Teaching Spoken English: Words,Chunks and Grammar
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Transcript of Teaching Spoken English: Words,Chunks and Grammar
13/11/06 1
Teaching Spoken English: Words, Chunks and Grammar
Ronald Carter
University of Nottingham
13/11/06 2
Top 40 most frequent words: 5m written
1 THE 2 TO 3 AND 4 OF 5 A 6 IN 7 WAS 8 IT 9 I 10 HE 11 THAT 12 SHE 13 FOR 14 ON 15 HER 16 YOU 17 IS 18 WITH 19 HIS 20 HAD
21 AS 22 AT 23 BUT 24 BE 25 HAVE 26 FROM 27 NOT 28 THEY 29 BY 30 THIS 31 ARE 32 WERE 33 ALL 34 HIM 35 UP 36 AN 37 SAID 38 THERE 39 ONE 40 BEEN
Top 40 most frequent words: 5m spoken 1 THE 2 I 3 AND 4 YOU 5 IT 6 TO 7 A 8 YEAH 9 THAT 10 OF 11 IN 12 WAS 13 IT'S 14 KNOW 15 MM 16 IS 17 ER 18 BUT 19 SO 20 THEY
21 ON 22 OH 23 WE 24 HAVE 25 NO 26 LAUGHS 27 WELL 28 LIKE 29 WHAT 30 DO 31 RIGHT 32 JUST 33 HE 34 FOR 35 ERM 36 BE 37 THIS 38 ALL 39 THERE 40 GOT
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From Words to Collocations to Chunks Single words Collocations (lean meat; *strong
car) Idioms and phrases (having forty
winks) Formulaic language (Have a nice
day) Formulaic language: how fixed is
fixed?
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9,164DO YOU10
9,586SORT OF9
9,722AND I8
11,048OF THE7
11,975I DON'T6
12,608IT WAS5
13,887IN THE4
14,086I THINK3
17,158I MEAN2
28,013YOU KNOW1
5,828YOU CAN20
5,914HAVE TO19
6,029AT THE18
6,157TO THE17
6,614DON'T KNOW16
6,709IF YOU15
7,165TO BE14
7,733AND THEN13
8,136ON THE12
8,174I WAS11
Top 20 2-word chunks (spoken)
13/11/06 6
Top 5 6-word chunks (spoken)
38I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS5
41AND ALL THAT SORT OF THING
4
64AND ALL THE REST OF IT3
222AT THE END OF THE DAY2
236DO YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
1
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Seven and beyond?
Chunks bigger than six or seven words are rare – the magic number 7
Bigger chunks are ‘learned texts’, e.g. quotations, proverbs, etc.
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0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
occs
in 5
m w
ds s
poke
n
a couple
of
at the m
oment
small
all th
e tim
eea
rly
you kn
ow what I
mean
fun
and th
ings like
that
however
Words v. Chunks
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Two Main Types of Chunk
as a matter of factsort ofor something like that
integrated items
I don’t know if …I was going to say…
prefaces
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Functions of Chunksdiscourse marking
you knowI meanand thenbut I meando you know what I meanat the end of the dayif you see what I mean
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Politeness
prefaces
do you thinkdo you want (me) (to)I don’t know if/whetherwhat do you thinkI was going to ask you
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Hedging, boostingand vagueness
I thinksort of/kind ofa bit (of a)/a couple ofI don’t know/I don’t thinkto be honest with youas a matter of factand stuff like that(and) all this sort of thingor something like that
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Conclusions
Chunks show how conversation is primarily about the speaker and listener
Chunks are part of our vocabulary and grammar
Using chunks contributes to fluency