3 Concordances in the classroom without a computer: assembling and exploiting
3.5 Assembling and investigating concordances: sample class activities
In this section I will describe five sessions where hand-concordancing was used. Each session was based on a different type of text, involved a variety of analytic procedures, and illustrates the kinds of insights that can be gained from using these procedures. The procedures and steps taken will then be summarised.
3.5.1 Sample session 1: a focus on as for ESP students
I was once invited to a university ESP department in a developing coun- try to lead a workshop on the lexical syllabus and the design of language analysis activities. There was little access to computers but, working with the texts the teachers had brought in, we successfully concord- anced, by hand, a number of common words, to see what insights could
Concordances in the classroom
57 be gained by doing so. Four teachers had brought in texts on the topic of farm animal nutrition that they were currently using with students studying English for agriculture. After a quick initial glance through these texts, I selected the word as, which ranks sixteenth in the general written frequency lists. Whilst other subject teachers were reading the texts to gain some idea of their subject matter, the four agricultural specialists split up sections of the texts between them and simply wrote up on the board all the examples of as they could find in their section, positioning the word as in the centre. This took around five minutes.
The result looked something like Figure 3.2.
We began by identifying the actual phrases containing the word as, that is, deciding where the phrases began and ended. This was harder than it sounds since it involved making decisions relating to seman- tic units and clause or phrase boundaries. In the case of Example 1 (the first line), for instance, most people intuitively felt that the chunk needed to include both verbs: are decreased proportionately as produc- tivity rises – to keep the semantic balance. In Example 6 (the sixth line) some pairs argued that as is explained later should not be separated from the first half of the sentence; when asked why, they were forced to reflect on and try to explain this meaning of as. Very few examples were as straightforward as in the same way as … as a result of … In fact, the whole process of identifying the boundaries of the as phrases stimulated both pair and class discussion of meanings and clause rela- tions. Being asked to justify their decisions concerning where phrases with as began and ended often forced participants to make explicit things they had only felt subconsciously before. This kind of activity refines and deepens their understanding of a very useful word and is exactly what is meant by the term awareness-raising activity.
Maintenance costs are decreased proportionately as productivity rises complex activity which includes such actions as the search for food
of blood constituents have been suggested as possible signals including . . . which receives signals from the body as a result of consumption of food some agent associated with energy storage acts as a signal fot the long term . . . that signal are received directly from the crop as is explained later.
A variety of aromatic substance such as dill, aniseed , coriander and . . . intake and energy requirement suggests that, as with energy, intake should vary
to environment temperature in the same way as monogastric animal, in that This can be considered as an aspect of energy balance in Digestibility here is expressed as the coefficient for food energy appears to be relatively unimportant in grazing as animals will graze in the dark
Figure 3.2
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The second task was to try to classify the uses and meanings of the phrases with as and to find how many different ways these could be classified. After some discussion, mostly focusing on the meanings and functions of as, pairs generally grouped the phrases into around five or six categories, thus:
• referring to time (1)
• introducing examples (2, 7) (Students would know such as, but prob- ably not the pattern such + noun + as)
• meaning similar to/same (8, 9 and possibly 6?)
• after verbs such as suggested, acts, considered, expressed (which also express similarity or something parallel)
• expressing a reason (12)
• left-over phrases: as a result
For each of these categories, pairs were then asked to suggest a further example that they had met before. They came up with phrases such as functioned as, as you know, As a child, I lived in …
They then felt they wanted to consult a dictionary to find whether their categories were similar to those in the dictionary and to find more parallel examples that might be useful. They did this in groups and then told each other their useful phrases. They particularly liked phrases such as saving as little as £10 per week, as a consequence of … and those with a more colloquial flavour: as things stand, and as it turned out.
It was noticeable that two categories of as were absent in this set of concordances: the phrase as if and the pattern as X as. Maybe these are simply less common in this genre of academic text; it would be interest- ing to take a bigger sample to find out if indeed this was the case.
So far these activities had involved a fair amount of repetition of phrases with as (helpful for learners who learn best by memorising) and discussion about the various meanings, functions and uses of as (help- ful to learners with a more cognitive approach). All this was leading to a general broadening of understanding of how and when they and their students could use such expressions. In addition to the word as, many other useful words and phrases had been focused on.
An important effect of concordance lines is that they enable us to take a more objective look at the language. They are like tiny snapshots of a linguistic landscape. Just as when looking at a photograph of a familiar scene you often notice something you had not realised was there before, concordance lines taken from their familiar surroundings seem to make it more likely that we notice new things.
These new things may not just be related to the central word. So once learners have begun to look at a set of concordance lines with
Concordances in the classroom
59 an analytical mindset, it is often useful to extend the area of study.
In this particular session, as a final supplementary activity, we moved the focus of attention outwards from the central word and looked to see what useful grammatical insights we could gain from looking at other words and phrases in the concordance lines on the board. I thought that this activity might last another two or three minutes, but it proved extremely fruitful. After ten minutes or so the board looked like Figure 3.3.
The noun groups (underlined in Figure 3.3) could be further subdi- vided into those consisting of noun + noun, and those with adjective + noun:
maintenance costs complex activity blood constituents possible signals energy storage aromatic substances food intake environmental temperature energy requirement monogastric animals food energy energy balance
Participants then went back to the texts themselves to see if they could find more noun + noun phrases, and came up with body weight, pro- duction costs, control centres, blood glucose, heat increment. They also recognised some of the concordance lines in their original context – a further deepening of their language experience. Identifying and explor- ing the structure and meaning of noun + noun phrases is a good way of focusing on the use of ESP topic lexis in many kinds of text. Noun
Maintenance costs are decreased proportionately as productivity rises complex activity which includes such actions as the search for food
of blood constituents have been suggested as possible signals including ... which receives signals from the body as a result of consumption of food some agent associated with energy storage acts as a signal fot the long term ...
that signals are received directly from the crop as is explained later.
A variety of aromatic substances such as dill, aniseed, coriander and ...
intake and energy requirement suggests that, as with energy, intake should vary to environment temperature in the same way as monogastric animal, in that
This can be considered as an aspect of energy balance in Digestibility here is expressed as the coefficient for food energy appears to be relatively unimportant in grazing as animals will graze in the dark Figure 3.3
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phrases can be longer and more complex – look out for examples in medical and business text. They also feature commonly in newspaper headlines – try working out the possible meanings of the headline Christmas Toy Trip Border Wrangle.
Verbs and verb phrases (identified by dotted lines in Figure 3.3) that are not in themselves specialist agricultural terms, but which appear commonly in academic writing, were also noted by participants. These included includes …, have been suggested as …, acts as …, suggests that …, can be considered as …, appears to be …
Other features that could be focused on include:
• general nouns such as aspect, variety, substances, signals, result, way, balance (circled in Figure 3.3). These have very little specific mean- ing on their own and must be further explained, either beforehand, as in energy balance, or later, as in signals from the body, result of consumption of food.
• phrases with verbs ending in -ed: are decreased, have been suggested as …, associated with … . These can be further classified either struc- turally into passives or adjectival uses, or semantically into subject- specialist terms and academic discourse terms.
• nouns formed from common verbs: maintenance, storage, consump- tion, digestibility, requirement.
• adjectives formed from nouns: aromatic, environmental.
So, starting with concordance lines assembled by the class, this ses- sion stimulated a rich exploration of the meanings, uses and patterns associated with the word as, and, in addition, of many other features typical of that genre of text which had been captured by chance in the concordance lines.
None of these analysis activities requires much advance teacher prep- aration, since they are general enough to be valid for any text. Once a word has been identified for study, an initial look through a dictionary entry for the chosen word should be sufficient. Such sessions can always be supported by the use of dictionaries should queries arise or more examples be needed.
Summary of activities used Assembling
• Learners identify lines containing the key word, and write them up (on the board, a wall poster or on an OHP transparency), with the key word in a central position. To save time, this can be prepared for homework.
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61 Analysing
• Learners identify the boundaries of the phrases containing the key word.
• Learners classify the phrases according to their meaning or use, pat- tern or grammatical classes they appear to fit.
• Learners think of known examples parallel to those they have found and classified.
Extension and consolidation
• Learners use dictionaries to consolidate specific areas or uses of the key word (concentrating on the uses occurring in these lines) and share findings.
• Learners make a record of useful phrases and examples in their own notebooks.
• Learners look at other features that happen to occur in the concord- ance lines, look for more examples in the original text, and record examples of any useful items.
This first sample session has illustrated some very general, open analysis activities that can be done with any text and with minimal teacher guid- ance. The next sample session exemplifies some more specific analysis activities, based on categories of word meaning and use, identified in advance by the teacher, but with lines still assembled by the learners.
3.5.2 Sample session 2: common words in spontaneous spoken narrative
The activities in this session were based on hand-generated concordances assembled in advance by a class of 20 intermediate students who were completing a unit on an incident in an African game park. Recorded materials included an interview and a story about a family’s encounter with a man-eating leopard which had been inadvertently released back into the game park. I did a quick scan through the transcripts to find ten words that all occurred quite frequently. These were: at, had, I, in, of, one, so, that/that’s, this, what/what’s. They were all fairly high on the spoken frequency list – most were above the 50 level.
Students had followed two or three task-based cycles, which entailed listening several times to the story and interview in order to complete the various tasks successfully. I then assigned each of the selected words to two students, and for homework they were asked to read through the transcripts again, searching for examples of the word assigned to them.
They wrote out the concordance lines for their word on an OHP trans- parency and gave these to me a day ahead of the next class.
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This allowed time for me to devise different kinds of consciousness- raising activities. With some words, for example one, I used a diction- ary to help identify and describe useful categories. I actually wrote the instructions on the bottom of each OHP transparency, which I then photocopied for future use. Activities for three of the ten sets of con- cordances are illustrated in Figures 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6.
• In Figure 3.4 look at the verb phrases containing the word I. Can you divide them into two categories: those which actually tell the story and advance the action (e.g. I got out of bed), and those which do not (e.g. I think)? Try to find ways to classify the verbs in the second group.
• In Figure 3.5 find four examples of this which probably refer to the leopard.
• Look at the four other phrases with this. Which two refer to the time of the actual story and which two refer to the discourse itself (i.e. not the actual story)?
• Choose three phrases with this that you think you might find useful.
Tell each other.
son. He was just, on, I think about one at the time And we er- I forget exactly where we went This is an important detail. I have to make it clear.
first night we were there as I describe we went to easily scared away. So, I got out of bed, and the roof. So I lit a hurricane lamp as the animal came by, I switched the hurricane And er eventually and I don’t exaggerate
Figure 3.4
But erm – on this occasion er, we went to Tsavo connect with the ceiling.This is an important detail. I have maybe kill – In fact this tig – this leopard that erm, we
In fact – this tig – this leopard that erm, we escaped I don’t exaggerate at this point – it started looking in at the How old was your son at this time? He was just one.
So, this one already had its er – And in the case of this one it had been kept in Nairobi
Figure 3.5
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• In Figure 3.6 find two examples where one probably refers to the son’s age.
• Find four or five examples where one means one of two (or more).
• Find four cases where one refers to the leopard.
• Find four phrases where the word one is definitely part of a larger chunk.
• Which words do you think typically come after one? (There are two here.)
• In which single example could the word one be made plural (ones)?
The class did each set of activities quite quickly, in pairs, and discussed each set as a class before moving on to the next one. They wrote down any useful phrases and insights gained for each word. In the case of the first two sets, from I and this, we all gained several insights into the nature of spontaneous narrative – there is a lot of talk which is not directly telling the story, but relates to the discourse itself, for example emphasising a point (I don’t exaggerate at this point) or expressing vagueness (I forget exactly where). The focus on so also drew attention to the way in which phases in the narrative can be signalled, as well as to the meaning of other uses of so. For this, a translation activity can work well: ‘What word/s do you have for each use of so in your language?’
Many useful common lexical phrases were identified and practised: in the case of this one; I have to make it clear that …; phrases with of such as and all the rest of it. Focusing on in, learners identified several ‘new’
phrases: in an attempt to …, in the (mistaken) belief that … . Some use- ful phrases occurred in more than one set of concordances and so were highlighted several times.
Oh, I think about one at the time.
Er. So eventually ... One of my plans just a bit less than one: Er. So we were in danger. One of my plans
management, you know, if one area hasn’t got enough and they mixed up one that had misbehaved they thought it was just one that they were
they were moving from one area to another so this one already had its In the case of this one, it had been kept Figure 3.6
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Summary of benefits of language analysis activities
From samples 1 and 2 we have seen that by working with concordance lines focusing on frequent words, learners can:
• become aware of the potential different meanings and uses of com- mon words;
• identify useful phrases and typical collocations they might use themselves;
• gain insights into the structure and nature of both written and spo- ken discourse;
• become aware that certain language features are more typical of some kinds of text than others.
Some people think that this kind of activity is not practicable with elementary learners or near beginners. But it must always be useful to encourage learners to look critically at language, whatever their level.
And it is quite possible to devise activities which enable beginners to do this, as the next section demonstrates.
3.5.3 Sample session 3: real beginners – a focus on that
As beginners will inevitably have a much more limited experience of English, the pedagogic corpus of texts and transcripts will initially be much smaller, and the texts and recordings shorter and briefer. But these will still contain a high proportion of common words. Beginners need to build up a deployable repertoire of useful words and phrases.
Some of these can initially be memorised as fixed chunks – phrases they simply learn by heart without breaking them down grammatically. But noticing the part that common words play in such phrases will begin to give learners insights into the way the language works, and help them to see how to generate their own chunks for themselves (see Batstone 1994, N. Ellis 2003, Skehan 1994.)
Instead of asking beginners to write out complete concordance lines (which may introduce too many additional and possibly distracting fea- tures), learners can simply identify and list the chunks or phrases they find containing the key word.
In this early lesson with real beginners, learners first completed a teacher-led task brainstorming English words that were commonly used in their country (e.g. football, hotel, disco). They then heard a recording of four native speakers listing words of English that they thought would be understood internationally. Learners listened several times, identify- ing words they recognised, comparing the two lists of words, and then