Optimizing a Lexical Approach to Instructed Second Language Acquisition

Optimizing a Lexical Approach to Instructed Second Language Acquisition

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Optimizing a Lexical Approach to Instructed Second Language Acquisition Frank Boers Erasmus University College, Brussels, Belgium and Seth Lindstromberg Hilderstone EFL College, Broadstairs, UK

Frank Boers and Seth Lindstromberg 2009 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-22234-2 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-30788-3 ISBN 978-0-230-24500-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230245006 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09

Contents Acknowledgements List of Figures and Tables List of Boxes Abbreviations vii viii ix x 1 Introduction 1 1.1 What parts of language is this book about? 1 1.2 Why have we written this book? 16 2 The Contribution of Chunks to Acquisition and Proficiency 24 2.1 Comparing the nature and necessity of L 1 and L 2 chunk acquisition 24 2.2 Evidence that L 2 learners benefit from chunk knowledge 35 3 Estimating the Chances of Incidental Uptake of L 2 Chunks 39 3.1 Fostering learner autonomy through awareness-raising 39 3.2 Estimating the chances of semi-incidental uptake of L 2 chunks 51 4 Selecting Chunks for the L 2 Classroom 55 4.1 Utility 55 4.2 Teachability 68 5 Semantic Elaboration 79 5.1 Exploiting imagery 79 5.2 Organizing lexis 96 6 Structural Elaboration 106 6.1 Phonological motivation in the formation and standardization of chunks 106 6.2 The memorability of phonologically motivated chunks 119 7 Bearing in Mind 126 7.1 The need for width and depth of chunk knowledge 126 7.2 The need for automaticity 134 v

vi Contents 8 Directions 146 8.1 Broadening the scope 146 8.2 Testing chunk knowledge 160 Notes 169 References 174 Index 193

Acknowledgements Frank would like to thank his collaborators June Eyckmans, Hélène Stengers, Aline Godfroid and Julie Deconinck for sharing their research findings and for talking him into believing that his advice sometimes matters. A very special thanks from Frank also to Murielle, Tom and Pauline for putting up with a moaning and groaning husband/ daddy-turned-author for three long months (again). Seth would especially like to thank Tessa Woodward for all kinds of reasons. Also, Sergei and Larry thank you for Google; Richard Lowry thank your for VassarStats ; and thanks too to all the authors who have helped us by making their papers available on the web. Frank and Seth would like to thank Jill Lake, Melanie Blair and Priyanka Pathak at Palgrave Macmillan for their guidance and assistance throughout this project. Last but not least, thanks also to the hundreds of students who participated in one or the other of our numerous classroom experiments over the years. vii

Figures and Tables Figures 4.1 Priority zone for explicit chunk targeting in the classroom 63 5.1 Example (1) of a collocation box proposed by Lewis (1997: 78) 102 5.2 Example (2) of a collocation box proposed by Lewis (1997: 79) 103 Tables 1.1 Word sequences classified by frequency plus MI score; an abbreviated presentation based on Ellis, Simpson-Vlach and Maynard (2008: 381) 7 4.1 Exact-word Google hits as an indication of relative commonness 58 4.2 Joint-frequency data on some verb noun collocations (from the Collins Cobuild collocations sampler) 59 6.1 /b/_ + /b/_ vs. /f/_ + /b/_ multiword lexis in the MED 109 6.2 /k/_ + /k/_ vs. /s/_ + /k/_ multiword lexis in the MED 109 6.3 Evidence of the role of alliteration in the formation and standardization of multiword units (sourced from the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, 2007, 2nd edn) 110 6.4 Consonant repetition within monomorphemic words in three 1402-token texts 115 viii

Boxes 1.1 Partial transcription of a BBC Radio 4 programme 3 1.2 Strong collocates of four prepositions, generated by the Collins Cobuild on-line collocations sampler at http://www.collins.co.uk. 6 3.1 Strong verb noun collocations occurring in the first 120 pages of Val McDermid s (2007) thriller Beneath the Bleeding 42 4.1 Idioms encountered in the first 120 pages of Val MacDermid s (2007) thriller Beneath the Bleeding 67 5.1 Identify-the-source multiple-choice items and feedback 85 5.2 Meaning multiple-choice items 86 5.3 Gap-fill post-test 86 5.4 Examples of contextualized idioms accompanied by origin hints 90 5.5 Examples of pictorial elucidation of the origins of idioms 91 5.6 Examples of figurative uses of manner-of-motion verbs 94 5.7 Examples of identify-the-informal-idiom exercises 95 5.8 Phrasal verbs grouped per metaphor theme 98 5.9 Anger-related expressions grouped according to metaphor themes (based on Boers, 2000b) 99 5.10 Grouping idioms according to their source domains 101 6.1 Some proverbs, similes and binomials displaying phonological repetition 117 6.2 Some compounds and collocations displaying phonological repetition 118 7.1 Reducing blind guessing in matching exercises 130 7.2 Reducing blind guessing in completion exercises 131 8.1 Creating paired associates for phrasal verbs 155 8.2 Examples of colligation and collocation test items from Hargreaves (2000) 161 8.3 Example items from the Discriminating Collocations Test, from Eyckmans (in press) 163 8.4 Example of a Deleted Essentials Test 165 8.5 Key to the example Deleted Essentials Test 166 ix

Abbreviations ACCESS automatization in communicative contexts of essential speech segments ACT active control of thought (theory) ALM audio-lingual method BNC British National Corpus CL Cognitive Linguistics CLT communicative language teaching DET Deleted Essentials Test Disco Discriminating Collocations Test ESS essential speech segment FLT foreign language teaching IT instance theory ISLA instructed second language acquisition LA lexical approach L1 first language, mother tongue L2 additional language LG derived from Latin or Greek MED Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (2007, 2nd edn.) MI mutual information OAL Oxford Advanced Learner s Dictionary of English (2000, 6th edn.) ODE Oxford Dictionary of English (2005, 2nd edn.) PA paired associates SLA second language acquisition TBI task-based instruction TEFL teaching English as a foreign language x