This presentation looks at applications of lexical bundles to ESL pronunciation teaching.

1. Using Corpus Linguistics to Look
at Phrases Actually Spoken on a
University Campus and
Implications for the Teaching of
English as a Second Language
Pronunication
R. Allen, M. Benedetti

2. Introduction
• Pronunciation is needed and teachable
(Derwing, Munro, Foote, Waugh, &
Fleming, 2014; Hayes-Harb, Smith,
Bent, & Bradlow, 2008).
• …but we neglect it (Gilbert, 2010;
Munro, 2011).
• More practical applications of corpus
linguistics are needed (Flowerdew,
2015); pronunciation has been very
little studied in corpus linguistics
(Friginal, Lee, Polat, & Roberson,
2017; Staples, 2019).

3. Lexical Bundles
• Groups that occur more
often than chance (Biber
& Barbieri, 2007; Hyland,
2008).
• Why?
– 80% of speech (Altenburg,
1998).
– Complex idea “building
blocks” (Biber, Conrad, &
Cortes, 2004, p. 371).
– Allow for generalizations
(Ellis, 2012).
On the other hand
In case of
As well as

4. Research Questions
• Which four word lexical
bundles are very
common in university
settings?
• Linking pronunciation
to meaning, which
functions do these
bundles serve in
speech?

5. Theory
• “Humans will remain the ultimate
arbitrators of whether and the extent
to which communication has been
successful in real-world settings, and
there will always be constraints in
what machines are able to do” (Isaacs,
2018, pp. 17–18)
• Corpora data is decontextualized, but
pronunciation – and communication
is highly situated (Field, 2005; Okim
Kang, Rubin, & Lindemann, 2015;
Zielinski, 2008).
• Critical socio-ecological framework is
implemented (Van Lier, 2007; Van
Lier, 2010).

6. Literature Review
• Relatively less has been done
with corpora and speaking
(Friginal et al., 2017).
• Almost nothing in pronunciation
(Pennington & Rogerson-Revell,
2019b; Staples 2019).
• Commercial applications such as
a grammar textbook and
SpeechRater are available.

7. Methodology and Data
• AntConc a corpus analysis
software tool to extract a list
four word lexical bundles
from the Michigan Corpus
of Academic Spoken
English (MICASE), 1.84
million word corpus
consisting nearly 200 hours
of speech.
– 31,408 4 word bundles.
– Flowerdew (2015) suggests
40 words per million  6,333
bundles.

8. Findings – Hylan’s Taxonomy
Type Sub-Types Examples
Research-oriented
Location all over the place
Procedure to make sure that
Quantification it's kind of
Description the same way that
Topic in the U.S.
Text-oriented
Transition in comparison to the
Resultive uh because it's
Structuring the next slide shows
Framing we’re not getting
Participant-oriented
Stance I don’t know
Engagement we’re not getting

9. Findings – Most Common Bundles
Bundle Frequency (our of 1.84 M)
I don t know 1404
I don’t think 468
I think it’s 318
you don’t have 261
I think that’s 239
that’s what I. 202
don’t know what 198
don’t have to 193
you know what I 193
don t know I 189
you know it’s 189
I mean it’s 181
I don t have 173
I’m not sure 157
if you don t 151
and I don t 149
at the same time 146
you don t know 137
it’s gonna be 133
what’s going on 132
at the end of 131
so I don’t 127
• We talk to the
listener…a lot!
• What grammatical
function comes up in
almost all the
participant-oriented
bundles?

10. Implications – Syntax, Semantics
and Phonology
Don't Do not
What I’m saying I don’t wanna wait. You do not induce or repress things that are constitutive.
I don’t know if any of you recognize this label…. You need to make sure that you do not, violate too much…
Cancer cells don’t have to, secret very much plasminogen
activator.
They do not allow us to infer anything, about God’s moral
attributes.
• Connected speech can be hard to understand, and lack of connected
speech can cause misunderstanding of the L2 speaker’s attitude.
• Contractions are significant in terms of prosody; they change the
number of syllables (Alameen & Levis, 2015).

11. Conclusion - Summary
• If we view
pronunciation as
contextualized, we have
to look at how meaning
is conveyed.
• Participant bundles are
far most common;
within those we need
contractions.

12. Conclusion – Future Directions,
Limitations
• Applied classroom
research.
• Meaning of contractions
in ESL speech.
• Pronunciation involves a
listener…

13. References
allenr0@mail.uc.edu