Lexical Chunking – Too Good To Be True?
Adam Borowski, Poland
Adam Borowski participated in the ''NLP for teachers'' course in 2007, conducted by Bonnie Tsai. It was a psychological rollercoaster for him, for which – in hindsight – he is grateful. He successfully completed a monthly course at London School of Journalism in 2009. He is a connoisseur of high intelligence and high strangeness, his adventures took him as far as Honolulu. He liked the local accent. E-mail: tethoril@interia.pl
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Introduction
Examples
Conclusions
References
What does it mean to be fluent in English? For some strange reason, I remember the following definition: fluency is based on the acquisition of a large store of fixed and semi-fixed prefabricated items. Every language follows certain rules and the multi-prefabricated chunks are an expression of grammatical rules found in English.
Lexical chunking is a relatively new trend in English teaching. The premise is simple: instead of forcing students to learn an endless stream of single words, we – as teachers - ought to focus on collocations, phrasal verbs, fixed phrases and idiomatic expressions. In their formative years, native English speakers acquire an instinctive understanding of the chunking process.
As a matter of fact (a good phrase to teach your students!), grasping the underlying pattern governing the chunks is the way to go. Once the underlying pattern has been discerned, we can then shift our attention to individual words. In fact, it is highly likely that students are going to conduct their own analysis without our help.
Sounds too good to be true? It probably is.
Lexical chunking has its share of critics. I scanned various blogs, websites, et al., and came up with a common critical denominator, encapsulated by the following quote:
Native English speakers have tens or hundreds of thousands — estimates vary — of these formulae at their command. A student could learn 10 a day for years and still not approach native-speaker competence.1
Therein lies the problem.
A student can memorize an impressive list of chunks – but if the memorization process is passive, then he/she is never going to be fluent in English.
What’s missing?
Teaching always works best when it is a by-product of social interaction, i.e. when acquaintances interact, when friends interact, when family members interact.
A teacher-student paradigm equals formality; and a formal type of milieu is rarely conducive to optimal language learning.
The student wants to interact with real people – not with a sanitized version of the language taught in the classroom. The student wants to interact with real native speakers and read authentic materials. With the English language, the issue is not whether we can access the materials, but rather: how to separate the wheat from the chaff?
With such a vast amount of materials thanks to the status of English as the lingua franca, it is difficult to imagine why any teacher would shun lexical chunking.
Of course, we must remember that native speakers of any language are a heterogeneous group; frankly, it is pointless to converse with a native English speaker, whose intellectual capacity is subpar/whose accent leaves much to be desired; rather, always be on the lookout for educated native English speakers. Especially those who travel a lot, speak multiple languages and/or are bilingual. The chunks are a great tool, but make sure they are properly taught! The fossilized chunk error is the worst error.
Going back to the educated native speaker, I predicate my argument on simple reasoning.
The native English speaker may be unable to explain his/her understanding of the chunking process (as we know, linguistic knowledge is tacit knowledge) if he/she is monolingual, but if he/she speaks multiple languages – the speaker can draw on his/her experience to enhance the language learning experience.
Practical application? Suppose there’s a Polish student of English. Who is going to be a better chunk teacher? An American who speaks American English only - or a Polish-American teacher who not only speaks American English and Polish on a native level, but understands the cultural intricacies/differences between Poland and the U.S.?
While I do realize the above scenario is difficult to devise, the sheer difficulty must not preclude us from trying; especially if there are advanced students of English in our classroom.
To conclude, I would like to leave you with this: remember that the concept of native English speaker has been used – and abused – to justify various socio-political agendas.
One wise man once told me that there is in fact an infinite range of proficiencies.
My personal proficiency range starts at a total beginner and ends on an educated (multilingual) native English speaker.
For our students’ sake, however – we must label linguistic knowledge.
The chunks are on our side. But… is the feeling mutual?
www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19FOB-OnLanguage-Zimmer.html?_r=0
Please check the Methodology and Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
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