Teaching Spoken
English: Words,
Chunks and Grammar
Ronald Carter
University of Nottingham
13/11/06 1

Top 40 most frequent words: 5m written
1 THE 21 AS
2 TO 22 AT
3 AND 23 BUT
4 OF 24 BE
5 A 25 HAVE
6 IN 26 FROM
7 WAS 27 NOT
8 IT 28 THEY
9 I 29 BY
10 HE 30 THIS
11 THAT 31 ARE
12 SHE 32 WERE
13 FOR 33 ALL
14 ON 34 HIM
15 HER 35 UP
16 YOU 36 AN
17 IS 37 SAID
18 WITH 38 THERE
19 HIS 39 ONE
13/11/06
20 HAD 40 BEEN 2

Top 40 most frequent words: 5m spoken
1 THE 21 ON
2 I 22 OH
3 AND 23 WE
4 YOU 24 HAVE
5 IT 25 NO
6 TO 26 LAUGHS
7 A 27 WELL
8 YEAH 28 LIKE
9 THAT 29 WHAT
10 OF 30 DO
11 IN 31 RIGHT
12 WAS 32 JUST
13 IT'S 33 HE
14 KNOW 34 FOR
15 MM 35 ERM
16 IS 36 BE
17 ER 37 THIS
18 BUT 38 ALL
19 SO 39 THERE
20 THEY 40 GOT

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?
13/11/06 4

Top 20 2-word chunks
(spoken)
1 YOU KNOW 28,013 11 I WAS 8,174
2 I MEAN 17,158 12 ON THE 8,136
3 I THINK 14,086 13 AND THEN 7,733
4 IN THE 13,887 14 TO BE 7,165
5 IT WAS 12,608 15 IF YOU 6,709
6 I DON'T 11,975 16 DON'T KNOW 6,614
7 OF THE 11,048 17 TO THE 6,157
8 AND I 9,722 18 AT THE 6,029
9 SORT OF 9,586 19 HAVE TO 5,914
10 DO YOU 9,164 20 YOU CAN 5,828
13/11/06 5

Top 5 6-word chunks
(spoken)
1 DO YOU KNOW WHAT I 236
MEAN
2 AT THE END OF THE DAY 222
3 AND ALL THE REST OF IT 64
4 AND ALL THAT SORT OF 41
THING
5 I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS 38
13/11/06 6

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.
13/11/06 7

13/11/06
occs in 5m wds spoken
a
co
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
up
at le
th o
e f
m
om
en
t
sm
al
al
l t l
he
ti
m
yo e
u
kn
o w ea
w rl y
ha
t I
m
ea
an n
d
th fu
in n
gs
li
ke
th
at
ho
w
Words v. Chunks
ev
er
8

Two Main Types of
Chunk
prefaces I don’t know if …
I was going to say…
as a matter of fact
integrated sort of
items or something like
that
13/11/06 9

Functions of Chunks
discourse marking
you know
I mean
and then
but I mean
do you know what I mean
at the end of the day
if you see what I mean
13/11/06 10

Politeness
prefaces
do you think
do you want (me) (to)
I don’t know if/whether
what do you think
I was going to ask you
13/11/06 11

Hedging, boosting
and vagueness
I think
sort of/kind of
a bit (of a)/a couple of
I don’t know/I don’t think
to be honest with you
as a matter of fact
and stuff like that
(and) all this sort of thing
or something like that
13/11/06 12

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
13/11/06 13