About two decades ago, I had the responsibility of designing and teaching an 80-hour spoken English course. Most of those who participated in the course were reluctant to converse in English as they had either studied in Tamil medium schools or did not have much exposure to the English language. So I set two objectives: 1) to boost the participants’ confidence and 2) to expose them to the language. The method that I followed was to expose students to lexical chunks in the language and create opportunities for them to use the chunks in appropriate contexts in their monolingual/bilingual conversations. At the end of the course the participants were familiar with over 500 common chunks.
Lexical chunks fixed phrases, discourse markers, formulaic expressions, or collocations (groups of words that always go together). Here are some examples:
Fixed phrases: If I were you, I was wondering if, In my opinion, In the meantime, Sorry to bother you, Would you mind if, As far as I know, On the other hand, Further to this, In consequence, As a matter of fact, For this reason, In contrast, In the event of, Once in a while.
Formulaic expressions: Good morning, Thanks a lot, Well done, Have a great day, Nice to meet you, Good luck, All the best.
Collocations: heavy rain, strong wind, quick lunch, fast food, utter disaster, abdominal pain (not abdominal ache), stomach ache (stomach pain is not common), tummy ache (not tummy pain).
In a fixed phrase, it is not possible to replace any word with another one as either the meaning changes or it leads to confusion. Discourse markers are also fixed phrases that link what has been said before to what comes next. Formulaic expressions are used in particular situations.
Collocations are right combinations of words. For example, ‘stomach ache’ is a proper combination whereas ‘stomach pain’ is not very commonly used.
By exposing learners to such phrases and explaining the context they are used in, they learn to use English in a natural way. Knowledge of lexical chunks helps learners predict meanings and participate in conversations confidently.