Acquiring Lexical Chunks

Evelina Miscin, Croatia

Siân Morgan teaches at the Language Centre of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. She is particularly interested in second language writing and has published several articles on this subject. E-mail: sianmorgan@katamail.com

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Introduction
Background
Examples
Conclusions
References

Introduction

During my teaching of ESP I have realised that many students have problems with using lexical chunks. They are never sure which combination is right and they mostly rely on their mother tongue, thus making a lot of mistakes. Therefore, I have been using a lot of exercises in order to help them. All the exercises are easy to be made and are very effective.

Background

When I started teaching, words were usually taught isolated or students were forced to learn all the sentences by heart without realising what each word meant. During several past years the trend has changed – words are more and more taught in their environment – instead of teaching individual words, they are taught with either a word that precedes of follows them. These are known as collocations, but since sometimes one could argue if something is a collocation or a phrase, or some other kind of word combination, I use the term lexical chunk to avoid such misunderstanding.

The objective of this paper is to show exercises which are meant to help students in raising their awareness about lexical chunks. The workshop was held in Cardiff at the IATEFL Conference in 2009. The emphasis is on acquiring lexical chunks consisting of a noun and a collocate which precedes it (so-called upward collocation).

Examples

The workshop consisted of ten activities. First, I wanted to test participants about their knowledge of lexical chunks, so I gave them tests – some people got business English and some medical English test. After they had completed it, I showed on OHP the results I got from the Croatian teachers who were not ESP teachers. The results are shown below.

MEDICAL TEST – the words in brackets indicate the most frequent collocation found in the corpus:

1. When you are pregnant you should avoid/give up/quit/refrain from/stop alcohol consumption. (refrain from)
2. The bandage should be changed/reapplied/replaced regularly. (changed)
3. A bedsore can appear/be cured/develop/burst out in hours and may take months to heal. (develop)
4. Each time you give blood a doctor checks/test/takes blood samples for safety tests in the labs. (takes)
5. The electrocardiogram (ECG) is an important and sometimes central tool used to help/give/establish/look up/confirm the diagnosis of myocardial ischemia. (establish)
6. NSAIDs are often used to ease/treat/remove/relieve/heal/reduce/kill headache pain. (relieve)
7. The patient was rushed/taken/admitted to hospital due to terrible injury. (admitted)
8. Antibiotics are used to treat/cure/prevent/fight/stop infection. (fight/treat/prevent)
9. He has suffered/experienced/had severe head injury. (sustained/experienced)
10. If you experience a severe allergic reaction e.g. with breathing difficulty seek medical attention urgently. (seek)
11. Tony Snow will undergo/visit/have/do surgery on Monday to remove a small growth. (undergo)
12. The doctor will prescribe/inject/administer/give penicillin or other antibiotics by pill or by injection. (administer/give)
13. The task of a nurse is also to take/measure/check a patient’s temperature. (check)
14. Health visitors visit families to carry out/administer/do check-ups on young children. (carry out)
15. I think I’ve gone down with/caught/had the flu bug that’s going round. (caught/picked up)

BUSINESS TEST – again, the words in brackets indicate the most frequent word used in the corpus.

Jan Vickers now owns/runs (runs) a successful bicycle company in the town. He made/put/built/set/took (set) it up ten years ago to cater for students and he has done extremely well. He does (does) a lot of rental business with the tourist trade at local hotels. In his first year of operations he undertook experienced/made/had (made) a loss, but his sales figures for his second year showed an upturn and he has never looked back since. Indeed you could say that business is currently booming/blooming/thriving/flourishing (booming) as he has just won/concluded/made/signed (won) an important new contract with a chain of fitness centres. There was a stiff competition but Jan won/got/gave/ put (put) in a bid which was more attractive than anything that rival presented/offered/had/did (struck/did). As a result Jan’s company is planning to open/offer/start/create (create) new jobs.

In the next activity, participants were given a medical text or a business text and they had to underline the lexical chunks they thought were important and that they would like to teach. For this purpose any text can be used where you can find some interesting word combinations and then it can be discussed why somebody thinks that some lexical chunk is more important.

In the next exercise, participants were given a list of words and asked to make collocations out of them within 2 minutes. They made collocations using all the words from the list.

(The key is: Make mistakes, Powerful engine, Have breakfast, Make an effort, Watch TV, Ancient monument, Substantial meal, Bitterly cold, Pitch dark, Strictly forbidden, Make breakfast, Substantial breakfast)

The next exercise is a well-known one – odd one out. Participants got a list of words and had to choose the one which does not collocate with the noun: (the bold word in the brackets is the correct answer):

1. Our company sets a high value/price/cost on after-sales service. (value)
2. Competition to earn/win/achieve the contract was strong/stiff/hard. (win, stiff)
3. You need a wide range of skills in order to work/run/go a successful business. (run)
4. How long have you been doing/making/getting business with China for? (doing)
5. The annual takeover/overtake/turnover/overturn of our company is growing rapidly. (turnover)
6. It’s my job to weigh/balance/add the budget. (balance)
7. We’ve put in a very competitive offer/bid/deal so I hope we’ll get the job.( bid)
8. We’ve been doing rapid/stiff/brisk business all morning. (brisk)

The next exercise is a guessing game – a teacher should read a list of words and participants have to guess the noun they collocate with (it can be made as a competition – divide the class into two teams and slowly read collocates – the sooner the main word or the node is guessed, the more points are won).

MEDICAL

1. cell, relation, type, plasma, count, group, transfusion → BLOOD
2. muscle, disease, failure, rate, attack → HEART
3. sex, growth, receptor, replacement, therapy → HORMONE
4. body, blood, plasma, membrane, killer, suppressor, nucleus → CELL
5. management, stabbing, relieve, threshold, excruciating, throbbing → PAIN
6. skeletal, fibre, visceral, spasm, striated, ache, cardiac, smooth, involuntary → MUSCLE

BUSINESS

1. awareness, stretching, own, image, management → BRAND
2. corner, open-plan, branch, dentist's, hours, manager, supplies → OFFICE
3. invest, spend, borrow, lend, waste, earn, gamble, laundering → MONEY
4. take, low, security, be at, spread, outweigh, calculated, management, minimise, share, run → RISK
5. allocate, low, national, keep within, below, state, annual, exceed → BUDGET
6. bank, current, day, company, holder, deposit, savings, joint, profit and loss → ACCOUNT

The next exercise is a well-know HANGMAN, but this time played with four words – participants were divided into two teams and instead of guessing just one word they have to guess four words based on the letters they provide. The important thing is that letters are not given for the central word (crisis) which has to be guessed based on the words which preceed and follow:

The example on the board with the letter ‘O’

- - O - O - -                        - - - - - - - - - -

                       - - - - - -

- O - - - - - - -                       - - OO -

Key:

ECONOMIC                       MANAGEMENT

                       CRISIS

POLITICAL                       PROOF

In the next exercise participants got a table with nouns and verbs and they had to match them. After that, they had to put them in the sentences or, for more advanced students you can ask them to make sentences of their own.
The last column and the words in brackets are the key.

1. They hope to ________ by employing fewer staff. (reduce costs)
2. Could you ________ so we can see exactly how it works? (arrange a demonstration)
3. It’s not always easy to ________ between management and staff. (settle disputes)
4. They’re going to ________ on some vacant land nearby. (build a factory)

The next exercise was similar to this one, but students were given a table with medical terms – they had to match the left and the right side and then mime a role-play situation with one person who has one or more of the above problems. The others had to guess what the problem is and how it happened.

The following exercise was correcting errors – participants got sentences with errors and had to correct them. The key is given in the brackets.

1. It was such a near finish that no one was quite sure who had won. (close)
2. I’ve just got to put the ending touches to my painting and then you can see it. (finishing)
3. I expect the meeting will go to an end at about 5.30. (come to)
4. Everyone is here, so I think we should do a start now. (make)
5. We all hope that the negotiations will succeed in taking the strike to an end. (bringing)
6. E-mail marked the start of the end for the fax machine. (beginning)
7. Our journey finished – as it had begun – in Cairo. (ended)
8. Have you heard yet what the finish result of the talks was? (end)

The last game and the favourite among my students is the association game. The table with four columns and six rows is drawn on the board and participants open the fields (e.g. A-1, B-4, C-2). They try to guess the word in columns and the final word which collocates with all four them in the fifth row.

Conclusions

The aim of all of the above exercises is to make students aware of lexical chunks and their importance. The exercises were given in the order of difficulty – from the easiest ones (recognition of lexical chunks, matching, correcting mistakes) to the more complicated ones where students are encouraged to think of the lexical chunks by themselves without being offered one. In this way, students found it stimulating and motivating dealing with these lexical problems and more easily remembered these word combinations and acquired competence. It can be done on all the levels, but I showed it with examples from ESP – particularly business and medical English.

References

Flower, John (2000), Build your business vocabulary, Thomson and Heinle, Boston, USA

Glendinning, Eric H. and Holmström (2005), English in Medicine, Cambridge Professional English, Cambridge, UK

Glendinning, Eric and Howard, Ron (2007) Professional English in Use Medicine, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK

O’Dell, Felicity and McCarthy, Michael (2005) English Collocations in Use, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK

Oxford Collocations Dictionary (2002), Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK

Riley, David (1996) Check your Vocabulary for Law, Peter Collin Publishing, Teddington, UK

Wyatt, Rawdon (2007), Check your English Vocabulary for Leisure, Travel and Tourism, A & C Black, London, UK

Please check the How to teach English to Business People course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching English for University Lecturers course at Pilgrims website.