Eric Nicaise

The inseparability of lexis, grammar and phonology: corpus-informed perspectives

Audience focus: All

Abstract

Traditionally, the three areas of language, lexis, grammar and phonology (or vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation), have been kept apart in EFL teaching. However, one major finding of corpus linguistics research over the past decades is probably that language is highly patterned. To a large extent, language is made up of fixed or semi-fixed chunks. Corpus studies, based on large collections of authentic texts, have highlighted the massive importance of collocations and phraseology in language study, and have provided evidence for the interdependence of lexis and grammar. Based on a seminal paper by Römer (2009), in which she argues for a lexico-grammar approach to language pedagogy, the talk will take this claim even further and will address the need for a holistic approach, in which vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation are inseparable from one another and should be woven throughout every lesson.
Indeed, given the high discrepancy between what we write in English and how we say it, we cannot overstate, from elementary level onwards, the importance of pronunciation - a broad term which includes both segmental phonology (the study of the sound system of English), as well as work on the suprasegmentals, such as word stress, sentence stress, weak forms rhythm and intonation.
Through a corpus exploration of classroom English (Nicaise, 2021), we will be looking at attested examples of expert EFL teachers highlighting the interdependence of lexis, grammar and pronunciation. Such examples will include the teaching of pronouns and negative contractions at beginner’s level, and phrasal verbs at more advanced levels.

References
Nicaise, E. (2021). Native and Non-Native Teacher Talk in the EFL Classroom. A Corpus-Informed Study. New York & London: Routledge.
Römer, U. (2009). The inseparability of lexis and grammar: Corpus linguistic perspectives. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 7(1), 140-162.

Biography

Eric Nicaise is a lecturer and teacher trainer in Dutch and English at University College Louvain-en-Hainaut (HELHa) and a scientific collaborator at TeAMM research group at Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium. His doctoral thesis focused on native and non-native teacher talk in the EFL classroom, and he has published a book on this topic. He has delivered lectures at several conferences, notably at the Centre for Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) and the Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies (IVACS). His other research interests include teacher development, phonology and research into the implications from second-language acquisition studies for the English classroom

Website door Livalos