Learning and Teaching the Phraseology of English

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Learning and Teaching the Phraseology of English

• 2005-08/LTG/SS/ENGL2

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Project objectives

• Enhance teachers and students critical
  awareness of the nature and role of phraseology
  in language.
• Design an innovative computer-mediated and
  corpus-driven learning and teaching methodology
  that facilitates the study of phraseology in
  English texts.
• Design and implement innovative learning and
  teaching activities that highlight key elements
  in the understanding and production of
  phraseology in English texts and which can be
  replicated in the most relevant and appropriate
  applied language studies and English proficiency
  subjects.
• Enhance students critical and creative thinking
  through the understanding, analysis, comparison
  and application of phraseology that is specific
  to individual text types.

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Deliverables (1)

1. Computed-mediated and corpus-driven learning and
   teaching methodology, with a built-in tutorial
   package, relevant to and appropriate for a range
   of applied English language subjects, English
   proficiency subjects, and ESP subjects.
2. A set of replicable learning and teaching
   activities and materials, aimed at language
   subject areas which would each emphasise
   discipline-specific aspects of English
   phraseology, e.g. pragmatics.
3. A set of replicable learning and teaching
   activities aimed at ESP, and which can serve as a
   template for other ESP subjects taught by ENGL.

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Deliverables (2)

• Design of English Phraseology Software Program
  ConcGram?
• Online ConcGram? version
• http//langbank.engl.polyu.edu.hk/RCPCE/
• ConcGram? was used to search different corpora,
  including RCPCE-Profession-specific corpora Hong
  Kong Financial Services Corpus, Hong Kong
  Engineering Corpus, and Hong Kong Corpus of
  Spoken English in the preparation of learning and
  teaching materials and examples, discussion
  tasks, seminar worksheets, and assignments.

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Deliverables (3)

• ConcGram-generated materials, etc. used at BA and
  MA levels
• ENGL303 Corpus-driven Language Learning
• ENGL561 Practical Communication Strategies I
• ENGL560 Analysis of Contemporary English I (50
  lexical studies)
• ENGL510 Analysis of Contemporary English III
  (discourse and pragmatics)
• ConcGram? used by PhD students
• Analysis of hotel website texts
• Analysis of pragmatic speech acts in a corpus

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Deliverables (4)

• Conference papers
• Greaves, C. and Warren, M. (2007). Uncovering the
  extent of the idiom principle. International
  Conference on Corpus Linguistics. University of
  Birmingham, UK, 27-30 July, 2007.
• Greaves, C. and Warren, M. (2007). A
  corpus-driven approach to learning and teaching
  the communicative role of discourse intonation.
  Third International Symposium on Teaching English
  at Tertiary Level, Hong Kong, 9-10 June 2007.
• Knowledge transfer seminars, workshop and
  consultancy
• ICAC
• Hong Kong Professional Teachers Union
• Official Languages Officers
• Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, Royal
  Institution of Chartered Surveyors Hong Kong,
  Land Surveying and Geo-informatics Department
• The Association of Chartered Certified Accounts
• Hong Kong Federation of Insurance Brokers

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BA and MA teaching and learning materials, tasks
and assignments

• Concepts defining phraseology, n-grams and
  skipgrams, concgrams (meaning-shift units,
  collocational frameworks, and organisational
  frameworks), aboutness, aboutgrams, etc.
• Use of the ConcGram? software program to search
  for and generate phraseological patterns and
  profiles in different corpora, and search results
  used in learning and teaching materials, tasks,
  and assignments

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Phraseology

• The phraseological tendency in language, or what
  Sinclair (1987) terms the idiom principle,
  refers to the way words are co-selected by
  speakers and writers.
• To fully describe the meaning and use of
  language, we need to be able to identify and
  describe the word co-selections which are evident
  in linguistic patterns.

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n-grams and skipgrams

• Searches for n-grams (aka clusters or
  bundles) find
• contiguous words, e.g. a lot of people, but
  not the same
• pattern in instances such as a lot of
  different people.
• As a result, instances of word association may be
  
• overlooked and those which typically occur in
  non-
• contiguous sequences (i.e. AB, AB) risk
  going
• undiscovered.
• Skipgrams (Wilks, 2005) are non-contiguous word
  co-
• occurences In other words, they include
  constituency
• variation (AB, A B) of up to three
  intervening words
• e.g. a lot of different kinds of people

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Concgrams

• a concgram is all of the permutations of
  constituency variation and positional variation
  generated by the association of two or more
  words (Cheng, Greaves and Warren, 2006 414).
• A concgram includes all instances when one or
  more words are found between the co-occurring
  words (i.e. constituency variation), and if the
  co-occurring words are in different positions
  relative to one another (i.e. positional
  variation).
• The co-occurring words comprising a particular
  concgram may
• be the source of a number of configurations.
• Lists of concgrams are generated fully
  automatically using the program ConcGram? written
  by Chris Greaves.

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Three types of concgrams

• meaning-shift units (Sinclair, 2007)
• collocational frameworks (Renouf and Sinclair,
  1991)
• organisational frameworks

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Meaning-shift unit (MSU)

• An MSU equates to Sinclairs (1996) lexical
  item and is composed of five categories of
  co-selection
• obligatory invariant core
• obligatory semantic prosody
• optional semantic preference
• optional patterns of collocation, and
• optional patterns of colligation

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Illustrating components of an MSU (a two-word
concgram) play/role

1. Core play, role
2. Collocation important (23), significant
   (15), major (8), leading/lead (8), central
   (8), key (7), crucial (6), vital (5 )
3. Colligation modifier, determiner, preposition
4. Semantic preference business/economic
   activities, organisational/societal relationships
5. Semantic prosody to participate and/or
   contribute in a weighty/meaningful manner (shown
   in the consistent choice of modifier)

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Concordance of a two-word concgram (MSU)
expenditure/increase

• 1 next five years. We also estimate that
  operating expenditure will increase moderately,
  at a rate commensurate
• 2 in the Consolidated Account for 2008-09.
  Public expenditure as a proportion of GDP will
  increase from 15.9
• 3 two and a half times the present
  population. The expenditure on the Old Age
  Allowance will increase
• 4 Since the planning of these projects
  takes time, expenditure on infrastructure is
  unlikely to increase
• 5 health care system were to remain
  unchanged, expenditure on public health care
  services would increase
• 6 and social development. We will
  increase expenditure on social services and
  welfare and return part of
• 7 lead to a decrease in revenue and an
  increase in expenditure in 2008-09. I have also
  earmarked 50 billion to
• 8 it is expected that the
  increase in overall expenditure on health care
  services will, on average, be two
• 9 is revenue by 33.5 billion and increase
  operating expenditure by 41.5 billion in
  2008-09. The latter figure
• 10 measure will increase
  government expenditure on CSSA payments when
  inflation rises. 145
• 11 be sustainable. If we increase recurrent
  public expenditure or reduce recurrent public
  revenue, we must be
• 12 Government cannot increase public health
  care expenditure indefinitely, we hope that
  supplementary
• 13 we will increase the share of public
  health care expenditure to 17 per cent of
  government recurrent

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Collocational frameworks (1)

• Collocational frameworks are comprised of
  grammatical
• words which frame lexical collocates (e.g.
  the President
• of the United States).
• Many associated words which recur in a corpus and
  are
• sometimes listed as individual clusters are
  produced by
• speakers and writers within a collocational
  framework.
• Currently, the fundamental role of collocational
• frameworks is largely ignored by both
  researchers and
• language teachers in favour of their
  resulting products.

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Collocational frameworks (2)

• For example, Carter and McCarthy (2006) list the
• following 4-word clusters
• the end of the the side of the
• the edge of the the middle of
  the
• the back of the the top of the
• the bottom of the
• but they do not describe the 3-word
  collocational
• framework common to them all the of the.

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An example of a collocational framework the ...
of

• a reasonable degree of control over the
  supply of money. We shall return to this method
• than possibility of movement for the
  number of people you anticipate. When
• possible consumption, and for many the
  equity of this method of taxation may well be
• number of applications has kept up, the
  amount of work that we are engaged in has er
• ampaign. Amongst Labour identifiers, the
  effect of reading a right-wing paper on their
• cases, one should not underestimate the
  impact of this new illustration of the Court's
• be over when he broke down badly in the spring
  of 1988. He was promptly retired but
• indeed form and process figured in the
  titles of a number of books concerned with

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Organisational frameworks

• Comprised of conjunctions/connectives and/or
  discourse markers which combine to organise
  part(s) of the discourse.
• Five of the top ten (next slide) are no surprise
  (or/whether, either/or, and/both, also/but and
  neither/nor). They are known as correlative
  conjunctions.
• The rest (plus others that do not make it into
  the top ten) are identified by searching for
  concgrams.

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Top ten 2-word organisational frameworks

• or/whether
• either/or
• because/so
• and/both
• also/but
• actually/what
• if/then
• I mean/you know
• I think/that
• neither/nor
• BNC (5 million)

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Concordances of an organisational framework
because/so

• assume that it's constant it will be Q over two
  because that takes you half way up so the holding
  cost
• small pixels the colour doesn't change any but
  because the size is become smaller so the
  resolution
• didn't get any nasal pharyngeal aspirate anymore
  because the nurses refuse to do it so we in-
  instead we
• both by nominative and nominative case (.) er
  because this is the accusative (.) so this is
  ruled out
• appropriate for the items that you're looking at
  because they won't all be the same so we can
  attempt try
• that question I think it's highly complementary
  because China is such a big country so we'll be
  doing
• three classroom settings (.) in that paper be-
  because it's it is a group project so I I I'm B
  
• also to the department and the university okay
  because like me just a small potato here so I
  cannot
• ...
• to Admiralty that often so that's okay with me
  because I don't have to see it that often erm but
  my
• whenever you can do it so reciprocity isn't rare
  because it's Asian but blue is m- is a more
  western
• types of situations so we deal with these things
  because there's a very good chance that you'll be
  caught
• River Delta cities so you're welcome to join us
  because I hope you would find it useful to you in
  terms
• the tourist group so he goes as fast as he can
  because the dolphins are like chasing the boat
  (.) and

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Determining aboutness

• Concgrams are the raw data needed to reveal the
  phraseological profile of a text, or corpus, i.e.
  all of the meaningful associations of words.
• From the phraseological profile of a text, or
  corpus, it is possible to arrive at its aboutness
  through the identification of aboutgrams.

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Phraseological profile

• Concgrams are a useful source of raw data to
  reveal the co-selections made by the speakers and
  writers represented in a text or corpus.
• They can be used to determine keyness and
  aboutness in the ways that single word
  frequencies are currently used.
• They are a potential starting point for
  quantifying the extent of phraseology in a corpus
  and hence determining the phraseological profile
  of the language contained within it.

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An example of a learning and teaching activity
students discuss and compare concgram lists
provided by the teacher

• Data
• Engineering text (4,810 words) a research
  article on Seismic Response Reduction of Tall
  Buildings
• A Hong Kong corpus of Engineering English (1 m
  words)
• BNC (100 m words)
• Procedure
• For each of 1, 2 and 3 above, a list of the ten
  most frequent lexical words, and a list of the
  ten most frequent lexically-rich two word phrases
  are compiled. (following 3 slides)
• In-class discussion tasks
• Compare the most frequent lexical words and
  phrases found in the engineering research article
  with those in the Hong Kong Engineering Corpus
  and the BNC.
• Discuss the findings.

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Text-specific lexical words most frequent
lexical words in an engineering research article
text
control
building(s)
damper(s)
MR (magnetorheological)
storey
semi-active
logic
system
response(s)
current
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Text-specific aboutgrams aboutgrams in the
engineering research article
MR damper(s)
building(s)/storey
control/damper(s)
logic control
semi-active/control
control/MR
control algorithm
control/passive
building/response(s)
semi-active logic
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Engineering-specific aboutgrams
design(s)/structural
structural model(s)
building(s)/design
architectural/model(s)
structural analysis
design/tall
data capture
structural optimisation
analysis/design
form/structural
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Example of a BA seminar task

• ENGL303 Corpus-driven Language Learning
  Worksheet 8 Concgrams
• Learning outcomes
• To understand the WSConcGram function in
  WordSmith and use it to search for concgrams in
  a corpus, and
• To analyse the concordance of a concgram, using
  Sinclairs (1996, 2004) model of five categories
  of co-selection the obligatory core word or
  words and semantic prosody, and the optional
  collocation, colligation and semantic preference.
• ConcGram (Cheng, Greaves and Warren, 2006) is
  acknowledged
• by Mike Scott.

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Example of an MA assignment (1)

• MAEP Lexical Studies
• ASSIGNMENT TWO Concgramming for lexical items
• 1. Study the concgram concordance lines below
  (slide 30). Starting with each centred (node)
  word, describe as fully as possible the five
  categories of co-selection that make up a
  lexical item (Sinclair, 2004). (70)
• Discuss the claim that an understanding of
  phraseology is the key to understanding lexical
  items as units of meaning. Use your analysis of
  one of the following sets of concgram concordance
  lines in your discussion. (30)
• Suggested length 1,200 words

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Example of an MA assignment (2)

• play/role
• 1 The advisers Professional
  advisers play an essential role in the management
  buy-out
• 2 1. What is market research, and why
  does it play an important role in the marketing
  function?
• 3 last-mentioned - marketing research
  agencies - play a significant role in the whole
  area of
• 4 M Ps can help in coordinating this. They
  could play an outstanding role in, in giving the
  information
• 5 who will discuss how the private
  sector can play a more prominent role in local
  and urban
• 6 person in his organization has a major
  role to play in pleasing the customer and they
  know it, and
• 7 The financial controller has a key
  role to play in facilitating this learning
  process by
• 8 Select Committees will have an important
  role to play in further developing the
  presentation of these
• 9 sections like the British, have a vital
  role to play. The annual budget for 1990 was
  GBP11 million,
• 10 resource does have a significant
  role to play in helping corporations to achieve
  viable
• provide/service
• 1 the civil servant takes pride in the
  quality of service provided. Similarly, if the
  official is expected
• 2 I believe in particular, the best
  possible service we can provide. ltu whoPS1UVgt
  We're going down
• 3 have absolutely no affect on the quality
  of the service that we provide to our client, but
  they form
• 4 f efficiency and quality, in fact we
  provide a service that's second to none. We
  shouldn't have to
• 5 weak and can only gain strength by
  providing a service superior to that of his
  competitors.

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References

• Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. (2006). Cambridge
  Grammar of English. Cambridge Cambridge
  University Press.
• Cheng, W., Greaves, C. and Warren, M. (2006).
  From n-gram to skipgram to concgram.
  International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
  11(4) 411-433.
• Renouf, A.J. and Sinclair, J.McH. (1991)
  Collocational Frameworks in English, in Ajimer
  and Altenberg (eds) English Corpus Linguistics,
  pp 128-43.
• Sinclair, J. McH. (1987). Collocation A Progress
  Report, in R. Steele and T. Threadgold (eds)
  Language Topics Essays in Honour of Michael
  Halliday, pp. 319-331. Amsterdam John Benjamins.
  
• Sinclair, J. McH. (1996). The search for units of
  meaning. Textus 9/1 75-106.
• Sinclair, J. McH. (2007). Collocation Reviewed.
  (manuscript), Tuscan Word Centre, Italy.
• Wilks, Y. (2005). REVEAL the notion of anomalous
  texts in a very large corpus. Tuscan Word Centre
  International Workshop. Certosa di Pontignano,
  Tuscany, Italy, 30 June 3 July 2005.