Corpora Collocations and Concordances Conference Paper

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••••Corpora, concordances, and collocations in classroom

teaching: Designing listening materials

by

Montazar AnNayef

ESP Center, Damascus University

This research was carried out to investigate the effectiveness of applying corpora

and consequently blank filling with collocations drills to teaching listening to

medical ESP students to develop their near-micro listening skills. Analyses of

authentic medical listening texts and various corpora-based listening activities were

used to collect data.

Plan

1- Introduction & Definitions

2- Why concordancing in language classes?

3- What are the language areas in which you can use concordances in teaching?

4- Why can listening with focus on collocations be sometimes troublesome?

5- What is challenging about a collocation?

6- Factors that influence listening7- How can teachers design listening tasks with the help of a concordancer?

8- Using corpora in listening materials development: SAMPLE UNIT

9- Ten reasons why you should use a concordancer!

10- Findings

11- Recommendations

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX

• The 33rd Annual Convention & Exposition, TESOL ’99, NY, USA, 9-13 March 1999.• The First International TEFL Conference, ESP Centre, Damascus University, Damascus, Syria, 27-29

March 2001.



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1- Introduction & Definitions:

With the advent of the 3rd millennium new horizons have been opened before

language teaching. One of these is computer-assisted teaching (CAT), which has

been promising teachers insightful techniques and teaching methods and

tremendously giving a hand to inspect authentic language. Technology, in fact,

has paved the way for authentic huge corpora to be accessed in classroom and has

given a precious opportunity to learners to scrutinize the language. For over a

decade, corpora have been compiled to provide practitioners with authentic

language to process. The best tool for that task was a concordancer.

Concordancers, therefore, have been created and used by linguists and language

specialists for the purpose of analyzing words, meaning, usage and frequency, but

mainly for linguistic and dictionary purposes. Interest in concordancers,

consequently, rose up as teachers of a language came to realize that

concordancers offer them and their students so many chances of approaching

language that they cannot have in traditional materials and approaches.

Corpus:

A corpus (pl. corpora) is a collection of language samples, written and/or

spoken, processed on computer using one or more software tools for the purpose

of analyzing the language itself for word use/usage and frequency and mainly for

linguistic and dictionary use (Flowerdew, 1996 ). There are two types: specialized

and general. The first may be common in ESP, while the other in EFL/ ESL.

Concordancer:

A concordancer is in the present sense computer software that enables

practitioners and learners to look for the concordance of a certain word in a givencorpus (e.g. Monoconc/pro, Wordsmith, …etc.).



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Concordance:

A concordance is the outcome of a concordancer usually characterized with

the key word(s) in the middle of the page, each is in its own textual environment

(Sinclair, 1986), which makes the text more accessible and analysis easier (e.g. a

concordance of taken below shows the key word in the middle.).

Collocation:

A collocation is a term used to describe two or more words that usually go

together. They can be verb-preposition/particle (to believe in, give up); verb-noun

(to save money); adjective-noun (chronic symptoms); or noun-noun (household

maintenance), etc.

2- Why concordancing in language classes?

Sinclair (1986) describes a computer as the tool which allows learners to

assume mastery of their own learning experience. Similarly, concordancing in a

learning environment “interjects authenticity (of text, purpose, and activity) in the

learning process”, of which learners assume control, as Stevens (1995) puts it.

Stevens also concludes that throughout their linguistic performance, learners may

become researchers into the language, aiming at discovering its mystery

themselves, and thus deducing rules that stem out of the evidence they have

before them.

… categories I would have liked to have [[taken]] you through. Research. Access to ...

… trying to improve it. We haven't [[taken]] a position on exactly what process we want…

… without depending on having [[taken]] an algebra course, or, if anything, just a couple..

… of very happy contempt. Having [[taken]] her into every division, and led her under ..

…. our judgment -- and I think our having [[taken]] the position we do contributes to --



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• What do you think learners need?

I believe that learners aiming at improving their language competence may

seek, on the first hand, improving their skills in listening, reading, speaking, and

writing; and, on the other, getting introduced to as much vocabulary as possible –

believing that getting acquainted with a huge number of words will facilitate

learning and mastering a language (AnNayef, TESOL Arabia: 1998) and

consequently comprehending any passage whatsoever. HOWEVER,

• However what?

However, as you may agree with me, words, relatively speaking, have acertain meaning when in context, and meaning usually changes whenever the

context changes. Moreover, words are not normally found in language on their

own but rather in clusters. Studying vocabulary, therefore, can be more effective

when learners are introduced to words in context – mostly as collocations.

Corpus-based approaches to lexicography made it possible to access a corpus

looking for information that is representative of the language. With

Concordancers it has been easy to scan a corpus looking for affinities between

two words or more and to measure their co-occurrence statistics (McEnery &

Wilson, 1996).

3- What are the language areas in which you can use

concordances in teaching?

Writing:

Why don’t you allow your students to use a classroom easy-to-use

concordancer and authentic corpora and let them do the editing and check

grammar, word usage, meaning, and collocations themselves? All you need is an

easy-to-use concordancer, computer, and corpus.



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Reading:

One of the earliest applications of concordancing were in semantics and

lexicography. Collocations, prefabricated structures, multi-immediate

constituents, and many lexicogrammar-related aspects of a language can be

closely inspected by both teacher and learners in classroom.

Grammar:

Another area that benefits from concordancers and corpora is Syntax.

Learners can deduce their own rules just by scrutinizing a concordance of any

problematic grammatical item. The teacher doesn’t have to teach a rule but rather

guide students to think more effectively and perhaps to formulate what learners

have come to conclude.

Listening:

Relatively speaking, literature shows that little or no work has been done in

this respect. My own experience, however, was based on designing authentic

listening materials from authentic corpora (AnNayef, TESOL New York: 1999).

The Corpora created came from two sources. The first was a 230,167-wordcorpus compiled from ABC News Programs, Health Watch, medical journals

such as JAMA and Postgraduate Doctor , and authentic medical lectures and

conference papers presented in conferences held in Damascus and Beirut in 1998

and 1999. The second corpus was some 50 million words compiled from medical

CD ROMs.

4- Why can listening with focus on collocations be sometimestroublesome?

There are a few reasons of which I can list two:

1. Familiarity with the collocation



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2. Phonological combinations

Listening problems due to phonological combinations can be mainly due to

learners’ unfamiliarity with the combination itself or with the cluster of words

that usually co-occur (i.e., collocation). Now when words, however, collocate

together to form collocates and word combinations, the outcome may sometimes

be subject to some sound aspect. When the combination results in the

replacement of a sound into another one having greater resemblance to an

adjoining sound, for instance, it is called in this case contextual assimilation, as

Jones (1975) puts it. In the present research, several incidences were found of the

same nature (e.g., effective therapy: /v/ is replaced by /f/ under the influence of

/th/. Many other sound aspects, therefore, can be applied to collocations, which

makes this issue of relative importance to material designers concerned with

collocations and listening. It is quite important to consider the confusion listeners

may experience when listening to collocations subject to such sound aspects.

Examples of phonological combinations:

Contextual assimilation: effective therapy

Simple Assimilation: common infectious diseases

million new infectious casesrisk category

Negligent Assimilation: weight loss

5- What is challenging about a collocation?

A collocation is not the smallest listening unit, not the largest; yet in listening

we treat it like a text and it is not a text; we use micro and macro listening skills

to decode it, as we do to decode the mother text that the collocation belongs to.

• Does listening with focus on collocations require some different skills?

Listening to collocations, like listening to larger texts, requires both macro

and micro listening skills. Brown (1977) mentions, in reference to the macro



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listening approach, that a native speaker acquires a stereotype knowledge that

allows the listener ‘to cope with a very reduced phonic input’ that conveys the

intended message, which, relatively speaking, non-native learners of English

may not be able to comprehend from that relatively little input. Nunan (1991),

on the other hand, identifies the micro listening approach as segmenting ‘the

stream of the speech into its constituent sounds’, linking ‘these together to

form words’, chaining ‘the words together to form clauses and sentences and

so on’. Nunan suggests using both approaches as two integrated skills.

However, as in Figure 1, collocations are neither the smallest units nor

generally the largest. Listening to collocations, like listening to larger texts,

requires both macro and micro listening skills. However, as clarified above,

collocations are neither the smallest units nor generally the largest. To decode

a collocation, a learner first needs background knowledge and knowledge

about context and so on (macro-listening skills) to construct a primary

expectation of the content of that text, which may lead a learner to establish

some sort of semantic expectation concerning the smaller units in the text.

Then he/she may need to relate those smaller units and clusters of words

together to build up the larger contextual meaning of the text (micro-listening

skills). At the same time, a learner needs to apply the same procedures as

mentioned above on collocations as texts and on the smaller units that make

up a collocation. A learner ends up using macro and micro listening skills on

two levels: the text-collocation level and the collocation-word level. Since a

collocation may not be the largest unit in a text but for sure is not the smallest,

then the skills needed are not the micro-listening but something between

micro and macro! Which is to say, a corpora-based listening task approach

that supports blank-filling-with- collocation activities demands that learners

develop a different kind of skills – namely near-micro listening skills - to

cope with the requirements of the task itself. At collocation level, which nears



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the micro items of the text rather than its macro structure, the needed skills

are near-micro listening skills. That is, listening to and filling in with

collocations simultaneously can help learners use both macro and micro

listening skills to approach a collocation, thus enabling them to identify single

words and word combinations in context in accordance with the progress they

have been making so far in regard to this kind of activities.

The more a learner is introduced to collocations in a given field by using

the corpora of that field, the better s/he may be at recognizing those

collocations - or parts of them - whenever listening to similar contexts. In

fact, becoming familiar with collocations throughout the course is one

somehow wide leap into language awareness. This, consequently, can

stimulate the learners’ cognition and promote their construction (Wolf, 1995)

and deconstruction processes. In corpora-based listening materials, activities

will derive from such materials rather than prevail and materials will be

designed representatively rather than intuitively (Lehmann, 1993).

The statistical techniques carried out by the present researcher helped

determine the percentage of the co-occurring words to their frequency in the

corpus and the outcome was the focus of the tasks designed thereby. This

same experience was reported by Church and Hanks (1989). The aim was to

look for semantic relations that determined the co-occurrence of certain

words. If the words always co-occur, some special relationship can be

assumed and the key words are traced in other corpora in an attempt to reach

a generalization about those multiword units (McEnery & Wilson, 1996). By

sorting the occurrence of particular words, the concordancer can help the

learner-researcher study the patterns in which the given key words are

typically used in their own textual context (Sinclair, 1986).



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Figure 1: A) Micro listening: accumulation of listening to the smallest items in a text

leads to understanding of the passage.

B) Macro listening: understanding the overall meaning of the text (context,

topic, tone, behavior, etc.) helps understand the smallest items in that text.

C) Near-micro listening: accumulation of listening to the components of a

collocation leads to the understanding of that collocation; simultaneously, being

familiar with the collocation helps determine its basic components. A

collocation is one component in a larger text.

6- Factors that influence listening

Factors that influence listening can be classified into three types (AnNayef:

TESOL Arabia: 1998). These are:

MICRO LISTENING

MACRO LISTENING

NEAR-MICRO LISTENING

CONTEXT/TOPIC/TONE/ETC

A)

B)

C)



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- Speaker-related factors: speed, clarity, voice modulation, accent, style, etc.

- Material-related factors: topic, objective of the passage, level of difficulty,

phonological combinations, question types, task objective, etc.

- Listener-related factors: acquaintance with the topic, acquaintance with the

text vocabulary, acquaintance with collocations, acquaintance with the

phonological combinations, competence in listening skills, psychological

status, etc.

When Designing listening materials, material designers should take the

above-mentioned factors into consideration, the material-related ones in particular

(e.g., phonological combinations and question type and objective).

7- How can teachers design listening tasks with the help of a

concordancer?

There are two ways for doing that:

- First: compiling the listening passages of the same classroom listening

materials, using them as data basis for concordancing, and designing

relatively short and concise tasks.

- Second: Compiling a larger, more authentic corpus and designing your

own activities.

Teachers can apply the concordancer and search for collocates and highly

frequent words. Sorting a concordance alphabetically according to first right choice

helps highlight phrases and other patterns that start with the key word, such as

collocations and frequent expressions (Sinclair, 1986).

It is quite true that what differentiates one medical text from another is the

quantum of the highly technical and subject-related words encountered in one text



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rather than another (Aston, 1995). What makes a text belong to anatomy rather than

etiology, for instance, is the sort of vocabulary that determines content. It is very

highly likely to come across the collocation tissue necrosis in a text on diabetes

mellitus rather than heart disease, whereas it is quite possible that you find the

collocation routine physical examination in two texts, hypertension and diabetes

mellitus. The objective of compiling a corpus on a specific topic is not only content-

based but also lexicon-based. In other words, it seems to be more efficient to let

learners establish links between certain vocabulary and certain topics, until they

come to discover that some vocabulary may be encountered in various contexts.

This discovery can happen in class throughout the course or at work or even through

one’s own readings.

The following steps include:

• Selecting high frequency collocates:

Once you get the concordances of certain words, you can also search for

collocates using the concordancer. Pick up the words that collocate with other

words on a high frequency basis.

Collocation frequency sample concordance:

Example 1: Words are sorted out according to first right search term

Example 2: Words are sorted out according to first left search term

…20-25 and to reduce the percentage of [[dietary]] calories gained from fat from 40-45

...indicated that they would reduce their [[dietary]] fat intake to modify their risk of

...ly related to total caloric intake, and [[dietary]] fats, especially saturated fats, (seven ...

…nitrogen metabolism. [[Dietary]] fibre undoubtedly affects human

...ternised communities to a deficiency in [[dietary]] fibre intake. The idea of increasing

...y out a fasting lipid screen. Initially [[dietary]] intervention is used but drug

...are dietary intervention and drugs. [[Dietary]] intervention Studies show that

...at the fibre hypothesis" relates to a [[dietary]] lifestyle rather than to specific

...ere more likely to indicate appropriate [[dietary]] modifications compared with those

...and narcotic drugs, alcohol and excess [[dietary]] protein can be corrected. Both acute a...it is possible to normalize VLCFA by a [[dietary]] regimen that combines restriction of



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Example 1: Words are sorted out according to first right search term

• Designing classroom tasks:

Question types vary according to the objectives of the tasks. Common

questions include blank filling with collocates, word matching, and word

recognition (Honeyfield, J. 1989; AnNayef, TESOL New York: 1999).

• Applying the listening task in classroom:

If the outcome listening task is not applied in class, the teacher cannot tell how

much successful their work on such kind of tasks is. They also need feedback from students for whom the activity was primarily designed. This can be done via

a questionnaire or interviews or through assessment.

• Testing students’ listening performance using corpora-based listening tasks:

Feedback, at a final stage, can be obtained from tests and exams adopting this

corpora-based listening tasks approach. Students’ results and performance can be

highly indicative of the input they have gained throughout the course, as well as

their expected output.The following is a full corpora-based sample listening unit. The key is

provided where necessary.

opportunistic bacterial [[infections]] are endogenouslyOcular bacterial [[infections]] vary from mild,

foreign body [[infections]].

blood borne [[infections]] such as hepatitis

recurrent chest [[infections]]. Downstream

rinary and chest [[infections]] are common and us). In contrast,

streptococcal corneal [[infections]] are more

External eve [[infections]] in man are caused reasons for the bad

fungal [[infections]] of the eye

prosthetic graft [[infections]]. The method of

Synthetic vascular graft [[infections]]. Graft infections

acute viral [[infections]] may resolve



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8- Using corpora in listening materials development

SAMPLE UNIT

Diabetes Mellitus••••

Talk

- Look at the picture* above. What do you call this case of diabetes mellitus?

- Now discuss with your classmates some of the cases of diabetic patients that you have

seen in hospital or clinic. Tell your class about one of these cases.

A description of the task

Under the title of the unit goes a picture related to the topic (in this case it is the

diabetic foot). The first task is Talk, which is a sort of warming-up activity that

the teacher is advised to start with, allowing students to communicate some of the

thoughts and ideas that the picture and the title of the unit trigger. Such an

activity may last for 8–10 minutes, during which the teacher directs students’

• * Levene, G. M. and Goolamali, S. K. 1991, Wolfe Medical Atlases



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discussions into etiology, diagnosis, signs and symptoms, etc., but it should not

exceed the allocated time limit.

Vocabulary

1. Complete the statements below with expressions that best complete the meaning,

and then justify your answer. There is more than one possible answer.

a. Under ___________________, Langerhans Cells secrete insulin according to glucose

levels in the plasma.

b. A patient is said to be a __________________ when glucose levels in plasma are not

stable due to absolute or relative deficiency of insulin.

c. The diagnosis of symptomatic diabetes is not difficult. When a patient presents with

_________________________ attributable to an osmotic diuresis and has

hyperglycemia, the diagnosis is clear.

d. To keep glucose levels in diabetic patients within normal limits, patients are given

insulin on a _________________.

e. Diabetic patients, especially insulin-dependent patients, are a high infection

_______________.


The second task is Vocabulary, which can be introduced in various ways. One

way is that students are required to fill in the gaps with word combinations based

on their previous knowledge of the topic and on clues introduced by means of

vocabulary or general meaning (e.g., items b and c). The aim of this activity is to

allow students to dig up their language resources looking for the vocabulary they



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have learned previously to give various possible answers. They will discover that

sometimes the root of the word combination is the same and it accepts in many

words constituting a certain frequency in the language (e.g., under laboratory

conditions, under natural conditions, under normal conditions, under suitable

climatic conditions, etc.). When I applied this task in class, students, who worked

in pairs, competed to give closer answers and justifications why one answer is

more probable than another.

Key:

a. normal conditions c. symptoms and signs e. risk category

b. diabetic patient d. regular basis

2. Match a word in A with a word in B to form different phrases and expressions.

Notice that more than one word in A may go with a word in B.

A B

Acute

ChronicClimatic

Common

Contemporary

DominantIn gross

Long

Mild

MinorNatural

NormalObscure

Recessive

term

terms

symptomsconditions

infections


Another way of familiarizing students with collocations and expressions may

be by introducing students to lists of word combinations separated into two

columns. Students are required to match words together. Sometimes several

words in column A can go with one word in column B, and so on (See Appendix



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1 for phrases, expressions and frequently occurring collocations in medical

lectures). A third way is by using multiple-choice statements where students have

to choose the most frequent word combination among other possible but less

frequent or impossible ones (there is no present example of this activity.). In both

tasks learners can use a concordancer in classroom to look for possible collocates.

Key (Due to very long concordance results, a few examples will be mentioned):

-Acute: infections/symptoms/conditions

-Common: conditions/infections/symptoms

-Mild: terms/infections/symptoms etc.

Listening

1. Now you are going to listen to a lecturer talking about diabetes mellitus. As you

listen fill in the gaps with words, expressions and phrases from the recording.

Good morning. We talked the other day about endocrine diseases and clinical

endocrinology. Our lecture today is going to be about diabetes mellitus.

Diabetes mellitus is the most common endocrine disease. As you know, it is

characterized by hyperglycemia due to absolute or ----------------------- of insulin. It is

common with its both types, insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, known as IDDM, and

non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, known as NIDDM. Insulin-dependent diabetes

mellitus is a ------------------------------- resulting from the destruction of the pancreatic

beta cells. Although the --------------------- for insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus are still

not well defined, ----------------------------------- is determined by several genes, where

HLA genes have the strongest effect. It has been found that the onset of the disease is ----

------, at least in diabetic family members and relatives. Very high-risk people to develop

insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus include -----------------------, persons with family

history of diabetes, or HLA-DQ persons.



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In non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, however, genetics, autoimmunity and viruses

do not contribute to the development of the disease. The main ----------------- are actually

lifestyle, age, pregnancy, ---------------------, insulin resistance and other factors such as

obesity, which markedly enhances the development of non-insulin dependent diabetes

mellitus.

Diabetes mellitus has ---------------------------- of symptoms and signs. However, in some

cases it can be asymptomatic that it can be detected on ------------------------------- Most

often, symptoms are due to hyperglycemia, but the first event may be an acute ------------

----------------- that very often results in diabetic coma. In gross terms, diagnosis is

confirmed by glycosuria with or without ketonuria and a random -----------------------------

--- greater than 14 mmol/L.

A description of the task (See Appendix 2 for tape script)

The third task is Listening. One of the very successful listening question types

is gap filling (Honeyfield, J. 1989) with corpora-derived collocations (AnNayef,

TESOL New York: 1999). The word combinations that will be tip-exed are

chosen ‘representatively rather than intuitively’ (Lehmann, 1993) serving a

purpose put forth by the material writer.

2. Listen to the second part of the lecture and answer the questions below.

a. Why should diabetes mellitus be inspected regularly? _________________________

b. What are the clinical features that must be observed in diabetic patients? Mention three

only. ________________________________________________________________

c. Why is tissue necrosis in the feet a common reason for hospital admission in diabetic

patients? _____________________________________________________________

d. How does foot ulceration start? ____________________________________________



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A description of the task (See Appendix 3 for tape script)

Open-ended questions can range from knowledge to inferential questions to

promote and evaluate learners’ listening comprehension. Other activities may

include listening to a dialogue to work on a blank filling task and listening to a

lecture to answer the questions that follow. (Students may also listen to a

dialogue between two doctors or a doctor and his/her patient. The type of

question that can be used varies from unit to unit according to dialogue topic,

difficulty, length, specialization, etc.)

The unit may end with a reading and/or writing task in which students can use

the words, expressions, and phrases they have learned throughout the lesson (See

Appendix 4 for sample occurrences of collocations in three large medical

corpora).

9- Ten reasons why you should use a concordancer?∗∗∗∗

i) A concordancer is particularly useful to the overloaded teacher.

Concordance output lends itself readily to subdivision. This means that the

output from concordance can easily be used to create individual or small group

assignments. Apart from this, the teacher does not have to do most of the work as

input from the teacher in this context is not central.

ii) Concordancing makes a text more accessible.

Learners can focus their attention on a certain element in the text. This

element can be studied individually without having to extract it from an

intimidating mass of texts.

iii) It encourages group work.

∗

Based on a poster given at the American Language Centre (Abunniaj & AnNayef, SPELT: 1999)



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The proposed methodology (taking concordance output and dividing it up

between groups or individuals) encourages group work. Also, the fact that

learners are assigned a specific individual task encourages an investigative

approach. In other words, learners explore the language through the tasks that are

set.

iv) Active engagement is encouraged.

Learners are required to make a specific, personal contribution to the task,

which requires much more than simply memorizing or working through an

exercise and increases the diversity of learning opportunities by making input

learnable and accessible (Pennington, 1996).

v) It promotes the development of interpretative skills.

The attention of learners is centered on a small section of text with a

controlled focus. Tasks tend to be very specific. In addition pre-digested guidance

notes are not used and they do not interfere or influence the process of

interpretation.

vi) It is learner centered.

Needless to say, computers in language learning offers learners a powerful

self-access facility. Computers help generate learner-centered , self-pacing

activities (Sinclair, 1986). With a concordance, attention is focused on the

interaction between the student and the text, rather than on the input from the

teacher. In this situation the learner takes on an investigative role and is able to

explore and discover rules and meanings within their own cognitive framework.

vii) It influences the learner’s performance in a specific context, such as ESP.





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• Using blank-filling-with-collocation tasks in teaching listening may further

develop learners’ micro and near-micro listening skills.

• Learners’ performance can be positively affected when learners are introduced

to collocations and word combinations in their specialization in the sense that

they have a wider range of vocabulary that is frequent in that field.

• Listening blank-filling-with-collocation tasks may also raise the learners’

awareness of the strategies and skills (Honeyfield, 1989) they need to deploy to

decode every single phonic input that will feed into recognizing clusters of

words, which may also further develop their listening competence.

• Consequently, such tasks stimulate the learners’ cognition and promote their

construction process/language awareness/ (Wolf, 1995).

• Materials can be designed representatively rather than intuitively (Lehmann,

1993 & Aston, 1995).

• Corpora-derived materials reveal the most frequent lexical items, significant

syntactic patterns common in a certain language component and important

functional/notional areas which are needed for the target situation and which

can be incorporated into the syllabus and teaching materials (Flowerdew,

1993a).

• Individual work to design corpora-based materials and activities is time-

consuming.

11- Recommendations:

• Collecting data from corpora may be time-consuming. Therefore, its usefulness

cannot be demonstrated on an individual basis where the teacher has to teach,

collect data, construct his/her own materials and then just go into class. It is

recommended this kind of work be carried out collaboratively, especially when





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Appendix 1

Phrases, expressions and frequently occurring collocations in authentic medical lectures

from health to terminal illness.

respiratory illnesses and mental disturbances.

patients with serious illnesses

a high-risk category

overt diseasesigns without symptoms

detectable abnormality

infection with micro-organisms

a clinical sign

infectious disease

infant mortality rate

standardized mortality rate

new cases of disease Incidence

total populationat risk

per unit time

total number of existing cases

Prevalence resistance and tolerance

Characteristic pattern

Potential harm

Free use

Curious fact

In this lecture

That is

Let me explain the difference

For instance

That’s what we’ll be considering todayDoest that sound complicated?

Let’s take the example of

It means

In today’s lecture

This is very important

In order to describe

That means

In fact

At this pointIn other words

Does that sound difficult to understand?

Let me give you an example

I mentioned

What does this mean?

You’ll be going on to consider

You’ve been considering aspects

Let’s start with

As you can see

Quite simply

Now turn to the

I’m sure

On average

Appendix 2

Diabetes Mellitus: Tape script 1

Good morning. We talked the other day about endocrine diseases and clinical endocrinology. Our

lecture today is going to be about diabetes mellitus.

Diabetes mellitus is the most common endocrine disease. As you know, it is characterized by

hyperglycemia due to absolute or relative deficiency of insulin. It is common with its both types,

insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, known as IDDM, and non-insulin dependent diabetes

mellitus, known as NIDDM. Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus is a chronic autoimmune disease

resulting from the destruction of the pancreatic beta cells. Although the responsible factors for

insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus are still not well defined, susceptibility to the disease is

determined by several genes, where HLA genes have the strongest effect. It has been found that

the onset of the disease is predictable, at least in diabetic family members and relatives. Very

high-risk people to develop insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus include identical twin, persons

with family history of diabetes, or HLA-DQ persons. In non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus,

however, genetics, autoimmunity and viruses do not contribute to the development of the disease.

The main risk factors are actually lifestyle, age, pregnancy, insulin secretion, insulin resistance



26

and other factors such as obesity, which markedly enhances the development of non-insulin

dependent diabetes mellitus.

Diabetes mellitus has a characteristic pattern of symptoms and signs. However, in some cases itcan be asymptomatic that it can be detected on routine physical examination. Most often,

symptoms are due to hyperglycemia, but the first event may be an acute metabolic

decompensation that very often results in diabetic coma. In gross terms, diagnosis is confirmed by

glycosuria with or without ketonuria and a random blood glucose concentration greater than 14

mmol/L.

Appendix 3

Diabetes Mellitus: Tape script 2Diabetes mellitus must be inspected because of its long-term complications that include diabetic

retinopathy, diabetic neuropathy, diabetic nephropathy, and diabetic foot. Today we will consider

the diabetic foot.

The foot is a frequent site for complication in diabetic patients. For this reason, foot care is

important and should be given a special attention in diabetic patients. The clinical features that are

observed are pulse, sensation, anhidrosis, cracks and fissures, painless ulceration, digitalgangrene, Charcot joints, clawed toes, and neuropathic edema.

Tissue necrosis in the feet is an adequate reason for hospital admission in diabetic patients. Such

admissions tend to be prolonged and sometimes end with amputation with various degrees. Foot

ulceration occurs as a result of trauma in the presence of neuropathy and/or a peripheral vascular

disease. This is usually accompanied by infection occurring as a secondary phenomenon

following ulceration of the protective epidermis.

Management of the diabetic foot starts by removing the dead tissue and treating infection. The

best management, however, is to prevent such a complication.

Now let’s consider the following slides.

Appendix 4

Sample occurrences of collocations in three large medicals corpora

Single Words/CollocationsOccurrences

in Corpus #1

Occurrences

in Corpus #2

Occurrences

in Corpus #3Total

Relative 6283 10385 4895 21563

Deficiency 3023 4809 4677 12509

Relative deficiency 5 9 15 29

Absolute 1181 2082 10334296

Absolute deficiency 2 0 3 5

Chronic 8806 15495 3879 28180

Autoimmune 1263 2403 569 4235



Disease 29228 48067 41897 119192

Chronic autoimmune disease 5 11 0 16

Responsible 4074 6816 2701 13591

Factors 29677 47396 1900096073

Responsible factors 84 139 130 353

Risk 14130 22745 17596 54471

Risk factors 7564 11739 2334 21637

Characteristic 2744 4634 2139 9517

Pattern 6074 10952 6415 23441

Characteristic pattern 42 87 50 179

Routine 2028 3440 3371 8839

Physical 4741 8777 2844 16362

Examination 6090 10119 8310 24519

Routine physical

Examination3 7 13 23

Metabolic 3169 5610 2932 11711

Decomposition 59 115 65 239

Metabolic Decomposition 0 10 4 14

Blood 30365 51816 35782 117963

Glucose 3560 6280 3593 13433

Concentration 11155 20955 12109 44219

Blood glucose concentration 34 57 53 144

Long-term 4889 8064 3442 16395

Complications 22176 36074 6416 64666

Long-term complications 46 84 35 165

Clinical 25365 43938 81778 151081

Features 4941 8714 4366 18021

Clinical features 732 1310 554 2596

Documents

Corpora Collocations and Concordances Conference Paper