Session after session, I integrate a “word of the day” into my lessons for students to add to their notebooks. I explain what the word means, provide examples of its use, and task them with using it that day. But I recently wondered whether it would be better to teach a “lexical chunk of the day” instead, as they tend to have a greater impact than isolated words. Also, students gravitate to these fixed expressions and are always asking what they mean. Indeed, well-known language educator Scott Thornbury supports this approach in Chunk-Spotting–A User’s Guide: “the possession of a memorized store of chunks allows more rapid processing, not only for production but also for reception. It’s quicker to process several words at a time rather than each word individually.”
What is a chunk?
The term “lexical chunk” refers to a fixed unit of two or more words often found together, such as collocations, idioms, and common phrases. And here’s a startling statistic: Lexical chunks make up 70% of what we say in English. It stands to reason, then, that it is important for students to be able to identify and work with chunks to develop their skills. For more information, see the blog post by Grade University, an online self-study facility for English teachers and part of the Cambridge Education Centre.
It’s easy to come up with examples off the top of our heads :
- Boundless energy; waste of energy
- Peer pressure; pressure to do something
- Keep a secret; keep quiet
- A heated argument
- Research to support this
- Sounds good to me
- I’m not sure
- I’ll pass on the broccoli, but please pass the salt
- What’s it like out there?
- There’s a hidden message
- I’ll get back to you.
And I could go on and on…
What are the benefits?
Fluency and idiomaticity
There is growing evidence to support the positive effects of lexical chunks on fluency and idiomaticity. Scott Thornbury does a nice job of outlining some of these benefits and the studies that support them in his article “Learning Language in Chunks.” Further, Hong and Chunling studied the effects of the chunking technique on a student’s learning over two years and by the end of that period, the student had doubled his vocabulary and increased his reading accuracy and speed.
Grammar skills
Research also shows that chunk learning builds grammar proficiency, particularly with young learners, who prescribe meaning to a whole word sequence as opposed to an individual word. While adults do not make the same innate mental associations as young children, it makes sense that the more students of all ages learn to identify and use the fixed expressions that dominate our language, the more they will recognize the grammatical patterns embedded in them (e.g. singular and plural markers, subject-verb agreement, gender, and syntax).
How do I integrate chunks into the classroom?
There are many options here. Think of activities that allow students to identify lexical chunks (readings and gap-fill exercises) and practice them (dialogues and role plays). Another idea is to have students use a journal to jot down the phrases they’ve learned while riding on the subway, watching TV, reading the newspaper, and so on.
You will also find learning activities in the above blog post by Grade University and Thornbury’s “Learning Language in Chunks.”
I am excited to try out these activities and to explore a more “chunk-centred” approach with my students. It feels good to cast off the old “word of the day” and replace it with something new and improved. At the very least, I hope I’ve given you some food for thought. See what I mean? We use them all the time.
Jennifer Hutchison
I’m Jennifer Hutchison and I teach EAP and communications at George Brown College in Toronto. I have also taught courses in sociolinguistics in the English Foundation Program at Toronto Metropolitan University. In my spare time, I write short stories, read, exercise, and bake (the last two are codependent). Teaching English is my passion. I am curious about the world around me and feel fortunate to have that world brought to me every day in the classroom. Nevertheless, I took a circuitous route to discover this passion. After my undergraduate degree in French and translation, I worked as a translator and then veered off into writing and editing, which I did from home while I raised my children (four of them!). In none of these positions (except, possibly, childrearing) was I helping anybody, so I returned to school, launched my ESL career, and have never looked back. I look forward to working with you and sharing experiences and strategies on the Blog!