NARA: February—Lexical bundles in English for Academic Purposes: On the other hand by Averil Coxhead.

Dr. Averil Coxhead specialises in vocabulary learning, with particular focus on English for academic (EAP) and/or specific (ESP) purposes. Many are familiar with her work on the Academic Word List (AWL)—one of the most well tried and tested word-lists available. In this presentation, she focused our attention on lexical bundles, which she defined as ‘three or more words repeated without change,’ for example, on the other hand. Many of the benefits of learning these set phrases seem common sense to us—gains in fluency, more native-like and idiomatic expression, etc. On the other hand…

We were taken on a whirlwind tour of corpus linguistics, and Dr. Coxhead’s own research, and introduced to some of the challenges that arise in using lexical bundles in the classroom. The following is a top-ten list of lexical bundles used in academic English (Byrd & Coxhead, 2010).

1) On the basis of, 2) On the other hand, 3) As a result of, 4) The end of the,  5) At the end of the, 6) The nature of the, 7) At the same time, 8) In terms of the, 9) In the form of, 10) In the absence of

Dr. Coxhead highlighted the structural features and limited frequency of these bundles as limitations for their use in the classroom. For example ‘on the basis of’ occurred 308 times in an academic English corpus of around 3.5 million words. This means that a learner reading 15,625 words of academic text, could expect to meet this—the number one most frequent lexical bundle in the academic corpus—twice. Not great bang for your buck. These bundles, also tend to be functional, discourse markers that get buried in-between long complex clauses and noun-phrases in academic English. She gave the following as an example.

Clyne’s research provides valuable information on the distribution of a large number of these languages in Australia (Clyne, 1985, 1991, Clyne and Kipp,1996). On the basis of his analyses, Clyne also identifies a number of “unequivocally important” factors as relevant in accounting for different rates of language shift in different communities….

Looking at this extract, it is apparent that a learner would be doing rather well if their major hurdle in comprehending these two sentences were the lexical bundle buried in the middle (highlighted in bold). Furthermore, these phrases tend to lack face validity with learners who already know all the words in the set and resent relearning them as a bundle.

Dr. Coxhead’s message was one of caution—there are so many other things going on in language to compete with a learner’s attention. Not least of all, there are other pre-fabricated lexical formulas; such as, frames with slots, collocations, academic formulas and metaphor. Metaphor, Dr. Coxhead pointed out, with particular reference to Frank Boers’ research, can be much more problematic in L2 comprehension. Dr. Coxhead left us with guidelines to approaching lexical bundles in academic English. We should always be wary of learning lists. We need to draw attention to lexical bundles in context, and revisit them in order to provide the repetition necessary for learning. And we can benefit our learners by being explicit about expectations for learning these bundles.

I’d like to conclude this review noting that Averil Coxhead was one of the most dynamic presenters I’ve seen in a long time. She charmed the audience with warmth and wit, and healthy doses of tales from her homeland, New Zealand. If ever you have a chance to see Averil in action, do not miss the opportunity to see yet another great kiwi teacher-scholar.

 

Review by Leigh McDowell


October presentation, Info in Japanese.

 

http://www.yume-kaze.com/site/access/index.html

 

 

88E14

 

192030

 

10TESOLE

 

TESOL

Harold Palmer in Japan: A Lesson from History

Our very own Leigh Mcdowell and Yoko Yasu will be talking to us about Harold Palmer and his  work in the teaching of English in Japan.

Catch them with us first before they take this great talk to the national conference.

Title:
Harold Palmer in Japan: A Lesson from History
Description:
Eighty-eight years ago, Harold E. Palmer—a language educator widely renowned for his creativity and expertise—was invited to Japan as Linguistic Advisor to the Ministry of Education. For fourteen years, Palmer worked tirelessly in Tokyo creating a wealth of language learning tools and techniques that would help Japanese reform their English language teaching.
Come and hear the story of this great man’s attempts to improve English language teaching in Japan in the 1920–30s. This is a story of success and failure; an episode in history from which we can all draw inspiration and learn something about what it means to teach English here in Japan.
Speakers:
Leigh McDowell
Leigh McDowell has been teaching and learning in Japan for over ten years now. He currently teaches scientific writing and presentation at Japan’s top ranked national university, the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST). After coming across the work of Harold E. Palmer in the Master’s in TESOL Program at Temple University, Leigh was inspired to research more and share with others the story of this great figure in the history of English language teaching.
Yoko Yaku
Yoko Yaku teaches English at the Osaka Pprefectural Matsubara Senior High School. She has also recently completed her Master‘s in TESOL from Temple University, Japan. Yoko is convinced that her English would be much better now if she had been taught in junior high school with Palmer’s methodology instead of the traditional Japanese way of teaching English. In this presentation, Yoko will share her reasons for that conviction.
Date: October 17th (Sun)
Time: 15:00–17:00
Location: Nara, Yumekaze http://www.yume-kaze.com/site/access/index.html
See you there!

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