Teaching Beginners Effectively

TEC 2014 Hyderabad

The Interface of

Corpus Linguistics and

The Lexical Approach for

Teaching ESL Beginner

Learners Effectively

Adam Scott

[email protected] @teachAdam

mailto:[email protected]

A need for change

• Some beginners making slow progress

• New students joining existing classes

• Traditional coursebooks failing to deliver

• Frustrating for teachers and learners

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The Interface of Corpus Linguistics and the Lexical Approach for Teaching ESL Beginner Learners Effectively

A premise or two

• Collocation should help learners

• Corpus data can inform course content

• Syntax is central to learning English

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Literature Review

Beginners, by Paul Grundy

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Teaching English to Beginners,

by LRH Chapman

Literature Review

The Lexical Syllabus,

by Dave Willis

Lexical Priming,

by Michael Hoey

From Corpus to

Classroom, O’Keeffe,

McCarthy & Carter

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Post-beginner Dilemmas

Problems some higher-level learners still have:

some level of illiteracy in English

poor basic speaking skills

poor basic listening skills

poor basic syntax and verb use

poor or unnatural basic vocab and collocation

struggle badly with pronunciation

have taken forever to make progress

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Why bother?

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Brain Power

McLaughlin’s Attention-Processing Model • Second language learning is a skill

• It requires “automization of component sub-skills”

• New learning needs our focal and controlled attention

• Our capacity to manage controlled processes is limited

• “automization” makes our language processing skills

more efficient

• Structured practice of linguistic patterns supports

integration and “automization”

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Welcome to English!

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Neradova, M. (2013). Summer in the mountains. Retrieved 15/11/13 from: http://www.marianeradova.org/?month=6

http://www.marianeradova.org/?month=6

Undirected focus

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Too many foci

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Typical coursebook

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Interface CL and LA

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Corpus tools 1

• Frequency Lists – UCREL Lancaster University http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/bncfreq/

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http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/bncfreq/

Top 30 English Words

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1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 5 4

are is

on

by

it

at

the

was

have

of

I

for

not

this

but

's

had

with to

be in

and

a you

he

that

... they

this is a ...

she

his

from

she is from ...

I have a ...

Data from Lancaster University. Companion website for “word frequencies in written and spoken English based on the British National Corpus”. (2001).

Retrieved 15/09/12 from: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/bncfreq/flists.html

are you from ...

http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/bncfreq/flists.html


Your turn to play!

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Practise and personalise

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Corpus tools 2

• Online Concordancer – BYU BNC http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

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http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

Online concordancer

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Online concordancer

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Building collocation

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have

see use

get go to

play

a taxi

Lexical grammar

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have

see use

get go to

play

a taxi

/j-uh/ ……? (=every day) Yes, I do. No, I don’t.

/d-i-j-uh/ … …yesterday? Yes, I did. No, I didn’t.

/j-uh/ Do you…?

/d-i-j-uh/ Did you…?

Key practical features

• Collocating lexis into grammar

• Presentation light, production heavy

• Careful staging – one thing at a time

• “Chunking up” structural elements

• A focus on accuracy

• Achieves real communication

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Building collocation

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Top 10 adjectives Top 10 nouns





Building collocations

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time

way

year work government

thing day man

people year

Top Verbs

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Building associations

• Collocating the highest-frequency words

– Builds associations across lexis

• Chunking creates better pronunciation

– Synthetic phonics to represent sounds

• Develops understanding of primings

• Supports receptive skills

– Increases ability to listen, read and anticipate

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Pronunciation

/w-air d-i-j-uh g-oh/

/h-ue d-i-j-uh g-oh w-i-th/

/w-e-n d-i-j-uh g-oh/

/w-o w-uh-z th-uh w-e-th-uh l-igh-k/

/w-o d-i-j-uh d-ue th-air/

/w-o w-uh-z-i-t l-igh-k/

/w-air d-i-j-uh s-t-ey/

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Doff, A. (2010). English unlimited starter coursebook. Cambridge: CUP. p.67

Adjacency Pairs Adam Scott


Doff, A. (2010). English unlimited starter coursebook. Cambridge: CUP. p.67

Pronunciation maps Adam Scott


New value in resources Adam Scott


play

run

n

walk

catch

(lie)

ly

sail throw

feed (ride)

rid

sit

t

fly

swim

m

kick

Associative activities

Using memory maps

• Collocating adjectives with landmarks

• Matching words with people

• Matching sounds in different words

• Teaching new lexis with strong collocates

• Meaning is built through association

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Statistical indicators

• Beginners reaching pre-int or higher (Beginner and elementary levels counted as one level)

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[VALUE] weeks

[VALUE] weeks

0.00

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

12.00

14.00

Num

ber

of

weeks p

er

level

(avera

ged)

COURSE TYPE

Median progress in student weeks

Traditional New


Qualitative Feedback

• Students fit capably into elementary level

• Surprising levels of fluency and accuracy

– Able to say a lot with relatively little

• Learners are engaged and questioning

• Good ability to collocate lexis

• Students are happy and motivated

• Good study skills

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Some closing ideas

• Stage lessons for focal, controlled attention: one thing at a time!

• Well-staged, integrated lesson content fosters “Demand High”

learning and meaningful production

• Chunk up cumbersome/discreet “discrete” grammar points

• Collocate new lexis to minimise learner confusion

• Collocation differences are easy to recognise and remember

• Simple, explicit pronunciation teaches sound-spelling relations

• Priming learners for listenings and readings practises sub-skills

• Learning is a skill - strategies are at least as important as content

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Thank you

Download slides at: http://teachadam.wordpress.com

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Teaching Beginners Effectively