The Issues of Teaching English Grammar and Vocabulary Through Chunks

The Issues of Teaching English Grammar and Vocabulary Through Chunks

by Tetiana Creative

It’s impossible to become a progressive English language teacher without considering the innovative techniques of teaching foreign languages. Nowadays’ students can’t stand dealing with long-term explanations as well as a large amount of studying material. Due to an enormous torrent of information from everywhere it is inevitable to sort it out and focus only either on the most important or the most interesting issues. Psychologists state modern students can only accept short bites of information and switch from one shortened piece of knowledge to another one. That may be explained as they got used to watching short videos or Reels and reading posts or commentaries in the social networks. Foreign language teachers should mind this psychological factor and take it into account while planning a lesson. In such a way it is possible to keep students active.

It is common for English learners to become overwhelmed by the number of words they are expected to know. That may result in the reduced motivation of the students to continue learning as they fail to see perspective in passive memorizing long lists of words which slip their memory the moment they encounter a real-life communication. But there is an easier and much better way to learn a new language. It is called chunking or learning languages through chunks.

Chunking is learning a language in context. It means learning phrases, or groups of words, rather than single words. Language chunks are patterns of words that are regularly used together in the same order (or move around in a regular way), they are widely recognized and often learned as a phrase: set expressions, phrasal verbs, fixed (or semi-fixed) phrases, verb patterns, idioms and collocations and other lexical units, e.g. “by the way”, a “sense of humor”, “make noise”, “What’s up?”, “can’t help doing something” “all of a sudden”, “at the end of the day”, “heavy rain” and many others.

Neuroscience states that the brains naturally perceive not individual words but instead evolved to remember short patterns of language in chunks. Logically, if chunks are high-frequency items (i.e. learners are likely to encounter them regularly), then it would clearly be useful to teach them. It’s easier for learners to recall a chunk of language (“How’re you doing?”) rather than try to construct the parts of the sentence from the lego blocks of vocabulary, grammar and phonology [1].

Chunking is considered to be a good way to learn a foreign language as it lets the learners take lots of small bits of information. New words are put together so that the students have a larger thing to remember, for example a phrase which is more meaningful than a single word and is much easier to remember as a pattern or in its contextual combinability. Chunking allows foreign language learners to have a lot of useful phrases on hand when they appear in circumstances to have conversations. Rather than having to find each individual word when they want to say something, they can find an entire chunk. This makes their speech much faster and more fluent and natural. It helps improve the skill to “think” in English, not to transform each thought born in native language into a second language idea. Moreover, speaking in chunks lets English learners speak in a grammatically correct way without having grammar competence completed at the elementary level of learning and develop their competence through chunking as well.

It is suitable to take the cases of both vocabulary and grammar chunks (which are sometimes combined) to demonstrate how it works. A rather popular phrase “What’s up?” is commonly used to ask “How are you?” or “What’s wrong?” in English speaking countries. But if broken into separate words – “what” “is” “up” – this phrase understood word for word might make the listener stare at the sky, looking for planes and clouds. The students might think it’s a very philosophical question: What is up? What is down? Where am I? Learning “What’s up?” as a chunk, however, will give the students awareness of the meaning of the phrase as a lexical unit in the context in which it can be used.

To find out how chunking can be helpful in developing grammar competence we can take a sentence as an example and break it into chunks: I used to go to the beach every weekend when I was a kid. There are several chunks in this sentence which would be worth paying attention to. “I used to…” means “I did something often but I don’t do it now”. This pattern or chunk is rather popular and versatile in English, it is used to talk about regular past actions or states which are not so any more in present. The teacher should support his learners with more examples, like the following: I used to meet my friends every Saturday morning. I used to love McDonald’s when I was younger. Giving students variety of situations with this chunk helps demonstrate similar grammatical meaning in different contexts and, thus, forms a steady skill of frequently using this chunk.

Students should be taught to accept the foreign language speech neither as a torrent of separate sounds nor as a torrent of separate words but as chunks, speech patterns. Analyzing a short conversation, we can break it into chunks. For example:

–What are you up to today?

– It depends on the weather.

–If I were you, I’d check the forecast.

The chunks which this short dialogue consists of are: “to be up to…” in the meaning “to be going to…”, “to depend on” – “be controlled or determined by” and “If I were you, I’d…” – chunk used to express speaker’s possible action in the suggested situation or under the mentioned circumstances.

The four reasons why learning chunks can be a real help from a learner’s point of view:

1. Chunks help understand idiomatic language. Native speakers often use language that learners find confusing, e.g. the greeting, “The weather is nice today”, may be responded “Don’t count your chickens”. Not knowing this idiom, the learner might think the other person has gone mad. As chunks of language are often idiomatic expressions, learning them helps them get used to a foreign language.
2. Chunks can improve fluency. Retrieving and using a chunk of language is much easier than retrieving several words and then using grammar to construct a sentence, especially in real-time conversation.
3. Chunks help learners develop faster. Imagine teaching “How are you?” to beginning students, who accept it easily as a chunk of language, without having to break it down grammatically – but then they further understand it as their learning allows them to. This idea is supported by Michael Lewis, who tended to “Lexical Approach” in foreign language teaching and noted: “The Lexical Approach claims that, far from language being the product of the application of rules, most language is acquired lexically, then “broken down”… after which it becomes available for re-assembly in potentially new combinations” [3].
4. Chunking increases motivation. Students respond well to quick wins in language learning. It’s highly motivating for them to be able to use chunks of new language fluently, in a short space of time.

If teaching chunks put into a contradiction to teaching vocabulary, grammar and phonology there may appear some points to compare. A chunk can contain pre-set vocabulary, grammar and phonology, which can be learnt together without breaking it down. Awareness may come later, when the students turn to the upper level. Chunks have vocabulary, grammar and phonology embedded in them. Phonology plays an important role in chunks, for example, “Yeah, right”. Without intonation the listener wouldn’t know whether this phrase is sincere or sarcastic.

Teaching phrases and chunks allows communication to happen faster. You can think of this as teaching “bottom-up” – usage and communication come first, and grammatical (and lexical and phonological) deconstruction can come later. When the teacher focuses on the vocabulary, grammar, and phonology, it allows students to understand the chunks, break them down, and reconstruct them in new and creative ways. You can see the students start realizing how to use the language in the form of speech patterns (chunks).

Alternatively, teaching vocabulary, lexis and grammar can be thought of teaching as “top down” – understanding the parts of language comes before communication or at the same time. The idea is that once the students acquire enough patterns, that they’ll be able to assemble language to communicate effectively. However, this can lead to low fluency as students can be afraid of mistakes while constructing their expressions in real communication.

As usual, there are advantages and disadvantages, chunking is not an exception, it also meets some challenges. The teacher should take the time to help students understand why and how chunks can help them learn, and increase their tolerance of ambiguity as well as take the time to break down the meaning, form and pronunciation of chunks to learners, if it is appropriate for the class.

In conclusion, it should be mentioned that chunking technique of teaching English is for all language learners at all levels, including beginners to learn useful sentences and questions. “Can you help me?” works much better than “Help!” And “Can I have a pint of coke, please” sounds more natural in the English-speaking surrounding than “Coke, please!” It will take much time before the students of the elementary or beginners levels understand the nuances of the modal verb can, but they can start using it in the chunks of language.

Summarizing the principles of the chunking technique we can distinguish some top tips:

– to teach chunks in context;

– to review items regularly;

– to let the learners pick up chunks of language from the different sources.

So, integrating teaching chunks into English classroom gives an opportunity to combine traditional methods and innovative techniques to develop foreign language learners’ competence and improve their motivation.

REFERENCES

1. Bor, Daniel. The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. Basic Books, 2012.
2. Jones L. How the chunking method can help you learn English. [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: https://blog.lingoda.com/en/how-chunking-can-help-you-learn-english/
3. Lewis M. Implementing the Lexical Approach: Putting Theory into Practice. Hove UK: Language Teaching Publications, 1997. [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: https://www.tesl-ej.org/ej09/r10.html
4. Weller D. How to Help Your Students by Teaching Chunks of Language. [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: https://www.barefootteflteacher.com/p/teaching-chunks-of-language