About two decades ago, when I was on the staff of Sequeira Institute of English, St Joseph’s College, Tiruchy, I had the responsibility of designing and teaching an 80-hour spoken English course. The clientele included doctors, engineers, lawyers, salespersons, and postgraduate students. Most of the participants of the course were reluctant to converse in English, as they lacked exposure to the language. As a result, they lacked confidence in speaking English. 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 the lexical chunks in the language and create opportunities for them to use the chunks in appropriate contexts in their monolingual/bilingual conversations.
The method worked well, as the confidence level of the participants in using the language improved and thus contributed to learning spoken English effectively. At the end of the course, the participants were familiar with over 500 common chunks. What are lexical chunks? They are fixed phrases, discourse markers, formulaic expressions, or collocations (groups of words that always go together). Here are examples of chunks:
Fixed phrases: If I were you; I was wondering if; in my opinion; in the meantime; Sorry to bother you; Would you mind if; to keep track of; as far as I know; by the way; on the other hand; further to this; in consequence; as a matter of fact; for this reason; in contrast; in the event of and once in a while.
Formulaic expressions: Good morning; Thanks a lot; Well done; Have a great day; Nice to meet you; Good luck and 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) and tummy ache (not tummy pain).
In a fixed phrase, it is not possible to replace any word with another word. All idiomatic expressions are fixed expressions. If any word is replaced by another word in the expressions, either the meaning changes or it leads to confusion. Discourse markers are also fixed phrases. They are words or phrases that link what has been said before to what comes next.
Formulaic expressions are used in particular situations. For example, when we meet someone, we say ‘Nice to meet you’ or ‘Good to see you’.
Collocations are right combinations of words. For example, ‘stomach ache’ is a proper combination whereas ‘stomach pain’ is not very commonly used. The search for the term ‘stomach pain’ in the British National Corpus gives only three solutions, whereas the search for the term ‘stomach ache’ gives 19 solutions. ‘Abdominal ache’ and ‘tummy pain’ are not proper collocations.
Why should learners be exposed to lexical chunks? By exposing learners to frequently used chunks and explaining the contexts in which they are used, we can help them use English in a natural manner. Knowledge of lexical chunks helps learners predict meanings and also enables them to participate in conversations confidently. By encouraging learners to identify lexical chunks in reading passages or conversations and to analyse the contexts in which they are used, teachers can help them become familiar with the phrases.
Rayanal@yahoo.co.uk