Day, money, way - A corpus-based investigation of the phraseology of three high frequency nouns and its implications for the design of TEFL materials E-Book
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- Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008
Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Hannover (Englisches Seminar), course: Hauptseminar Corpora and Language Teaching, language: English, abstract: The use of corpora has expanded linguistic research possibilities, revolutionized theoretical concepts of language by applying empirical methods, and changed the face of applied linguistics. Although corpora are a tremendous asset to lexicography, translation studies, cultural studies and even to forensics, an awareness of their benefits has not fully arrived in the field of language teaching, yet. While insights from corpora linguistics have led to the development of a new and improved generation of dictionaries, most teaching materials for teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) have been largely unaffected in this respect, and are regrettably still based on old conventions and on the intuition of course book designers. This unfortunate fact is the starting point for the term paper at hand, which investi-gates the high frequency nouns day, money and way in two corpora in order to compare their authentic use by native speakers to their illustration in German teaching materials. Its focus is set on phraseology and frequency to find out if these nouns are adequately represented, or if an amendment of teaching materials is necessary. The spoken part of the British National Corpus (BNC spoken) serves as the basis of this analysis, due to the fact that German language teaching policy favours a communicative approach aiming at the development of communicative competence and fluency in spoken English. The BNC findings are juxtaposed to the results of an analysis of the German English as a Foreign Language Textbook Corpus (GEFL TC), a corpus comprising two school book series. Additionally, the nouns´ introduction and presentation in the German English G 2000 textbook series are explored. Finally, as one approach to investigate the teaching materials for advanced learners, the respective entries are checked in three dictionaries aiming at this target group, namely the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the Macmillan Dictionary for Advanced Learners and the Oxford Advanced Learners´ Dictionary of Current English. The paper will first provide the theoretical background for the analysis, and will explain its concept and methods. Subsequently, it will focus on the analysis´ results and will propose improvements to textbook design. Last but not least, it presents Data Driven Learning (DDL) as corpus-based complement of course books and devises six exercises, based on the corpora findings of the BNC spoken, to exemplify it.
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1. Introduction
The use of corpora has expanded linguistic research possibilities, revolutionized theoretical concepts of language by applying empirical methods, and changed the face of applied linguistics. Although corpora are a tremendous asset to lexicography, translation studies, cultural studies and even to forensics, an awareness of their benefits has not fully arrived in the field of language teaching, yet. While insights from corpora linguistics have led to the development of a new and improved generation of dictionaries, most teaching materials for teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) have been largely unaffected in this respect, and are regrettably still based on old conventions and on the intuition of course book designers.
This unfortunate fact is the starting point for the term paper at hand, which investigates the high frequency nounsday, moneyandwayin two corpora in order to compare their authentic use by native speakers to their illustration in German teaching materials. Its focus is set on phraseology and frequency to find out if these nouns are adequately represented, or if an amendment of teaching materials is necessary.
The spoken part of the British National Corpus (BNC spoken) serves as the basis of this analysis, due to the fact that German language teaching policy favours a communicative approach aiming at the development of communicative competence and fluency in spoken English. The BNC findings are juxtaposed to the results of an analysis of the German English as a Foreign Language Textbook Corpus (GEFL TC), a corpus comprising two school book series. Additionally, the nouns´ introduction and presentation in the German English G 2000 textbook series are explored. Finally, as one approach to investigate the teaching materials for advanced learners, the respective entries are checked in three dictionaries aiming at this target group, namely the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the Macmillan Dictionary for Advanced Learners and the Oxford Advanced Learners´ Dictionary of Current English. The paper will first provide the theoretical background for the analysis, and will explain its concept and methods. Subsequently, it will focus on the analysis´ results and will propose improvements to textbook design. Last but not least, it presents Data Driven Learning (DDL) as corpus-based complement of course books and devises six exercises, based on the corpora findings of the BNC spoken, to exemplify it.
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2. Main Part
2.1. Phraseology, Frequency and Typicality as Issues of Corpus Linguistics
Computer-driven investigations of large text compilations known as corpora enable linguists to easily deal with large amounts of language material, and to apply reliable empirical methods to their research. Furthermore, they offer a chance to behold language from different angles which change its perception and lead to a better understanding and even to new notions and concepts of language. Three of these angles are phraseology, frequency and typicality.
2.1.1. Phraseology
One sort of corpus-access software, so-called concordancing programs, can be used to observe the phraseology of words by investigating their collocates (cf. Hunston, 2002: 9, 13). Phraseology can be defined as “the tendency of words to occur in a preferred sequence in naturally-occurring language data” (Groom, 2006: 25; Hunston, 2002: 138). It comprises all aspects of preferred sequencing as well as the occurrence of fixed phrases (Hunston, 2002: 138) Collocates are words or phrases that are frequently used with other words or phrases in a way that sounds correct to native speakers of a language (Koprowski, 2005: 332), while the term collocation denotes the “statistical tendency of words to co-occur” (Hunston, 2002: 12;), Phraseology plays a “central role in the corpus linguistic study of language” (Mahlberg, 2006: 378) having a major impact on the development of language theories, because it is crucial in the determination of linguistic meaning (cf. Groom, 2006: 25). As Sinclair explains, the sense of words is connected to a particular usage, either syntactic patterns, a close association of words or a grouping of words in a set phrase. Therefore, the meaning of words cannot be detected in isolation, but it is determined by the respective environment (1995b: xvii). Meaning and phraseology are intertwined and distinguishing between meanings is distinguishing between patterns of usage (cf. Hunston, 2002: 47). This holds particularly true for polysemous words, because their diverse meanings “do not reside in the words themselves, but in the sequences in which they participate” (Groom, 2006: 26). Each sense will tend to be associated most frequently with a different set of phraseological patterns (Hunston, 2002:139).
Phraseology is also important to determine semantic prosody, a phenomenon that refers to words that are typically used in a particular environment, from which these words adapt connotations in addition to their usual meaning (Hunston, 2002: 141 et seq.). Due to the fact that semantic prosody is a “subtle element of attitudinal, often pragmatic meaning”, it is
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evidence of frequency. They rather concern prototypicality, the usage which is commonly felt to be typical. (cf. Hunston, 2002, 43 with reference to Barlow and Shortall) Additionally, frequency is an important factor in combination with phraseology, because the most frequent words carry the main patterns in a language (Mahlberg, 2006: 389 with further reference) and have a “subtle range of meanings” ( Sinclair, 1995b: xviii). Phraseology is prevalent in very frequent words, because they are often used in fairly fixed phrases (Hunston, 2002: 102 with further reference).
Furthermore, if it is assumed that the meaning of words can be viewed as their use, frequency can also be seen as part of the meaning. (Mahlberg: 2006: 389).
2.2. Phraseology, Frequency and Typicality in Applied Linguistics and
Language Teaching
Corpus insights concerning phraseology and frequency have had an immense influence on applied linguistics and revolutionized the design of reference materials like dictionaries and grammar books.
Dictionaries nowadays tend to define phrases rather than single words, include definition sentences to illustrate phraseology, and sometimes even introduce collocational information into definitions (cf. Hunston, 2002: 102) They also include frequency information, either explicitly in the respective entries or implicitly as an criterion for the organization of entries (cf. Hunston, 2002: 97). Examples of such corpus based dictionaries are theCollins Cobuild English Language Dictionary(Sinclair, 1995a) and thePONS Großwörterbuch Englisch - Deutsch, Deutsch - Englisch(Cop & Agbaria et al., 2002). Some grammar books include lexical information as one major part of the grammatical description, explicitly state lists of grammatical patterns sorted according to words of different word classes, and use grammar codings based on these patterns. Additionally, they are also based on frequency information (cf. Hunston, 2002: 104 et seq.). Representatives of such grammar books are theCollins Cobuild English Grammar(Sinclair et al. 1991a) and theCobuild Grammar Patternseries (cf. Hunston, 104 with further reference). Aside from their implications and effects on the design of reference material, phraseology, frequency and typicality are important issues in the realm of actual language teaching, too.
The study of phraseology is of great pedagogic value for the teaching of languages (cf. Koprowski, 2005: 322, Hunston, 2002: 197), because phrases can pose problems for language
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learners as well as support their understanding of the target language. This particularly holds true for the learning and teaching of English, as phrases are frequently used in this language (Hunston, 2002: 138 with further reference).
First of all, if Sinclair’s idiom principle depicts cognitive reality, learners need to be confronted with phraseology, rather than with a construction kit of single lexical items and rules for their combination.
Secondly, negotiation of ambiguous meanings is a common element of classroom discourse and of interactions between native and non-native speakers (Groom, 2006: 27). Phrases or sequences are problematic in this respect, because they are often connected with associations that can differ strikingly for native speakers and for learners of English as a foreign language (Groom, 2006: 26). On the other hand, the exposure to certain sequences can also lead to sets of expectations as to what they typically mean, which are then consciously or unconsciously applied to new instances of this phraseology (Groom, 2006: 26 et seq.). Therefore, the study of phraseology helps learners to understand the meaning of phrases, raises their consciousness of the target language, and enables them to conform to nativespeaker phraseological norms and expectations, which supports their communica-tive skills (cf. Römer, 2005: 282; Groom, 2006: 27; Hunston, 2002: 197; Mukherjee, 2004: 246). Moreover, vocabulary teaching has to take account of semantic prosody, especially in teaching hermeneutics to advanced learners. In this respect, a phraseological approach is the only effective way of accomplishing it (cf. Hunston, 2002: 142). Summing up, TEFL methods therefore have to include phrases and should replace the single word as a teaching unit by phraseology wherever possible (cf. Hunston, 2002: 139; Lamy & Mortensen, 2006: 323 with reference to Willis). On the other hand, one has to be cautious only to include useful lexical phrases and to exclude superficial or extremely rare ones (Koprowski, 2005: 324, 331), but this is a question of frequency and typically and will be discussed later on.
Aside from its significance for communicative competence and vocabulary teaching, the study of phraseology also holds advantages for the teaching of grammar, and can enhance the traditional methods. Learners often have problems with abstract grammatical metalanguage and rules, which may lead to unnecessary failure (Hadley, 2002: 3.2). By following the pattern grammar approach, surface distinctions can be used to focus on the association between meaning and form, and to characterize grammatical patterns without regress to abstract terms and labels, which are often connected to delimitation problems and to controversial interpretations (cf. Mahlberg, 2006: 379, 381). Thereby, grammar teaching
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would become more illustrative by shifting the focus from “agrammar of “empty constructions”“to “agrammar of lexical items”(Römer, 2005: 286) Another argument that supports the application of the grammar pattern approach in TEFL is that fact that English is a lexical language, in which many grammatical concepts can be regarded as lexical patterns (cf. Hunston, 2002: 190 with reference to Willis).
Thus, many proponents of a pattern grammar argue for its introduction in language teaching to communicate grammatical insights and to help learners utilize the target language (“Pedagogical Grammar” Hadley, 2002: 3.0; “Corpus-Driven Communicative Didactic Lexical Grammar” Römer, 2005: 285; “Lexical Syllabus” by Willis cf. Hunston, 2002: 190 and Lamy & Mortensen, 3.2.2.).
Frequency and typicality do not rank behind phraseology in terms of their significance for language learning and teaching. It is demanded that frequency and typicality should constitute the centre of a syllabus, which teaches the most frequent words and items first (cf. Hunston, 2002: 194, 189 with further reference to Willis; Koprowski 2005: 324; Römer, 2004: 161; Römer, 2005: 281, 287).
One reason given is the fact that the most common units in a language are the ones, which learners will likely encounter outside the classroom and in contact with native speakers (cf. Koprowski, 2005: 324). Secondly, most frequent words have a variety of usages, so that learners easily acquire a flexibility of language by learning them (cf. Hunston, 2002: 189). Therefore, fluency in using frequent words is of greater value than knowing a lot of words which are hardly ever used (cf. Sinclair, 1995b: xviii). Finally, the main uses of the most frequent words also cover the main grammatical patterns and should be used to explain grammar in class (cf. Hunston, 2002: 189)
In addition, if language teaching should facilitate learners´ communicative competence, it has to communicate knowledge about what is expected or typical in a language. Again, the most typical and central language features should be taught first, before exposing learners to less common and rather marginal features (Römer, 2005: 281). In order to give learners the opportunity to sound more natural or native-like, every item should be presented in its typical context, which encompasses collocation, phraseology and patterns (cf. Römer, 2005: 282 with further reference).
Summing up, if lexical items are arranged, ordered and presented in accordance with frequency, it is assured that the most important aspects of the target language are learnt first (cf. Mindt & Grabowski, 1995: 6), and that learners receive an optimum yield out of their learning efforts (cf. Koprowski, 2005: 323). Due to this, typicality in frequency terms should
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also be a guideline for choosing examples for teaching (cf. Hunston, 2002: 44). Nevertheless, in order to present an adequately detailed picture of the target language, certain infrequent but important aspects should be considered and included in a syllabus, since infrequent items sometimes have a high cultural value and may carry a lot of information which learners need to know in order to understand them semantically and culturally (cf. Hunston, 2002: 194; Römer, 2005: 286).
2.3. Status Quo of Phraseology and Frequency in Contemporary Teaching
Materials
Despite their didactic significance and in contrary to the paid attention in reference materials, phraseology, frequency and typicality play only a subordinate role in contemporary teaching materials and in EFL course books. Concerning this matter it has to be kept in mind that in many teaching contexts there is no distinction between course books and syllabus, making the books the main source for instruction and nearly the only language input for learners (Koprowski, 2005: 323 with further reference). This also applies to German TEFL which is very textbook-based, especially in respect of the training of beginners and intermediate learners (Römer, 2004: 151, 163). The dependence on written course materials reaches so far that the term “Abiturspeak” denotes the fact that advanced learners, who leave school with the German equivalent of British A-levels, are not sufficiently able to use natural spoken English, but rely on a spoken version of the written language (Mukherjee, 2004: 247). In general, teaching materials have been largely unaffected by the insights of corpus linguistics (Römer, 2005: 277; Römer, 2006: 128; Mukherjee, 2004: 242 et seq.) Research even attested discrepancies between course books and corpus evidence. For German EFL materials, Mindt stated that “English in German EFL textbooks is at variance with language used by native speakers” (1997: 42), and Römer documented “considerable inadequacies in pedagogical description”, which refer to a simplified illustration of lexical and grammatical items in textbooks, basing on significant aberrations of collocation and context patterns from natural spoken English. (cf. 2004: 275, 282). Moreover, the notion of a pattern grammar has not reached EFL course books, yet. The dichotomy of lexis and grammar is still maintained (Römer, 2004, 286).
Even if British mainstream course books nowadays routinely offer a mix of collocations, compounds, binominals, idioms, as well as fixed and semi-fixed phrases, the selection is done without reference to corpus data (especially frequency), and many of the presented items are of limited pedagogic value (cf. Koprowski, 2005: 322).
