner) And so on There is one other point to be made about the sentencesthe studentwill have been looking it, namely that they will characteristically- if the text is nonnarrative - make sensetogether,as will be seenbelow: Despite being the head of a language unit dedicated to Applied Linguistics, I am not myself an experiencedlanguageteacher.The little experienceI have of languageteachingis well out of date and forms no basis for giving practical advice to anyone I may have no language teaching experiencebut I have daily experienceof being a language leamer The experience I bring to a book like this aimed at the practising language teacher is that of the typical well-motivated but only averagelycompetentlearner Thus the studentsget two benefits at the same time They have a controlled task to perform that will result in the raising of their consciousnessabout the nature of the collocations, colligations and semanticprosodies of a group of words - though I hope I not have to add that there is absolutely no need for them to ever hear whisper of such terminology.At the sametime they have got sensefrom authentic text without having had to read everything in the text In this context I should emphasisethat the text doeshave to be authentic; inauthentic text may distort the featuresI have been describing 11.7 Summary The featuresI have been describing,as well as thosedescribedelsewherein this book, are the natural result of the way we encounterand acquire our first language.Word-lists, despite the promise they offer of allowing the learners to correlatetheir first languagewith the languagebeing learned,deprive them of much of the information they would naturally have if learning those same words in the language community The strategiesI described in the last few pages are not the only, and probably not the best, ways of enhancing the leamers' vocabulary so that they learrrnot just the meaningsof the words but the environmentsthey occur in But they surebeat word-lists! No wonder I have never succeededas a languagelearner: the coursesI have taken have not only denied me accessto the collocations of the words I have A world beyond collocation ){J learned, but they have hidden from me the whole rich world beyond collocation that underlies what it r"atty -"u.r to know a word Discussioneuestions #:iHf;"tr havevounoticedwhenlearners learnlisrsof individualwords Michaer Hoey is ress happy with many themed word lists, such as lists of sporrs or fumiture, than with unthemei fisrs drawn from a;;;", dialogue experience ffi: #ii:,classroom reflecthis assessm"nt or-rn " differenr Do you anticipate any probrems implementing the suggestion, made by severar contributors to this uoot, oi"n"ouraging learners to record languagein multi_worditems, new ,cleaning l" it up,first? "orrt"^t,^;ithout 244 Bibliography Bibliography Baigent, M (1999) Teachingin Chunks: integratinga lexical approach,'in Modern English Teacher,Vol 8, No Biber, D., Conrad, S and Reppen, R (1998) Corpus Linguistics, Cambridge University Press Brown, G (1917) Listening to SpokenEnglish, Longman Bygate, M (1996) Effects of Task Repetition: appraisingthe developing languageof learners,in Willis and Willis SJ S] L S1 Sr Tr R T EI Coady, J and Huckin, T (1991) SecondLanguageVocabularyAcquisition, Cambridge University Press T \t Fernando, C (1996) Idioms and Idiomaticity,Oxford University Press vt Hill, J and Lewis, M (Eds) (1997)LTP Dictionary of SelectedCollocations, UTP T] 1, Hoey, M (1991) Patternsof Lexis in Text, Oxford University Press v! Hoey, M (Ed) (1993) Data, Description,Discourse,HarperCollins \1 H Howarth, P (1998) Phraseology and Second Language Proficiency, in Applied LinguisticsVol 19, No Hudson, J (1998) Perspectives on Fixedness,Lund University Press Johansson,S (1993) "Sweetly oblivious": some aspectsof adverb-adjective combinationsin present-dayEnglish, in Hoey, 1993 Krashen, S and Terrell, T (1983) The Natural Approach,Pergamon Larsen-Freeman, D (1977) Chaos, Complexity, Science and Second LanguageAcquisition, in Applied Linguistics,Vol 18, No Lewis, M (1993) The Lexical Approach,LTP Lewis M (1997) Implementingthe Lexical Approach,LTP Lewis, M (1996) Implicationsof a Lexical View of Language,in Willis and Willis Lewis, M (1991) PedagogicalImplications of the Lexical Approach, in Coady and Huckin Nattinger, J and DeCarrico, J (1992) Lexical Phrases in Language Teaching,Oxford University Press Poole, B (1998) Corpus, Concordance, Combinability, in IATEFL Newsletter,Feb-March 1998 Rudzka, B., Channel, J., Putseys,Y and Ostyn, P (1981) The Words you Need,Macmillan Schmidt, R W (1990) The Role of Consciousnessin Second Language Learning,in Applied Linguistics,Vol 11, No , Bibliography 2,{g sinclair, J (1991)corpus, concordance,colrocation, oxford university press Skehan, P (1998) A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning, Oxford UniversityPress Stewart, I (1990) Does God play Dice?, penguin Sunderland, P (1998) Lexical Chunks,inArena, Issue 19 Ter-Minasova, S (1996) Language, Linguistics and Life: A view from Russia,Moscow StateUniversityAssociation o l Timmis, r (1999) Language corpora: what every teacher should know, in ELI News & Views, year 6, No Thornbury, S (1998) The Lexical Approach: a joumey without maps in Modern English Teacher,Vol No watts, P (1999) using textual analysis to teach source use, paper, 33rd TESOL Convention Wilberg, P (1987) One to One, LTp Williams, A (1998) Negotiatingin Chunks,in Arena, Issue 19 willis, J and winis, D (1996) chailenge and change in LanguageTeaching, Heinemann I S B N1 - 9 - 1 - X [...]... part of the collocation and students have to remember or find the missing part in their notebooks before I dictate the whole item Other ways of recycling include: domino-typegames- match the cardsend to end by matchingthe collocations;'find your partner'activitieswhere twoword collocations are split between members of the class who then have to find their 'p the table an time hoprn: recycling is 1.9... expressionswith collocations - they're getting married, we got wet, we got thrown owt, I've got a bad cold and so on Ignoring these expressionsin the forms in which they occur, or taking thern apart in order to establishthe meaning of get is ridiculous, as the leamers will only have to put them together again in order to use the original expressions Once you have realised that the mental lexicon contains many... for themselves Not only should they notice common collocations in the texts they meet, but more importantly, they should select those collocations which are crucial to their particular needs This is very much in line with modern trends in languageteaching, where there is a shift from simply teaching the languageto helping learnersdevelop their learning skills How, then,can we encourageand developthe... 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, learnersbegin to notice more of this kind of languagefor 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... learningnew words By focussingour students'attentionon mis-collocations we make them aware that learning more vocabulary is not just learning new 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 identify collocationsin... dictionary definition and all will be fine until the student comes across the word wownd Sfte) then has to reassesswhat injury means in the light of the new discovery, a discovery the teachermay wish the learner had never made when the leamer asks: What's the dffirence befween'wound'and 'injury' 2 One's instinct - and my initial training - leads you to answer such a question by trying to define the differencebetweenpairs... Cognitive Approach to Language Learning) makes a similarpoint whenhe writes: In this view, the role of instruction is not necessarilytherefore in the clarity or in the explanation it provides, but rather in the way it channelsattention and brings into awarenesswhat otherwise would have beenmissed Simple questionssuch as What's the verb before 'opportunie' in the ftrst paragraph?draw students'attention to collocations.Oncethat... the missing parts of the collocations.For any collocationswhich are worth adding to, I elicit or give more very quickly Do not assume students are noticing collocations and recordingthem for themselves.They won't unlessyou train them to I have found that after a short period of time, students begin to ask me about collocations in texts - whether they are worth recording - and they also ask 24 There is... imporlantly, how they are used Taking a few minutes to supply these collocationsin a lesson shortcutsthe processof building up meaning and therefore acquiring If you do not actively introduce additional collocations, it may be weeks,monthsor yearsbeforestudentsmeet thosecollocationsand therefore the process of evolving and deepening understandingis delayed Actively introducing collocations recycles half-known... 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 languageteachingcoursesand materials .The following is a personalaccount of how I have brought collocations into my classroom and how my teaching