Alex Warren National Geographic Learning workshop: No word is an island - the importance of word partnerships

Alex Warren National Geographic Learning workshop

No word is an island - the importance of word partnerships

 

What are word partnerships?
As Alex pointed out, language is full of word partnerships. Some of these can be weak, e.g. colour + noun, others medium, e.g. make/let it go and finally, there are strong partnerships: predictable combinations of many kinds, e.g. pitch black, where our brains can anticipate the following word or words.

Alex began by setting us a quiz. How many types of word partnerships can you identify from the following examples, and what are these different combinations called? Try the quiz and check your answers at the end of the post.


Types of word partnership


1. “When I was younger I was always told that the early bird catches the worm, but I’m not sure I agree.”
2. “The nearest newsagent is just in front of the cinema.”
3. “I’ll have a pint of Guinness, please.”
4. “The wind was bitterly cold as it blew across the open fields.”
5. “Okay, okay. I hear you loud and clear – I need to be cool, calm and collected.”
6. “I’ve never really been interested in the cult of celebrity.”
7. “I’ve always looked up to my older brother.”


Why are they important?

In the next slide, Alex asked us to guess what percentage of language is made of collocations / word partnerships. (Answer at the end).

Lewis further suggests that ‘adding collocation to your teaching…increases the chance of acquisition taking place’ (2000:14)

Useful resources for finding collocations include

www.just-the-word.com

The Pearson International Corpus of Academic English

https://www.sketchengine.eu/picae-corpus/

Academic Collocation List

https://www.eapfoundation.com/vocab/academic/acl/


There seems to be evidence to suggest that memorizing and reproducing sequences of language (which can later be ‘unpacked’ and analysed) can lead to enhanced fluency.

 

As Scott Thornbury describes it, ‘It seems that the mental lexicon is not so much a dictionary as a phrase book’. (2002)


Practical Activities

1. Collocation Hunt

Alex suggested that this is a good idea for fast finishers: Ask learners to underline/highlight the collocations they can find in a reading text or listening tapescript they have been working on. This can be taken even further by asking the learners to categorise the combinations they have found (by grammatical category, by semantic group, etc.)

2. Brainstorming

In groups, we brainstormed as many words or phrases as possible to combine with 

BUSINESS

We’re all familiar with this activity, but adding a time limit and a competitive element can increase interest (even among seasoned teachers). Afterwards, the word combinations can be analysed, as in the previous activity.

3. Collocation Competence

As a follow-up to both of the previous activities, the sequences can be added to a table on the screen to identify whether the sequence is pre-modification or post-modification of the noun.

Before....

...and after

4. Collocation Iceberg game

To set up the game, Alex projected a (beautiful, National Geographic) image of an iceberg and asked us to guess how much of an iceberg is below the surface (answer below). He drew the analogy that the majority of learners’ collocational knowledge is also ‘below the surface’ and needs to be constantly recycled and reactivated.

In groups, we drew a line across a horizontal page* and brainstormed words we would collocate with the key word ‘FAMILY’, above the line. The paper was passed on to the next group who added ‘new’ words below the line. This continued until the paper returned to the original group. With each exchange of papers, learners were checking and reproducing their own word combinations and new ones they’d encountered from other groups, all the vocabulary being learner-generated.

The teacher can draw learners’ attention to interesting and/or new combinations by writing them up on the board, e.g.



The collocation 'iceberg'

*I used this activity in class the following day and asked groups to draw the iceberg and vote on which was the best, before we’d even started the activity. It only took a couple of minutes and was a relaxing distraction from a rather ‘heavy’ lesson on the topic of social justice.


5. Pronunciation: Thought groups

In general, our students have difficulty reading aloud, often because they don’t know how to ‘chunk’ sections of the text when reading. To raise learners’ awareness of this, ask them to work out where the natural breaks would be in a text before reading (for example, in the sentences below)

My best friend │ started her own company │ about five years ago, │ right after college.

 

6. Race the teacher
(based on an activity by Sandy Millin)

Drill phrases for pronunciation & fluency. Practise saying the sentence faster and faster. Pairs compete to see who can say the sentence the quickest.

Sandy Millin's 'Shy teacher's drill'

7. Colligation: Sentence stems

Colligation refers to the grammatical patterns that are normally associated with a particular item. Ask learners to complete the following stems:

It’s one of the nicest things………………………………………….

Just because………………………………..

The teachers in the workshop typically finished these stems with a) a present perfect structure, e.g. It’s one of the nicest things that’s ever happened to me. and b) ‘doesn’t mean’, e.g. Just because you’re 16, doesn’t mean you can come home when you want.

8. Dictoglance

Let learners scan read a short text (for example, from the course book) for 10 seconds and try to read as much as they can – then try to reproduce the text. They will generally reproduce chunks of language. This activity sensitizes learners to the sequencing of language (might be a good idea to do this before activity nº 5.

9. Odd one out

Tried-and-tested activity. Give a time limit. Learners have to justify their answers.

An oldie but a goodie

10. Missing collocate

Reveal a list of words one by one. Learners try to guess the collocate and see how many words they need before they guess the correct one (make the first couple tricky, can collocate with various word partners).


BUSINESS………., DAY………….., ROUND…………., WEEKEND……….       TRIP

11. Collocation Jumble

Mix up common collocates (make sure that some of the words can collocate with more than one to raise the level of difficulty). Learners sort them into pairs (answers below).

                      strong              eggs              freshly               skies

                                        green             five                tea

                    rain              rotten                  chance             made

                           clear                  milky                 heavy

                      take            fingers             heavy                fat


12, Collocation stories

Brainstorm collocations from the week with your group. Learners choose 5-10 expressions to include in a (+/-) 200 word story, but only include one word of the collocations, e.g.

I had a ………………….. argument with my parents last night.
Swap with another pair to see if they can fill in the missing words.


Solutions

A. Word partnership quiz:

Answers:

1. “When I was younger I was always told that the early bird catches the worm, but I’m not sure I agree.”
Idiom / Fixed expression

2. “The nearest newsagent is just in front of the cinema.”
Prepositional phrase

3. “I’ll have a pint of Guinness, please.”
Chunk

4. “The wind was bitterly cold as it blew across the open fields.”
Collocations

5. “Okay, okay. I hear you loud and clear – I need to be cool, calm and collected.”
Binomial / Trinomial /Fixed expression

6. “I’ve never really been interested in the cult of celebrity.”
Dependent prepositions

7. “I’ve always looked up to my older brother.”
Phrasal / Multi-word verb


B. Percentage of language that is made up of word partnerships / collocations:

70% (although academic and spoken discourse has a lower proportion).


C. How much of an iceberg is below the surface?

80% (apparently, but sources differ).


D. Activity 11 Collocation jumble

Key:

green fingers                    clear skies
freshly made                    fat chance
heavy rain                        rotten eggs
strong tea                         milky coffee
take five