Helping ITAs to notice and use "lexical bundles"

1. Teaching ITAs to Use Lexical Bundles<br />TESOL 2011, New Orleans<br />Ellen Rosenfield HYPERLINK quot;
mailto:erosenfield@gmail.comquot;
erosenfield@gmail.com<br />Poor pronunciation is only one reason why undergraduates have trouble understanding their international teaching assistants. Another reason may be that ITAs often memorize paragraphs from textbooks to compensate for their lack of fluency in English. These ITAs are often not aware that the dense, content-packed style of textbook prose is so fundamentally different from the spoken language, especially the language used in classroom teaching.<br />Research in corpus linguistics by Douglas Biber and others has provided rich data on these differences. One of the most striking findings is that classroom teaching has more in common linguistically with conversation than it does with textbook prose. As in conversation, native speakers rely heavily on fixed multi-word sequences, called “lexical bundles” (Biber) Examples of lexical bundles in teaching include phrases like “What I’d like to...” “Those of you who” and “stuff like that.” <br />Biber’s linguistic descriptions of textbook prose and classroom teaching offer other useful insights that we can pass on to our ITAs. <br />To highlight the differences between textbook prose and classroom English, I looked for excerpts from textbooks and classroom teaching on roughly the same topic: hydrogen bonds in water.<br />Textbook<br />Hydrogen bonds in water http://www.wwnorton.com/college/chemistry/gilbert2/tutorials/chapter_10/water_h_bond/<br />Strong intermolecular forces called hydrogen bonds are formed between water molecules. Hydrogen bonding is responsible for many of the unusual characteristics of water, namely its relatively high boiling point (and low vapor pressure) for a molecule of its size, the wide range of temperature that this small molecule exists in liquid form, its lower density in the solid form compared with its liquid form, and its propensity to form dome-like droplets on surfaces<br />Classroom Teaching (underlined phrases are especially common in teaching)<br />Biology 1A<br />OK...<br />So as I said, the first subject that I want to talk about is--biological molecules. And --if you look at all living organisms, interestingly, the composition of these organisms, in terms of what you find in a bacterium, a plant cell, an animal cell, is very similar. And that’s shown on figure 2, --That’s a pie: That’s a pie –shaped figure. And the interesting feature of the pie shaped figure to the left ( I can draw this. .. because I can draw a circle.) is that it is – essentially-- three fourths of this is water.<br />So if you look at any living organism, it’s primarily composed of water. (And this is, of course, when they send probes onto Mars or the Moon, the first thing they’re looking for is water because the belief is that there’s no life, --living organisms that can live in the absence of water. So if there’s no water on the moon, no life forms as we know them are on the Moon. ---same for Mars.)<br />The rest of this pie shape is primarily biological macromolecules, about..oh, I don’t know...This is 75% roughly. This may be another 20% ...This would be biological macromolecules.<br />OK, and then the rest -- some five or ten percent, are small metabolites or they’re ions, --and things like that.<br />Since we are primarily water, I think it’s worth me spending oh, five or ten minutes talking about water and using this to introduce a couple of subjects that will be important when we talk about the structure of molecules.<br />Another UC teacher<br />Statistics<br />OK. So, I’ll tell you a little bit about me, a little bit about the class, give you kind of an outline of what we’re going to do this semester, and then, toward the end I’ll actually talk about statistics a little bit. <br />II. Linguistic Differences<br />The data in this chart is taken from the T2000 Spoken and Written Academic Language corpus, which consists of about 2.7 million words and represents a range of university spoken and written registers: lectures, textbooks, office hours, etc. This chart compares the occurrence of nouns, verbs, and personal pronouns in four registers: academic prose, textbooks, classroom teaching, and conversation.<br />.<br />(chart from Lexical Bundles in University Teaching and Textbooks, p. 378)<br />Other Insights into Grammar Use in Classroom Teaching <br />(from Biber, University Language)<br />1. The most common adverb clause in teaching is “If you look at...”<br />(“So if you look at any living organism, it’s primarily composed of water.”)<br />2. The most common noun clause in teaching “We/You know that...”<br />(used as a reminder of what students have previously learned)<br />3. BE + that clause constructions are extremely common “My point here is that...” “One reason is that...”<br />(The interesting feature of water is that it’s a molecule that has a polarity”)<br />4. Adverbs like “actually,” “in fact,” “obviously” are very common.<br />5. Request verbs + to are very common. “I want you to” “Remember to” “Be sure to” “I’d like you to”<br />6. The most frequent noun in classroom teaching is the word “thing,” but it rarely refers to a physical object. “There are two things to consider.” “The first thing we have to do is” “The good thing about this plan is that...”<br />7. Modals: CAN/COULD/WILL /I’D LIKE are very common. MUST/SHOULD are uncommon. (In my experience, students overuse “must” and “should.”)<br />8. “OK” and “Well” are used to structure discourse. (“OK” can signal a new topic or a request for questions. “Well” marks a response that is not expected. (After a student answers incorrectly, for example)<br />III. Lexical Bundles in Classroom Teaching<br />The term “lexical bundles” first occurs in Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (2000) to describe frequently occurring multi-word sequences. What distinguishes lexical bundles from other lexical phrases (like idioms or transition expressions) is that they’re identified only by frequency not by meaning. So, for example, if the computer is programmed to look for four-word sequences, then every four-word sequence is examined but only those sequences that appear more than a certain number of times qualify as “lexical bundles.” Biber’s work concentrates on four-word sequences that appear more than 40 times per million words in the T2SWAL corpus (2000 Spoken and Written Academic Language Corpus) <br />Notice that classroom teaching relies more on lexical bundles than any other register.<br />In other words, when teachers teach, they use a lot of ready-to-go chunks of language. This is not surprising, considering that teaching occurs in real-time; most of the language a teacher uses is not pre-planned. Both the teacher and the listener need processing time, and research shows that both L1 and L2 speakers process multi-word sequences more efficiently than non-formulaic language. (Jiang, The Processing of Formulaic Sequences by Second Language Speakers, MLJ, 2007)..<br />Examples of Lexical Bundles in Classroom Teaching <br />(These are all from the article “If you look at: Lexical Bundles...”)<br />1. I want you to take out a piece of paper and jot some notes down in these four areas.<br />2. But right now, what we’re going to take a look at are ones that are produced that are positive and beneficial.<br />3. I want you to be able to name and define those four curriculum categories.<br />4. What I want to do is quickly run through the exercise that we’re going to do. OK, just so you see what it does.<br />5. Now, we want to talk about testing hypotheses.<br />6. If you look at development and the jobs that are created, it says nothing first of all of the type of jobs that are created.<br />7. What do you think the text is trying to tell us?<br />8. Well, why is the Navajo Depot important today? It has to do with the START talks with the Russians.<br />9. For those of you who came late, I have the, uh, the quiz.<br />10. How many of you watched the Oscars last week? (not from Biber)<br />11. One of the things they stress in parenting is to be consistent.<br />12. I think we have what about, six weeks left of class or something like that.<br />13. There are obviously companies that do evaluations and things like that.<br />14. So I want to talk a little bit about process control from that point <br />Examples of lexical bundles from textbooks<br />(These are all from University Language, pages 166-172)<br />1. The length of the line of action can be determined by Equation 7.5<br />2. The resonant frequency depends on the ratio of the mass to the total spring rate of the tires. <br />3. A 60 per cent aqueous sucrose solution at 20’ C flows through the bed at a rate of 244 lb min negative 1. <br />4. Fleshy fruits are classified on the basis of the differentiation of the fruit wall.<br />IV. Teaching Lexical Bundles <br />Why Teach Lexical Bundles? <br />1. They may promote fluency –Lexical bundles form “building blocks.” “They provide a pragmatic ‘head’ function as discourse frames for new information.” Biber, Lexical Bundles in University Spoken and Written Registers. (My guess is that lexical bundles are used by native speakers as “stalling techniques” as they think in real time about the rest of their sentences.) <br />2. They may increase intelligibility – Research shows that both L1 and L2 speakers process formulaic language more efficiently than non-formulaic language. (Jiang, The Processing of Formulaic Sequences by Second Language Speakers, MLJ, 2007) By using lexical bundles, ITAs may be able to improve their intelligibility and compensate for other language deficiencies.<br />Teaching Materials and Activities that Focus on the Language of Classroom Teaching<br />1. MICASE Self-Study: Academic Formulas<br />http://micase.elicorpora.info/esl/formulaic-expressions/Definition.htm<br />2. “Consciousness-raising,” activities<br />• Language Logs: Students watch whatever they want (TV, TED lectures, webscasts) and look for useful phrases. (One of my students watched a TED lecture and added to his log “There is a widely-held assumption that...”)<br />• Examples from ITA textbooks (Communicate, English Communication for International Teaching Assistants, Giving Academic Presentations)<br />In the excerpt below from Communicate, Students are completing the conversation with classroom language -- vocabulary such as “partial credit” and two-word verbs such as “do over” but the dialog also contains common lexical bundles like “The last thing I want to talk about...” and the frequent cleft sentence structure “What I is...”<br />Excerpt from exercise from Communicate Using classroom expressions page 17, 18<br />Student: I don’t understand, Will we be allowed to use a calculator?<br />TA: Yes, you can use a calculator, but I won’t require you to actually finish the calculations. What I’m mainly interested in is how well you can analyze the problem. I’ll even give you (6) if you (7)<br />Student: (8) to the homework, if we do badly on it, can we (9) it .<br />TA: No, I’m sorry. I don’t have time to grade extra homework...The last thing I want to talk about is the textbook. <br />• Students bring a Wikipedia definition of a concept to class. Using lexical bundles, restatement, and rhetorical questions, students in small groups turn the written definition into the language of classroom teaching.<br />3. Teaching pronunciation using lexical bundles as examples<br />In courses with a pronunciation curriculum, we can use common lexical bundles to provide examples of familiar pronunciation problems.<br />• Linking: intervocalic /t/ “a little bit about<br />• Prominence: The first thing I want to do. <br />• Linking: the /v/ sound, especially the final sound of “of” Those of you who, <br />• Reduced sounds: (schwa in “to”) I’d like you to read I want you to do<br />• Overuse of schwa: (between words ending and beginning with consonants) You need to ...The last thing I want to do<br />4. Teaching audience awareness<br />Before students choose a topic to teach, I divide the class into pairs of students from different academic disciplines and direct them to ask each other the following questions<br />1. What do you already know about my field?<br />2. What would you like to know about my field?<br />If possible, I have them work in pairs twice –with different partners, so that they get an idea of what their audience would like to hear. This activity forces students to choose a topic that is not too technical and encourages a more conversational style. After getting a sense of their audience, students can be encouraged to use phrases such as “those of you who...” and “some of you may know...” <br />5. Using scripts and videos of authentic teaching/Asking students to write scripts <br />We can use webcasts, transcripts and videos to focus not only on lexical bundles but also on other features of classroom language: the use of rhetorical structures, restatement, humor, and analogies.<br />(What I recently tried)<br />1. I asked for a volunteer to come up to the front of the room, imagine that we are a freshmen with little background in math, and define the word “function.” As I expected, the definition was short and the content was densely packed. <br />2. I then played a video from the textbook English Communication for International Teaching Assistants in which a real TA defines the word “function” in a very casual, conversational style. (When I asked my students what they thought of the teacher, one student said it sounded like kindergarten.)<br />3. I played the video again while students looked at the transcript. We focused on the very frequent restatements and repetitions, the use of an analogy, and on two useful lexical bundles, “Let me remind you” and “a little bit about.” We spent time working on the linking problems of “a little bit about” and practiced it in various structures.<br />“Let me tell you a little bit about my field” <br />4. I introduced the idea of “lexical bundles” and we brainstormed a few common discourse-organizing bundles like “What I want to...” and “I want you to” <br />5. Students then chose something to define, went to the board, and wrote the first four sentences of their script. We looked at them together and made comments on how they could be improved.<br />6. For homework, students sent me their improved script and a two-sentence sound file.<br />Below is an excerpt from a successful student assignment:<br />I. Good afternoon, nice to see you guys in our class. Today we are going to talk a little bit about solids and fluids, say the differences between solids and fluids. As we all know, most substances could be described as two existing states, saying solid and fluid. For example, this table is solid because wood is solid. Water you drink every day, oil you use every day, air in the classroom and outside are all considered as fluid. So I have a question here. Why could we define solid and fluid? Why we could say, Oh this table is solid? (wait for the students’ questions) Who can tell me the differences?<br />OK, before we talk about what is solid and what is fluid, let me remind you about the force on a surface.(draw pictures) The force on a surface, or the surface force could be expressed as the sum of two forces, of course, the sum means the vector sum. As you can see here, this is our surface and this is the force on it.<br />The Mirroring Technique: This has been described by Colleen Meyers and others. Students choose a native speaker to imitate, (someone they can listen to repeatedly) select five consecutive sentences from the native speaker’s speech, write a transcript of the sentences, and practice imitating the speaker, working hard to copy the native speakers’ pronunciation, pauses, intonation, etc. <br />A final thought: Do we have a library of teacher video clips and accompanying scripts? -- Something more user-friendly than MICASE? Prospective ITAs need to read, listen to, and study many examples of teaching in order to be effective in the U.S. university classroom.<br />