“Linguistic detectives” at work

Carmen Cáceda , Ph.D.

cacedac@wou.edu

SPELL, 2nd Annual Conference, April 4, 2014

Session Outline:

1) Ice-breaker

2) (Re)Activating Prior Knowledge on Idiomacity (Collocation)

3) Over to You: Collocation Application & Ideas Sharing

4) Self-Assessment & Revising Session abstract

5) “An extra” Language Awareness Activity

6) References

1. Ice-breaker/Breaking the ice. Group work. First, read the strips given in the envelope; then, match them; and finally, think of a context where the phrase/s can be used (you can choose to do the activity in English or in Spanish).

2. (a) (Re)Activating Prior Knowledge. What do you notice about the chunks in red? Talk to your elbow peer.

(1) The exam was a piece of cake. (2) The SPELL Conference was put off for next week.

(3) Do I sign in or sign up for my google account?

(4) On the one hand, I agree with CCSS. On the other hand, I know that they will be challenging for us all.(5) The voucher program, along with privatization of public schools, has also had its run in Chile and the electorate there is up in arms.

(6) Our teacher invited us a glass of milk and a piece of cake.

(b) If you were to give an overarching name/label to the previous phrases (1-6)`, what would it be?

2. (b) Idiomacity

1. Idioms

1.1. Pure (e.g., blow the gaff) They murdered Mr. Ruiz because he

was about to blow the gaff on who the killer was.

1.2. Figurative (catch fire)The idea that a prominent politician

consumed drugs caught fire in the news some time ago.

1.3 Open collocationscollocations (e.g., take it or leave it)

2. c) (Re)Activating Prior Knowledge: On CollocationsCollocations Individually, answer the following questions:(a) what is your definition of a collocation?(b) how many kinds of collocations do you think there are?(c) why should we teach collocations?(d) how would you teach the collocations given before?(e) Can you think of any other collocations in Spanish or in any

other language?

(a) Definition. Briefly, collocations are set of words that tend to co-occur and have a specific order, or as Lewis (2005) put it, “most languages consists of strings of pre-fabricated phrases (lexical items) which exhibit more or less possibility of variation.” He added “[These] patterns [collocations] are typical of one kind of English (genres [e.g., news, fiction conversations, academic writing]), may be rare or not occur at all in other genres” (p. 8).

For Walsch (2005), “these pre-assembled word combinations [collocations] are employed throughout language to make communication more efficient” (p. 1).

(b) Kinds of collocations.

1. a difficult decision (adjective + noun)

2. submit a report (verb + noun)

3. radio station (noun + noun)

4. examine thoroughly, apologize humbly, (verb + adverb)

5. extremely inconvenient, hopelessly addicted (adverb + adjective)

6. revise the original plan (verb + adjective + noun)

7. The fog closed in (noun + verb) moved

8. To put it another way (discourse marker)

9. a few years ago (multi-word prepositional phrase)

10. turn in (phrasal verb) submit

11. aware of (adjective + preposition)

12. fire escape (compound noun)

13. backwards and forwards (binomial)

14. hook, line, and sinker (trinomial) Completely

15. On the other hand (fixed phrase)

16. A sort of … (e.g., a head of buffalo) (incomplete fixed phrase)

18. See you later/tomorrow/ on Monday. (semi-fixed expression)

17. My other half (fixed expression)

19. Too many cooks… (part of a proverb)

20. To be or not to be … (part of a quotation)

Source: Lewis, Michael. (2000). Learning in the lexical approach. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Language in the lexical approach (pp. 132-133).

(c) Reasons to teach collocations. It is our task, as teachers [of English], to facilitate our students’

acquisition/learning/development linguistic process of the most appropriate ‘chunks’ as opposed to single words.

(d) Ways to teach the collocations.

(e) Collocations in Spanish or any other language/s. Are there any

examples that you are familiar with?

3. Over to You: Collocation Application. Individually, do the following two activities. Then join a partner and share your responses.

3.1. Individual work. A. What issues do the following collocations present?(a) ‘Our family's had our downs and ups.’(b) ‘I’m just pulling your legs.’(c) ‘I like weak tea but powerful coffee.’(d) ‘Happy Christmas!”(e) ‘a herd of fish’(f) ‘She has a nice education.’•‘to deal to people’

B. Can you think of any other examples that your students produce? Think of at least two examples.

3.2. Collocations in the content areas. Pair/Group work. Have a look at the texts provided, think of the different kinds of collocation types, which one/s surface/s in the text/s the most?

Source: Common Core State Standards (Oregon): http://bit.ly/1ectakq

3.3. Your lessons. Can you think of collocations that you have taught or you will soon teach considering the content areas? (e.g., the least common denominator)

4. Self-Assessment and Translating Theory into Practice

1. Self-Assessment. Choose ONE of the following responses considering how familiar you were with collocations.

(a) I was fully familiar with collocations.

(b) I was somewhat familiar with collocations

(c) I was not familiar with collocations.

2. “Exit ticket”

(a) Write at least ONE idea that you liked or disliked from the session.

(b) Write at least ONE idea that you will put into practice next Monday.

This is an interactive language awareness session for teachers who would like to become familiar with collocations (Lewis, 2000) and infuse them in their daily lessons, especially in their content areas. The teaching of collocations (i.e., groups of words that tend to go together such as the least common denominator or a pride of lions) is one of the areas that needs to be explicitly explained/taught so that English learners can understand the subtleties of English.

Revisiting the Session Abstract

References

Hill, J., Lewis, M., & Lewis, M. (2000). Classroom strategies, activities and exercises. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation (pp. 88-117). Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications.

Lewis, Michael. (2000). There is nothing as practical as a good theory. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation (pp. 20-27). Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications.

Lewis, M. (2005). Towards a lexical view of language: A challenge for teachers. Babylonia: The Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, 3, 7-10.

Walsch, M. (Producer). (2005) Collocation and the learner of English.

Lewis, Morgan. (2000). Learning in the lexical approach. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation (pp. 155-185). Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications.

Lewis, Michael. (2000). Learning in the lexical approach. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Language in the lexical approach (pp. 126-154). Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications.