Lexical Approaches to Learning Business English

This entry looks at how our view of the English language has been radically altered by the advent of large databases of real usage of the English language and the consequences of this for language learning and teaching. One such consequence is that the learning and teaching of ESP (English for Specific Purposes), and in particular business English, can rightly focus on the language needed by students in their own unique contexts, without  undue burden of the traditional and often demotivating, focus on ‘tenses’ and sentence grammar.

·         Language corpora

·         The Lexical Approach

·         Lexical Chunks

·         Consequences for our view of  language

·         Learning and teaching

Language Corpora

The rapid growth of computerised corpora of English in the later part of the twentieth century has given researchers, course designers and teachers hitherto unavailable information about how the language works in practice. As a result, crucial insights into our descriptions of language have come into being. Yet despite all this, our understanding of how languages can be learnt, and how this work can be applied to the language learning experience itself, have lagged far behind.

·         Corpus data can identify the co-occurrence of words with grammatical patterns. It has been revealed that although words operate in strings which show basic grammatical relationships, the partnerships between words are primarily semantic or meaning based. Words occur together and this affects their meaning. Prior to this, the idea that that the major carrier of meaning was the individual word went unchallenged. No longer.

·         There are a number of ways in which words co-occur together to produce single units of meaning.

·         20% of the language used in all texts (spoken and written) is accounted for by the most frequently used grammatical items (the, of, I, that, was, and etc.) Consequently, learning the essential grammar needed for successful communication would best be served by focussing on how words typically operate in association and the patterns in which they are most frequently found in real use. For example, the word of is very frequently found in the pattern:

Noun Phrase (NP) + of + Noun Phrase (NP)

the heart of the matter, the majority of our international competitors etc.

·         The centrality of idiomatic and metaphorical language also came to be recognised, and this recognition extended to the need for them to be treated systematically.

·         Evidence from corpora has helped writers of learner dictionaries (such as OALD) to provide a much more accurate picture of the language and draw attention to the most useful and frequently occurring words.

The Lexical Approach

The fact that words seem to be primed to co-occur with other words formed the main impetus in Michael Lewis’ proposal of a Lexical Approach to learning and teaching language.  This constituted a direct challenge to the view that speaking a language was primarily a matter of slotting words into grammatical strings.  In fact the situation, according to exponents of this view, is quite the reverse.

Chunks

A key element in learning vocabulary is knowing that language use is largely predictable, in that the choice of words that can go with any given word is restricted not only by grammar but by association. This is commonly known as collocation and the relationship may be grammatical, as in the case of verbs collocating with prepositions:

depend on, look out for etc.

Alternatively, it can be lexical, when content (meaning carrying) words are frequently found together as in:

small print rather than *little print, have a meeting rather than *do a meeting.

These combinations can vary in strength. Both elements can co-occur with lots of other elements, as in  

target market, bull-market, flea market, market leader, market research

 Or they can have a stronger association, as in competitive advantage.

Strongest of all are those which have acquired the status of ‘fixed expressions’, such as:

as a matter of fact, without further ado etc.

Words not only collocate with other words, they collocate with other word families, or lexical fields, as in:

write an email, send an email,  delete an email, cc an email etc.

Learning and Teaching

These developments brought some recognition by course designers that a lexically based syllabus could give learners access to language as it is used, rather than as it is described by linguistic theory. Lamentably, these insights and suggestions have had less of an impact than they should. Consequences for language learning and teaching are:

·         Jane and Dave Willis argued that a syllabus based on the idea that the most frequent words and patterns would reflect the most frequently expressed meanings of a language and would be a more useful one from the learner’s perspective. This was the guiding principle for the Co-build Project, the main aim of which was to compile works of reference and course materials for English language learning and teaching.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBUILD

·         The focus shifted to specialised lexis- the vocabulary of commerce, of aviation, of science, marketing etc. 

·         The advent of the lexical syllabus-syllabuses based on specialised vocabulary, patterns and collocations, where vocabulary is given precedence over grammar as the central organising principle.

·         Time spent on promoting the noticing and manipulation of such patterns and chunks, and the systematic recording of the items realising them, is a much more efficient way for learners to progress than following a syllabus that requires the endless manipulation of sentence structures.

·         More time is spent on base verbs than on ‘tenses’, content nouns are taught in chunks (an influential politician rather than politician), sentence heads (Would you mind if…?) are taught unanalysed and chosen for inclusion in the syllabus based on their usefulness to the learner, linking between sentences is taught overtly alongside a growing understanding of how language operates at text level

·         Prepositions, modal verbs and de-lexicalised verbs are treated as part of single items (attend a meeting, get on well with).

Conclusion

Michael Lewis’s Lexical Approach and the lexical syllabus as proposed by Dave and Jane Willis share the beliefs that:

·         The prime function of vocabulary is to create meaning.

·         The traditional distinction between grammar and vocabulary is both invalid and unhelpful for learners.

·         Courses can be organised around the vocabulary that learners need and the items that occur most frequently in real use. Grammar can be treated as and when it is needed.

Findings from corpora showing how the language is actually used in practice show that both our description of the language, and our approach to learning and teaching (especially in ESP where time is short and focus paramount) need urgent review.

References and Further Reading

Carter and McCarthy (1998) Vocabulary and Language Teaching

Coady and Huckin (1997) Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition

Lewis (1993) The Lexical Approach

Lewis (1994) Implementing the Lexiclal Approach

Lewis et al (1997) Teaching Collocation

McCarthy (1990) Vocabulary

Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching

Nation (1990) Teaching and Learning Vocabulary

Pawley & Snyder (1983)Two puzzles for linguistic theory-native like selection and native like fluency. In Richards Language and Communication

Sinclair (1991) Corpus Concordance, Collocation

Thornbury(2004) Natural Grammar

D. Willis (1990) The Lexical Syllabus

Collins Cobuild Business Vocabulary in Practice (2006)

Language Corpora

The British National Corpus

http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

Collins-Cobuild Corpus

http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx

The Corpus of Contemporary American English

http://www.americancorpus.org/

Longman-Lancaster Corpus

http://www.pearsonlongman.com/dictionaries/corpus/lancaster.html

Lexical Warmer for the New Year

A Lovely View of Lancaster from the Priory (adj +n +of +NP)


Yes. The snow's gone now and a mild few days in prospect before I'm off back to the Algarve for a night. Then it's back up through the Alentejo to Lisbon and a New Year starting. The time has passed far too quickly and my feet have hardly touched the ground. Parties, kids and family. A lovely walk with Rachel along the canal on a frozen afternoon with her saving the ice and snow people from the ugly grit. A football match or two. Old faces and newly grown. A day in Preston and rescuing an old soldier from a fall on the ice then depositing him safely in the Harris Museum café. A few books bought. Some jeans and shirts in the sales. Decisions, decisions, decisions. On Monday I'll be back to the grind. I'm giving a training session on lexical approaches to language learning. An old favourite. There is a need for this. A very definite need for this. 


At random, a few items of interest from the above;


a mild few days, in prospect, back to + NP, touch the ground, an old soldier, a training session...and many more. That the majority of language teachers would fail to notice these items is worthy of comment. Michael Lewis' much needed and elegantly argued for change in mindset has seemingly failed to do that, 'set'. 


From now long experience I know all too well that if I presented the above opening to this blog to 9 out 10, and that's a generous estimate, practising English language teachers without comment, a good half of them would no doubt ignore the many complex and interesting things going on therein in favour of isolating the few complete sentences present and make a beeline for the verb forms they could identify. 'Present Perfect, Present Simple, Present Continuous, Future Simple 'tenses'' they would say and that would be that. A good few of them would also say that the English is either not well-formed as full sentences have not been used for much of the text. or that this kind of text is not representative of the type of language that learners can be usefully be exposed to.  Wrong on both counts. 


In opening his book Implementing the Lexical Approach (LTP, 1997) Lewis states that;


The standard view divides language into grammar (structure) and vocabulary (words). The Lexical Approach challenges this fundamental view of language. Instead, the Lexical Approach argues that language consists of chunks, which when combined, produce continuous coherent text.. (p7) 


This insight is crucial. That professional (and other) language teachers ignore this view on a daily basis is most certainly true and the predominance of the slot filling role for vocabulary still persists despite the influence now aging Lexical Approach and the such works as Scott Thornbury's Natural Grammar (OUP, 2005), wherein language patterning at phrase and clause level is given its due emphasis, alongside the sentence level grammar most equate with that much misunderstood and unduly limited word. For there is much more to 'grammar' than the sentence structures which continue to form the backbone of syllabuses as delivered in practice and the border between the grammatical and the lexical is indeed blurred.  


David Wilkins, as Lewis observes, said that 'Without grammar little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed' (Teaching Collocation. LTP 2000, p7). For language learners the crucial task is 'in acquiring a sufficiently large mental lexicon...even for intermediate learners this is enormous'. (ibid) The role of tradtional grammar  structures  needs to be re-evaluated as lexis takes centre stage. A new sense of awareness needs to be engendered and this should become second nature to teachers. First the mammoth task of shifting the emphasis back to where it belongs needs to be given. A tall order for this profession as it stands. But we can all fight our own little corners. 

After a few days in Algoz with Andy, a Brazilian and a dog and then it was cold

Well not that bad. I did actually get here with only an hour and a half delay at Faro. Many others had a much worse time of it. I really can't abide travel anymore...it became drab. Long gone the months on Greyhound buses and stunning rail journeys across the Rockies. These days it's airports and snowstorms. But here I am in Lancaster on a quiet Sunday night, garden snow-clad and looking forward to seeing it as I wake up in the morning. 


Lovely to have the kids next to me watching Patrick Stewart as Scrooge as soon as we arrived. And a lot more of them in the days to come. More snow please...coming home for Christmas.

Thank God It's Sunday

'Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.'


WS


The old café will be closed today. He warned me not to come down for a coffee on Sunday and Sunday it is. I've been drinking too much of it as it is and am looking forward to a break from it for a couple of weeks, The coffee back there is foul by reputation and in fact. Of course I'll take the odd frothy pseudo-Italian bucket of flavoured milk to break up a Lancaster shopping day or two and the company will no doubt be convivial.  


A couple  days left still before I set off down to Algoz for a few Algarvian adventures before heading back via Faro and Liverpool to the city that has become the family lair. But before the chill and the tea,  it's course writing and a sea of PowerPoint slides to contend with, to order, to edit, to improve, to turn into the basis for a thousand leaning experiences worth their salt. How far we've come and yet how far we have to go. 





For a thousand years and more attitudes to language and language learning have been a strange  mixture of myth and realism, of deeply held beliefs bordering on the superstitious and attempts at applying the scientific world view to the workings of it, to the learning and teaching of it. However, like much else, its only since the late 19th Century that a truly scientific  attitude characterised by consistency and precision, unfettered by the preconceived,  has come into being and yet the field remains all too prone to myth making and fad. The subjective remains, in practice, supreme. 


Take a quick tour of what's been on offer since the fifties, a veritable catalogue of methods and approaches with adherents and critics coming and going and fulminating as distastefully as any a crazed  pulpit peacher.   And they are still with us today,  as the Callan Method, the Wall Street Institute, Berlitz and company with their blanket statements and potted solutions at the fore amply demonstrate. 


'The Callan Method is focussed on teaching students the basic grammar and the most essential vocabulary. By the time he (!) has completed all 12 stages of the Method (notice the use of capitals here), the student will have mastered the 5621 most common words of the English language.' 


Surely this smacks of the silly pseudo-religious and of the cult. They're all there if you look closely. The dangerous characteristics of the mystical. The voice of authority, the adherence to the cause, the sorry supplicant at the feet of Baal and the mountain to climb. The steps to be followed to reach enlightenment, the curious mixture of the statistical and the loopy promise and the shitting on the opposition. ('As many tests have shown they (the students) learn English in a quarter of the time'). A quarter of the time compared to what? Oh yes, 'make progress up to four times faster than at other types (sic.) of language school.' (My underlining.) And the appeal to science when it suits? 'The method is like a piece of precison engineering, an intricate design which is simple to use.' Now that should appeal to the ignorant and bring them the church door in their droves. It seems to be working. New schools, apparently,  are opeing at such a rate that the site is having to be constantly updated. Hallelujah ! But it is Sunday and we wouldn't want to be offending sensibilities on the (for some) day of worship.

The Long Haul to Darius the Great

Having a Friday off and a good old slouch on the sofa I saw the following on BBC Entertainment this afternoon. An Englishman turned Polish fireman explained to Michael Palin how he'd done it with one of the 'five most difficult languages there is' by drinking and talking to Polish guys until he'd drank (at least) the volume of several fire engines in beer and vodka over the ten years he'd lived in Poland. However, he was at a loss to explain how he'd arrived at this enviable state of being.   He'd had no formal lessons at all, hadn't encountered the language in any sense the common view might  accept as a 'study' setting and yet had married a local girl, settled in, was building a home in the woods, was raising a daughter called Chelsea (poor soul) and had clearly integrated successfully into his adopted community.


However, from what I hear he's an exception. Most English people living and working in Poland, usually English teachers, could not boast the level of fluency of this ex-Londoner, and now functioning fireman so expert at his trade that he trains encumbent Polish firefighters to follow in his capable footsteps for a living. Presumably a high level of proficiency in using Polish is required to do this. But I got to wondering, not about the relative difficulty of learning language x or language y, nor the role of formal instruction in language learning, but about what's come to be known as the 'intermediate plateau'. For this London gent had clearly pulled himself, or been dragged, beyond this towering wall of impossibility. 


Learners at B1  according to the CEFR level descriptor for this level:


Can understand the main points of clear standard  input on familiar matters regularly encountred in work, school, leisure etc. Can deal deal with most situations likely to arise whist traveling in an area where the language is spoken. Can produce simple connected text on topics which are familiar or personal interest. Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions, and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans

http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/Portfolio/?M=/main_pages/levels.html

Learners of English making the transition from Pre-Intermediate to Upper-Intermediate and beyond typically reach a plateau in their language learning experience. After several hundred contact hours, and much sweat and blood,  the feeling of exhilaration at being able to hold a genuine conversation which accompanies the fact that the learner can now do all of the above (which is a fantastic achievement in itself)  is soon overtaken by a sense of frustration by many, notwithstanding our fireman friend. No matter how much more effort they put in, many learners and teachers report that the learning process does not follow a smooth transition from intermediate to advanced levels of proficiency. 


According to Jack Richards (Moving Beyond the Plateau-p1, CUP 2008) 'acquiring a usable supply of essental and high-frequency vocabulary does not come easily, nor does the ability to recall and use the correct grammar and conversational patterns at the appropriate times and to understand the gist and sometimes the details of the language they hear.' And this sensation causes no end of motivational troubles. The estimate  to acheive this breakthrough is  for learners to have acquired around 3,000 word families for use and at their immediate disposal. 


This is a very tall order when we remember what it means to be able to say that a 'word' is 'known'. This includes its pronunciation, the type of word it is, how it typically behaves in phrases and sentences, patterns and collocations in which it frequently occurs, it's appropriacy in context and more. To be able to produce an utterance of the complexity of this one, produced by a fluent Portuguese speaker of English in the natural context of summarising a passage from a book she was reading, is no mean feat-despite its apparent simplicity; 


'He decided to conspire against the king with six or seven other knights and managed to ambush and kill him...he was a nasty piece of work that Darius.'


The Spanish ladies have a way to go before they can scale such heights of fluent and natural production. They have though overcome a number of psychological plateaus of their own in realising that the road before them is a long one. They will need to praised for their victories and take a practical approach to their learning, be exposed and notice  salient patterns within the language, and above all else understand how the lexical system of English works. And of course-collect, engage and manipulate the items they come across as they explore. Being realistic will get them far and this is a major barrier for learners at this level. 

A very long day not yet over brings on a moaning session which will be replaced, I'm sure, after  a reasonable night's slumber and  comfortable dreams by my usual enthusiasm for what we do. We all have our off-days and if this isn't the space for public catharsis, where else is? I'll no doubt be back on with the course writing in the morning non the worse. However, much of this will remain valid.  So here we go. Tomorrow is another day.

It's a sad  fact that the world of language teaching and learning lags far behind most other areas of professional, social and academic life.  The teaching of English, as a profession and as a business activity, has more often than not failed to provide solutions for those needing to use it for communicative purposes in their own special contexts, if treated in a predominantly statistical fashion. I am entirely conscious while writing this that much good-will and a lot of hard work is put into the construction, running and follow-up of learning encounters the world over. But all is surely not well in the house of TESOL. 

Working conditions are often, and notoriously, depressing, while delivery of service remains on the whole uninformed by the rapidly growing and extensive research being carried out at leading centres of learning throughout the English speaking world and elsewhere. Piecemeal approaches at the ‘chalk-face’ are routinely employed with little or no reference to objectives and learner wishes, needs and contextual peculiarities. No overall strategy is formulated and made public, except through occasional reference to the syllabus provided in the first few pages of proscribed coursebooks (most of which, willingly or otherwise, encourage the perpetuation of the popular myth that in order to be able to speak the desired language a thorough knowledge of sentence level grammar, as exemplified in the written form of the language, is the number one pre-requisite).  

As pressure rises to ´get through the book’, even those carefully crafted and professionally written, such vital niceties as the pronunciation system of the language and lexico-grammatical patterns at phrase level which, many commentators believe, form the backbone of the language, are treated as no more than areas for on the spot correction, a technique about whose efficacy there are serious doubts, and fall by the wayside. That there are such things as spoken grammars, of which ongoing research has identified deep rooted differences when compared to their written counterparts and features of which, since the advent of language corpora are beginning to be described in some detail, many teachers remain woefully ignorant. (This ignorance is far from being the fault of the teachers themselves-with no overarching  system of accreditation in existence and minimal and misdirected training being the norm.) Learner acquaintance with text level features of language are quite often given belated attention in EAP or exam class scenarios and more often than not, limited to the presentation and practice a standardised set of cohesive devices seen in written language, many of which are, in fact, sparingly used by native speakers and the misunderstanding of whose subtleties give rise to many a red line or exclamation mark.

Surely this ground level analysis paints too depressing a picture. But is it surprising when what happens in the learning context is very often, dependent on the goodwill of badly paid teachers, who themselves lack any viable support and have been trained either inadequately, or for far too short a time? There are responsible people and organisations out there. I'm working for one at the moment. But these are far outnumbered by the unscrupulous and it's taken as granted in most environments that novice teachers need to take care in selecting from the literally thousands of seeming opportunities out there.

Again this is hardly the fault of the teachers. Llearners in many cases are seen as little more than sources of ready income for unscrupulous owners of ‘language schools’, who have little or no background in the field, and even less interest in the exciting developments in research into the nature of language learning, teaching and the language itself coming out of leading tertiary education institutions from Adelaide to Oxford and beyond. Many are the tales of woe recounted by those working in this field, as a few minutes browsing the TEFL Blacklist (http://teflblacklist.blogspot.com/) will clearly show.  

This scenario repeats itself throughout the world, and it is little wonder that the author of an article in the Guardian some years ago coined the term McTEFL, a term which, painfully and sadly, all too accurately describes the experiences of many who have toyed with the idea of making this their calling and have been sent scurrying back with a year or two’s experience of living in Italy, Thailand or Bolivia to find a ‘real’ job with little or nothing to show for it except a few vague memories and a distaste for teenagers and public transport and absolutely for sure, no savings. Very often, and hardly surprisingly, many end up in situations which if not outright dangerous, border on the ludicrous when looked back from the safe distance of years and miles. 

Woe is me...for a while only! Someone's got to do something about this mess and maybe the internet is the way. I had better get a letter to the council written then-while there's still a council to write to and all will be right with the world. So to sleep then  Sleep-and the world will be a new place, a fresh place and opportunities will appear. LIke each and every day. Must be getting close to dropping-gabbling away. Better get dreaming.

. 

Waves in Carcavelos

Boy were those waves were doing their thing today. I heard them last night  through the kitchen window here in Lombos roaring and crashing away, and that a good walk of ten or fifiteen minutes away. They were loud.



From the train window, going to Cascais this time-so it was a different show, you could feel the power in them, the sheer volume of swirling water. The shades of greeny grey in them, The hovering seabirds brought inland and dwarfed by them. The breakwaters battered by them and people on the train awed by them. The Atlantic has been a constant companion for me in my times here. Ever present, never the same- a reminder of the fact that we are shortlived guests on this planet. Especially when it does its winter thing. Like today. I can hear them now as I sit with midnight approaching and iamgine thme crashing in the dark on the sometimes calm sands of Carcavelos beach.