Masterlanguage Presentation

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Masterlanguage Presentation

Dahunsi & Ewata (2022). An exploration of the structural and colligational characteristics of lexical bundles in L1–L2 corpora for English language teaching

Purpose

Focus on lexical bundles (LBs), a type of multi-word expression

LBs are key indicators of proficiency

Providing valuable insight into teaching methods in an EFL environment.

RQS

Are LBs present in both native English (L1) and English as a second language (L2) corpora?

What are the prevalent types of LBs, and how do they differ across language contexts?

What are the structural patterns and colligational characteristics of LBs in L1 and L2 corpora?

How can the study's findings improve language teaching methods, particularly in an EFL setting?

Corpora used

Two different corpora

International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), British in nature, one million-words, Written and spoken texts, first language use

Nigerian Meida Discourse (NMD), sourced from nigerian newspapers, one million words, written texts, second language use

Method NMD

Computer tool Wordsmith for retrieval

Cluster computation was then used to identify 3-word clusters

Exlude those with a frequency less than 50, names or contractions

Resulting in 3161 entries

Analysis of their comparative availability, frequencies and usage patterns

Method ICE-GB

Comparative Analysis in ICE-GB:

Specific LBs were comparatively explored in ICE-GB using the ICE-CUP lexical analysis software.

ICE-CUP displayed instances of occurrence and full sentential environments for each LB.

Results classification

The exploration of the BNC and NMD corpora uncovered Lexical Bundles (LBs) with diverse frequencies. In the NMD, two primary types emerged: general LBs, such as "as well as," "in terms of," and "a matter of," widely present in both corpora, suggesting their general language-specific nature.

  Genre-specific LBs, tied to Nigerian socio-economic and socio-political contexts, were either exclusive to the NMD or had low frequencies in the BNC.

Results (structural)

Structural analysis further classified LBs into five categories: article-headed (e.g., "a lot of," "a matter of"), preposition-headed (e.g., "as long as," "in order to"), noun-headed (e.g., "part of the," "members of the"), verb-headed (e.g., "to ensure that," "is going to"), and pronoun-headed (e.g., "he said that," "it will be"). 

The preposition-headed category was found to be the most productive, with "in" and "as" dominating. However there is a difference between Corpora NMD (78%) and BNC (22%)

Results (Colligational)

Similar patterns detected for both Corpora

For each category determined in their structure there are distinct syntactic categories that occur

For instance, "as far as" was shown to combine with independent clauses (e.g., "as far as they are concerned") and gerund phrases (e.g., "will go as far as getting to the root"). 

Discussion

- An essential discovery is the frequency variation of LBs between corpora, implying associations with discourse types.

- The distinction between general LBs, found in both corpora with high frequencies (e.g., "as a lot of," "in spite of"), and genre-specific LBs, unique to one corpus (e.g., "British Prime Minister" in BNC), underscores the importance of context-specific language use.

Discussion (2)

Learners of English as a second language need to be familiarized with LBs in terms of what LBs are, how they are

formed and how they are correctly used in sentences.

Conclusion

While previous research has often focused on the structure, types, and discourse functions of LBs, this study highlights the similarity in structures and patterns of LB use across different language contexts.

Conclusion

In ELT, teaching LBs, akin to other multi-word expressions like idioms and clichés, is recommended to enhance learners' vocabulary development and sentence formation skills. The study suggests the need to incorporate the teaching of LBs into ELT curricula, aligning with the broader objective of improving learners' understanding and mastery of English language use.

Discussion questions

How do you think learners might benefit from recognizing and correctly using lexical bundles in their language learning journey?

 

Can you think of real-life examples where an understanding of lexical bundles could enhance effective communication?