Willis, Dave, The Lexical Syllabus

The Lexical SyIlabusA new approach to language teaching

Dave Willis

COLLINS E.L.TLondon and Glasgow

Contents

Introduction iii

Chapter 1 From methodological options to syllabus design l

Chapter 2 Words and structures 15

Chapter 3 The lexical research and the COBUILD project 27

Chapter 4 Syllabus content 39

Chapter 5 Communicative methodology and syllabus specification 57

Chapter 6 Syllabus organisation 74

Chapter 7 Word, structure, function and discourse 91

Chapter 8 A brief review 124

Bibliography 133

Index 134

Collins ELT8 Grafton StreetLONDON W1X 3LA

COBUILD is a trademark ofWilliam Collins sons & co Ltd

First published 1990

10987654321

All rights reserved. No part of this book may he reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmittedin any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, withoutthe prior permission in writing of the Publisher.(NOTE: The University of Birmingham has obtained permission from the publishers to make this book,now out of print, available to its students, on the University website. The copyright of the publishersshould be respected in the usual way.)

Introduction

There is general agreement nowadays that we learn a language best by using it to dothings, to achieve outcomes. Communicative activities involving games playing andproblem solving have become a more and more important part of the languageteacher's stock in trade over the last fifteen years or so. Some writers (see, forexample, Maley and Duff, 1978) display great ingenuity in devising such activitiesand there is a wealth of supplementary material which exploits these activities. Yet inspite of this virtually all coursebooks rely on a linguistic syllabus which 'presents' thelearner with a series of linguistic items. It seems that communication is good fun and well worthwhile for a bit of variety,but that the serious business of language learning needs to have a firm grammaticalbasis resting on the assumption that the grammar of the language can be broken downinto a series of patterns and reconstructed in a way accessible to the learner. Evencoursebooks based on a notional-functional syllabus specification, which take units ofmeaning as syllabus items, still rest on a methodology which 'presents' learners with aseries of patterns. The notionalfunctional syllabus is communicative in that it tried tospecify the syllabus in terms of meaning, in terms of what was to be communicated.But the methodology which realises the notional-functional syllabus is little differentfrom the methodology which realises the structural syllabus which it seeks to replace.Both depend on a three part cycle of presentation, practice and production. My dissatisfaction with this methodology has a theoretical basis but it is stronglyreinforced by experience in the classroom. The theoretical base draws on the work ofpeople like Prabhu (1987) and Rutherford (1987) both of whom point to the glaringinadequacy of pedagogical grammars. They argue that we cannot begin to offeranything like an adequate description of the language on which to base a pedagogicalgrammar. Given this, our only recourse is to depend on the innate ability of learners torecreate for themselves the grammar on the basis of the language to which they areexposed. The conclusion is similar to that drawn by interlanguage theorists like Corder(1967) and Selinker (1972) and classroom resear~hers like Ellis (1984). Teachers andresearchers have been aware for many years that 'input' does not equal 'intake', thatwhat teachers claim to be teaching bears only a tenuous relationship to what learnersare actually learning. But in spite of this, coursebook writers continue to act on theassumption that language can be broken down into a series of patterns which can thenbe presented to learners and assimilated by them in a predictable sequence. It does notseem to worry people a great deal that this assumption flies in the face of ourexperience as teachers. My experience in the classroom, like that of all teachers I suppose, has seen bothfailures and successes. On the one hand I found that students often failed to learn whatI thought I was teaching them. On the other hand most of them showed an ability totranscend the limited language which I had so carefully presented to them. It wasclear to me that my efforts to present the grammar of the language met with verylimited success, yet in spite of this mv students' English was improving. It isencouraging to know that so much learning is taking place in the classroom. It issobering to realise just how little control the

iv The Lexical Syllabus

teacher has over what is being learned. The obvious conclusion to be drawn from thisis that students learn a great deal directly from exposure to language through readingand listening, without the need for the teacher to impose a description on what islearnt. One of the most plaintive cries in any staffroom goes along the lines of "I'vetaught them that so many times, and they still get it wrong." There is overwhelmingevidence from my experience as a teacher that teachers have little control over what isactually learnt and reproduced in spontaneous language use. How many times, forexample, do we teach the distinction between the present simple and the presentcontinuous before students begin consistently to get it 'right'? It usually takes them along, long time. Could this be because it is not the controlled presentation which doesthe trick but rather constant exposure over a period of time? Could it be that studentslearn in the controlled environment of the language classroom not because language ispresented to them, but because they are constantly exposed to language? And if this isthe case should we not be looking to methodologies which maximise meaningfulexposure to and use of language? Taking meaningful exposure as a starting point it is possible to develop anapproach to language teaching which takes advantage of the learner's natural tendencyto make sense of language and to learn for himself. In order to take full advantage ofthis approach, however, two other things must be done. First a methodology must bedefined which encourages the learner's ability to learn. Teachers need to encouragelearners to look critically at language and to recognise the need to develop and refinetheir language code in order to achieve their communicative aims. Secondly we needto look carefully at the kind of language to which learners are exposed. Randomexposure is of little value. Exposure must be organised. What should be aimed at, is exposure that is organised in three ways. First thelanguage that learners are expected to understand and produce should be graded insome way so that learners do not face such difficulties and complexities at an earlystage that they become demotivated. Secondly the language they are to be exposed toshould be carefully selected so that they are given not random exposure, but exposureto the commonest patterns and meanings in the language - the patterns and meaningsthey are most likely to meet when they begin to use language outside the classroom.Thirdly there should be some way of itemising the language syllabus so that it shouldbe possible not simply to expose students to language, but also to highlight importantfeatures of their language experience, and to point to what language we mightreasonably expect them to have learned from their experience. The first of these problems is relatively easy to surmount. It is not too difficult todesign tasks which involve a meaningful use of language but which can still behandled by learners who have relatively little control of the language - the kind oflearner who is often referred to, somewhat unfortunately in my opinion,as a remedialor false beginner. Tasks which have a clear outcome and involve the exchange ofhighly specific information can be made accessible to false beginners. As I have said,such tasks have been used as supplementary material for many years. The second and third factors were, until recently, more problematic. When

Introduction v

my wife Jane and myself were asked by Collins ELT in 1983 to begin to research andwrite a series of coursebooks, the Collins COBUlLD English Course, we began to askourselves a number of related questions. How could we identify the commonestpatterns and meanings in English and how could we highlight these for students?Obviously many of them are covered in most elementary courses. The verb be and itsforms and most of its uses would obviously come high on any list as wouldprepositions of place. But other equally common forms such as the passive voice andmodal verbs are traditionally left until much later. Also, we discovered as we becamemore involved in the research that a number of important words and patterns are oftenomitted altogether. Words like problem, solution, idea, argument and thing arecommonly used with a noun clause introduced by that to structure discourse. It isdifficult to get very far in speech or writing without them. And what about items which seemed to take up far too much time in elementarycourses, items like the present continuous used to talk about what is happening hereand now? Apart from a traditional belief that certain patterns are 'difficult', thereseems to be little objective reasoning behind the selection and ordering of items. Wewere soon to find evidence that a syllabus based on these established values waslikely to be highly uneconomical. But how could we go beyond the traditional approach to itemising and organisinga syllabus? Given the range of language experience which is bound to come fromexposure to a series of tasks which are graded for difficulty but not otherwiselinguistically graded, how would one choose which elements of language tohighlight? How would one decide which items to specify as part of an efficientlearning programme? Perhaps the most convincing attempt in the field so far was theCouncil of Europe Threshold and Waystage Syllabus. But this was ultimately a verysubjective piece of work. It took as its basis the intuitions of scholars and teachers. Itdid not rest on an analysis of actual language use. In the mid-1980s a number of things began to come together. After years ofteaching English as a foreign language, a period of work as a teacher and teachertrainer in the second language environment of Singapore had forced me to look moreclosely at methodological issues, particularly the relationship between accuracy andfluency (Willis and Willis 1987). This helped to formalise a communicative approachto ELT and to identify some of its important components. The writing of the CollinsCOBUILD English Course provided us with the opportunity to put thesemethodological insights to work. The coursebooks were to be a part of the COBUILD research project in lexicaldevelopment, a major computing and publishing venture involving cooperationbetween Collins and the English Language Research Department at BirminghamUniversity. The first part of this project had involved the assembly on computer andsubsequent analysis of a 7.3 million word corpus (later extended to over 20 millionwords) of spoken and written English. It was proposed by John Sinclair, Professor ofModern English Language at Birmingham and Editor-in-chief of the COBUILDproject, that this computational analysis should provide the basis for a newcoursebook syllabus, a lexical syllabus. Sinclair advanced a number of arguments infavour of the lexical syllabus, but the underlying argument was to do with utility andwith the power of the most frequent words of English.

vi The Lexical Syllabus

The 700 most frequent words of English account for around 70% of all English text.That is to say around 70% of the English we speak and hear, read and write is madeup of the 700 commonest words in the language. The most frequent 1,500 wordsaccount for around 76% of text and the most frequent 2,500 for 80%. Given this, wedecided that word frequency would determine the contents of our course. Level Iwould aim to cover the most frequent 700 words together with their common patternsand uses. Level 2 would recycle these words and go on to cover the next 800 to bringus up to the 1,500 level, and Level 3 would recycle those 1,500 and add a further1,000. We would of course inevitably cover many other words in the texts to whichstudents were exposed, but we would highlight first the most frequent 700, then 1,500and finally 2,500 words in the language. In one way this took us back to the pioneering work in the analysis of lexis ofscholars like West and Thorndike in the 30s and 40s. But the computer would be ableto afford a much more thorough and efficient analysis than had been possible in thosedays. The database assembled at Birmingham would provide us with detailedinformation about the commonest words and patterns in English and the meanings anduse of those words and patterns. At first we had doubts about the practicality of thelexical syllabus. But the more we worked with the information supplied by theCOBUILD research team the more we became convinced that the syllabus whichemerged was highly practical, entirely realistic and vastly more efficient thananything we had worked with before. I have already pointed to words like problem, solution and idea which are omittedfrom most language courses, even though they play a vital function in structuring theway we speak and write. A particularly striking example is the word way, the thirdcommonest noun in English after time and people. The word way in its commonestmeaning has a complex grammar. It is associated with patterns like:

. . . different ways of cooking fish.A pushchair is a handy way to take a young child shopping.

What emerges very strongly once one looks at natural language, is the way thecommonest words in the language occur with the commonest patterns. In this case theword way occurs with of and the ring form of the verb and also with the to infinitive.It is also extremely common with a defining relative clause:

I don't like the way he talks.

The lexical syllabus does not identify simply the commonest words of the language.Inevitably it focuses on the commonest patterns too. Most important of all it focuseson these patterns in their most natural environment. Because of this, the lexicalsyllabus not only subsumes a structural syllabus, it also indicates how the 'structures'which make up that syllabus should be exemplified. It does this by emphasising theimportance of natural language. As we began work on the course design, therefore, a number of basic principleswere agreed:

- The methodology employed would be based entirely on activities involving real

Introduction vii

language use.

- Learners would be exposed almost entirely to authentic native speaker language. They would not betaught through the medium of'TEFLese'- a language designed to illustrate the workings of asimplified grammatical system and bearing a beguiling but ultimately quite false similarity to realEnglish.

- Spoken material recorded specially for use in the course would not be scripted and rehearsed. Itwould be spontaneous speech and would therefore contain many linguistic features normallyidealised out of language teaching material.

- We would not 'present' learners with language but would encourage them to analyse for themselvesthe language to which they were exposed and thus to learn from their own experience of language.We would not say to learners 'I, the teacher, will exemplify for you the important features of English,and you, the learner, will thereby build up a description of the language in the way that I havedetermined'. We would say instead 'You, the learner, already have valuable experience of thelanguage. We will help you to examine that experience and learn from it'.

In effect what we planned to do was create a learners' corpus and encouragelearners to examine that corpus and generalise from it. I have already referred to theCOBUILD corpus of 20 million words. By studying this corpus in great detail,lexicographers were able to make valid and useful generalisations about the meaningsand uses of the words in the language. For Level 1 of our course we intended to createa corpus which would contextualise the 700 most frequent words of English and theirmeanings and uses. We would then highlight those words with their meanings anduses to provide learners with valuable exposure and experience. We would thendevise exercises to encourage learners to analyse that experience of language and tolearn from it. Levels 2 and 3 would go on to do the same at the 1,500 and 2,500 wordfrequency levels. We set about designing tasks for use in the classroom. Some of these were basedon written and some on spoken texts. All of the spoken tasks designed to beperformed by learners were carried out by native speakers and recorded. This gave usa bank of texts, both spoken and written which we could use to provide learners withbalanced exposure to the language. The balance was determined by the originalCOBUILD research. We identified from that research the important features oflanguage we wished to illustrate and then constructed our corpus by selecting textswhich would indeed illustrate those features of language. This was a long andtime-consuming process. All the texts we used had to be closely analysed and manyof them were rejected on the grounds that they did not afford us economical coverage.What we finished with was a small corpus of language which presented the learnerwith a microcosm of the 20 million COBUILD corpus. In becoming familiar with thiscorpus, the learner would become familiar with the language as a whole since thecorpus contained all the important features of the words which make up 80% oflanguage use. The lexical syllabus, therefore, affords the learner a coherent learning opportunity.It does not dictate what will be learned and in what order. It offers the learnerexperience of a tiny but balanced corpus of natural language from which it is possibleto make generalisations about the language as a whole. It then provides the learnerwith the stimulus to examine that mini-corpus in order to make those productivegeneralisations.

viii The Lexical Syllabus

The process of syllabus design involves itemising language to identify what is to belearned. Communicative methodology involves exposure to natural language use toenable learners to apply their innate faculties to recreate language systems. There is anobvious contradiction between the two. An approach which itemises language seemsto imply that items can be learned discretely, and that the language can be built upfrom an accretion of these items. Communicative methodology is holistic in that itrelies on the ability of learners to abstract from the language to which they areexposed, in order to recreate a picture of the target language. The lexical syllabus attempts to reconcile these contradictions. It does itemiselanguage. It itemises language minutely, resting on a large body of reseach intonatural language. On the basis of this research it makes realistic and economicalstatements about what is to be learned. But the methodology associated with thelexical syllabus does not depend on itemisation. It allows learners to experiencelanguage items in natural contexts and to learn from their experience. It reliescrucially on the concept of the learners' corpus. It is the concept of the learners' corpuswhich reconciles the contradiction between syllabus specification and methodology.Once we had come to this realisation the concept of the learners' corpus was simple.The processes by which we came to this concept, and the procedures which realised itare far from simple. It is those processes and procedures which are described in thisbook.

The Lexical Syllabus; Dave WillisOriginally published by Collins ELT, 1990

CHAPTER 1: From methodological options to syllabusdesign

Syllabus and methodology

It is tempting to see syllabus design and methodology as discrete options. Thesyllabus specifies what is to be learned and the methodology tells us how it is to belearned. It seems that there need be no conflict between the two. We can specify asyllabus in whatever way seems sensible, and can then use whatever methodology wewant in order to transmit our syllabus content. Unfortunately, in recent years there hasbeen conflict between syllabus and methodology. The failure to recognise this conflicthas on occasions led to a good deal of confusion. There is general agreement nowadays that people learn a language best by actuallyusing the language to achieve real meanings and achieve real outcomes. This beliefhas brought into the classroom a wide range of activities designed to promotelanguage use - role play, games playing and problem solving activities for example.These activities are contrasted with activities which involve manipulating language inways which do not involve any exchange of meaning. Listening and repeating,transformation exercises and controlled pattern practice are activities which involvethe production of language but not the use of language. This emphasis on language use has obliged us to look carefully at the content oflanguage courses in terms of topics and activities. The best way to ensure that learnersreally use language is to put them in a situation which makes them want to uselanguage. We must catch their interest in some way, or present them with a challengethey feel motivated to meet. They will then be predisposed to use language in order tocommunicate their interest or to meet the challenge of a game or problem. There are, then, at least two kinds of language production as part of the learningprocess in the classroom. At times people produce language in order to communicate.At other times they produce language simply in order to practise correct forms, or todemonstrate that they can produce a correct form. This may seem to be astraightforward distinction, but at times it can cause confusion in the classroom. Here is an example from some actual classroom data (J R Willis 1981). Theteacher has worked very hard to set up a situation in which students are to practise anumber of verbs followed by the gerund form -ing. She tells one student:

Antonio, ask Socoop if he likes being a father.

Antonio says:

Socoop, do you like being a father?

2 The Lexical Syllabus

Socoop replies:

Yes, I erm . . . I am father of four children.

By standards operating outside the classroom this is a perfectly reasonable reply. It isalso, as it happens, an acceptable sentence of English. The teacher, however, is notsatisfied with this reply. She says:

Yes, all right, listen to the question though.

Socoop listens to the question and then tries a series of replies without real successuntil the teacher resolves the issue by answering for him:

Yes, I do. I like being a father.

The learners do not challenge the truth of the teacher's utterance, even though theteacher is a woman, because they know it is not a real statement intended tocommunicate something about the teacher's attitude to parenthood. It is simply theteacher correcting Socoop and giving him a model of the target pattern. Socoop'smistake, of course, was to behave as if the question he was asked was a real question,and as if he really was expected to explain to the class his feelings about fatherhood. McTear (1975) gives a similar example:

Teacher: Where are you from?Students: We're from Venezuela . . .Teacher: No. Say the sentence: Where are you from?Students: Where are you from?

Here again the students imagine that the teacher is asking a real question whereas infact the teacher is simply giving them a model to follow. The literature on classroomresearch is full of misunderstandings of this sort, where an utterance is taken ashaving some communicative value, when in fact it is simply intended as a sample oflanguage for the learners to copy or manipulate in some way, usually by repeatingword for word or by producing another sentence incorporating a similar pattern.Unfortunately, it is not only learners who are sometimes confused about the natureand purpose of language produced in the classroom. Most teachers nowadays would claim that their approach to teaching rests, as Ihave already said, on the belief that we best learn a language by using that languagerather than simply by producing samples of it for the teacher's inspection andcorrection. Broadly speaking such an approach is referred to as communicative, sinceit is based on the use of language to communicate. Even if a language programme isbased on a grammatical syllabus, it may be described as communicative on thegrounds that it rests on a communicative methodology. But what if there is, as I haveclaimed, a conflict between syllabus and methodology? I believe that such a conflict is revealed in attempts to harness a communicativemethodology to a grammatical or structural syllabus. The syllabus aims are expressedas a series of language patterns with their associated meanings. The aim of each unitis that by the end the learner should have mastered the prescribed pattern or patterns.One methodology which might realise such a

From Methodology to Syllabus 3

syllabus is based on a three stage cycle involving presentation, practice andproduction. The aim of this methodological cycle is to lead students towards controlof a particular pattern in English which is based on the structure of the clause or thesentence. The pattern is intended either as an illustration of some aspect of Englishgrammar, or as the realisation of some communicative function. At the presentation stage the teacher contextualises and models a target form - aclause or sentence pattern - and students are required to produce that form under closeteacher control. Care is taken to see that learners understand the pattern they are aboutto practise. Once the meaning is clear, the cycle moves on to the practice stage. Thereis a range of techniques which might be used at this stage. Students may be requiredto reply to a question taking care to use a sentence of the appropriate form; or theymay be asked to respond to some other stimulus whereby they transform or expand agiven utterance into one with the appropriate form. The presentation stage of the lesson is at first very tightly under the teacher'scontrol. A very common way of accomplishing this stage is for the teacher to ask aseries of questions which the students answer using the target pattern. If, for example,the target is the present continuous used with future reference, as in:

A: What are you doing tomorrow? B: Well, in the morning I'm playing tennis.

the teacher may ask a series of questions like:

What are you doing after tennis? What are you doing in the afternoon?

and so on. The content of the students' answers may be controlled, for example by theuse of a series of flashcards:

Teacher: What are you doing tomorrow?(Shows picture of people playing tennis.)Learner: I'm playing tennis.Teacher: Good. And what are you doing at the weekend.(Shows picture of a cinema queue.)Learner: I'm going to the cinema.

Gradually the control of content is relinquished as the lesson moves into thepractice stage. Learners may, for example, be expected to give true answers to theteacher's questions. But the teacher still hovers in the background to ensure that thelanguage produced is relevant to the aim of the lesson - the accurate production of thetarget form. The purpose of the activity is not simply to give learners the chance totalk about what they are planning to do at some time in the future. It is, quitespecifically, to give them opportunities to use the present continuous tense. In the presentation and practice stages, then, the focus of attention is very much onthe form of the language which is to be produced. It might be argued that there is afocus on meaning too. But meaning implies choice, and the purpose of presentationand practice is to restrict choice. In the lesson above, the


'right' answer to:

What are you doing tomorrow?is not:

I don't know. I might play tennis.

or: I'll probably play tennis if the weather's okay.

or:

I'm going to play tennis.

The 'right' answer is:

I'm playing tennis.

This is because the focus of the activity is not really on the content of the language,the meanings that are being exchanged. The real focus is on the form of the utterancesused to realise those meanings. Presumably, then, it is at the production stage that learners are involved in reallanguage use. The first two stages have an enabling role. They provide students withthe language they will need in the production stage. But what is it that is to beproduced? If, as the label implies, the purpose of this stage is to produce the targetform, then what we have is yet another form-focused activity. The intention may bethat the production of the target form is subordinate to some other activity, a role playor problem solving exercise for example. But if learners are predisposed to producespecific forms of the language, then it is difficult to escape the conclusion that theactivity is one which focuses on form and on formal accuracy. During the presentationand practice stages, learners have been encouraged to give the 'correct' response to thequestion - correct in that it incorporates the form under study. In the same way duringthe production stage learners will be strongly predisposed to produce the target form.In the example I have given they will be predisposed to make statements about thefuture not by using the modal will or might or by using going to, but by using thepresent continuous, irrespective of the meaning they wish to convey. In other wordslearners will have a mental set such that form takes priority over meaning. When itcomes to talking about the future in a classroom context, the focus of the productionstage is very much on form. Sometimes this predisposition on the part of the learners is reinforced by theteacher and the materials used. Learners may be encouraged to 'try to use phrases likethese'. They will then only be regarded as having performed successfully if they doindeed produce the forms which have just been presented and practised and if they failinitially to do this the teacher will intervene to ensure conformity. Socoop made themistake of assuming that he was being asked a real question, and he had to becorrected by the teacher. In the same way a learner who fails to produce the presentcontinuous after the kind of presentation and practice stages we have described maybe 'corrected' by the teacher. It is easy to drift into a situation in which the mainpurpose of the pro-


duction stage is not to exchange meanings but to produce the target form.In spite of this, there is sometimes a claim that this kind of methodology is in someway communicative. Littlewood (1981) outlines a sequence based very much onpresentation, practice and production in which he subsumes presentation and practiceunder 'pre-communicative activities', leading up to 'communicative activities'corresponding to the production stage:

Through pre-communicative activities, the teacher isolates specific elements ofknowledge or skill which compose communicative ability, and provides the learners withopportunities to practise them separately . . . In communicative activities, the learner has toactivate and integrate his pre-communicative knowledge and skills, in order to use them forthe communication of meanings. He is now engaged in practising the total skill ofcommunication. (Littlewood 1981)

Littlewood suggests that the normal sequencing will be for teachers to provide inputin the form of a form-focused pre-communicative activity, and to follow this with acommunicative activity 'during which the learners can use the new language theyhave acquired and the teacher can monitor their progress'. But if the purpose of theso-called communicative activities is for students to demonstrate control of the newlyintroduced language forms, how does the teacher 'monitor their progress'? Presumablyby listening to see if they do indeed incorporate the target form, and additionally tosee if they produce it accurately. It is difficult to see how such activities can be regarded as truly communicative ifthe learners' main object is not to achieve some outcome through the use of language,but to demonstrate to the teacher their control of a target form. True communicationinvolves the achievement of some outcome through the use of language, and demandsthat the language used should be determined by the attempt to achieve that outcome.In the kind of communication described by Littlewood, the so-called communicativeactivity is simply an opportunity to use a particular form and the language used isconditioned by this. There is, therefore, a tension, perhaps a basic contradiction, between agrammatical or structural syllabus and a communicative methodology. A grammaticalsyllabus demands a methodology which focuses on the correct production of targetforms. It is form-focused. A communicative methodology, if it involves realcommunication, demands that learners use whatever language best achieves thedesired outcome of the communicative activity. There is no real sense in which thepresentation and practice stages described above can be called communicative,because they restrict the freedom to use whatever forms best realise communicativeintent. Learners are not able to choose whatever forms best realise the meanings theywant to realise, but rather have to use the forms that have been identified andprescribed for them by their teacher. At the production stage teacher and learner have two options. The purpose of thestage may be for learners to produce the target form. If this is the case thencommunication has been subordinated to the primary goal, which is to rehearse theuse of a particular form. The other option is for them to see this last stage as free.Learners use whatever language they want in order to achieve the desiredcommunicative outcome or intention. But if they do this we can


hardly speak of a 'production' stage, because we can no longer say what it is that is tobe produced and we can no longer point to a link between the activity and thesyllabus. Sometimes a claim to a 'communicative' approach rests on syllabus specificationrather than methodology. Many language teaching programmes take anotional-functional or 'communicative' syllabus as their starting point. Such asyllabus, like the Council of Europe Threshold Syllabus, is seen as communicativebecause it consists of an inventory of units of communication rather than an inventoryof sentence patterns. It has units entitled 'Making Requests' and 'Cause and Effect', soit is concerned with what is to be communicated rather than with how it is to becommunicated. In this case one would expect to match the syllabus statement with acommunicative methodology. But the communicative syllabus based on specified notions and functions does notreally consist of such communicative units. Those units are the abstract categories onwhich the syllabus is based, but these categories are realised by a set of sentencepatterns. The real syllabus is an inventory of such patterns. Thus the unit on requestsmay cover the models would and could in patterns like:

Could you open the window please.

The methodology which is usually associated with such a syllabus is a presentationmethodology of the kind I have described above. It depends on learners producing thetarget pattern rather than encoding requests in whatever way seems to be mostappropriate. It is not 'communicative' because it does not involve learning throughuse. It seems, therefore, that syllabus and methodology are not discrete options. If wechoose a syllabus which specifies an inventory of language forms, it is difficult to seehow we can achieve this syllabus by means of a communicative methodology. And ifwe want to use a communicative methodology in which learners use language freely,it is difficult to see how we can then specify what language forms will be covered bythis methodology. One response to this conflict is to adopt an eclectic approach. For example thesyllabus may be defined linguistically as an inventory of language structures, andrealised through a presentation and practice methodology. This methodology maythen be supplemented by giving learners ample opportunity to use language freely toenable them to consolidate and extend what they have been taught. This is whatunderlies Brumfit's (1984) recommendation that a language learning programmeshould offer a balance of activities, some of which focus on accuracy and some onfluency. There is a focus on accuracy when learners are concerned with the form ofthe language they produce, and on fluency when they are concerned with exchangingmeanings and achieving outcomes. One could achieve this double focus by operating with a structural syllabusrealised through a presentation and practice methodology, and by having in parallel aseries of activities which encourage learners to use language. This would not be aproduction stage but a discrete series of activities, so that learners did not feelconstrained to 'produce' any particular form, but simply to communicate as best theycould with whatever language they could command.


However, an eclectic approach of this kind skirts around the problem of reconciling asyllabus specified in linguistic terms with a methodology based on language use.There is no serious attempt to ensure that there is a real relationship between thelanguage syllabus, realised by controlled activities, and the communicative activities.Presumably one would hope that there would be a good chance that in thecommunicative activities learners would use at least some of the language that hadbeen presented and practised, even if one did not judge success simply in terms ofwhat language was produced and how accurately. But this does not provide more thana tenuous link between syllabus and fluency activities. I have argued up to now that there are potential conflicts between the way wespecify a syllabus and the way we realise that syllabus. I have argued that there is abasic dichotomy in the language classroom between activities which focus on formand activities which focus on outcome and the exchange of meanings. I havesuggested that we need to be clear about the relationship between syllabusspecification and methodology. I have also suggested that the choices involved areconcerned crucially with the ,way language is used in classrooms - whether the focusis primarily on language form or on language as a means of communication.

Grammar in the classroom

Rutherford (1987) is highly critical of the view of language enshrined in apresentqtion methodology. He argues that this approach to language learning regardsthe process as one of 'accumulated entities'. According to this view learners graduallyamass a sequence of parts. At intervals their proficiency in the language is measuredby determining what parts and how many parts they have accumulated. Rutherfordargues that most commercially produced foreign language textbooks reflect this view,an indication that it is a view widely held in the language teaching profession. Theassociated methodology is based on:

. . . the discovery of a target language whose structure has been analysed into its putativeconstituent parts, the separate parts thus serving as units of pedagogical content, focus,practice and eventual mastery. (Rutherford 1987)

The danger with an approach of this kind is that it trivialises grammar, and trivialiseslanguage description in general. It does give recipes for the construction of someclauses and sentences, and for the production of samples of language. But thegrammar of a language is not a set of clauses and sentences. It is the systematicrelationship between meaning and form which underlies the production ofgrammatical clauses and sentences. It is useful to acquire samples of language only inso far as those samples lead us towards insights into the underlying system. Language behaviour is highly systematic. We produce language in accordancewith a complex system of rules. Most people, even though they are successfullanguage users, are quite unable to give anything but the most rudimentary statementsabout how that system works. They can make statements about whether or notsomething 'sounds all right', but find it very difficult to


explain these decisions. Most native speakers would have no doubts that thesentences: John is being silly.and: John is being careful.are grammatically acceptable. Equally most native speakers would have doubts aboutthe sentences:

John is being tall.and:

John is being handsome.

Silly and careful belong to a class of adjectives often referred to as dynamic. They areused to describe someone's behaviour rather than their inherent attributes. Dynamicadjectives, such as awkward, mischievous, kind and cruel, are regularly used withthe present continuous, whereas other adjectives which are stative are not. This is arule which all native speakers operate but very few would be able to explain. There is a difference then, between a user's grammar and a grammaticaldescription. A user's grammar is an internalised system, the operational systemunderlying our language behaviour. We normally operate the system unconsciouslyand are quite unable to explain it. A grammatical description is an attempt tocharacterise that behaviour, and to identify the categories and concepts on which itrests (categories like adjective, dynamic and stative). Prabhu (1987) argues, like Rutherford, that most approaches to language teachingare based on 'internalisation of the grammatical system through planned progression,pre-selection and form-focused activity'. In other words there is a description of thelanguage which is communicated to the learners bit by bit by revealing to themsamples of the language in a predetermined order. Prabhu claims that such anapproach is based on a number of quite false assumptions. The most basic of these assumptions is that we have a description of grammarwhich is adequate to this task. The user's grammar is and always will be, morecomplex than any descriptive grammar. Indeed attempts to describe the grammarsimply showed:

. . . that the internal grammatical system operated subconsciously by fluent speakers was vastly more complex than was reflected by or could be incorporated intoany grammatical syllabus- so complex and inaccessible to consciousness in fact,that no grammar yet constructed by linguists was able to account for it fully.

However much we may wish to, we simply cannot give the learner a description ofthe language which works. It must follow that if our pedagogic description of thelanguage is inadequate, then in order to learn the language the learner must operatelearning strategies which do not depend on a grammatical description of the language.There must be important and subtle insights into the structure of language whichlearners are able to make quite unaided. A look at most coursebooks will confirm that the number of patterns actuallybrought directly to the attention of learners does not go very far towards a com-


prehensive grammar of English. Fortunately learners are able to transcend or, perhapsmore accurately, to by-pass the grammar that is presented to them and to go beyond it.They begin, for example, to use the present perfect tense with reference to future timein sentences like: Please let me know as soon as you havefixed your travel plans. I'll come round later if I've finished what I have to do.even though this particular use is hardly ever presented in coursebooks. They learn, aswe shall see later, that the word any and its compounds are used in affirmativesentences like: Anything you can do I can do better. Come round any time.even though they may have been taught quite explicitly that any is used only innegative and interrogative sentences. We should ask very seriously how it is thatlearners are able to go beyond what they are taught in this way. An obvious possibilityis that they learn a good deal for themselves from the language that they read andhear. They do not need to be taught, because they have an innate ability to generalisefrom the language they read and hear in order to build up and refine a workablegrammatical system. It is also difficult to see how the learner can move from an inventory of discretepatterns towards important generalisations about the grammar of the language. Wehave already pointed out that there is much more to language than a series ofstructures which can be presented to a learner. We can present, for example, thepattern which is commonly, though misleadingly, called the first conditional: If it rains we will get wet.This pattern is regarded as difficult, and therefore worth presenting to students,because the use of the present simple tense with reference to future time causesparticular problems. But this is a feature of the so-called present tense, not simply ofthe first conditional. The present tense is commonly used with future reference intemporal clauses: It'll be quite late when we arrive.and after verbs like hope: I hope somebody is there to meet you when you arrive.The same use is common in other subordinate clauses: There will be a prize for the one who finishes first.The present tense is an option when the future is already fixed or arranged. I recentlyhad a conversation trying to arrange a meeting involving a number of people. One ofthe participants turned down a proposed date saying: I'm sorry, I'm in Bhutan.This was obviously not a reference to present time since we were in a Britishuniversity at the time. It was a reference to future time and was acknowledged


by another participant:

Oh, yes. When do you go?

Drilling or repeating the first conditional pattern may show a learner that this is anacceptable pattern of English, and the pattern may eventually be incorporated in thelearner's language. But it tells the learner nothing of great value about the grammar ofthe present tense. Indeed, by implying that there is something unusual about this useof the tense and that this unusual feature is associated with the conditional, it isactually getting in the way of learners developing a more complete description of thepresent tense and realising that 'the present simple tense is neither present nor simple'(Lewis 1989). There is also an assumption on the part of those who present language to thelearner that the learner is actually in a position to receive what is presented, that wecan specify what will be learned and in what order. This again flies in the face of ourexperience as teachers. We know very well that it will be a long long time beforelearners distinguish consistently between, for example, the present perfect and pastsimple forms of the verb. We may 'present' some version of this distinction but it willnot immediately become part of the learner's language behaviour. A learner mayignore the distinction altogether or may operate it only in a few instances. It will be along time before the learner has any control of this part of the verb system of English.We cannot realistically hope to present the learner with usable information in thisway. All we can realistically do is attempt to make the learner aware that theseconcepts and these distinctions are a part of the grammar of English. Whether and atwhat point the learner will be able to act on that information is beyond our control. If we are to help learners to acquire the grammar of the language in the sense ofan operating system, we must begin by acknowledging that we can only do thisindirectly. We may be able to offer useful hints, but we cannot begin to offer a fulldescription of the language. We may be able to devise activities which will helplearners internalise the grammar of the language for themselves, but we cannotpresent them with usable chunks of language. A methodology should take account ofthe fact that any pedagogic grammar will be inadequate, that what is presented willnot necessarily be received and, most important of all, that the crucial participant inthe attempt to internalise a grammar is not the teacher or the materials but the learner.

Use and usage

Even if we were able to teach the grammatical system effectively, there is noguarantee that this would be translated into an ability to use the target language.Widdowson (1978) argues that a methodology which focuses simply on languageform is deficient in that it is concerned simply with enabling students to producecorrect sentences. He feels that the ability to use language involves more than just theability to produce grammatical sentences.

Someone knowing a language knows more than how to understand, speak, readand write sentences. He also knows how sentences are used to communicativeeffect. (Widdowson 1978)


At first sight this may seem to be a highly artificial distinction. How can someoneknow how to 'understand, speak, read and write sentences' without being able to usethese sentences to communicative effect? It seems to me that there are two ways in which this can happen. The first isprobably familiar to very many of us who have learned a foreign language. We canwork out the meaning of a spoken sentence and perhaps reply to that sentence, butonly if we are given time to process the language involved. Given time we can do alot with the language, but under the kind of time pressure which usually accompanieslanguage use we just cannot get things together. There is a sense in which we knowthe language in that we know what the forms mean and we know what forms we wantto produce. But there is another sense in which we do not know the language. Wecannot get things together with sufficient speed and confidence to use the languagewhen we are required to do so. We have a knowledge of the forms, but we do nothave the kind of fluent control demanded in real communication. There is a second sense in which we may be said to 'know' the language and at thesame time not to know it. We can produce and understand acceptable sentences in thetarget language, but we are not sure in what circumstances these sentences would beappropriate as tokens of communication, and we are not sure how we would deploythem in communicative discourse. This is what Widdowson has in mind. Take, for example, an English speaker who has a good knowledge of Frenchgrammar and lexis and who then tries to put this knowledge to use in writing abusiness letter in French. The letter would be unlikely to create a favourableimpression in a French reader. The conventions of letter writing in French are quitedifferent from those in English, and if the words and phrases are translated directlyinto English they sound elaborate and ornate to an English ear. Similarly, the directequivalent of an English letter might sound abrupt and dismissive to a French speaker.We all have to learn the conventions of certain types of communication in our ownlanguage, even though we have a sophisticated knowledge of the grammar and lexis.We have to do the same in a foreign language. We must also learn how to deploy sentences in discourse. There is a phrase inEnglish which seems to have become very common in recent years. The phrase is'Having said that...', and it is used to introduce some modification or something whichpartly contradicts what has just been said. There is nothing in the meaning of thephrase 'Having said that. ..' which can be gleaned from its Iexis and grammar to giveus any indication of its use. We have to know what value it has in discourse, how it isused to structure what follows. Widdowson develops a distinction between language as a lexico-grammaticalsystem, which he refers to as language usage, and language as used forcommunication, which he refers to as language use. One of his conclusions is that weneed to take much more account in our teaching strategies of language use. But theproblem here is that we know very little about language use. We do not, he argues,have any adequate description of language use. We do not know enough about theconventions of communication and about the way phrases, clauses and sentencescome to have a value quite separate from that of their component parts.


It must be stressed that the study of language in use is still in its early stages: we know verylittle at present about such matters as the way discourse develops and the way differentrhetorical activities are to be characterised. There is no source of reference for the teaching ofuse as there is for the teaching of usage. In these circumstances it is prudent not to be toopositive in one's recommendation.(Widdowson 1978)

This is true in the sense that we do not have an accepted model for the analysis anddescription of discourse or for the classification and characterisation of rhetoricalactivities. But we can still look at language in use and encourage learners to makegeneralisations about it. One thing, however, is sure. If we are to study language inuse, then what we must study is language in use. This is a tautology, but it is onewhich is often brushed aside:

. . . there has been for many years in English teaching a loss of respect for the natural patternsof a language. Because of the difficulty of analysing language that occurs in everydaycontexts, teachers have got in the way of accepting all sorts of invented or adapted texts.These are grimly defended by some, but there is no virtue in them; they were only made upbecause it was not practicable to harness real language. (Sinclair 1988)

Approaches which focus primarily on the form of a simplified and idealised'language' are indeed unlikely to take us anywhere near the study of language in use.If we are to study language in use then we must study real language designed to servesome communicative purpose, rather than language simply designed to illustrateaspects of usage. But a methodology based on presentation and practice is notequipped to handle problems of use. As we have seen, the language involved is notbeing used. Socoop's teacher, for example, when she says:

Yes, I do. I like being a father.

is not seen as expressing how she feels about fatherhood. Presentation and practice areconcerned purely and simply with usage. The production stage following presentation and practice is also concernedprimarily with usage. When learners produce the present continuous with futurereference, their decision to use this form is not based on criteria of use. They do notchoose this form because it is the form which best expresses the meaning they want toexpress. They produce the form to demonstrate their familiarity with the aspect ofusage which is the focus of that particular lesson. Once learning targets have beenspecified in terms of form learners are predisposed to usage rather than use.

Use and usage in the classroom context

To a large extent the presentation methodology I have described above has replacedthe old grammar-translation approach. Grammar-translation was characterised by agood deal of explanatory talk in the learner's first language,


with relatively little production of the target language on the part of either teacher orlearners. One of the features of presentation, practice and production is that there is agreat deal of the target language produced in the classroom, and perhaps this is thereason for its relative success. If you observe very carefully a lesson based on presentation, or, even better, if youlook at transcripts of such lessons, you will probably notice two rather surprisingthings. You will probably see that there is a lot of language produced in addition tothe language that presents and practises the target form. One reason is that teachersuse a lot of language to organise the lesson. They are constantly giving instructionsand explanations to give structure to the lesson and make sure that learners know whatis expected of them. Another reason is that a language lesson is a social event. Thereis more to it than simply learning a language. Teachers and learners greet each other,tell stories, make jokes, get to know one another and do all the other things thatcontribute to an easy social atmosphere. Another thing you will notice about the language in a classroom, particularly in anelementary classroom, is that teachers produce a lot of language which is beyond thelevel the learners are supposed to have reached. They do not, indeed they cannot,restrict themselves to the very limited language which has already been presented. Ateacher might well begin a lesson, even at the elementary stage, by saying:

Okay, Unit 6. Could you turn to Unit 6? Right, Andreas, what about the first picture? What's in the first picture?

This would be quite unremarkable teacher behaviour even if learners have not yet'done' the modal could or the phrase 'What about . . . ?' By the same token, learners manage to get across meanings which are beyondtheir target language resources. In the lesson featuring Socoop (see page 1) one ofSocoop's classmates wanted to make the point that women often do jobs which aretraditionally regarded as a man's prerogative:

Victoria: (A woman) . . . He works, he . . . she works . . .

Teacher: Yes. Victoria: in sever(?) for her husband. Teacher: Mm? Victoria: He works teacher or, er engineering or many jobs, er, the sever in a man. Teacher: The same. Victoria: The same Teacher: As a man. (J R Willis 1981 )

One of the important things about the way a presentation methodology is realised by asensitive teacher is that it is language rich. Learners are involved in a lot of languageuse. But, paradoxically, this is not a deliberate part of the methodology. It is verymuch a by-product of the methodology. But it would help to explain how learnerslearn a lot of language which has not been presented to them. It would also help toexplain how in some cases, as in the case of any cited above (page 9), they may learnsomething very different from what has been presented to them.


It is also important to remember that presentation and practice are only part of whathappens in a language teaching programme. The eclectic approach referred to earlier(page 6) brings into the classroom activities involving listening and reading skillswhich give much more, and much more varied, exposure to language than does a wellorganised and controlled presentation-based lesson. It is also the case that suchactivities are much less likely to have an overt language focus in the sense of beingtargeted at a particular language form. In recent years such lessons have often beenreferred to as 'skills-based' lessons. Perhaps this is an acknowledgement of the factthat language use is a skill rather than a body of knowledge, and that the best way ofacquiring a skill is by practising that skill. This is, in fact, another way of asserting thebasic principle behind communicative methodology, that the best way to learn alanguage is by using it to communicate. It is certainly true that language use in its various manifestations involves theapplication of skills. But those skills operate on language. If, for example, learners arebeing encouraged to predict the development of a text, they can, in the final event, dothis only on the basis of their knowledge and experience of what words and phrases intexts are predictive and how they are predictive. To take an example quoted earlier,when they hear a speaker produce the phrase 'Having said that . . . ', they are alerted tothe fact that what follows is likely to introduce some contradiction or modification ofwhat has been established so far. It is likely, therefore, that the effectiveness of a skills-based approach to learningwould be considerably enhanced if we could identify the linguistic knowledge onwhich particular skills operate. This takes us back to the need for a linguistic syllabus,and back to the contradiction that a linguistic syllabus is likely to lead to a focus onform rather than use, whereas the strength of skills-based activities is that they arebased firmly in use. I am arguing that the presentation of language forms does not provide sufficientinput for learning a language. The grammatical system is much more complicatedthan we can possibly reflect in a methodology which claims to rely on thepresentation of a very limited set of discrete patterns. In spite of this, a presentationmethodology seems to work tolerably well. I am suggesting that this is partly becauseit is language rich. In spite of the fact that the methodology is based on presentation ofsamples of usage, the methodology succeeds because it provides a context in whichthere is a great deal of language use. This brings us back to the uneasy relationship between syllabus specification andmethodology. The syllabus specification must, directly or indirectly, consist of aninventory of language forms. I have suggested, however, that a successfulmethodology must rest on language use. The problem for a materials writer is toproduce a specification of those language items which a learner is likely to need andthen to match this with a methodology which involves a predominance of languageuse. We must look for a methodology which aims quite deliberately at language userather than a methodology which offers language use as a by-product. We should tryto devise a methodology which is based on using language in the classroom toexchange meanings and which also offers a focus on language form, rather than amethodology which focuses on language form and which only incidentally focuses onuse.

The Lexical Syllabus; Dave Willis 15

Originally published by Collins ELT, 1990

CHAPTER 2: Words and structures

The Collins COBUILD English Course

In 1983 my wife, Jane, and myself were commissioned by Collins to write a newEnglish course to be called the Collins COBUILD English Course. Once a design hadbeen agreed we were to have overall responsibility for writing the course, but we werenot to be entirely free agents in drawing up the syllabus which would form the basisof the course. A decision had already been taken that the syllabus would be lexicallybased. Instead of specifying an inventory of grammatical structures or a set offunctions, each stage of the course would be built round a lexical syllabus. This wouldspecify words, their meanings, and the common phrases in which they were used. Initially, the notion of a lexical syllabus gave us two grounds for concern. Weboth had firm ideas on the kind of methodology we would like to incorporate in anEFL course. It would be a task-based methodology firmly based in language use. Wewere, however, for the reasons outlined in Chapter 1, far from sure that our ideas onmethodology would be compatible with a linguistically specified syllabus. Secondly we had at that stage no real idea what a lexical syllabus would look like.We were familiar with the idea of a syllabus built round grammatical patterns andnotions, and we were equally familiar with the idea of a functionally based syllabus.We could not understand at first how a list of words with their meanings and commonphrases would be significantly different. It was only when we began to look at thegrammar of English very much from a lexical viewpoint that we began to see realpossibilities. We felt that a lexical approach might answer at least some of the doubtswe had so far entertained about structure-based pedagogical grammars, and about thesyllabus as an inventory of structures.

Priority and difficulty

Very often one of the striking features of ELT materials is the lack of balance in thetreatment of grammar. I have already suggested that the number of patterns presentedin most coursebooks gives a very restricted picture of the grammar of English. Mostcourses spend a great deal of time on the verb phrase and on a limited set of clauseand sentence structures. Relatively little time is spent on some areas of English whichformal grammars find extremely difficult to handle, such as transitivity and thestructure of the noun phrase. If we are to judge priorities by the amount of time afforded different features ofEnglish, then tense, aspect and voice are seen by most coursebook writers as being ofoverwhelming importance. In addition to this, a number of sentence patterns featureheavily and take up a good deal of the learner's time. Among these are the threeconditionals. Another item which takes up a lot of time is


reported speech, particularly tense in reported speech. The consensus seems to be thatthese items are of central importance, and that they cause learners particulardifficulties, and therefore justify the expenditure of a good deal of time in theclassroom and a good deal of space in coursebooks. There are further indications thatthe passive voice, the conditionals and reported speech are seen as difficult. They alltend to come relative! late in the teaching sequence. They are not usually 'presented'until well into an intermediate course.But why should these patterns be regarded as difficult?

The passiveThe uses of the past participle are illustrated in these five examples:

1 I would be interested to hear an account of your experience. 2 Thank you very much for your detailed letter. 3 I think they must have got mixed up. 4 A van equipped with a loudspeaker . . . toured the reservoir. 5 He was rescued by one of his companions.

Four of the patterns in which it occurs are closely paralleled by patterns withadjectives: 6 I would be happy to hear an account of your experience. 7 Thank you very much for your newsy letter. 8 He must have got very angry. 9 One man, happy with the results of his efforts, was able to take home a large sum ofmoney.

Sentences 1 and 6 are examples of an adjective as complement after the verb be.Sentences 2 and 7 show an adjective qualifying a noun. Sentences 3 and 8 have anadjective after get. Several other verbs like look, grow and become display this samepattern. Sentences 4 and 9 show an adjective followed by a prepositional phrase.There seems, therefore, to be a good case for treating the past participle as anadjective. If we do this, it need no longer be seen as presenting any special difficulty.Some teachers, however, may baulk at regarding 5 as an adjective. In 1 the pastparticiple interested is descriptive and tells us how the recipient of the letter felt. In 5,however, rescued tells us what happened to someone. Semantically the past participleinterested is stative and the past participle rescued in 5 is dynamic. This is certainly true. There is a large class of past participles which are stative inmeaning- delighted, tired, worried, broken etc. - and which are therefore betterregarded as adjectives. But the distinction is not as clear cut as that. In a sentence like:

10 The windows were broken.

the past participle broken could be regarded as stative:

1 l The house was a mess. The paintwork was peeling and the windows werebroken.

or dynamic:

12 The windows were broken by the force of the explosion.

Words and Structures 17

Similarly frightened:

13 He was frightened of snakes.

.: is descriptive or stative. But:

14 He was frightened by a snake.

is dynamic. But it is not only past participles that can be either stative or dynamic, with somehaving the potential to be either. As we have already seen, the same is true ofadjectives:

Stative and dynamic adjectives differ in a number of ways. For example, a stativeadjective such as tall cannot be used with the progressive aspect or with the imperative: *He'sbeing tall, *Be tall. On the other hand we can use careful as adynamic adjective: He's being careful, Be careful. (Quirk et al. 1972)

A Grammar of Contemporary English goes on to list well over fifty adjectives someof them such as kind and nice extremely common - which can be used dynamically. It seems, therefore~that the only real distinguishing feature of the passive is theuse of by with a noun phrase to mark an agent. Rather than pick out the passive forspecial treatment, an economical teaching strategy will allow the past participle to betreated adjectivally. One of the consequences of this is that the collocation of be with-ed forms is noted but not given undue prominence:

5 + -ed / -en

Your father's called John? and your mother's called Pat? (19)It was built in 1890. (55)It was built for William Randolph Hearst. (55)This street is called Montague Street Precinct. (67). . .teenage girls who are interested in fashion. . . (95)

Are you tired?Wally is awakened by the phone ringing. (91)

. . .so that I can make sure that you are properly looked after. (193)Listen for the words that are stressed. (103)

Once this is put together with:

by (111)1 who / what did itWally is awakened by the phone ringing. (91 )

Handicrafts made by people in the Third World. (104)Is that a magazine published by Macmillan? (146)

the learner has all that is needed to produce the passive. But the greatest prob

18 Thc Lexical Syllabus

lem with the passive is not form but use. Again, the teaching strategy proposed hereseems more likely to be effective than a transformational approach which relates thepassive closely to the active. If the participle is treated adjectivally it will quitenaturally be used when the focus of attention is on the subject of the passive verb. Thedifficulty is not with the sentence structure. This is no different from sentencestructure with adjectives. The difficulty lies in understanding that the past participle ispassive in meaning.

The second conditional

The COBUILD main corpus which was analysed to produce the Collins COBUILDEnglish Language Dictionary contains just under 15,000 occurrences of the wordwould. It is the forty-fourth most frequent word in the COBUILD corpus, morefrequent than will, for example, which has 8,800 occurrences. In around half of its15,000 occurrences would is described as 'used to talk of events which are of ahypothetical nature at the time of being mentioned, either because they are in thefuture or because they depend on other events which may or may not occur'.Examples include:

The people of South Vietnam would receive their conquerors with relief / I think The Tempestwould make a wonderful film / I suspect that the West Germans would still be a little bitcautious.

In these examples a condition has been established earlier in the text, or is implied inthe word would. This use accounts for around 7,500 of the occurrences in theCOBUILD corpus. A sub-category of this, accounting for a further 1,200 occurrences,is would used in explicitly conditional sentences:

It would surprise me very much if sterling strengthened. / If he wasn't such a reactionary I'd feel sorry for him.

In fact although many ELT grammars and coursebooks talk about the threeconditionals:

1 If it rains we'll get wet. 2 If it rained we would get wet. 3 If it had rained we would have got wet.

everyone is well aware that there are actually a very large number of possibleconditional patterns:

4 You can always explore the neighbourhood if you have half an hour to spare. 5. Even if I had the time I feel too tired. 6 If it got out it might kill someone. 7 If it's all right by you we could start now.

Why then does ELT practice isolate three patterns for special treatment?

All of the models, not only will and would, are common in conditional sentences.Most of these models are taught lexically. Students learn that might and could, forexample, are used for possibility. It is not thought necessary to teach a fourth and fifthconditional like 6 and 7 above. Provided learners know what if means and they knowwhat might and could mean, it is assumed that they are capable of creating forthemselves sentences like 6 and 7. In exactly the same


way, if would is taught lexically with its main meaning of hypothesis, learners will bewell able to generate for themselves sentences like 2. The strategy of highlighting word meanings is a much more productive one thanthe strategy of teaching structural patterns. If the second conditional is taught as ameans of introducing learners to the most important meaning of would this seems tome to be an economical teaching strategy. Learners may then be led to thegeneralisation that would also occurs in all kinds of environments without if. But thisis not what generally happens. The second conditional is taught as though it had somelife of its own, as if there was something unique about this combination of the pasttense and the modal would. But both these elements carry the meaning of hypothesisquite independently of the second conditional. In fact would in conditionals is nomore difficult than might or could in conditionals. It is simply more common. Thisagain stems from its meaning, since conditional sentences are very much concernedwith hypotheses. The Collins COBUILD English Course (CCEC) Level 2 includes a sectionentitled 'Your favourite cheap meal'. This Language Study exercise simply draws learners' attention to the use of thepast tense and of would to express a hypothesis. It also makes the point that would ispreferred to will for an unreal hypothesis. Knowing the second conditional is not amatter of being able to recite a particular pattern of words: it is a matter of knowingthe meaning of would and the meaning of this use of the past simple tense.

89 Your favourite cheap meal

a Jenny asked the others whae they would cookfor eheir favourite cheap meai for four people.David chose baked poraroes with a fiiiing ofcheese and Jenny said she would do scrambledeggs on oast. Danny said he wouidn t cookany~hing himself. He would go out for some pieand mashed potatoes. Jenny then asked them howmuch i'wouid cost to cook these things at homeand how much it would cost if they went out to acafe or restaurant.

89a Make notes about how much each meziwould cost. Compare your notes with a friend.

• Tell the class.

• 89b b Listen and see if you were right.

c What would members of your group cook andhow much would their mesis cost?

• Tell the class. Whose dish would be the bestvalue for money? Take a vote.

90 Language study

Woulda Look at the verbs in colour. What tense are theyin? Do they refer to past time?

JV: Are we ready? Yes. Erm now what would each of you cookif someone dropped in unexpectedly and stayed for a meal inthe evening?

JV: What would you cook David? DF: Whatever vegetableshappened to be there.

JV: Supposing they arrived after the restaurants had shut.JV: But er and if you’d made it at home. . .

Why are they in the past tense?

b Look at these sentences. What does would mean? Whyis it would not will?

We asked Jenny Bridget David and Danny what they would cook for an unexpected guest.JV: What would you do Danny? DL: Would I have to cook them something. because I d prefer to take them ouUor a meal.JV It says here What would each ot you cook? . DL: Emm... JV: So. to summarise. Bndget would cook sausage and beans

Danny would cook an omelette David would cooksomething exotic that he'd rustled up trom bits in the fridgeand I would cook a cheese flan.


Reported statements

It is a fact of the English language that the tense we select is liable to change if wetake a different standpoint in time. If George says'l'm tired' end I report this as 'Georgesaid he was tired' I can choose the past tense because George's being tired occurred inthe past, rather than because the verb said is past tense. Even if George is still tired, Imay nevertheless choose to say 'George said he was tired.' But if George is still tiredand I want to make this clear I can choose to report what he said by saying 'Georgesaid he's tired' or even 'George says he's tired.' So the choice between past and presentdoes not simply indicate when something happened. It may also indicate whether ornot I think the happening is still relevant. The fact that we sometimes have a choice between past and present tenses is notsimply a feature of reported speech. I might talk about something which happened inthe past by saying 'We stayed in the Grand Hotel. It was an awful place.' If the hotelstill exists and is still awful I can nevertheless choose to use the past tense if I do notthink my statement has any relevance to the present. On the other hand I can chooseto give my assessment some present relevance by selecting the present tense: 'Westayed in the Grand Hotel. It's an awful place. You certainly shouldn't stay there.' While preparing the CCEC materials we asked someone to rewrite a story as aradio script. The story included this passage:

'What part of London are you headed for?' I asked him. 'I'm going right through London and out the other side,' he said. 'I'm going to Epsom, for the races. It's Derby Day today.' 'So it is,' l said. 'I wish I were going with you. I love betting on horses.' 'I never bet on horses,' he said. 'I don't even watch them run. That's a stupid silly business.' 'Then why do you go?' I asked. He didn't seem to like that question. His little ratty face went absolutely blank and he sat there staring straight ahead at the road saying nothing. 'I expect you help to work the betting machines or something like that,' I said. 'That's even sillier,' he answered . . . (Roald Dahl, The Hitch-hiker)

This summary was produced:

The other day I picked up a hitch-hiker who was heading for London and then going on to Epsomfor the Derby. I got very curious about him because it transpired that although he was going to theDerby he didn't like horses or racing, he didn't bet on races and he didn't seem to have any kind ofjob at the race track.

The interesting thing about this is that although the second version reports what wassaid there are no verbs of saying. There is no past tense verb like said to trigger atense change. The report is in the past tense because the reported events happened inthe past. There is nothing difficult about tense in reported speech in English. The logic itfollows is the same as for the rest of the language. In spite of this, many coursebooksinsist on regarding reported statement as a structure of some kind which has a systemof rules to itself. Instead of looking for broad generalisations about the language, thereis an attempt to cordon off sections and treat


them as if they were in some way unique. Reported speech, particularly the use oftense, is treated in this way and is seen as creating great difficulties for learners, evenat quite an advanced level. One practice book for the Cambridge First Certificate, for example, solemnly liststhe 'rules' for reported speech. It explains that changes have to be made to certainitems with the result that this becomes the .. . or that, today becomes that day and Ibecomes he or she. To complicate the issue further, it is explained that if the reportingverb is in the past tense then all the senses 'go one step backwards in time'. Thesebackwards steps are then listed. Present simple becomes past simple, present perfectand past simple become past perfect and so on. This is all totally unnecessary. These differences in person and in phrases of timeand place occur because we are taking a different standpoint from the original writeror speaker. It would be stupid to refer to something as happening today if I am wellaware that it happened several days ago. Similarly it would be silly if someone askedme the question:

Do you think I'll be late?

to reply by saying:

Yes I probably will.

We are constantly changing reference to person, time and place to accommodate thestandpoint of a different speaker at a different time. This is a feature of language as awhole, not simply a feature of reported speech. It is a confusing and uneconomicalteaching strategy to single out reported statements and treat them as if they wereunique in some way. In fact it is difficult to sustain the argument that reported statement is a usefulgrammatical category at all. An analysis of noun clauses introduced by that in thetexts for CCEC Level 3 produced examples like these:

1 Cecil Sharp felt that the old songs of England might disappear for ever. 2 If it's a job interview try to show that you're interested in the job. 3 The government brought in a rule that children under thirteen werentt allowed to work. 4 The unsuccessful artist decided that his prayer had been answered. 5 The monkey said that there was no such thing as food, only fruit. 6 A long time ago there was this theory that women always passed first time.

Altogether in the texts which make up CCEC Level 3 there were 212 occurrences ofthat used to introduce a noun clause. Of these 212 occurrences:

87 are introduced by verbs of thinking: think, feel, assume, decide, realise, understand, conclude,believe, know, wish, recall, remember.

40 by verbs of saying: say, tell, demand, report, explain, suggest, point out, assure, argue.38 by nouns: rule, fact, idea, theory, problem, situation, thing, information, implication, promise,

belief, impression, assurance, grounds, speculation, claim, announcement, signs, concern,conclusion, feeling, case, background.


13 by adjectives: glad, clear, sure, likely, incredulous, satisfied, convinced.34 by miscellaneous other words: show, see, it, except, mean, imply, turn out, hear, notice, pretend, reveal.

This tells us a number of things. First of all, comparatively few of the 212 occurrencescould accurately be described as reported speech. Reported thought is much morecommon than reported speech. But reported thought does not figure in pedagogicgrammars with anything like the same inevitability as does reported speech. Secondly,a large number of the occurrences, such as 2, 3 and 6 above, could not be described asreports at all. Thirdly, noun clauses are by no means always dependent on a verb. What, then, does the learner need to know about noun clauses of this kind? As Ihave pointed out, many pedagogic grammars imply that the difficulty lies particularlywith tense, and with the changes in time and place reference. But I have argued thatthere is nothing unique about tense or about time and place in these noun clauses. Iwould suggest that, as with the passive the most important thing about noun clauses isnot how they are formed but how they are used. They are used, for example, in theway I have used them earlier in this paragraph with words like argue and suggest tohelp develop an argument. They are used with nouns like thing, problem, situationand theory to help define and develop ideas. In particular they have an importantfunction in identifying and highlighting a notion that is going to be developed in thetext:

thing . . . problem . . . The situation is(that) theory . . . difficulty . . .

Once we begin to look at the uses of noun clauses, we begin to look at the words withwhich they are associated, and to ask how those words function in text. In asking whatit is that the learner needs to know, and what it is that should be highlighted, weacknowledge the importance of the noun clause, but we also come back to theimportance of the word as a unit of syllabus design.

English as a lexical language

I have suggested that three of the items traditionally regarded as difficult for thelearner are not in fact difficult in the way they are generally believed to be. They aregenerally regarded as being difficult structures. I have argued in effect that thepassive and the conditionals do not need to be presented as 'structures', since they canreadily be created by learners for themselves, provided they have an understanding ofword meaning. This does not mean that they will necessarily be easily acquired bylearners. Even a rule as straightforward as the subject-verb concord in 'he rues' is noteasily acquired. It is a long time before it becomes a consistent part of the learner'sproduction. We do not know why this should be. Perhaps because it is heavilyredundant. We can never be sure when, or even whether, input will become part of thelearner’s behaviour.


Indeed the very concept of input is a misleading one. Input implies intake, and therecan never be any guarantee that learners will take in the language that they hear.A structurally based approach which is linked to input will be more diffuse than alexically based approach in two ways. In the first place it does not offer such powerfulgeneralisations. Once the learners are aware of the potential of the past tense andwould to encode hypothesis, they are in principle capable of producing:

I think the Tempest would make a wonderful film.

and:

I wish I lived in a caravan.

They are also in a much better position to make sense of further input. They will bemore likely to identify the general hypothetical use of the past tense and would if theyare able to abstract them from the second conditional pattern. Similarly, once theyidentify the past participle as adjectival, a range of uses is open to them. It may besome time before they take advantage of this, but they are more likely to do this if thisis the starting point than if the passive is treated transformationally, or in some otherway~vhich associates it very closely with verb forms. In the second place, the fact that a lexical description depends on a more powerfulgeneralisation means that the learner will have more evidence on which to base usefulgeneralisations about the language. I have shown, for example, that would expressinghypothesis is much more common than the second conditional. The learner willtherefore have many more opportunities to reinforce the meaning of would than thestructure of the second conditional. A similar lesson can be drawn from our look at the noun clauses which realise,among other things, reported statements. Noun clauses of this kind are ubiquitous.There are three examples in the paragraph above, none of them strictly speaking areported statement. This noun clause, therefore, is likely to be a much more usefulconcept than reported statement. It is not linguistically complex, since it follows thegeneral rules governing English tense and adverbials of time and place. Once learnersbecome aware of this, they can begin to work on the variety of uses of such clauses,and in particular the words that introduce them. A focus on words, therefore, as well as providing the raw material to make morepowerful generalisations, seems to offer learners the potential to create structures forthemselves. Word forms are also easily recognisable and easily retrievable. This is notalways the case with structures. Learners can find words for themselves and begin to make useful generalisationsabout them. As we shall see later, it is possible to build on this accessibility to deviseexercises which encourage learners to speculate usefully about the meanings andfunctions of words - a process which leads to greater awareness of language use. If weare to adopt a strategy which aims at awareness raising, therefore, there are goodarguments for highlighting meaning; and if we are to do this, the most effective unit islikely to be the word rather than the structure.


This may or may not be the case with other languages, but it certainly seems to bethe case with English. It is perhaps particularly unfortunate that English has for solong been described in terms of a Latinate grammar derived from a highly inflectedlanguage, when English itself is quite different, a minimally inflected language.Obviously I would not claim that there is nothing more to English than word meaning,but it does seem that word meaning and word order are central to English in a waythat may not hold true for other languages.

Difficulty in EFL - a re-assessment

Some of the grammatical systems of the language seem to operate a logic to which itis very difficult for the learner to gain access. Perfective and progressive aspect inEnglish are notoriously difficult. A lot of time in elementary and intermediate coursesis spent contrasting the present and past simple, and the present and past continuoustenses, and equally on contrasting the present perfect and the past simple. Anothernotorious area of difficulty in English is the system of determiners, particularly thedefinite and indefinite article. This again is an area which receives a good deal ofattention in most courses. But the vexing thing about grammatical systems like theseis that they are conspicuously resistant to teaching. However hard teacher and learnersmay try, some language systems take a long, long time to learn. A number of theories have been put forward to account for this. It may be thatthere is a fixed order of acquisition which is broadly speaking common to all learners.There is some, though not conclusive, evidence for this view. Prabhu (1987) arguesthat any relationship between the grammatical systems as we describe them andgrammatical systems as they are subconsciously conceptualised by the learner(between descriptive and operational systems) is purely accidental. If this is so, it ismeaningless to look to our description of grammatical systems for an index of thelearner's progress. Interlanguage theorists like Selinker and Corder describe languagelearning as a process of continually forming, testing and revising hypotheses about thegrammar of the language. If they are right, then learners will need a lot of evidence inthe form of exposure to the language before they are able reach stable conclusionsabout the grammar. Whatever the reasons for these difficulties, they are certainly an observable andsometimes worrying fact of life in the EFL classroom. It is simply a fact of life thatsome systems are not immediately accessible to teaching. They take time, often a longtime, to assimilate. Indeed perhaps the only real answer to the question 'What systemsof English are difficult to learn?' would be 'Those systems that take a long time tolearn.' This is not objective or demonstrable in any straightforward way. I havealready given subject-verb concord as an example of something which is easy tounderstand but very difficult to assimilate. It may be that teaching helps learning. Itmay well be the case that some teaching procedures hinder progress in thedevelopment of some grammatical systems. What is sure is that learners need time toassimilate language. Strategies that aim to help assimilation by awareness raising aremore tolerant of the learner's position and more likely to be successful than strategieswhich aim to


incorporate the target language into the learner's repertoire more or less immediately. It can be argued that the attempt to reduce language to presentable patternsactually adds to the difficulties faced by the learner, and compounds this by confusingthe learner as to the true nature of language. Language patterns are often presented tolearners contrastively so that they are required to distinguish between, say, the presentperfect and past simple tenses. Many coursebooks tell us, for example, that the presentperfect is used for events which happened in the recent past, particularly if the effectsof the action can still be seen or felt. Very often pictures are used to illustratesentences like:

I've broken my arm.

But in spite of appearances, the 'recent past' has nothing to do with how much timehas elapsed since something happened. There is nothing ungrammaticalabout:

1 I broke my arm this morning.or about: 2 I'm afraid I've broken my arm. I broke it last week.

Similarly if the present perfect is used because the effects of what happened can stillbe seen or felt, how could we account for:

3 A: I've broken my arm. B: Oh dear. How did you break it?

as opposed to:

4 A: I've broken my arm. B: ?Oh dear. How have you broken it?

We may make useful generalisations about the present perfect and the past simple,and we may be able to point to a few cases in which the contrast is absolute. We mayadvise learners, for example, that the past simple rather than the present perfect isused when the time at which an event took place is made explicit:

5. I broke my arm yesterday.as opposed to:

6. *I've broken my arm yesterday.

But this still leaves problems with the choice between:

7 Have you been to church this week?

and:

8 Did you go to church this week?This leads us to two important points. The first is that it is meaning that determineswhat is and is not acceptable in terms of sentence structure. The sentence:


6 *I've broken my arm yesterday.

is unacceptable not because there is some abstract rule which tells us that we cannothave the present perfect tense together with a past time adverbial, but because there isa contradiction between the meaning of the present perfect tense and the meaning ofyesterday. By selecting the present perfect tense the speaker is asserting the presentrelevance of his utterance. By adding yesterday he is denying this present relevance.Learners make mistakes of this kind not because they have not grasped the rule, butbecause they do not understand the meaning and use of the present perfect tense. Ifthe teaching strategy we adopt illuminates that meaning, it may be a useful strategy. Ifit simply asserts the incompatibility between the tense and the adverbial, it is unlikelyto be successful. The second point elaborates Widdowson's distinction between usage and use. Theessence of language use is choice. Restrictive rules such as the one stating that thepast simple is preferred to the present perfect when the time of an event is madeexplicit, tell us something about when not to use the present perfect tense. They mayhelp us to avoid some instances of faulty usage. But they do not tell us when or whythe present perfect is to be preferred to the past simple. They do not give us insightsinto use. They do not afford us criteria to choose between formulations such as 7 and8 above. Again this points to the need for exposure. Learners need experience of thepresent perfect in use if they are to grasp its meaning. Only when they have this willthey be able not only to avoid the contradiction inherent in:

6 *I have broken my arm yesterday.

but also to select the present perfect tense when it is appropriate to the meaning theywish to convey. This is also an argument in favour of the use of authentic text in language learningrather than text specially written to illustrate some aspect of language. Such speciallywritten text is usually constructed to focus on contrived contexts in which there is aclear cut distinction between the present perfect and the past simple. Learners areasked to engage in such exchanges as:

A: Have you read War and Peace'? B: Yes I have. I read it last year.

The only reason for selecting one tense or the other is that that is what they have beentold to select. The exchange is meaningful in that it consists of three acceptablesentences of English for which we can readily imagine a meaningful context. But theselection of one tense as opposed to the other is not meaningful. It is a teacher-ledcontrivance. The system which is presented to learners involves conformity tosuperficial rules, often of a restrictive kind, under careful teacher control. If learnersare to create appropriate meanings, they need to become aware of the choices realisedin genuine language use.

The Lexical Syllabus; Dave Willis 27Originally published by Collins ELT, 1990

CHAPTER 3: The lexical research and the COBUILD project

The corpusI have suggested that the word may be a better unit of syllabus design than the structure.This is partly because word is very often prior to structure in that it is word meaning whichdetermines which structures are grammatical and which are not. A description of languagewhich takes the word as its starting point offers more powerful generalisations and is moreaccessible to learners than a structural description. A lexical description of language,therefore, should offer a powerful basis for syllabus specification. I would like now to look at the research programme which went into the production ofthe Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary. This programme was to produce anew lexical description of language which would eventually provide us with the basis for anew approach to syllabus design. The basic aim of the COBUILD project was to develop:

. . a new, thorough-going description of the English language, and one which was not based on theintrospection of its authors, but which recorded their observations of linguistic behaviour as revealed innaturally occurring text. (Renouf 1987)

The first stage in the project was to gather together a corpus of language on j computerready for analysis. Since a corpus represents a sample of the language under study it isobviously important to obtain as representative a sample as possible.Our aim was to identify those aspects of the English language which were relevant to the needs of theinternational user. We therefore defined these for ourselves as follows:

- written and spoken modes - broadly general rather than technical language - current usage, from 1960, and preferably very recent - ‘naturally occurring’ text, not drama - prose, including fiction and excluding poetry - adult language, 16 years or over - ‘standard English’, no regional dialects - predominantly British English, with some American and other varieties. (Renouf 1987)

Renouf goes on to explain how texts were selected to give the right coverage and gives abroad description of the corpus. A complete list of texts can be found in the corpusacknowledgements in the Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary. The next important feature of the corpus is simply its size. Obviously, the larger thecorpus the more likely it is to be representative of the language as a


whole, or of that part of the language researchers are aiming to describe. This need for sizehas to be balanced against the aims of the study and also against rapidly diminishingreturns to scale beyond a certain point. By mid-1983 a Main Corpus of 7.3 million wordshad been built up by the COBUILD team, and this was large enough for a study of thecommonly occurring words of English. The most frequent 700 words of English all occurat least 650 times in the Main Corpus. All of the 2,500 most frequent words of English,which were eventually to form the basis of the lexical syllabus for the Collins COBUILDEnglish Course, occurred at least 120 times in the corpus. For the study of less frequentwords, those occurring less than fifty times in the Main Corpus, a Reserve Corpus of afurther 13 million words was added by the end of 1985. In producing the dictionary thisReserve Corpus played a vital role as about ninety per cent of the word forms in the MainCorpus occurred with a frequency of 50 or less. The first stage in processing the corpus was to run a computer programme to produceconcordances for each of the words under study. Let us look at the word way. This comesafter time and people as the third most common noun in English, with around 7,000occurrences in the Main Corpus. Here is a sample from the concordances:

fluctuated. It is not, I suing on; fewer still had premises in any way suitable; some turned out to be schassertively un-urban that we affected a way of dressing quite unsuited to Univeattention if he became too excitable, a way whose success was, I think, due tohanged, and a manned craft was the best way of preserving flexibility. Photograed to the idea very gradually. The best way to do this. I decided, was to introburn and the island beaches. I went by way of my family home in the south of Sts, but not in the seemingly calculated way that is born of deprivation. The spale lifeless, and I began in a desultory way to review in my mind various animalthe bath; it had become an established way of quieting him when he was obstrepnd the retaliatory strategy had to give way to the flexible response, with itso be thrown. Such pebbles that came his way seem mainly to have been on the queh strip of garden from the road. On his way home, but never on his way out, Mijroad. On his way home, but never on his way out, Mij would tug me in the directed in his small body. He would work his way under them and execute a series ofconverse with them.<p 124>’ It was his way for the most part to wander in thosuch panic that he could hardly make his way home, tottering on us feet; and earthat he could not even turn to make his way back, and with a fifty-foot sheer dbearings if he were trying to make his way homeward through ii. I put a lightupstart. But I soon found an infallible way to distract his attention if he bece Fleet as and when it had to fight its way against Soviet sea and air oppositie chick while he went on in a leisurely way with its underwater exploration. Itd on the rocks wets of Canna, by a long way the nearest to me of their coloniesozen occasions, and most of them a long way off. No doubt they have often beene had to be. Camusfearna is a very long way from a vet.; the nearest, in fact,No strange sea monster has ever come my way since I have been here, though in twas as it had been before. I was on my way back to the scullery when I stoppedI had the impression that he was in no way taxing his powers, and could greatless. Once Morag asked me, in an offhand way behind which I sensed a tentative pnd chittered at it in a pettish sort of way, and then, convinced of its now peren the water is low, one may pick one’s way precariously along the rock at theof mackerel fishers; there was only one way of extraction, and a very painful othe copious use of telegrams. The only way in which a telegram can be deliveredid he cower and tug his lead the other way; a memory, perhaps, of his native mlife to which he was accustomed. On our way back to the aircraft an Egyptian ofxpression. Otters usually get their own way in the end; they are not dogs, andritation. In turn each of us in our own way depended, as gods do, upon his worseen fortunate to turn the tap the right way; on subsequent occasions he would aviated to ‘Calum the Road’( in the same way I have known elsewhere a John theat secretive expression that is in some way akin to a young girl’s face duringthe near skyline, and they were in some way important to me, as were the big foall over and I was beaten I had in some way come to terms with the Highlands—ouss, round a cygnet that seemed in some way to be captive at the margin of thehese subjective images one were in some way cheating the objective fact. It is,in Seal Morning, if one may put it that way, and found them delicious. So the fand begin, very slowly, to squirm their way upwards, forming a vertical, close-amusfearna, where they would pick their way delicately along the top of the cro

to the rituals of children who on their way to and from school must place their

The Lexical Research and the COBUILD Project 29

ughs among the horizontal ledges, the way is ? asy—a few inches of horizontmad with joy like a puppy and lead the way down the path to Camusfeama as if Iwise Mijbil might at once have gone the way of Chabala and for the same reason.larly beds, between the sheets, all the way from the pillows to the bed-foot.Wire cutters and work the hook all the way back again. It is not always mackerHundred yards up thre burn’s course, the way is blocked by the tall cataract, eiSlosh of water over her gunwale all the way. If I shipped oars to bale I made sTugged purposefully at the lead all the way up the astonished platform to the sIl I saw what an otter could do in this way. This aspect of an otter’s behaviouoe, travelling in a leisurely, timeless way between the scattered reed-built vixcreta in an anecdotal or informa-tive way, or because he did not recognise inabout otters, it takes place the wrong way round, so to speak. When one playsin Seal morning, if one may put it that way, and found them delicious. So the fnd chittered at it in a pettish sort of way, and then, convinced of its own perxcreta in an anecdotal or informative way or because he did not recognise inslosh of water over her gunwale all the way. If I shipped oars to bale I made sil I saw what an otter could do in this way. This aspect of an otter’s behavioudid he cower and tug his lead the other way; a memory, perhaps, of his native meen fortunate to t8urn the tap the right way; on subsequent occasions he would aviated to ‘Calum the Road’( in the same way I have known else-where a John thee fleet as and when it had to right its way against Soviet sea and oppositiat secretive expression that is in some way akin to young girl’s face duringthat he could not even turn to make his way back, and with a fifty-foot sheer dwire cutters and work the hook all the way back again. It is not always mackerwas as it had been before. I was on my way back to the scullery when I stoppedlife to which he was accustomed. On our way back to the aircraft an Egyptian ofess. Once Morag asked me, in an offhand way behind which I sensed a tentative poe, travelling in a leisurely, timeless way between the scattered reed-built vihese subjective images one were in some way cheating the objective fact. It is,all over and I was beaten I had in some way come to terms with the Highlands—oamusfearna, where they would pick their way delicately along the top of the croritation. In turn each of us in our own way depended, as gods do, upon his worsmad with joy like a puppy and lead the way down the path to Camusfeama as if Iconverse with them. <p 124>‘It was his way for the most part to wander in those had to be. Camusfearma is a very long way from a vet; the nearest, in fact,larly beds, between the sheets, all the way from the pillows to the bed-foot.uch panic tat he could hardly make his way home, tottering on us feet; and earh strip of garden from the road. On his way home, but never on his way out. Mijbearings as if he were trying to make hisway homeward through it. I put a lightthe near skyline, and they were- in some way important to me , as were the big foxpression. Otters usually get their own way in the end; they are not dogs, andthe copious use of telegrams. The only way in which a telegram can be deliveughs among the hori-zontal ledges, the way is e? asy—a few inches of horizontwise Mijbil might at once have gone the way of Chabala and for the same reason.assertively unurban that we affected a way of dressing quite unsuited to Univeof mackerel fishers, there was only one way of extraction, and a very painful o0ozen occasions, and most of them a long way off. No doubt they have often beenburn and the island beaches. I went by way of my family home in the south of Shanged, and a manned craft was the best way of preserving flexibility. Photograthe bath; it had become an established way of quieting him was when he was obstrepen the water is low, one may pick one’s way precariously along the rock at theabout otters, it takes place the wrong way round, so to speak. When one playso be thrown. Such pebbles that came his way seem mainly to have been on the queNo strange sea monster has ever come my way since I have been here, though in tunctuated. It is not, I suppose, in any way strange that the average Lon-donerIng on; fewer still had premises in any way suitable; some turned out to be schI had the impression that he was in no way taxing his powers, and could greatlTs, but not in the seemingly calculated way that is born ofdeprivation. The spaD on the rocks west of Canna, by a long way the nearest to me if their coloniesTo the rituals of children who on their way to and from school must place theiruss, round a cygnet that seemed in some way to be captive at the margin of theupstart. But I soon found an infallible way to distract his attention if he beced to the idea very gradually. The best way to do this, I decided, was to intole lifeless, and I began in a desultory way to review in my mind various animalnd the retaliatory strategy had to give way to the flexible response, with itstugged purposefully at the lead all the way upwards, forming a vertical, close-attention I fit became too excitable, a way whose success was, I think, due tochick while he went on in a leisurely way with his underwater exploration. It

Lexicographers worked methodically with these concordances to compile entries oncomputer input slips. These slips were specially designed both to


prompt the researcher and to hold information in a form suitable for computer input to thedictionary database. The outcome of this process, then, was a database which recorded allthe relevant information about way to be incorporated in the final dictionary entry.

From concordances to database and dictionary entry

The database for way lists the main semantic fields covered by the word. It runs to over 40typewritten pages, but can be summarised as follows:

1 method, means: It's a useful way of raising revenue. The cheapest way is to hire a van. behaviour Play soccer Jack Charlton's way.2 manner, style, He smiles in a superior way.3 what happens, That's the way it goes. what is the case We were so pleased with the way things were going. 4 degree, She's very kind and sweet in lots of ways. extent, respect In no way am I a politically effective person.5 location, A man asked me the way to St Paul's. movement, Get out of the way. direction, space6 distance, I flew the rest of the way to Danang extent It was downhill all the way after that.7 time National revolt was still a long way off.8 miscellaneous You're way below the standard required. (= a considerable distance) The AEU, in a classic balls-up, voted both ways. (= one of a number of choices)

In addition to these semantic areas, a number of discourse uses are listed, such as:

by the way By the way, that visit of Muller's is strictly secret. (used to addsomething to what you are saying)by way of Well, that's really by way of introduction. (used to explain thefunction of something you are about to say, for example whether it is intended as an introduction anexample, an apology etc.)

The computer input slips used to build up the description of each of these uses of way,drew attention to a number of relevant features associated with each example. An expandedentry for:

The cheapest way is to hire a van.

for example, would read: way 1.01 DEF (definition): Used to refer to something that must be done, or a series of things that must be done in order to achieve something. [Used to answer the question 'how?' Also closely connected to the prep 'by'.]


FLD (field): method; procedures.EX (example): The cheapest way is to hire a van.GL (gloss): i.e. of moving house.SYN (syntax): N + INF-TOPRAG (pragmatics): anaphoric.

This description relates the use of way to a particular meaning, gives us a syntacticenvironment showing that this use of way is associated with the infinitive with to, and addsthe comment that this particular use is anaphoric - that the example refers back to 'ways ofmoving house'. If we look at the syntactic environments associated with this use of way, (meaningmeans or method) we find:

N + INF-TOas in the example given, N + PREP/OF + -INGas in: The different ways of cooking fish. N + WHICH:XPas in: They kill animals in a way which would disturb the ordinary town boy. PREP/IN + DET/THIS + Nas in: In this way the energy in the pile is controlled.

If we look at the pragmatics of this meaning of way we find that it is used anaphorically asin the example given above; cataphorically as in:

You can qualify for a pension in two ways.

for instructions, as in:

Do it this way.

In this way we begin to build up a picture of the word way - not only of its meaning, butalso of the syntactic patterns with which it is associated and its use in discourse. Also annotated in the database are common phrases with way which are found sofrequently that they function almost like lexical items in their own right:

By the way this visit of Muller's is strictly secret. . . . by way of introduction.Little in the way of strategic thinking was needed.He's not on board. No two ways about it.In a way these officers were prisoners themselves;

Eventually all these insights are incorporated in a dictionary entry. The entry for animportant word like way in the Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary runs totwo full pages and, if we include fixed phrases, runs to 36 categories, some of themsubdivided. Typical sections from the entry are:


way /wel/, ways 1 If you refer to a way of doingsomething or a way to do if you are referring to how youdo it, for example the series of things that you do in orderto achieve it, or the course of action that you take. EG..different ways of cooking fish... A pushchair is a handyway to take a young child shopping… You can qualify lora pension in two ways ways in which the present servicecould be improved… In what way can I help you?.. Shehad decided on this course as the only way out of ahopeless situation.

N COUNT, OR NCOUNT + to-INF/A= means, method

25 You say by the way 25.1 when you addsomething to what you are saying, especially aquestion or piece of information that you have justthought of. By the way this visit of Muller's is strictlysecret…My father's dead by the way. 25.2 to indicatethat a comment or remark is not directly relevant tothe main topic of the discussion. E.G That point isquite by the way26 by way of. 26.1 You use by way of when you areF~EP explaining the purpose of something that youhave said or are about to say, for example whether itis intended as an introduction, example, apology, etc.E.G. I'm going to sketch in a bit of the backgroundby way of introduction. 26.2 If you go somewhere byway of a particular place, you go through that placeon your journey. EG I came by way of Madrid andAthens…We drove back to Central Park West, byway of Briceland.

PHR: USEDAS ADV SEN= incidentally

PHR: USEDAS AN A= incidental

PREP

PREP= via

From data sheet to language course

The information in the database was edited down, then, to provide a dictionary entry of thekind exemplified above. It was also edited down to produce a 'data sheet', one of 700 whichprovided the raw material for the lexical syllabus on which CCEC Level 1 was to be based,and which would be recycled through Levels 2 and 3:

Entry for the word form 'WAY'

Total no. of occs. in corpus: 6,791

Category 1: REFERS TO THE MANNER OF A PERSON'S BEHAVIOUR OR ACTION, ESPECIALLY ACERTAIN ATTITUDE, STYLE OR FEELING THAT SOMEONE HAS. [Approx 44% occs.](Subtechnical noun -C).

we take a look at the way IN WHICH computers are revolutionizing our/the disrespectful way IN WHICHthese flighty females carry out their / studies of the way IN WHICH today's continents fit together / in muchthe same way THAT we dispose of Kleenex or beer cans / people related to each other in a way THAT I hadnever seen before / Vorster said in his heavy way: "Now are there any questions about the bill?" / the Spanishchroniclers did it their OWN way / about to change in a radical way / bird must have flown in a direct andpurposeful way / it'll be convenient because of the way we're going to work at this / we behave all in exactlythe SAME way / we're not going to deal with it in the ordinary way / thinking of abstractions in quite adifferent way from the way we think of them / highly contemptuous of the American way OF LIFE / thosedefects being her virtues, her faith, her way OF LIFE / life isn't the way it ought to be / that's the way I feelabout it anyway / I am old fashioned in this way lCategory 1.l: THE MEANS OR METHOD BY WHICH SOMETHINGIS DONE, OR HOW IT OCCURS.[approx 10% occs.](Sub-technical noun -C).

the most effective way OF countering the Soviet air threat / there's one other way OF getting hydro-electricpower in areas / this process was a round about way OF achieving something that could have been done / anartificial way OF making the child learn by doing / we have no way OF knowing whether the kinds of menrepresented / family duties and responsibilities were a way IN WHICH sharing was institutionalized/l believethis is the only way THAT an ordinary person can inspire others/he had wished that there had been some wayhe could exchange words with this man /Category 2: USED WITH REFERENCE TO DIRECTION, EXTENT, DISTANCE AND TRAVELGENERALLY; ALSO REFERS TO A ROAD, PATH, ROUTE OR JOURNEY SOMEWHERE. [Approx26% occs.](Noun)

33I drove the wrong way ROUND a roundabout/British gilr secretaries who work their way ROUND theStates/it's got pretty embroidery all the way ROUND the bottom/they walked down the stairs and on the wayOUT I heard him say his first words / having addressed the troop ship on the way OUT to South Africa / itdoes not matter WHICH way the vectors go / what sort of ship it is and WHICH way the thing is going / moreof transit flying, and of fighting their way THROUGH defences / hold a tray aloft as he weaves his wayTHROUGH the crowd in his new role of barman / and then barge your way THROUGH and shout at theback of the queue / quite a LONG way past them was the greenhouse with the vine / it certainly was a LONGway FROM Cape Town / she keeps gaining on me all the way DOWN the long hill to the bottom of the lane /after giving him minute directions of the way. They could see the whole ridge of Wirral Hill / he led the wayover the rocks / a time when we got lost - right out Dennington way. But we found our path eventually / withno fear this time of losing the way/ended up as far out of their way as Pleiku, fifty miles to the south /Phrases and misc:I IN/OUT OF THE WAY (5 occs. in sample):he had kept out of DeMille's way / we constantly get in the way of and interferewith /ii BY THE WAY (4 occs. in sample):By the way, Castle, you might get me the name of his dentist / By the way, do youkeep cats here? /

Notes:i WAY is a sub-technical word with all the expected features e.g. its dummy role insome of the examples in Category 1. e.g. bird must have flown in a direct and purposeful way /ii It was too difficult to sub-divide Category 1 further in the time available, althoughthere seems to be some basis for doing that.iii WAYS: this word functions as the plural of WAY, and generally follows the sameusage except that almost all instances of use fall into Category 1 and Category 1.1e.g. some babies become so set in their ways during this period/this will addanother to the many ways in which the rich can buy youth / I examine various waysin which the ills of this society can be tackled / the old ways are the best ways /iv WAYS is also characterised by the frequency of occurrence for particular lefthand collocates. The most common of these are MANY, OTHER, SEPARATE,SOME and other expressions of quantity.e.g. we improved the paper in a number of OTHER ways / there are MANY suchways in which we~ehave as if we were two people / in MANY ways it was a badbargain / we look at various ways in which over the years Britain has / China is inMANY ways a developing country too /

Further information on right-hand collocates. WAY WAYS OF 637 occs. 209 occs. TO 637 59 IN 272 80 THAT 255 24 AND 188 57 THE 180 44 I 175 17 OUT 125 THEY 120 HE 111 AS 108 IT 107 13 THROUGH 96


Each of the two main categories of meaning for the word way is the focus of an exercise inCCEC Level 1:

78 Ways of saying numbers

78a a How do you say telephone numbers in yourlanguage? b Look at the numbers on the right. What arethey? What about 1989 for example? Could it be atelephone number, or a date, or car V number? Howwould you say it if it was a date? One thousand ninehundred and eighty-nine? . . . One nine eight nine. . .?

Discuss with your partner how you could say thenumbers. How many different ways can you find andwhat do they each mean ?

• Tell the class

78c c Bridget and David talked aboutthe same numbers.Did they think of the same things as you?Write down the things David and Bridgetthought of.

22

0

1989

3.14

748

22756

10.12

021 337 0452

In addition to the uses of way in the rubric for this activity:

Ways of saying numbers.and:

How many different ways can you find…

a recording of native speakers doing the task contrasts the American way ofsaying dates with the British way. Inevitably the word way will feature a gooddeal in the exchanges in the classroom between teacher and learners, andamong learners.

How many ways did you think of?Yes that's another way.We got three ways.etc.

This use is highlighted again in a summary of the useful words and phrases fromthis unit, Unit 6:


a) way There are different ways of writing 'colour'- the American way (color) or the Englishway (colour). How many ways are there of saying this number? Practice these ways of agreeing and disagreeing. I like the way he sings. Do it this way. Look.

Unit 9 takes as its theme finding the way:

122 Landmarks

When people ask us the way and we give them directions we usually use landmarks. We say things like this.

It's just past the hospital.It's opposite St Joseph's school.It's near the Post Of fice.It's behind the supermarket.

Look at these landmarks. Do you know what they are?

Here again it is likely that in addition to the forms occurring in the coursebook and itsaccompanying recordings, the word way will feature in classroom discussion. Two other examples which occur later in Level 1 are picked up in a review section:

I may be able to stop off on my way to the USA. He went all the way back.

These are sentences which have been contextualised earlier in Level 1 and are laterhighlighted.

Unit 7 looks in detail at the uses of the word to and category 7 draws attention to thepattern: N + INF- TO

101 Grammar wordstoDo you have the same word for all these uses of to in yourlanguage?1 where I've come to Liverpool to stay with my parents.2 who (with give, offer, present etc.)· I gave it to David.3 listen or speak to someone/something Listen to Bridget· Talk to your partner about . . .4 purpose . I went to see my sister.· I've come to Liverpool to stay with my parents.5 after ask, want, plan etc. We asked people to write about . It's for people who want to take better photographs.6 after it (see it 2, section 8 8 ) It was nice to see you When is it possible to phone your partner?7 after place, way, thing etc. What's the best way to travel? London is a good place to live.

8 from _ to_It was reduced from £2s to £5.Our lesson lasts from_ to _9 used to, have (got) to, going toWe've got to get seven differences.David used to share a flat. I had to come downstairs as the phone was ringing.

Which categories do these sentences belong to?a We only have to do seven.b Say these words to your partner.c Work m groups to do these puzzles.d A man dressed as Napoleon went to see apsychiatrist.e We'regoing to seea film after classf The cheapest thing to do is take a bus.g Bridget works from Monday to Friday.h I'd like to come back here.i The psychiatrist asked her to sit down.j Read these phrases to your partner.k It's difficult to see the tree.I He wants to go to Britain to learn more English.

Compare the examples in each category with examplesin the Grammar Book.


This use is given again in a grammar reference section at the back of the Level 1coursebook. Level 2 reviews the uses of way which are highlighted in Level 1 and goes on to showthe pattern:

N + PREP/OF + -ING

in Unit 6 which is entitled ‘What's the best way of travelling to Paris?’ A ‘Wordpower’exercise in the same unit offers another summary of the meanings of way:

74 WordpowerwayLook up way in the Lexicon.Which meanings does way have inthese examples?a) This word can be used in many

different waysb) I like the way he sings that son.

I’ts really good

c) After the class, or on the wayhome …

d) The cheapest way would be togo by bus.

e) Er, sorry, is that in the way?

f) It’s interesting the waycomputers have changed ourlives.

g) I can remember thinking thatway about teachers.

h) The American way of life isvery different.

i) I can go back the way I came.

(NB the above exercise was accompanied by cartoon pictures to illustrate some of theexamples.)

Way is also one of the words selected for inclusion in a lexicon at the back of the Level 2coursebook: way 6

1 Way refers to the manner In which a person or thing behaves or acts, or the certain stylesomeone or something has, or feeling or attitude of a person. EG Just look at the way he eats! It'shorrible!2 Way refers to the means or method by which something is done, or how it happens.EG The best way of getting to Paris is by train and boat. (64)3 Used with reference to a direction, distance, route, road, path or journey somewhere.EG Which way do I go?' 'Turn right at the shops, and go all the way down that road.'

By the time learners reach Level 3 they have had ample opportunity to become familiarwith the main meanings and patterns associated with the word way. In Level 3 the wordoccurs 87 times. There is also a grammar section in


Level 3 which reviews the pattern:N + PREP/OF + -ING

144 Grammar

· Of + ingSome words are very commonly followed by of + ing. Look at these examples and make aIist of words followed by of:1 Another way of doing it is to work abroad. (140) :2 I think it's more a question of specializing in the country in which you work. (1403 Their first memory of singing together was during their days as Boy Scouts. ( 13 )4 His prayer had been answered and he gave up the idea of committing suicide. (36)5 I always had this fear of falling downstairs. (34) :6 This would have the twofold effect of getting the job done cheaply and making it safe for the local : peopleto cross the river. (97)7 He took every opportunity of visiting the zoo. (91) :8 So the thought of competing with a three year old is quite difficult. (106)9 . . . how to reduce the risk of falling a victim to violent crime. (l50)10 The POW Group also accuse the government of refusing to provide water as a deliberate policy.(163)11 It would have to keep right on going if he was to have any chance of winning it now. (229) :12 And then he hits on this crazy plan of jumpingoverboard... (243)

This is another way of talking about ideas and actions. You could rewrite sentence 4 likethis:. . . he gave up the idea that he would commit suicide.

Can you rewrite sentence 5 in the same way? : Sentence 1 can be rewritten like this:

Another way to do it is to work abroad.

What about sentences 7 and 12?


The importance of ‘way’

As the third most frequent noun in English, the word way is important in its own right. It isunlikely that a learner will get very far without the need to express the kind of meaningnormally encoded in English as:

The best way to . . . is to . . . by _ing... One way of _ing . . . is to . . . by _ing...

and so on. And these phrases provide a very typical environment for the phrases 'of -ing . . .', 'by _ing . . . ', and of the use of the infinitive with to followed by part of the verb be as in:

The idea is to score as many points as you can. One possibility would be to start from the beginning again.

The commonest patterns in English occur again and again with the commonest words inEnglish. If we are to provide learners with language experience which offers exposure tothe most useful patterns of the language, we might well begin by researching the mostuseful words in the language.


Chapter 4: Syllabus Content

Too much to learnThe most difficult thing about learning a language is that there is simply so much to learn. Aneducated speaker of English is likely to have a vocabulary of some 50,000 words. Not only that,but a native speakers act on a great deal of information about every one of these words. We have already looked at the word way. What about another common word –thing?Obviously we know what this word means. We know, too, how it behaves grammatically. It hasa plural form, things. More than that, we know that thing has a complex grammar. It iscommonly found in sentences like:

1 The most difficult thing about learning a language is that there is simply so much to learn.2 The best thing is probably to read as much as we possibly can in the target language.

We probably carry in our minds ‘chunks’ of language incorporating the word thing in thesegrammatical frames:

The (adjective) thing is that… The (adjective) thing is to… It’s one thing to X, and quite another to Y.

We also carry around ‘chunks’ with thing like ‘one thing after another’ and ‘the shape of thingsto come’. We know that the word thing can be used in ways which carry attitudinal overtones.

3 How do you drive this thing?

Does not mean the same thing as:

4 How do you drive this vehicle?

The first of these signals quite clearly that there is something about the vehicle which I findannoying. Similarly the sentence:

5 So that’s George. I’ve heard about him.

is not an accurate paraphrase of

6 So that’s George. I’ve heard things about him

To a native speaker, the second of these implies that what I know about George is not to hiscredit. We also know that the word thing can be used in fixed phrases in specific contexts:

7 Eating with your fingers is not quite the done thing.

The important thing here is that thing cannot be replaced by another word or phrase, even onewhich seems to make perfectly good sense as:

8 *Eating with your fingers is not quite the done way.


l Similarly, the phrase 'All things being equal' comes to the tongue much more readily than 'Allopportunities being equal'. So there are a lot of things to know about thing. This brief summaryrepresents just a few of them. All of this must be involved in learning the language.

Collocational patterns in language

Hanks (1987) elaborates the point that knowledge of a language includes a vast amount ofcollocational knowledge - a knowledge of which words combine with which other words orcategories of word:

The words of English simply do not, typically, combine and recombine freely and randomly.Not only can typical grammatical structures and form classes be observed, but also typicalcollocates. The distinction between the possible and the typical is of the greatest importance. Itis possible given a reasonably lively imagination, to use a particular word in any number ofdifferent ways. But when we ask how the word is typically used, rather than how it mightpossibly be used, we can generally discover a relatively small number of distinct patterns.(Hanks 1987)

In this way Hanks argues for the notion of 'selection preference' underlying our languagebehaviour. He exemplifies this by looking at the words wide and broad, suggesting that it isunhelpful to look for a subtle semantic distinction between the two.

The important thing to say about BROAD is that it means wide and it co-occurs with words ofa certain type. (Hanks 1987)

Part of the native speaker's language knowledge is an awareness of these probableco-occurrences - the knowledge, for example, that broad is used not only with physical entitiessuch as roads and rivers, but also with more abstract notions:

This takeover bid has broader implications.

and also in very specific cases:

Broad hints were aired that the newspaper should be closed down.She spoke in a broad Wiltshire accent.

in which wide is not an acceptable substitute. This is not because broad is preferred to widewith an abstract noun.

The library had a wide variety of books.?The library had a broad variety of books.

It is simply because some nouns collocate with wide and some with broad - that is, some havea selection preference for wide and some for broad. Collocations of this kind are features of naturalness in language, and in looking at syllabuscontent we need to take deliberate account of such features. Unfortunately in doing so we runvery seriously into the problem of proliferation: the fact that language knowledge is so vast anddetailed. One way of limiting this proliferation is by taking note of Hanks' distinction betweenthe typical and the possible. We should take care that the language to which the

Syllabus Content 41

learner is exposed is typical of the language as a whole. This can only be done by research. Weneed to look seriously at the language and make principled decisions about what patterns anduses are to be regarded as typical and to be highlighted for the learner. The uses of common words like thing and way are so frequent that the learner is unlikely toget very far without the need to encode these meanings. Unfortunately there are no rules bywhich learners can create or retrieve these forms for themselves. It is important, therefore, thatthey are included in the language to which learners are exposed and that their attention is drawnto them. Of course, this wealth of knowledge which is part of 'knowing a language' is largelyunconscious. It is revealed in use, and although it is called up very readily in response to someneed to communicate, it is only with great difficulty that we can summon up such knowledgeby an effort of will. Ask someone who is linguistically unsophisticated what they know aboutthe word point, for example, and then look the word up in a good dictionary. The CollinsCOBUILD English Language Dictionary devotes almost two whole pages to the word point. Itidentifies 30 categories of meaning for the headword point together with such fixed phrases as'I take your point', 'beside the point', 'the finer points' and 'in point of fact'. It then goes on totreat derived forms like pointer, pointed and pointless together with phrases like point out,point up, point of view and point of reference. All of this is information that the competentuser of the language acts on on appropriate occasions, but it is unlikely that even the mostsophisticated native speaker would be able to recall more than a fraction of it at will. Indeed even sophisticated language users like lexicographers have to undertake a long andcomplicated research programme to make explicit what all of us already know about point - inthe sense that all the meanings and phrases are likely to be instantly understood by an adultnative speaker and most of them will be readily produced. It is not an easy task to makecomprehensive explicit statements about all the other words we use so easily and automatically.But the appropriate forms are readily called to mind when there is an occasion for use. It is theoccasion for use that activates our language knowledge.

Structural syllabuses and synthetic approaches

Language learners face three tasks. They must acquire an enormous body of knowledge, theymust store it in such a way that they can act on it automatically, and they must use the languagewith which they are familiar as a basis for exploring the further possibilities which exist in thelanguage. In order to help learners achieve this, the syllabus designer must first specify syllabuscontent as economically as possible. Almost any language course specifies what the designersbelieve that learners at a certain stage of language development need to learn and know, eventhough they cannot guarantee when and if learners will acquire what is presented to them. Goodcoursebooks which have been carefully worked out provide an inventory of words, patterns andmeanings that learners are to acquire as a result of their course. Normally this is a list of words,


structures and language functions in both their written and spoken form with both orthographyand phonology as part of the learning task. But the major problem is in deciding what items toinclude. This is particularly important in designing material for beginners or near beginners. Language teaching in its broadest sense - syllabus specification, syllabus design,methodology, classroom interaction - always involves choices between control and exposure,form and outcome, fluency and accuracy. Wilkins (1976), reviewing the work of the Council ofEurope on Notional Syllabuses, highlights a choice between what he calls synthetic andanalytic-approaches to language teaching. A synthetic teaching strategy:

is one in which the different parts of the language are taught separately and step by step so thatacquisition is a process of gradual accumulation of the parts until the whole structure of the languagehas been built up. (Wilkins 1976)

This strategy breaks language down into small units and arranges these in a particular order.The learner's task is to re-synthesise the language that has been broken down into a large number ofpieces with the aim of making his learning easier. It is only in the final stages of language learning thatthe global language is re-established in all its diversity. (ibid.)

Wilkins quotes Corder (1973) who suggests that such approaches, which specify the syllabus interms of language patterns, have 'low surrender value'. This is a term taken from the world ofinsurance. A life insurance policy which has low surrender value is one which you must payinto for a very long time before it acquires a reasonable value. If you cash it in early, either bychoice or by necessity, you do not get much of a return on the money you have invested Corderargued that grammatically based language courses have the same problem. If you give up sucha course after say one hundred hours, you will have learned very little that is likely to be of realuse to you. Your grammar will be very limited and may be missing major categories like thepassive, and many of the models. If you have been well taught you may have good control overthe limited grammar you have learned, but it will almost certainly be very limited and, as wehave already seen, there is no guarantee that this control will be reflected in your use of thelanguage. A second problem with synthetic approaches is that they assume grammatical items can beordered in a way which is logical, not only from the course writer's point of view, but also fromthe learner's. It may well be that there are criteria for ordering which are reasonable in thecourse writer's terms, but that is not the same as saying that the ordering is logical. It willdepend very much on what model of grammar the course writer is working from. But evenwriters working from the same model may quite reasonably reach different conclusions aboutordering. What about ways of referring to the future, for example? Should going to comebefore or after the present continuous as future? What about the modal will? Different coursewriters and teachers make different decisions on this, and there is no objective way of sayingthat one way is right and another wrong.

There is therefore no compelling logic to the ordering of items in a syllabus.

Syllabus Content 43

Of course learners must and will make generalisations about the target system. But in theabsence of any overriding logic, how can they make generalisations about a whole system onthe basis of evidence from an artificially constrained system which is built up piece by piece? Ifwe can point to no logic in the ordering of the syllabus, then we must either deny the learners'capacity to generate from the language they have been exposed to or we must agree withPrabhu (1987) that it is 'unlikely that any planned progression in a grammatical syllabus couldaccurately reflect or regulate the development of the internal system being aimed at'. Another problem with synthetic approaches is that syllabus specification and orderingplace far too much emphasis on production of language and relatively little on comprehension.In an extreme form this means that the only language to which learners will be exposed islanguage they themselves will be expected to produce. There will be a successive series ofmodels of the language as more and more parts are added, until finally learners are able tomake generalisations from what Wilkins calls 'the global language'. Yet another problem with synthetic approaches comes, paradoxically, from the fact thatthey are so well established. It is not surprising that one manifestation of a particular approachdraws heavily on others. This means that the virtues of such approaches are solidly reinforced.Imaginative exercises designed for one coursebook are developed and improved by others. Asan approach becomes established, teacher training begins to work on and developmethodological procedures for teaching particular items. A metalanguage is developed whichenables practitioners to exchange and develop ideas. In this way an established approachbecomes even more strongly established. Unfortunately, this strength can also be a source of weakness. As manifestations of anapproach draw on one another without questioning basic assumptions, so the weaknesses of onemanifestation reappear in another, until they become an essential part of the approach, nolonger subject to questioning. Almost all synthetic approaches to ELT seem to cover with somethoroughness those grammatical systems which are relatively closed. On the other hand, moreopen-ended and therefore more problematic systems are largely ignored. Clause structure andthe verb group figure massively, but apart from the relative clause comparatively little accountis taken of, for example, the way in which the complex noun phrase is built up. Sentences like:

Detectives hunting for the man believed to be responsible for the disappearanceof sixteen year old schoolgirl Angela James have been forced to abandon theirsearch.

simply do not feature in most pedagogic grammars, even though research suggests that roughlyone noun phrase in eight has this kind of multiple modification. A proportion of one in eightcertainly justifies thorough pedagogic treatment. Other complex phrases such as the adverbial:

On my way home from a recent holiday in France, I stayed overnight in a smallhotel just south of Calais.

tend to be similarly ignored.


Part of this weakness is the almost universal tendency to borrow systems and categories fromother courses, irrespective of whether these systems and categories have any pedagogicusefulness, whether they are likely to cause serious learning difficulties, and in some casesirrespective of whether they have any grammatical validity. I have shown that some items suchas the passive and the second conditional have been elevated to an undeserved level ofimportance, and that artificial and uneconomical categories such as reported speech have beencreated in the name of pedagogy. It is a strange teaching strategy indeed which allocates a largeproportion of time to relatively straightforward grammatical systems and very little time to themost problematic systems. It is stranger still if, in the interests of grading, we deny learnersexposure to the language which might enable them to draw conclusions for themselves aboutsuch problematic systems.

Analytic strategies and syllabus content

Wilkins contrasts synthetic approaches to language teaching with what he calls 'analyticstrategies'. These analytic strategies form the basis of the methodology which realises thenotional-functional syllabus. This methodology does not present carefully selected samples oflanguage in an attempt to build up a gradual picture of the grammar of the language. Instead, itidentifies phrases which have high utility and presents these as whole phrases. Analyticstrategies, then, do not control the language presented to the learner by means of carefulgrading:

Components of the language are not seen as building blocks which have to be progressivelyaccumulated. Much greater variety of linguistic structure is permitted from the start and the learner'stask is to approximate his own linguistic behaviour more and more closely to the global language.Significant linguistic forms can be isolated from the structurally heterogeneous context in which theyoccur, so that learning can be focused on important aspects of the language structure. It is this processwhich is referred to as analytic. (Wilkins 1976)

Wilkins and his Council of Europe colleagues recommended that instead of looking atwords, patterns and meanings we should begin by identifying meanings. In answer to thequestion 'What forms of the language does the learner need to be familiar with?' they no longerstarted by attempting to identify basic patterns of English. Instead they interposed a secondrather different question 'What does the learner need to mean in English?' The idea was that weshould first identify the basic meanings or 'notions' which learners would need to realise. Weshould also identify what it was that learners wanted to do with the language, what 'functions'they would need to carry out. Having established this inventory of notions and functions wecould then ask the question 'How are these meanings realised in English?' The outcome of thiswould be not a structural, but a notional syllabus.

In drawing up a Notional Syllabus instead of asking how speakers of the language express themselves orwhen and where they use the language we ask what it is they communicate through the language. Weare then able to organise language teach-

Syllabus Content 45

ing in terms of the content rather than the form of the language . . . A general language course willconcern itself with those concepts and functions that are likely to be of the widest value. (Wilkins 1976)

In theory this would be a highly efficient way of designing a syllabus and of ensuring thatlearners acquired the language that would be of most need to them. It would avoid the charge oflow surrender value. A great many applied linguists and course designers worked hard toproduce complex inventories of semantico-grammatical notions, spatio-temporal notions,socio-cultural notions and so on and so on. This was certainly a useful exercise. It broughthome very starkly the fact that learning a language means learning to encode meanings and todo things with the language rather than simply learning to produce the forms of the language.The Council of Europe Threshold and Waystage syllabuses, which are based to a large extenton a specification of notions and functions have informed syllabus design ever since. But in thefinal event, the problem of specifying notions and functions created as many problems as itsolved. We simply had no way of specifying with any objectivity the semantic content of asyllabus, let alone of going on to specify how that content might best be realised. But the pipedream of the notional syllabus stayed with us. If only we could specify the basic meanings ofEnglish, the meanings which even the most elementary users of the language would need toencode, how efficient it would be. But Wilkins himself acknowledged the enormouscomplexity of this task:

I do not wish to suggest that it is in principle impossible to plan the conceptual content of languagesyllabuses in this way. However, it does seem to me clear that it would in practice prove to be anextremely complex task; the more so if we are simultaneously trying to introduce language functionswhich have been contextualised by suitable notions. (Wilkins 1976)

The arguments were compelling and convincing. The achievement, however, was as good asimpossible.

It also transpired that exemplars of the notional-functional syllabus when it is used toteach English for general purposes are subject to one of the criticisms laid against syntheticapproaches. They are concerned with specifying and ordering what it is that the learner will beexpected to produce, rather than with helping the learner to build up a picture of the language.Wilkins himself is well aware of the problems of going beyond this producer-basedspecification:

If, however, we focus first on the receiver and then on the process of interaction we shall see that ourmodel implies more radical changes in the teaching of languages than would be necessary simply to'semanticise' existing forms of exercise or drill. The needs of the receiver will lead us to consideration ofthe place of authentic language materials. (Wilkins, 1976)

This echoes to some extent the distinction we have been making, following Widdowson,between use and usage. Artificially restricting the language to which learners are exposed in theinterests of simplified production distorts the language in specific ways, and it is unlikely thatwhen learners finally come face to face with the language in use they will meet the samedistortions. By attempting to make things simple for the learner as producer, we are makingthings


difficult for the learner as receiver, unless of course we are to accept low surrender value andpostpone contact with language use for a considerable time. But how could we possibly predict the needs of the receiver? How can we select, out ofthe vast range of linguistic knowledge, those items which are likely to benefit the learner asreceiver in communicative situations over which there are no controls? And even if we could,how could we make this language accessible to the learner? It is one thing to prescribeartificially the language the learner will be exposed to and exemplify this simplified language.It is quite another thing to accept that learners are likely to be exposed to a bewildering range oflanguage, and to enable them to draw useful conclusions and generalisations from exposure toauthentic language materials.

Specifying the lexical syllabus

As so often happens, however, the solutions to the enormously complex problem of syllabusspecification proved to be disarmingly simple. The commonest and most important, most basicmeanings in English are those meanings expressed by the most frequent words in English. If wecould identify the commonest words in English and identify their meanings, we would have thesolution to the whole problem. This very simple, yet highly significant insight was put forwardby John Sinclair, editor-in-chief of the COBUILD project. He proposed a return to the idea firstsuggested by people like H E Palmer and Michael West in the 1930s and 1950s - of a syllabusbased not on structures or on notions, but on words. This proposal is based on the observationthat a relatively small number of English words accounts for a very high proportion of Englishtext. Nation (1983) reports that Bongers (1947) produced a list of 3,000, words which would,he claimed, account for 97% of all written English text. Caroll et al. (1971) estimate that 1,000words account for 74% of all text; 2,000 for 81% and 3,000 for 85%. The figures based on acomputer analysis of the COBUILD corpus are slightly different, but point to the same basicconclusions: The most frequent 700 words of English constitute 70% of English text. The most frequent 1,500 words constitute 76% of text. The most frequent 2,s00 words constitute 80% of text.

This tells us two things. First, it shows the enormous power of the common words of English. Itmeans that, even though we have a vocabulary of tens of thousands of words, on average sevenout of every ten words we hear, read, speak or write come from the 700 most frequent words ofEnglish. In some texts, of course, the incidence is much lower. But in others it is very muchhigher. In a highly specialised text on nuclear physics, for example, there will be a highincidence of unusual words. But in many texts, even if they are highly specialised, theincidence of words outside the 2,500 frequency band is surprisingly low. For example, in this section 'Specifying the lexical syllabus', there are so far only 11 wordsnot in the top 2,500: corpus, dictionary, disarmingly, incidence, insight, lexical, specification,specialised, specify, syllabus, vocabulary. Of these words, three (specify, specification,specialised) have the same base form

Syllabus Content 47

as words that are in the top 2,500, and would therefore be easily guessable. This leaves eightwords, most of which are to do with the specialist nature of the topic concerned. As such, theseare used repeatedly in the text, and so will be quickly assimilated by the specialist reader. Ingeneral, therefore, the lexis in these paragraphs will be quite accessible to a learner who hasbeen systematically exposed to the commonest words in English, and who has an interest andgrounding in the specialist subject. Secondly, the figures illustrate dramatically the importance of careful selection inidentifying the lexical content of the syllabus. The 700 most frequent words cover 70% of text,but coverage begins to drop rapidly thereafter. The next 800 words cover a further 6% of textand the next 1,000 words cover 4%. The way in which utility begins to fall off at anaccelerating rate shows the paramount importance of identifying the right words to give us theright sort of coverage. It is true that general frequency is not the sole criterion. As we movedown the frequency band we need to take more and more account of the needs of specificlearners. Particular vocations, cultures, and sections of society will have specific needs whichare obscured in a general count. If we are talking about the 2,500 most frequent words inEnglish, however, no learner is likely to get very far without needing to express and understandnotions and functions carried by words at this level of frequency. As I have already pointed out, frequency counts are not new. Michael West's GeneralService List (1953) is still widely used by course writers today, not as a basis of a syllabus butas a check to see they have a reasonable coverage of the most frequent words of the language.Tickoo (1988) pays tribute to the pioneering work of West and adds:

Although 35 years old and in many ways outdated, GSL continues to serve ELT practitioners in theirsearch for the commonest uses of many common words. It is only in the last few years thatcomputer-based studies of word values, concordances, and collocations (Sinclair, 1985) have begun tooffer deeper insights into the behaviour of ordinary words. (Tickoo 1988)

We have already seen some evidence of the power and rigour of such computer-based studies,and how they can offer a more detailed study of larger and larger samples of language. Thespeed at which large corpora can be handled means that a description of today's language canbe not merely produced but regularly updated. The 700 most frequent words in current English were identified in the COBUILD study.With a few exceptions and additions (see page 77) these words make up the content of theremedial beginners course, the Collins COBUILD English Course, Level 1, as listed in the backof the Student's Book.

From words to meanings

This takes us as far as identifying the words, but we are looking for meanings. We began withthe assertion that 'the commonest and most important, most basic meanings in English are thosemeanings expressed by the most frequent


words in English'. The COBUILD project worked, as we have seen in Chapter 2, from a corpusto concordances, from concordances to a database and from a database to the final dictionaryentries. These entries summarised an array of information from the database which includedsyntactic and pragmatic information as well semantic. Often the information on a given word derived from such a study is very much in line withthe picture of that same word given in most EFL coursebooks. In the 7.3 million word MainCorpus the 22,000 occurrences of the word by, for example, reveal four major categories ofmeaning, leading to this picture of the word in the Collins COBUILD English Course, Level 1:

by (111)

1 who / what did itWally is awakened by the phone ringing. (91)Handicrafts made by people in the Third World. (104)Is that a magazine published by Macmillan? (146)

2 howYou solve it by elimination. (158)English by Radio. (146)London is only 55 minutes away by train. (179)Find out by talking to people.

3 whenEveryone helps to clear away after dinner. By then it's about7.15 or7.30p.m. (113)Even though the Forth River is only 66 miles long, by the time it reaches Edinburgh it isover 4 miles wide. (179)

4 whereBehind the chair? Of the person sitting by the desk? (72)Just by the bus stop. (122)On the wall by the entrance was a notice. (173)

The commonest of these meanings is the first, which accounts for just over 50% of occurrencesof by. It occurs most commonly with a passive verb, but there are around 1,000 occurrenceswith a noun of some sort:

1 . . . an investment of 12 million pounds by Courtaulds . . .2 . . . attacks on EEC ministers by a commission member . . .

Possibly underrated in many courses is the second use, particularly the pattern by + . . . ing.This accounts for almost 2,500 occurrences in the corpus with other expressions of mannermaking up a further 2,200 occurrences. The third use, on the other hand, may well receive moreattention than it merits, although it is certainly important, with some 300 occurrences in thecorpus. The fourth category is roughly twice as common as this, with around 600 occurrences.In spite of these weightings, however, the picture of by shown by the

Syllabus Content 49

COBUILD research accords pretty well with that traditionally given in EFL courses. It is notalways the case, however, that the research bears out our intuitions so neatly.

Some surprises

As one looks more closely at the evidence, surprises begin to emerge. A common EFL view ofthe words some and any, which is enshrined in many pedagogic grammars, suggests that wheresome is used in affirmative sentences its counterpart any is used in negative and interrogativesentences. But look at the concordances for the word any taken from the texts which make upthe first 13 units of Level 2 of CCEC. (see p.53) Look particularly to see how many of the occurrences are in negative sentences, how manyin interrogative and how many in affirmative sentences. These concordances show a verydifferent picture from that shown above, which is the picture presented to many languagelearners. Of the 38 concordance lines shown here, 23 are in affirmative sentences, 11 innegative and only 4 in interrogatives. At first sight one might think that the data is restrictedand therefore the picture is a false one. But the description of any derived from the corpusshows this picture: (see p.53) Far from being an aberration, the use of any in an affirmative sentence is in fact muchcommoner than its use in interrogatives. In this particular instance the information given tolearners by some coursebooks and grammars is simply wrong. Fortunately there were comparatively few findings which stood in outright contradiction tothe traditional picture. There were, however, a large number of findings which suggest that thetraditional picture is somewhat skewed. A study of the word would presents the picture: (seep.55) There are two things of particular interest to the EFL teacher here. First there is thefrequency of Category 2: 'used to'- indicates past habits. At 21 % of 14,687 this represents some3,100 occurrences. The conventional EFL wisdom is that this use of would is rather informal,even old-fashioned. The commonest way of expressing this notion is used to. A look at used toshows 1,100 occurrences with this meaning. In spite of the conventional wisdom would (or 'd,as in I'd) meaning 'used to' is almost three times as common as used to meaning 'used to'. Thisis not to say that we should teach would to the exclusion of used to. They are both commonforms and should both feature in an intermediate course. Used to also has a less restricted usethan would since it can be used with stative verbs such as know, understand, notice andbelieve- those not commonly found in the progressive tenses:

1 'I used to know,' Mary said.2 I don't notice things as much as I used to.

whereas there are no occurrences of would with these verbs. But the fact remains that wouldwith this meaning is extremely common and must be


included. It is surprising how many teachers reject this recommendation, preferring to hold totheir intuitions. A common reaction is to query the validity of the corpus. Is it predominantlymade up of written texts? Is it out of date? But no amount of doubt and suspicion can gainsayfigures as stark as these. It is not just that this use of would is more common than used to, it isthree times as common. A syllabus which ignores this fact is deficient. It ignores the fact thatoutside the classroom setting the learner is at least three times as likely to come across the formwould or 'd as the form used to. The second interesting thing about the word would has already been highlighted in ourdiscussion of the second conditional in Chapter 2. That is the predominance of Category 1.1,the use of would 'to talk of events which are of a hypothetical nature':

3 I suspect the Germans would still be a little bit cautious.4 I think The Tempest would make a wonderful film.

This makes up almost half of the 14,687 occurrences. As a sub-category of this we have wouldused in conditional sentences:

5 It would surprise me very much if sterling strengthened.6 You would be surprised if I told you what my credit is.

As we have seen the usual strategy in EFL courses is to present would as a part of the secondconditional. We have argued, however, that it would be more effectively taught lexically. Perhaps one of the most pervasive findings of the COBUILD study when used as the basisfor a syllabus, however, is the recognition that we use language in a much more abstract waythan most elementary courses would lead us to believe. We have already looked at the wordthing and noted that it refers much more commonly to an abstract entity, such as a propositionor argument, than to a physical object. The same is true of many other words. The pronounsthis and that behave in the same way:

7 Is that why you had a few days off?8 Is that clear, Sergeant?9 This is why I'm opposed to the plan.10 The law says he can't be evicted. Is this right?

Similarly the word see is much more common with the meaning 'understand':

11 I see what you mean.12 I don't really see how I can.

than with the meaning 'to perceive with the eyes':

13 I can hardly see without my glasses.14 He looked up and saw Ellen staring at him.

Verbs of motion are used to describe progress through time and through discourse as well asthrough space:

15 We'll come back to that point shortly.16 Most children stay at home until they reach school age.17 We finally arrived at a situation where we were making a small profit.

Syllabus Content 51

All of this suggests that there may be a considerable gulf between the language used inelementary and intermediate courses and the language used in the world outside. The languageof the classroom largely handles a world of concrete objects and observable events. Thelanguage needed outside the classroom is needed much more to create an abstract world ofpropositions, arguments, hypotheses and discourses. It may be that in learning our firstlanguage we move from concrete to abstract, but mature learners of a foreign language alreadyhave these abstract concepts as part of their knowledge of their first language. As maturelanguage users they will want to understand and create similar concepts in the target language.We should provide them with experience of the kind of language they need in order to do this. A fresh look at the meanings of common words, therefore, brings to light a number offailings in the traditional EFL view of language. Occasionally it is simply mistaken, as when itasserts that any is rarely used in affirmative sentences. Sometimes it is wrongly weighted, aswhen it includes used to for past habit but ignores the much commoner would. Sometimes it isuneconomical, looking at specific uses of words rather than making broad generalisations aboutthem. Thus it restricts would to the context of a conditional clause without recognisingexplicitly that the hypothetical meaning of would has a much wider currency than this. Finally I have suggested that unless we look with an open mind at the commonest uses ofthe common words of English and try to reproduce those uses in the classroom, then we are indanger of using language in the classroom in a very restricted way to create a material world ofobjects and events, ignoring the commonest and most typical uses of language which create aworld of abstract ideas. There is certainly enough evidence in the research to show that the useof language in the classroom is far from typical of language use in the world outside.

Patterns in language

Clearly there are recurrent patterns in language. Some of these patterns are so common and sosalient that we actually have names for them:

Noun phrase + am/are/is + . . . ing = the present continuous tense.Noun phrase + be + past participle (+ by + noun phrase) = the passive.

Course writers and teachers also identify more informally such patterns as ‘the going to future','the second conditional' and 'reported statements'. These are certainly items which need to becovered in an English course up to the elementary level. The matter at issue is how they are bestcovered. There are, however, a number of important patterns which are in danger of beingoverlooked altogether unless once again we go back to the research and make sure that we havea reasonable coverage of the language. I showed in Chapter 3 that the word way occurs with a variety of patterns:

1 The most effective way of countering the Soviet air threat . . .2 I believe this is the only way that an ordinary person can inspire others.3 Life isn’t the way it ought to be.


I suggested at the beginning of this chapter that the same applies to the word thing. There is alarge class of nouns like way, thing, idea, wish, notion, hope, intention, all of them verycommon, which pattern with of, that or to. It is worth emphasising that these words all play animportant part in structuring discourse, and that they are not generally highlighted inintermediate coursebooks. If we look at language we will discover these patterns and recognisetheir importance. If we rely on intuition - even, or perhaps especially, intuition informed byyears of ELT practice - we may overlook them. We shall also look later (Chapter 5) at the level of detail required if we are to offer learnersreasonable exposure to the common patterns of the language. The CCEC elementary syllabuscovers, with a few exceptions, the 700 most frequent words in English. For each of these wordswe worked with data sheets similar to those for way shown in Chapter 3, and those for wouldand any shown above detailing meanings and recurrent patterns. This elementary syllabus,therefore, consists of many hundreds of pages. If we are to attempt to list realistically thecontent of a syllabus it seems to me to be necessary to go into at least this level of detail. It isnot enough to offer a list of structural frames without indicating which words are likely to fillthem and also how the words which fill the frames are likely to behave. If one starts by listingwords and their behaviour, one generates automatically the structural environments and thewords which are likely to occur within them.

Syllabus Content 53

SAMPLE CONCORDANCES FOR THE WORD F0RM ‘ANY’

mmm no I " e never broken any bones so far…er…just someCertainly not me! I don’t really get any colds, or…well, I think I’mthat allows me to cope with almost any circumstances, and to make friendsare the most paid. Do you think any of them are underpaid or overpaid:secretary’s desk to see if there were any messages for him. There were none,But when it happened, I never had any reply at all. I had to just sittheirand healthy. I didn’t really have any career ambitions. Er…partly becauseclose friends or relatives ever won any money either through betting or in aone of these passe, you can travel any distance. You can go more or lessthe attached form and take it to any of the places listed here. (For 16-your Travelcard can be renewed at any of these outlets. WHAT PLACES CAN Iaren’t there? CF: Mm, Do you know any ? JM: Um…there is one wherethe microwaves stop being produced. Any microwave for sale in the UK mustserviced regularly, and if you have any problems contact us and we’ll try tohappened to you: Can you think of any other ways of getting meals orTO YOU? 1.1 Have you ever done any of these things? Has any of theseevery done any of these things? Has any of these things ever happened toyou?condition of your policy. (a) Report any statement made at the scene of themade at the scene of the accident by any one of the parties. (b) You will bemachines and selling tickets to mugs. Any fool could do that.I decided not to question him any more. I remembered how irritated I‘What makes you think that I’m any good at my job?’ I asked. ‘There’sis liars,’ he said. ’You can buy any car you like and it’ll never do whatthink of anything else? Is there any other…BG: I can’t. I can’t thinkM; Mm, red and yellow. JM: Mm, any , any group of people together, likewell, if you look at, um, say, amy, any group of people together, like saythere right now.’ ‘I don’t want any nonsense,’ insisted the hijacker.SB: Okay. You haven’t given me any idea of how long this is. You saidIt one bit.’ ‘Don’t talk to ‘im any more than necessary, you understandpenalty goes with which offence. Any comments: SERGEANT BROWN’S PARROTtyres down. I wouldn’t have done any damage like smash the windscreen ornished with you. You won’t be driving any car again, come to that, for severalhe said. ‘You don’t. And you ain’t. Any fool could tell that.’ He took fromdoor closed and locked and secure any ladders. 4 Do ALWAYS lock your car,out proper authority. If you are in any doubt, inform the Police. 7 makeMake certain you do not part with any cash for goods delivered to yourhousePay for. 8 Report to the Police any questionable telephone calls.ContactAt your local Police Station for any free Crime Prevention advice you think

Entry for the word form 'ANY'


Category 1: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHICH, ALL AND EVERY (Adj / det., adverb, pronoun) [42%of sample occs.]

Any child under two is given a bottle or a dummy / the young men went for any job they could ratherthan a farmjob / opposing all concessions of any KIND / Any lightweight objects such asnewspapers/England has the longest Open tradition of any OF the English links / closing any OF themwould be a major engineering feat / if any OF you wish to um transfer them to tapes / if any ONE was illthe whole street would know/we work more overtime than any OTHER country in Europe/library hasnever been more than half full at . . . at any TlME/he wouldn't offer the job to Hubert Humphrey or anyOTHER tired politician / a churchyard was no more sacred than any OTHER yard / she couldn't bear thethought of any man touching her / man could not hope to land on any Galilean moon /

Category 2: NONE AT ALL (WITH NEGATIVES) or SOME AS OPPOSED TO NONEI(INQUESTIONS) (Adj/det.) [39% of sample occs.]


I doN'T know any Russian / I caN'T even remember any English /There'd be a big to-do that couldN'Tdo anybody any GOOD/They had NOT dared to strike any MORE matches / we haveN'T any paper / inHong Kong's slum there is NEVER any privacy / I doN'T think there was any rain all summer long /There was NEVER any TIME for . . . / In this job I didN'T have to do any writing / this state of affairscould NOT go on any LONGER/the Conservative Government's lack of any overall transport policy/toplay as often as you can and to get rid of any inhibitions/'Did you, may I ask, get any results?'/ Have weany stain remover? /Phrases and misc:i ANY MORE e.g.: There wasn't much to do any more / I wasn't going to the houseany more /ii AT ANY RATE e.g.: she was undeniably attractive, at any rate to judge from thenewspaper photographs /iii IN ANY WAY e.g.: Was he linked in any way to men in other countries? /iv IN ANY CASE e.g.: it was NOT written for a specific woman and in any case awoman's circumstances constantly change /

Notes:i In Category 1 most of the occs. are adj / det. Pronouns and adverbs are much lessfrequent, occurring in particular collocational patterns (see examples above).ii In Category 2 'any' occurs with negatives, and verbs or clauses with negativeovertones e.g. Mr Habib's statement omitted any mention of the parties / it wasvery hard to find anyone with any previous experience /.iii Where 'any' occurs with an actual negative in a statement it seems to have theeffect of strengthening the negation e.g.: 'A picnic wouldN'T be any fun,' Sarahsaid, 'without you.'/iv Teaching wisdom has it that 'any' in questions implies that the expected answerwill be 'no'. Without knowing the answers to the questions asked in the exampleabove I can't shed any light on this.v 38% of sample occs. are preceded by not' or 'never'.vi Only 5% of sample occs. Are recognisable as questions.vii In 2% of sammple occs., ANY is followed by a comparative adj/adv., e.g.: /Right, is that any clearernow? /Why should you want to go any faster? /, where ANY means ‘at all’/ to some extent’.

Further information on right-hand collocates: OF 391 occs. OTHER 361 MORE 340 CASE 129 RATE 111 TIME 111 KIND 104 ONE 98 WAY 89

Syllabus Content 55

Entry for the word form 'WOULD'


Category 1: USED TO TALK OF EVENTS WHICH ARE OF A HYPOTHETICAL NATURE ATTHE TIME OF BEING MENTIONED, EITHER BECAUSE THEY ARE IN THE FUTURE ORBECAUSE THEY DEPEND ON OTHER EVENTS WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT OCCUR (Modalauxiliary) [48% of sample occs.]

she just thought she would LIKE a little flat of her own / I suspect that the West Germans would still bea little cautious because of their . . . /This means, give or take a bit, that it would take a full century toproduce a library of . . . / then the people of South Vietnam would receive their conquerors with relief / .. . direct massive action against the IRA because this would produce a polarisation / putting a privatedetective on your trail (which would probably cost more than you are fiddling) / I should have thoughtthat YOU would prefer an agreed incomes policy to one that . . . /'Productivity' became the magicpassword that would open the doors to prosperity / Opening the beaches would NOT be a solution or aconclusion / the barmen were threatening to strike. This would NOT only have deprived Dublin ofdrink, but . . . / but to look at her YOU would NEVER have guessed it / I think The Tempest wouldMAKE a wonderful film and have my own ideas . . . / telling the children about Bombay and how theywould live in a beautiful flat with a lift to go up / A handlebar moustache would HAVE completed thepicture / simply it came to my wife and myself that it would BE nice to keep bees /'. . . trade all mytomorrows for a single yesterday.' Would SHE make a deal like that? She wondered. / YOU wouldHAVE to be in at half past ten and YOU wouldn't be allowed any males in your room /

Category 1.1: USED IN CONDITIONAL SENTENCES 18% of sample occs.]It would surprise me very much IF sterling strengthened / You would BE surprised IF I told you whatmy credit is / Would it feel wrong IF I didn't come? / Would sex crimes BE reduced IF children . . . /Would THE world BE a better place to live in IF the . . . / IF we were to let their emotions go theywould run away with them / IF we were to put the idea to them all, it would require a plenarymeeting/IF he wasn't such a reactionary, I'd feel sorry for him / IF I'd typhoid or cholera aboard I'd sailat once for . . . / IF there were a beast I'd HAVE seen it / IF we left it'd take about three or four weeks tosettle down / IF you couldn't do that YOU wouldn't be able to do this next one /

Category 2: 'USED TO'- INDICATES PAST HABITS [21% of sample occs.]The old man would walk down with me to check the camels of an evening/'You are quaint, Crab,' shewould SAY / by car or forty miles on horseback to Hobeni. He would stay the weekend and gobushbuck hunting/'I do wish,' our mother would SAY, 'I do wish you'd listen to me.'/they would practiseall day standing on their heads / often as many as three of them would play the same game together / thecolonial servants' returning steamer would pass ‘the outward bound troop ship . . .'/'Damn it, I'm exactlythe same age as Hitler.' he would SAY /

Category 3: USED AS THE PAST TENSE OF 'WILL' IN REPORTED SPEECH, THOUGHT, ETC.[6% of sample occs.]


Thatcher rather ringingly SAID that all this would BE sorted out very quickly / that's what he SAID, hewould eat at his hotel/he was going to perform a story that she SAID I would NEVER have heard ofbefore / Ford SAID the company would NOT comment on the claim before the October meeting / But Ithink he secretly HOPED I would one day change my mind/Bar had promised them that he would sendher home every summer/I thought I would wait until something went wrong with his machine / therewas no hurry, he told himself. He would return here later / I TOLD him I'd BE right back / Lynn hadTOLD Derek she wouldn't BE long /

Category 4: USED TO MAKE REQUESTS, QUESTIONS, OFFERS, SUGGESTIONS, ETC. POLITE[2% of sample occs.]

'The devil take me if I can get my car to start. Would YOU be so good as to give me a push . . .'/WouldYOU kindly send me your autograph?/Would YOU switch the light on, please? /Would YOU pleaseremove your glasses? /'Would YOU LIKE some coffee?' 'No, thank you'/'Would YOU do me a favour?''Of course!'/'Would YOU LIKE me to sing you a song?' I asked / Would YOU LIKE to see the house.Rudolph? / Wouldn't YOU LIKE to come with me . . . / Would YOU LIKE to come and read Proustwith me? /'Would YOU LIKE to go to Ernie's for dinnef? /'You'd better tell me all about it.' 'WouldYOU mind very much if I did?'/'After what you've been through, Mr Gerran, I'd advise you to give it amiss'/Phrases and misc:i WOULD YOU SAY (THAT) e.g.:/Would YOU say that this method can beused widely /

Notes:i The percentage counts given in the entry are based only on non-sentence-initialoccs of WOULD. Examples are taken, however, from 'would', 'Would', and'I'd'.ii There are two problems with the frequency figures given above. First, Category 1is very large and may contain occs. which should have gone in 1.1. The IF maywell have been in an earlier or later part of a line which was not shown. Some ofthe occs. also implied IF, but does that make them conditionals?iii Second, Category 4 accounts for only 2% of non-sentence initial occs. In sentence initial occs. itaccounts for about 65%.iv Sentence initial occs. only account for about 3% of total occs.v WOULD is frequently preceded by a pronoun.vi In contracted form - I'd, It'd, wouldn't, etc. - there were a higher proportion ofmore obviously conditional sentences.vii WOULD can also be used instead of 'do' in some instances where it has the effectof making something sound more tentative or polite, or acts as an intensifiere.g.:/I wouldn't agree with you that it takes an . . ./How my English friendswould rag me! /

Further information on left-hand Further information on right-handcollocates: collocates:I 1,399 occs. BE 2,475 occs.IT 1,312 HAVE 1,517HE 1,032 NO 556SHE 562


CHAPTER 5: Communicative methodology and syllabusspecification

Communicative methodology, a definition

There is a good deal of confusion as to what is involved in a communicativeapproach to language teaching. I argued in Chapter 1 that part of this confusion stemsfrom the fact that an approach involves both syllabus specification and methodology.Sometimes the term 'communicative' is used to describe an approach incorporating anotional-functional syllabus on th t. the grounds that such a syllabus is expressed notin terms of language items, but in terms of what is communicated through language.But the methodology which realises a notional-functional syllabus may be apresentation methodology which involves virtually nothing in the way of genuinecommunication in the classroom. Sometimes the term 'communicative' is taken as referring to the methodologyinvolved in a particular approach. In terms of the distinction made earlier between afocus on form and a focus on meaning, activities which focus on meaning would beseen as communicative, because learners are expected to acquire language by using itto communicate with one another, not simply to display a knowledge of linguisticform. I would like to distinguish between three kinds of classroom activity (see J DWillis 1983). The first two, citation and simulation, focuson language form. Thepurpose of citation activities is to model target utterances for the learners This isusually achieved through the kind of presentation methodology described in Chapter1. Teachers have a range of devices for this. The important thing, as we have seen, isthat students are required to respond to a teacher elicitation with an utterance which isappropriate in form. So Socoop's perfectly acceptable sentence:

Yes, I am, er, father of four children.

was rejected by the teacher because it did not display the form the teacher wanted, averb with a gerund as object. Any of the following would have been acceptable:

I

lovelikeenjoy.hatecan't stand

being a father

irrespective of whether it happened to be true or not. Nowadays teachers often go to great lengths to createtaste the impression that


language is being used rather than simply manipulated. There is even talk of'communicative drills'. But such a concept is contradictory, since the essence ofcommunication is choice and a basic requirement of drilling is the restriction ofchoice. The advocates of 'communicative drills' argue that provided the learner isrequired to produce a true statement, then whatever they say is meaningful. Theywould argue, for example, that in the sequence quoted in Chapter 1, Socoop'sutterance of the form:

I like being a father.

would be meaningful because it would be a true statement. In a narrow sense so itwould. In the same way an example given in a dictionary definition is meaningful. Itis a sentence of English for which we can conceive a meaningful context. When I readin the Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary:

I shouldn't write these down if I were you.

I do not take it that the lexicographer is advising me not to waste my time by copyingdown definitions. I know that the sentence is being used simply to illustrate themeaning of should. In the same way, were Socoop to say:

I like being a father.

he would be uttering a 'true' sentence. But he would not be using it to inform theteacher about his attitude to parenthood. He would be doing it to demonstrate hiscontrol of the target pattern. The intention behind his utterance would be to showcontrol of language form, not to convey information. Some classroom activities have a more elaborate similarity with acts ofcommunication. When, for example, students are asked to write an essay on 'TheHappiest Day of My Life' most of them know very well that the purpose of thisactivity is not to inform, amuse or entertain the teacher. It is to display control overthe forms of the language. Sophisticated students will aim quite specifically to avoiderrors or to display particular language forms in the guise of informing the teacherwhat happened on a particularly happy day. I call activities of this kind simulationactivities, because although there is an appearance of communication, the real purposeis to display control of language form. The same is true of role play activities in whichthe learner is expected to display forms of the language which have just beenpresented and practised. The role play is simply a device to enable the learner todisplay particular forms. Students adopt, for example, the roles of doctor and patientsimply in order to show that they have 'learned' expressions like:

What's the problem?

and:

I've got a pain in my back.

Simulation activities, therefore, are constrained in the same way as citation activities.Learners know that they are expected not necessarily to tell the truth or play aconvincing role, but to display control of language form. Classroom activities of the third type, which focus on outcome, are calledreplication activities because they replicate within the classroom aspects of

Communicative Methodology and Syllabus Specification 59

communication in the real world. There is a wealth of activities already accessible toteachers involving games, problem solving, information gathering and so on in whichlearners use language for real communication. In these activities they ask questionsbecause they need to know the answers in order to solve a problem or win a game, notsimply to show that they can produce question forms in English. The forms of thelanguage they use are in no way predetermined. They can use whatever language theywish in order to achieve the desired outcome quickly and efficiently. I would define acommunicative methodology as a methodology based on this kind of language use, inwhich learners are required to use language to achieve real outcomes. What we havedone in CCEC is match a lexical syllabus with a communicative methodology of thiskind.

Language varieties in the classroom

Ellis (1984) proposes what he calls a 'variable competence model' of second languageacquisition. He points out that native speakers do not have just one single languagesystem, but a number of overlapping language systems. This is a notion that alllanguage users are familiar with. The style of writing I am using here, for example,would probably be inappropriate in an informal letter. The kind of spoken language Iuse in delivering a public lecture would be most inappropriate in style if I were to useit at the family breakfast table. We all move easily from one style to anotherdepending on where we are, who we are talking to, what we are talking about and soon. To make this point, Ellis draws on the work of Labov (1972). Labov's workshows that there is a predictable relationship between the circumstances ofcommunication and the variety of language produced. Where communication ispersonal and casual, users adopt a ivernacular' or natural variety. Where thecircumstances of communication are more formal, users move towards a moreprestigious variety. In the case of the New Yorkers whom Labov sfudied, the naturalstyle showed a much higher incidence of /dis/ and /daet/, as opposed to the /bis/ and/daet/ of the more prestigious variety. By analysing the relative frequency of 'speechmarkers' like /dis/ and /daet/ as opposed to /dis/ and /daet/ Labov was able to showthat his subjects operated a range of styles according to how much they wereconcerned with the form of their utterance. Applying this to language learning, Ellis goes on to argue that:

SLD (Second Language Development) is accounted for by demonstrating thatstructures which are initially stylistically restricted to formal contexts of use aregradually available for use in more informal contexts. (Ellis 1984)

In other words learners, like native speakers, have a number of different languagesystems. There are times when they are careful about how they express themselvesand times when they are not so careful. This is a process that the teacher can usefullyexploit in the classroom. Before looking at the pedagogical implications, however,there are three ways in which I would like to reformulate Ellis's position. First of all the learner's switch from one variety to another is developmental in away that the native speaker's is not. New Yorkers vary their style according


to social context. But all the styles they use have a real value. Unless they have somesocial motivation for doing so, they are not going to eliminate /dis/ and /daet/ fromtheir repertoire. Learners, on the other hand, do want to eliminate features of theirrepertoire and replace them with a different variety. They know that their 'vernacular'style, an unstable interlanguage, has a limited value outside the classroom and theywant (assuming of course that they are reasonably motivated) to transcend this styleand replace it with another. Secondly, learners are operating within a restricted environment. The classroomdoes not immediately create the variety of social contexts to which the native speakerresponds in the outside world. At an early stage the learners' first concern is withsome kind of propositional/functional adequacy. Provided they can get the basiccontent of their message across they are not concerned with much beyond that - andeven that limited objective may be achieved only with some effort. If learners havebeen set purely pragmatic goals there is no reason for them to go beyond that limitedpropositional/functional adequacy. Unfortunately, many teachers have a similarlyrestricted view of what is meant by communication. They cast doubt on the value ofpair and group work in which learners communicate with one another unsupervisedby the teacher on the grounds that 'My students can communicate all right, but theykeep on making a lot of mistakes'. And unless teachers work to create an environmentin which learners will be moved to look for more than propositional/functionaladequacy, that is exactly what will happen. Unless teachers manipulate the socialcontext within the classroom, there is no reason why learners should look to a prestigevariety of the language - one which in their case is as far as possible formallyaccurate. Finally, we need to question the nature of the structures that are restricted andneed to be made more widely available. Ellis's formulation may suggest that a'structure' is a linguistic unit. It might be better conceived of as a mental constructrelating to the way the learner's internalised grammar conceptualises the language,rather than as a form of words or even the kind of abstract patterning described informal grammars. Certainly if we understand the word 'structure' to refer almostexclusively to clause or sentence structure in the way it seems to be understood byproponents of a presentation methodology, we shall have a very restricted view of thelearning process. Considering the position of the learner in the classroom, let us say for the timebeing that all learners have a variety of English which they regard as adequate forcertain restricted communicative purposes in the classroom. They also haveknowledge about the forms of the language which they may be able to deploy to movetowards a more universally acceptable variety. They also have the motivation todevelop this restricted variety towards something which has a wider currency outsidethe classroom. Most important of all, they will be subject to the same kind of socialpressures in using the target language as in using the native language. Given the rightclassroom environment they will attempt to refine the language which is immediatelyavailable to them. The teacher's task, then, is to create an environment in which thelearners will respond to familiar social pressures and adjust their languageaccordingly. This can be done by manipulating the communicative context. When students areworking in pairs or small groups to solve a problem or to exchange


information, they will tend to use what to them is a natural variety, the language thatcomes easily to them, in the way that /dis/ and /daet/ come easily to many NewYorkers. The circumstances of their communication are:

Private: Students are working in a small group, all the members of which are working as aunit towards the achievement of a common goal.Spontaneous: They are producing language in real time in response to their changingperceptions of the problem they are tackling and of the way a solution is best achieved.Exploratory: The responsibility for a successful outcome is shared. There is some tolerance ofimprecision. Meanings can be overtly negotiated by continuous feedback. Useful meaningsare built up by trial and error, by hint and counterhint.

If, on the other hand, a student is asked to stand up in front of the class as a whole andoffer a considered report of the results of his or her group's deliberations, thecircumstances of the communication are quite different. They are:

Public: The student is speaking to a wider group. This group does not have the solidarity of acommon purpose. The setting is different. It is a classroom rather than a secluded corner of aclassroom. This means that delivery must be more deliberate.Rehearsed: The student is offering a considered report. He or she is not producing language inreal time but is delivering a performance which has been, at least to some extent, rehearsed.Final: It is no longer a question of a group of participants working together to reach aconclusion. What we have now is a monologue in which the speaker carries adisproportionate responsibility for the success or otherwise of the enterprise. He or she mustbe precise or explicit, since the circumstances do not allow for the same kind of negotiation ofmeaning as does the group situation.

One would predict, and this is borne out by informal observation, that in the firstset of circumstances students produce the kind of language that comes naturally. Inthe second set of circumstances they aim at what they believe to be a prestige form ofthe target language. They want to speak well and clearly and above all accurately.

A variable competence methodology

One way of achieving this shift of communicative context is to set up a series ofactivities which vary the demands on the learner in a principled way. The componentsof such a methodology could be labelled Task, Planning and Report (Willis andWillis 1987). The Task phase consists of a task-based activity focusing on outcome - areplication activity. In an early unit in CCEC, for example, students are asked tointerview one another and then to draw up a family tree for their partner on the basisof the information gleaned from the interview. The circumstances of the task areprivate, spontaneous, and exploratory. Students aim at task-orientated efficiencyrather than formal accuracy. They are seeking to achieve propositional/functionaladequacy. During this phase the teachers are asked to restrict themselves to functionalcorrection. That is to say, they are to restrict their correction to the resolution ofcommunicative problems - they are not to


correct students simply for the sake of formal accuracy. In working on functionalcorrection they are working with the students, helping them to achieve the outcomethat the students themselves are working towards. In the Report phase of the cycle, students will report to the rest of the class theresults of their work during the task phase. Here the circumstances of communicationare public, rehearsed, and final. In these circumstances theform of the messageassumes great importance. Students will move towards what they believe to be aprestige form of the target language that prescribes a high level of formal accuracy.The report phase is still an activity which focuses on outcome, provided of course thatsome outcome is built into the report. (In the example we have given, the results of afamily tree exercise are incorporated by the class into a class survey.) But the activityalso sets a premium on formal accuracy. It is, if you like, a fluency activity with afocus on accuracy. There are a number of ways that a teacher can make the circumstances ofcommunication more 'formal', so as to move the learner towards a desire for accuracy.In general the written form of the language demands a higher level of accuracy thanthe spoken form. This is because it is more permanent and therefore more public,more open to inspection. The same effect can be achieved by making a recording ofstudents' reports on audio or video cassette. Similarly if learners prepare notes on anOHP transparency and then come out to the front of the class to make a report, there isgreater formality and greater pressure for acpuracy. It is important to identifytechniques which work within a given teaching situation. If students are to do themselves justice in the report phase of the cycle, they aregoing to need help. That is the purpose of the Planning phase. As students worktogether to prepare their report, the teacher works with them, helping them to rephraseand polish until an acceptable version is realised. This involves correction based onformal accuracy. But this focus on formal accuracy is not dictated by the teacher'swhim or by the nature of a citation activity. It is the product of the communicativecircumstances which will pertain during the report phase. Once again the teacher isworking with the students, helping them to realise a form of language which theythemselves want to achieve. Of course most students will still make mistakes even inthe most formal contexts. The important thing, however, is that they are trying toshape their vernacular style towards something more universally acceptable.

Extending the methodology

What we have established so far is a three stage methodology:

Task: In which learners carry out a replication activity. The focus is on the outcome oflanguage use rather than the display of language form.Planning: In which learners prepare to present the findings of the previous phase to the classas a whole. At this stage the teacher helps with correction, rephrasing and so on.Report: In which learners present their findings. The focus is on outcome, on actuallypresenting their findings, but also on achieving the level of accuracy demanded by thecircumstances of communication.


If learners are to gain experience of language in use it is not enough for themsimply to work with tasks for themselves. Ideally they must also be given exposure tolanguage relevant to the task they have performed or are about to perform, and inparticular they must be given the opportunity to see how competent speakers andwriters use the target language to achieve similar outcomes.

Let us look at a task from CCEC Level 1:

78 Ways of saying numbers

78a a How do you say telephone numbers in yourlanguage? b Look at the numbers on the right. What arethey? What about 1989 for example? Could it be atelephone number, or a date, or car V number?How would you say it if it was a date? Onethousand nine hundred and eighty-nine? . . . Onenine eight nine. . .?

Discuss with your partner how you could say thenumbers. How many different ways can you findand what do they each mean ?

• Tell the class

78c c Bridget and David talked aboutthe same numbers.Did they think of the same things as you?Write down the things David and Bridgetthought of.

22

0

1989

3.14

748

22756

10.12

021 337 0452

Before students do the task for themselves the teacher will probably introduce thetask, focusing attention on the problem and on possible solutions. There will be ateacher-student exchange of this kind:

T: What about this one? (writes 3.14 on the board)S: Time is three fourteen.T: Good. If we were talking about the time we would say three fourteen . . . or?S: Fourteen past three.T: Yes fourteen minutes past three. What else could it be?

This preliminary stage provides learners with an introduction to the task they areabout to do. It provides them with some ideas on how to approach the task. It alsoprovides valuable exposure to language, in particular to the forms could


and would and to the hypothetical or ‘unreal' use of the past tense. But the im-portant thing is the preparation for the task. Language input is inevitable, but itshould be incidental. Further exposure is provided in the form of native speakers working towardsa similar outcome. We recorded two native speakers doing the task. Here is anexcerpt from the recording we made:

A: Er, ten twelve. That could be the time. You'd just say ten twelve. The dateyou'd say B: Mm Or twelve minutes past ten.A: . . . either the tenth of December or the twelfth of October . . .B: Mm . . .A: . . . depending on whether it was English or American. Erm . . . If this was atelephone number you'd say o two one three three seven o four five two, wouldn'tyou?

This recording provides us with a listening stage, which gives further exposure to theforms could and would, and to the hypothetical use of the past tense. In addition to this, the recording provides us with an opportunity to studylanguage use. It provides us with a text for detailed study and analysis. An appropriateanalysis task here would be:

Read through the transcript and find three occurrences of 'd. What does 'd mean? Why is thepast tense used in the transcript? Are they talking about the past?

This analysis is clearly a language focused activity and one which focuses onaccuracy and the relationship between form and meaning. In this case it highlights theway English handles the notions of hypothesis and possibility. We now have a six stage methodology:

Introduction: In which the teacher prepares the learners tor tne lasK mey a~about to perform.Task - planning - report: The basic task-based cycle.Listening: In which learners listen to native speakers carrying out a paralleltask.Analysis: In which learners look critically at aspects of the native speaker language use in thelistening phase.

It is the task stage which is central to the methodology. It is by working at the taskthat students grapple with meaning and create a meaningful context for the languagethey have heard and are about to hear. In the task we have been looking at theyconsider possibilities:

That could be the time.

and set up hypotheses:

If this was a telephone number . . .

and talk about the consequences:

. . . you'd say o two one . . .

Of course many learners may not have the right English. They may say:

Maybe time. If is time is ten twelve.


This does not matter at first. The important thing is that they are looking for ways ofexpressing possibility and hypothesis. They are searching the English they have andmaking it do the work. This is a creative and useful process. One of the most valuableskills learners can acquire is that of making a little go a long way, of doing a lot withthe limited language they have at their disposal. Often this involves them in extendingtheir language in a way which is not strictly acceptable. They make mistakes. But ifthey make mistakes by manipulating language to achieve the meanings they want toachieve teachers should learn to recognise this as a sign of useful creativity andingenuity. It may be that learners will pick up some of the language they want at theintroduction stage. If not, they will have another opportunity at the planning stagewhen the teacher offers help and correction. There will be a further opportunity at thereport stage, either because they hear their classmates use the appropriate forms orbecause the teacher follows up and reformulates using those forms. Next, during thelistening stage, they will hear fluent speakers of English using the forms. Finally, theanalysis stage will focus in detail on some target forms (in the example given aboveon 'd meaning would and on the hypothetical past tense). The most important thing isthat by using their own language in the attempt to get these meanings across, thelearners have created a precise context. They are already looking for the language toexpress these notions, they know that they need the language, and they are likely toaccept it readily when it is offered. The paramount function of the task, then, is toprovide a context and a need for target language forms.

Working with written language

The same methodology can be used for exposure to and analysis of the writtenlanguage. (see p.66-67) In this sequence learners begin with an introduction in the form of a teacherleddiscussion about the kind of arrangements that need to be made in setting up anoverseas tour. They go on from this to do a task in groups or pairs. Having done this,they are given time to prepare a report to the class of their findings. Finally there is ananalysis exercise based on some authentic written correspondence which focuses onways of referring to the future in English. Again we have focus shifting to and fromoutcome and form.

The learner's corpus

We now have a methodological cycle which gives plenty of opportunity for focus onlanguage form within the context of a task-based methodology. But we still have noway of specifying syllabus content. The spoken and written texts, however, doprovide us with raw material. They provide a corpus of language which learners willhave processed for meaning and which therefore consists of, to adapt Krashen'sterminology, not only comprehensible input but comprehended input. These textstherefore represent an important part of the learner's experience of English.


133 The Yetties to South East Asia - April/May 1982 .

Quickly read the extracts from letters and interns correspondence and say which order they werewritten in. Which dates fit which extracts?

20 November 198116 December 198126 Feb '829 March '825 May '826 May '82

(NOTE: Pages 66 and 67 comprise extracts from the Cobuild English coursebook relating to thisexercise, not reproduced here.. The material consists of facsimiles of six letters. or partially visibleletters, including addresses, company logos etc, on the subject of a forthcoming tour of South East Asiaby a pop group called ‘The Yetties’. There are also further exercises and a Language Study boxcontaining common phrases used in letters.)


In Chapter 3 we looked at the ways in which lexicographers move from a corpus oflanguage to an analysis of that corpus, and therefore to generalisations about thelanguage as a whole. We have suggested that as part of our methodology we shouldinclude an analysis component in which students look critically at samples oflanguage to see what they can learn from it. l suggest that this process is analogous tothat carried out by the lexicographer. I would argue that just as lexicographers andgrammarians clarify and systematise their knowledge about the language by analysisof text, so learners can make use of similar techniques to formulate and testhypotheses about the way language items are used. In the examples of analysis activities given above, learners look at specific textsand discover from those texts some of the ways in which English encodes possibilityand hypothesis, and some of the ways in which English refers to future time. We neednot, however, confine analysis activities to a single text. Look, for example at thesetwo exercises on the word by, the first taken from CCEC Level 1 and the second fromLevel 2:

111 Grammar words

by

1 who/what did itDo you think this would be said by a teacher?

2 howShe begins by asking what time they start.I do my shopping by car.I come to work by bus.

3 whenI've got to finish this by tomorrow.It opens at eight, so I'm there by eight.

4 whereThere's a phone box by the school. It's over there by the post office.

Find examples for each category.

a She starts by asking what time they begin work.b She usually gets back home by 9 a.m.c . . . handicrafts made by people in the Third Worldd Come and sit here by me.e Guess what your partner's number is by asking 'Is .it under 50. . .'f I think I left it by the telephone.g I have to finish this by tomorrow.

Compare the examples in each category with the examples in the GrammarBook.


96 Preposition spot

by

1 showing who or what does somethingThe microwaves are absorbed by the food. ( 91 )B & B -in most cases it will be run by the owner.(39)

2 answering the question 'How?'Microwaves work by using a device called amagnetron... (91) They only deal with enquiries by letter.

3 answering the question 'When?'

(Note: cartoon picture omitted)

By the time we got downstairs they were alreadyhalfway down the street. (178)

4 meaning 'near' or 'next to' I would probably wait by the car. (150)

Find two examples for category 1, three forcategory 2 and one example for categories 3 and 4.Write down the other four phrases with by. Whatdo they mean?a I can get by in French . . . ( 12)b I'm fairly interested in sport, but by no meansfootball. (20)c We went up by car. (29)d She answers the door, looking a bit angry, as it'sone in the morning by then (78)e He sees this girl standing by the road sidehitching. (78)f They produce heat by friction,(91)g Ensure your safety by getting microwave ovensserviced regularly. (91)h I was driving up to London by myself (97)I There'll be a left turn followed by an immediatenght.j I was approached by an American mother . ..(144)k 'By the way,' I said, 'why did you lie to him?'(161)

All of the examples in these exercises are taken from the learner corpus. They areall utterances taken from the course materials, which learners have processed or willprocess for meaning during the course of their study. We looked at similar examplesin Chapter 3 to show how the uses of the word way were extended and recycled overthree levels of CCEC. Just as the computer enables lexicographers to retrieveconcordances from a large corpus of language under study, so the same computertechniques enable course writers to retrieve concordances for learners to study fromthe corpus of language contained in a language course. The effect of this procedure isto enable learners to examine their experience of English and to learn from it. In apresentation methodology, the teacher and course writer in effect say to the learner ilam an experienced user of English and as such am able to present you with theseacceptable samples of the language organised in such a way that from them you willbe able to make useful generalisations for the future.' In enabling learners to examinetheir own experience of the language, teachers and course writers are saying 'You, thelearner, have valuable experience of English. We will help you draw that experiencetogether and see how it fits with a description of the way words are used and patternedto create meanings.' They no longer simply preser~t language to the learner for thepurpose of illustrating language form. Instead they encourage learners to examinetheir own experience of the language and make generalisations from it. There is no way of knowing for sure what language items will be assimilated bythe learner at a given stage of his or her language development. We are thereforeobliged to recycle the typical patterns of the language so that learners will be exposedto them time and time again. At the same time we help learners develop a curiosityabout language and an analytical capacity so that they will gain maximum benefitfrom exposure. Finally we recycle language items not only by offering them tolearners in new contexts, but also by retrieving earlier


occurrences so that we can exploit the learner's corpus, their experience of the the language in use.

Syllabus specification

Once we think in terms of the learner's corpus, we no longer need to illustrate thelanguage for the learner piece by piece. We can begin by specifying what it is thatlearners need to know about the language. We then go on to assemble a corpus whichincorporates these 'items'. If we are committed to a task-based methodology, we willbegin with an inventory of tasks and will go on to collect a set of texts arising fromthese tasks. If we are committed to a lexical syllabus we analyse our texts taking lexisas a starting point and check to see that we have the coverage we want. As we shallsee in the next chapter, ensuring that we have the right coverage is by no means astraightforward process. Once this is done, however, we know that we have a corpuswith which the learner will become familiar, and frorh which we can retrieve all thelanguage we want to cover. We can realistically specify 700 of the most frequentwords together with their main meanings and patterns as syllabus content. This isbecause we now know that we have a corpus of language which includes these words,meanings and patterns. The learner will be exposed to a carefully constructed sampleof the language which contains the most common important features of the languageas a whole, and all of these features can be highlighted for the learner. The syllabus from which we as course designers for CCEC worked is hundredsof pages long. It consists of data sheets for around 700 words of the kind shown forway on page 32 and for any and would on pages 53 and 55. In the Collins COBUILDEnglish Course the syllabus from which the teacher works is contained in the teachingmaterials and is specified in teachers' notes. Unit 3, for example, lists learningobjectives under the headings of Crammar and Discourse, Tasks and SocialLanguage:

OBJECTIVES

Lexical objectives are in TB48Grammar and discourse

a The meaning and use of common prepositional phrases ofplace (34,39)b The use of the quantifiers both, all, some, neither, more(35,46 4Bc)c The use of one/ones as in the blue one (34.35,4&)d The tendency to run a check list of information received.marked by one, another, second, third etc (36,37)e The use of mine (36,38)f The use of so to mean the same as in such phrases as sois mine (33)g The description of people by the use of has/have got andwith or by the verb be followed by an adjective or the-ing form of the verb. (38,39)h There is/are/was/were to express location or to identifynumber (35,42,44,45)i The structure of affirmative and interrogative sentenceswith there(45)j Stress (focusing on the important words) (41.47)k Contrastive stress (40)I Weak forms of of, the, there, is and are (35,45)m Ouestion words how, what, where, who, why. (48a)n Three English sounds: /k/ as in colour, /r/ as in grey./l/ as inyellow. Silent r as in are (40)o The use of okay, so, ah to mark an item in a list. (37)

Tasks

a Understanding descriptions of people and identifyingthem in terms of their clothes and surroundings (36, 38)b Asking and responding to questions to elicit specificinformation (38)c Checking on information received (36, 38)d Listing stems from memory and identifying them intermsof position (42)e Gtving precise reasons for a conclusion (46)f Explaining the process of logical deduction (46)

Social language

a Offering things to people (47) b Asking for and giving explanations about language(41 )

Remind students tro look out for the title in the Unit Itcomes in recording 36b


It also lists under Lexical Objectives over 80 words which are introduced in the unit,for example:

him 1 object pronoun The woman nextto him. Do you know him?See also them, us, you.hold 1 holding his arm/handlady 1 a very polite word for womanlanguage 1large 1 a large blue bookleft 1 on the left, to the left oflight 1 Shall we have the lights on?Switch the lights off. Traffic lightsHeadlights1.2 It'sgetting light/dark2 Shall I light the gas? A lightedcigarette3 not heavy. Her bag was very light4 not dark She had light brown hairmiddle 1 in the middle (of)

mine 1 Mine has got three people in itSo has mine.neither 2 Neither of his daughters goesto school.next 3 indicating position next to himno 1 not any. no blue ones. no lights on.no children3.2 used to refuse an offer. No thanksnone 1 not one. None of the yellowshapes are squares.nothing 2 emphatic - in phrases likenothing else, nothing but .one 1.1 this one, the red oneones 1 the blue onespart 1 parts of the bodypink 1red 1

It further lists the items as they occur with each section. A task involving identifyingdifferences, for example, covers this language:

38 Find the differences

Aims: I To describe and identify people using new language from this unit and anyother English students know.2 To listen for relevant information in a more extended stretch of conversation.

Lexis: arms, carry, group, hat, holding, lady, mine, second, show. so, with. yoursUnderstanding only: Don't show..., each, Get into pairs - , someone, so has mine,stand Revision: but, talk to

The syllabus is, then, enormously detailed. It needs to be so if we are to provide goodcoverage of 700 words and their meanings and patterns. We have, then, in Level 1 of CCEC a corpus of language which illustrates themeanings and uses of almost all of the 700 most frequent words in English. Learnersare exposed to this corpus as language in use in that they listen to it or read it andunderstand and process the language. They are given the opportunity to focus onusage through a series of exercises, most of them involving language they havealready processed for meaning. In terms of language production they are asked toencode meanings similar to those encoded by native speakers in using language toperform a series of tasks.


The methodology which exploits this corpus now has six components:

Introduction: This gives students initial exposure to target forms within a communicativecontext.Task: This provides an opportunity to focus on and realise target meanings. Students maybegin to approximate to the target language form or they may use quite different, evenungrammatical forms.Planning: The teacher helps students to move towards accurate production, often bymodelling the target forms for them.Report: Students have another opportunity to use target forms. Again, however, there is afocus on fluency as well as accuracy.Listening/Reading: Students have a chance to hear or read the target forms used in a contextwhich has become familiar to them through their own attempts to perform and report the task.(This stage may come immediately after Introduction, but normally comes just beforeAnalysis.)Analysis: This is an awareness raising exercise which gives the learners a chance to formulategeneralisations about the language they have heard.

Controlled practice

Finally, what about controlled practice? Does it have a place? In order to answer thisquestion we should first consider the aim of controlled practice activities. I think thefirst thing here is to dispel the notion that practice of this kind teaches grammar. Ithighlights acceptable patterns in English, but it does little more than that. You canrepeat passive sentences as long as you like, and that may help you to see how theyare formed. But it will not help you with the important and difficult thing about thepassive which is not 'How is it formed?' but 'How is it used?' This question can onlybe answered by exposure and by analysis. The passive is learned by seeing andhearing passive forms in use, not once but many many times, by focusing attention onhow they are used and by providing learners with opportunities to use the same formsfor themselves. The same applies to any other pattern. The important and difficultthings are to do with use rather than form. The role of pattern practice, then, should be to enhance the learner's familiarityand fluency with holophrastic units whose meaning and grammar have already beenhighlighted and exemplified in use. At first sight this takes us back to Wilkins'analytic strategy, by which the learners' attention was focused on functionalrealisations in the hope that these would become part of the learners' repertoire.CCEC focuses on the common patterns of English as identified by the COBUILDresearch in the hope that an analysis of these patterns will help learners benefit fromexposure to the corpus of which they are a part. The difference is that instead ofpresenting items to the learner and drilling them in the hope that they become part ofthe learner's repertoire, we are identifying those items which are already part of thelearner's corpus and building on the learner's familiarity to promote fluent production.We might therefore usefully drill such 'chunks' as:easiest

… the easiestbestsimplest

waysolution

is to …


But this will not be an attempt to teach grammar. It will be an attempt to consolidatesuch units so that they are easily retrievable. It is an attempt to consolidate thefamiliar rather than to present the unfamiliar. The rationale for this type of patternpractice rests first on the belief that learners do accumulate language form, oftenphrases. Secondly it rests on the belief that an important part of the native speaker'srepertoire is in the form of prefabricated chunks of language which are retrieved anddeployed in use. We are, of course, far from sure what these chunks are. What we aresure of, however, is that we are more likely to find them by looking empirically at thepatterns which occur with great frequency in the speech and writing of nativespeakers than by starting from an abstract grammatical description. It certainly seems to be the case that learners (particularly in the early stages)want controlled practice, but I do not believe that it should be central to amethodology. First of all I suggest that this kind of practice should be little and often.A short sharp burst of practice can be a useful confidence builder, but if you spend toolong at it students soon begin to parrot the repetition without thinking about what theyare doing. This may be useful if the aim is to consolidate a holophrase. It does not,however, help to teach grammatical form. That can only be done by looking atlanguage in use so that learners can become aware not only of the phrases but also oftheir meaning and use. Secondly I think this kind of practice should come when learners have somefamiliarity with the item to be drilled, and that it should come at the end of themethodological cycle, not at the beginning. The danger with focusing mechanicallyon form too early in the cycle is that students see what follows not as an opportunityto use language for communication, but rather as an opportunity to produce theprescribed form as often as possible. The focus on form gets in the way of fluencypractice and all we have are a series of activities designed to elicit a particularlanguage form. We should first create a context and demonstrate language in use. We do thisduring the Listening/reading, Planning and Analysis stages. Students may begin toapproximate to the target during the Task and will certainly be aware of it duringPlanning. This awareness becomes explicit during the Analysis when it is setalongside similar occurrences from the learner's corpus. When students are aware ofthe form and have seen and heard how it is used, when they have a context and ameaning for the target form, that is the time to do a quick burst of controlled practice.Controlled practice should be the final stage which helps build confidence andreinforces familiarity with form.

74The Lexical Syllabus; Dave WillisOriginally published by Collins ELT, 1990

CHAPTER 6: Syllabus organisation

Aims - coverage and authenticity/spontaneity

Our aim in writing Level 1 of the Collins COBUILD English Course was to provide the learnerwith exposure to language which would illustrate the meanings and patterns of 700 of the mostfrequent words of English, to highlight all of those words and to treat selected items in detail.This would mean that a false beginner would, after around one hundred hours of study, havesome familiarity with the words and patterns which make up around 70% of all English text. Ifwe could achieve this coverage we would be offering the learner a corpus of tremendous utility.We accepted that we were unlikely to achieve such coverage completely. The target for Level 2was to cover the next 850 words and for Level 3 the next 950, a total of 2,500 words after threebooks, accounting for around 80% of all text. We recognised that in order to achieve coverageof 700 words, and afterwards 850 and 950, we would have to include other words from outsidethis high frequency list. We set out, however, to achieve the best coverage we could with aslittle extraneous lexis as possible. Our task was made much more difficult, but also much more meaningful, by our decisionto use as far as possible only authentic or spontaneously produced texts. By 'authentic' texts wemeant those produced by language users in the course of their everyday lives for somecommunicative purpose external to language teaching, and not simply produced to illustratesome generalisation about the language. Almost all the written texts we used were authentic inthis way. It was also decided that if we were obliged to make up single sentence examples toillustrate specific points about words, we should do so with reference to the data sheets drawnfrom the original COBUILD corpus, as far as possible reproducing data sheet examples withminimal alterations. By ‘spontaneously produced’ texts we meant texts which were unscripted and unrehearsed,but which were produced not in the course of everyday life, but at our request and in artificialcircumstances. Most of the spoken texts we used fell into this category. A large number of thesewere recorded by native speakers of English in a studio, carrying out tasks which would later beperformed by learners in the classroom. These texts were not simplified in any way, sinceparticipants in the recording sessions were told that they were providing material for a researchproject rather than material for language teaching. The resulting texts have almost all thefeatures of authentic spoken discourse. These include false starts, changes of subject, requestsfor clarification and so on. More significantly they demonstrate communication as a cooperativeact in which participants work together to achieve an outcome. In Level 1 Unit 11, for example, learners are set this task:

Syllabus Organisation 75

158 Puzzle

a How good are you at logical thinking? Can you work out this puzzle?

Peter, Mary and John all went away last weekend. One of them went to Birmingham one toManchester, and one to London. One of them went to the theatre, one went to see a relative, andone went to buy a computer. Who did what?

Here are two clues to help you.

• One of them went to London to visit her mother.• John bought a computer but not in Manchester.

The following is part of the transcript of the native speaker recording:

BG: Right. So Mary went to LondonDF: So it's Mary and mother. John bought a computer but not at Manchester, therefore it must be-BG: John must have gone to Birmingham.DF: Birmingham. Computer And, er, who's the other one? Peter.BG: Must have gone to Manchester.

This does not feature the neat turn-taking of scripted dialogues with each turn virtuallycomplete in itself, replying predictably to or commenting explicitly on what has gone before.There are two participants but the text is very much a joint product, and if the text were not laidout neatly with each turn attributed to a particular participant it would be very difficult toseparate out the contributions:

So it’s Mary and mother. John bought a computer but not in Manchester, therefore it must be -John must have gone to Birmingham. Birmingham. Computer. And, er, who's the other one?Peter? . . . must have gone to Manchester.

It is indeed true that we have no precise description of language in use. But as I argued inChapter 1, learners need to find out as much as possible about language in use, and this cannotbe done unless they are exposed to language in use. The form of language we use is determinedcritically by the purpose for which it is used. It is essential therefore to provide learners withlanguage which is genuinely informed with some communicative purpose. This is difficult,expensive and incredibly time consuming, which may explain why there is so littleauthentic/spontaneous language in coursebooks. If it can be done, however, it brings enormousbenefits. It means the language that learners hear and read in the classroom is exactly the kindof language they will be exposed to outside. This brings great advantages not only of economybut also of motivation. The


satisfaction learners gain from being able to process spontaneous native speaker speech atnormal speed constantly enhances and reinforces motivation.

Input - from topics to tasks and texts

The process of writing the coursebooks was inevitably a complex one. The particular syllabusdesign procedures and the methodology which was to carry the syllabus had never before beenincorporated in a published course. There were a number of different strands in the research,design, writing and piloting of the course. All of these processes impinged on one another and ahold-up or failure in one process had repercussions throughout. Things were not made simplerby the fact that the authors of the course were working in Singapore, while most of the researchwas being carried out in Britain, particularly at the University of Birmingham. What follows,therefore, is a streamlined report of the whole process. It omits false starts, unexpected failures,conference phone calls linking Singapore, Birmingham and London, problems with computers,the difficulties of storing diskettes in a tropical climate, and a host of minor problems which area part of any major publishing venture. A good deal of research was undertaken before we began to assemble Level 1. We wereprovided with the raw material of the syllabus in the form of some 700 data sheets of the kindexemplified by would and any in Chapter 3. We wrote to a large number of ELT institutions inBritain and overseas in order to build up a list of topics which were felt to be of value and ofinterest to students. On the basis of this information and of our own experience as teachers, wethen identified a series of topics to form the basis of the course and devised a number of tasksbased on each of these topics. These tasks were then recorded in a studio using educated nativespeakers. The recordings were transcribed and concordanced to enable us to define the learner'scorpus more easily. At the same time we set about identifying a bank of written text whichcould be made accessible to remedial beginner learners and which would integrate without toomuch difficulty with the topics we had identified. Meanwhile the COBUILD team in Birmingham was assembling the TEFL Side Corpusmade up of over twenty of the most widely used ELT coursebooks worldwide:

In early 1984, as part of the preparation for the later Collins COBUILD Er~glish Course, theTEFL Corpus was analysed in detail in order to identify the linguistic structures and speechfunctions which were common to most of its books at the lower levels. This analysis could be saidto mirror the 'received' or consensus syllabus for the teaching of English which operates currently .. . (Renouf 1987)

We believed that our lexical approach would provide adequate coverage of this consensus andalso go well beyond it. We intended to use the TEFL Corpus to make sure that we did indeedhave coverage of the consensus syllabus.

Procedure

Once our bank of texts was assembled, it was ordered according to our


intuitions about the difficulty of the texts and tasks. This intuitive ordering was then subject to apreliminary pilot, which was designed to test not only the accuracy of our predictions as todifficulty but also the validity of our task-based methodology. It was also intended to find outwhether elementary students could indeed handle authentic written text and spontaneouslyproduced spoken discourse. In general we were happy with the results of this pilot, eventhough, inevitably, some tasks and texts had to be abandoned and others had to be reordered.The remaining tasks and texts were ordered, and an outline of the coursebook was put togetherwhich included rubrics for the exercises, but not at this stage any language focused exercises.

Checking the lexical coverage

The texts and rubrics were then concordanced by computer and the concordances checkedagainst the data sheets to see if we had adequate coverage of the main uses of the 700 targetwords. Basically the coverage was satisfactory. We had sufficient data to present a good pictureof almost 650 of the target words. Some of the omissions were words which, though veryfrequent in themselves, tend to be restricted in range and to occur in contexts which wouldcreate considerable problems for false beginners. Among these were words like community,development, trade and energy. Some, like concerned, finally, involved, indeed and unlesswere felt to be of high utility and therefore to be serious omissions. In addition to these wordswe had also missed a few major meaning categories of some very common words. One of thesecasualties was would meaning ‘used to’. Nevertheless, since the coverage of frequent wordsand patterns was our overriding priority, it is not surprising that we achieved a very much morecomprehensive coverage than is usually found in an elementary coursebook. We decided that it would be uneconomical to extend our corpus considerably in order toensure coverage of the few significant omissions, but we did take careful note of the missingwords and meaning categories to ensure that we included them in Level 2. To replace them inLevel 1 we chose to highlight around fifty other words of particularly high frequency whichhappened to be well contextualised in our data. Among these were such words as telephone,visit, window and station. To these we added two more sets of words. First were those whichwere of high utility and occurrence in the classroom situation bearing in mind the methodologywe had decided to adopt - words like teacher, student, group and share. Secondly there werewords which did not qualify for inclusion on the grounds of frequency alone, but whichcompleted important lexical sets. These included such items as days of the week, and a numberof adjectives of colour and shape. Together with the 650 words already identified, these madeup the target for Level 1. Inevitably a number of other words occurred in the texts, some ofthem, like cat, banana, psychiatrist and lining, of low frequency and utility. We had nointention of highlighting these. The fact that they occurred in the learner's corpus was aconsequence of our decision to work only with authentic and spontaneously produced text. Similar procedures were applied to specify content for Levels 2 and 3. As


with most language courses, the emphasis and therefore the proportion of text, began to movefrom spoken to written. In addition to other written texts, Levels 2 and 3 each included acomplete short story by Roald Dahl and Level 3 also featured a good deal of newspaper text.When we came to profile the words in Levels 2 and 3, we took account of the fact that profilesbecome less complex as one moves down the frequency scale and we were thus able to workwithout data sheets. In profiling words for Level 2 we worked from database (see page 32) anddictionary entries, and for Level 3 we relied on the Collins COBUILD English LanguageDictionary itself. Of the 1,800 words additional to the 700 in Level 1 we managed tocontextualise all but about 200. Texts and rubrics for Levels 2 and 3 were concordanced in thesame way as for Level 1. Like most coursebooks, all three levels went through several rewrites as a result ofreaders' comments or piloting. The information and advice culled from these processes had tobe incorporated, but here again we were presented with particular problems. We could notrespond immediately to adverse comments on or reactions to a particular text or task. Itsometimes happened that the text in question offered a particularly good context for importantwords or phrases. Since we were committed to the use of authentic/spontaneous text we couldnot simply write something else to give us the same cover. We were reluctant, therefore, to dropa useful text unless we could find and exploit a good context elsewhere in the materials or inour text bank. If we did drop the text we had then to identify the items we were losing and goback to the concordances of our material to find other places where these items were covered. Asingle decision of this kind had considerable repercussions. We did not doubt that ourdetermination to keep the best possible coverage of our target words in the learner's corpus wasjustified, but sometimes we paid a high price for it.

Adjusting the learner's corpus

Statistically it was almost inevitable that with some words the picture which emerged fromconcordances of our texts differed in important ways from the picture derived from the 7.3million word COBUILD corpus. The word like provides an example. The main COBUILDcorpus has 11,600 occurrences of like. Of these about 60% mean 'resembling, similar or havingthe appearance of something else; in the same way as'. Typical occurrences are:

People with sensitive skins were beginning to look like lepers. The proprietor's word, like Hitler's,was absolute.The aim is to run them like nursery schools.

A sub-category of this meaning accounted for around 20% of the remaining uses:

SUCH AS; USED WHEN CITING EXAMPLES OF A PARTICULAR TYPEOR CLASS.She lived on lovely clean foods like milk, butter, eggs . . .A private gardener like myself would never get on in nursery work.

The remaining 20% were occurrences like:

I don’t like what you stand for.There's nothing I like better than talking to my colleagues.


and sentences with would like such as:

Would he like to inspect the hut now?That's what I'd like to know.

In our text data, however, the proportions were reversed in that the occurrences of like meaning‘be fond of’ and would like meaning ‘went to’ heavily outnumbered the other categories. Wemade sure, however, that we drew attention to the first two categories no less than the third. Indoing this it occurred to us that whereas many coursebooks have whole units dealing with 'likesand dislikes', relatively few of them highlight the more frequent meanings of like. In all caseslike this we were careful to cover as far as possible all uses which were prominent in theCOBUILD corpus, even if there were relatively few such occurrences in our own texts.Obviously we would have been happier with a neat match between our mini-corpus and themain corpus, but the amount of material which would need to have been processed in order toachieve this put it out of the question.

Language focused work

We felt reasonably confident that at each level, and certainly by the end of Level 3, we hadprovided learners with exposure to a highly representative sample of English. But we did notwant to rely simply on exposure. We wanted to enable teachers to highlight the most importantwords and phrases as they occurred in the texts to which learners were exposed. For this reasonwe itemised learning aims, including lexical aims, for each section of each unit (see page 70),and summarised lexical aims for each unit (see page 71). Without guidance of this sort, learnershave no way of knowing what is important and needs to be remembered. We were also wellaware from our own previous teaching experience that teachers too need to be prompted if theyare to recognise which items have high utility. In addition to this we wanted to provide specific language practice of different kinds. Wewanted first to make sure that we covered all items in the consensus syllabus as identified bythe TEFL Side Corpus, unless there was a clear reason to omit them. We did this largelythrough special grammar exercises.

200 Grammar words so 1 marking a summary or a change of subject A: I wasn’t in London last weekend. B: So you weren’t in London last weekend? BG: I haven’t really got anything else planned. DF: So what about the shopping?

2 expressing amount We were so tired that we went straight to bed.

3 meaning therefore He saw someone he thought he knew, so he called out andran after her.

4 pointing back A: It s very easy. B: Do you really think so?

5 so that used to talk about result or purpose The British Council helps British participants by helping to pay their expenses so that they can attend theSeminar.

6 meaning ‘also’A: I’ve got some money. B: So have I.

There is one example below of each of these six meanings of so. Which is which?

a DF: Will you be going to Nisa thisweekend? BG: Yes. I think so. DF: So will I. Sothat's one possibility.b A : It depends if I’ve got a car or not. B: Right, soyou do your shopping by car.c Please let me know as soon as you have fixed yourtravel plans so that I can make sure you areproperly looked after on arrival.d After so much hassle I’m determined to stay at thetop.


The aim was to give a picture of the grammatical behaviour of the very commonest words ofthe language. These exercises drew almost entirely on material from the learner's corpus asdescribed in Chapter 4, enabling the learners to draw on their own experience of the language.A reference section which brought together these grammatical generalisations and illustratedthem with further examples was included at the back of the Student's Book Level 1 and PracticeBook Level 3.

So (200)1 marking a summary or a change of subject

Okay. So we've got the camel in the sunset next. (171)So what do you do at quarter to eight? (143)Right. So Mary went to London. (158)

2 expressing amount

There are always so many tourists.No wonder you look so tired. (142)

3 meaning ‘therefore’

The suitcase looked exactly like mine, so I said ‘Excuse me, sir.. .’

4 pointing back

JV: Wouldn't you think Cairo was 1500? DL: Yes, out of the ones given, I would’vethought so. (90)

5 ‘so that’ used to talk about result or purpose

It had a thick lining, so that you could practically sleep out in it. (104)Let me know as soon as you have fixed your travel plans, so that I can make sure that youare properly looked after. (193)

6 meaning ‘also’

JV: The woman next to him has orange trousers. DL: So has mine. (38)David lives in London and so does Bridget.__________________________________________________

Look at these examples.I'm tired. So am I/So is she.I've finished. So have I/So has she.I'll help. So will I/So will she.I like it. So do I/So does she.I liked it. So did I/So did she.

Reply to these sentences in the same way.

1 I'm hungry.2 1 enjoyed the film.3 He always comes.


4 They're going home.5 She's done it before.6 He'll have to work harder.7 She was so tired she went straight to sleep.

______________________________________________________

These exercises provided learners with valuable input. Even more important they encouragedlearners to look at language critically to see what patterns words featured in, and to assignmeanings to those patterns. The grammar was, therefore, organised almost entirely lexically in Level 1. This gave ussome misgivings to begin with, but gradually we became convinced of the value of thisapproach. The value of organising things under words is that words are immediatelyrecognisable. We felt that grammarians, coursebook writers and teachers had become used toworking with abstract categories parts of speech; verb tenses; semantic labels such as'conditional'; functional labels such as 'reported speech' end so on. When you have thelanguage, you begin to search for categories to describe it. But learners do not 'have' thelanguage. They are struggling to learn or acquire it. In doing so they are obliged to work fromsurface forms to perceive whatever recurrent patterns they can. In the case of an almost entirelynon-inflected language like English, 'surface forms' means words. In fact we did include in ourgrammar morphemes such as -ing, markers of past tense and the past participle -ed and -entogether with -s as a marker of the plural and third person singular, and -'s as an abbreviationfor is and has and marking possession:

213 Grammar words

-ing

1 describing somethingThere were two girls eating fish and chips.Write down one or two interesting things about each person.

2 after am, is, be etc.One girl was carrying a white bag.The S student will be asking you questions about things that youusually do during the day.

3 after see, look at, hear, listen to etc.Listen to them talking about when they go to bed.

4 before am, is etc.Dialling 999 is free.

5 after stop, start, remember, like etc.I remember going to London many years ago.She likes watching television.

6 after when, before, instead of etc. Remember that when dialling a number from within the samearea, you do not need the prefix.Before attempting to break down the door, the man tried. . .

Write down five of these things. something you like doing something you stopped doing a long time ago something you can see someone doing what you were doing at this time yesterday what youwill be doing this time tomorrow something youremember doing as a child someone who is sitting at the front of the class

What categories do these sentences belong to?

a Put in the money before making your call.b Listen to David and Bridget discussing the sameproblem.c The conversation ceased and she heard gaspingsounds.d Using a cardphone is not difficult.e You can telephone your family back home withoutusing money.f The special cards are available from Post Officesand shops displaying the green 'Cardphone’ sign.g I really like running. Swimming is nice too.h You have quite a long working day, don't you ?

Once this groundwork was laid in Level 1, we allowed ourselves to reference grammar inother ways. In Level 2 we organised some grammatical entries under functional headings suchas ‘Cause and Effect’:


76 Grammar

Cause and resultIn the first examples, the part expressing cause iscoloured. The other part expresses the result.1 a sentence consequently He was very tired. Consequently he fellasleep. as a result Britain is quite a small country. As a resulttravel is quick and easy.that’s why…but they’re ever so small. That's why rainis thin. .2 a clausebecause I don't have a journey to work because I workat home. (80)and John is trying to get a new job, and is busy sendingapplication forms all over the place. (2)as We chose to go by plane as it meant we had moretime in Paris.so There’s no chance of a promotion there, so I’mgoing to move on. (2)

so . . . that I was so proud (that) I jumped up and down.since I suppose that would come out the same way sincepeople seem to prefer cats and dogs to snakes andspiders .(25)

3 a phrase as a result of As a result of this postcard I think Beckywill write back.(33) because of A: Why can't you starve in the desert? B: You can't starve in the desert because of the sandwhich is there. (Can you explain this joke?)

as As a visitor you can take tax-free goods home.with Until, mad with energy and boredom, youescaped. (26)

4 words meaning ‘cause’ or ‘result’ :make His pointed ears made him look like a rat.result Shorter periods of use can result in fuel billsavings. (91)cause What was the cause of the accident?lead to A serious illness led to his losing his job .

5 no markerI don't want that one. It's too expensive.Until, mad with energy and boredom, you escaped.(26)

Look at the sentences below. Say which partexpresses. cause and which result.a We had never been to Northumberland before.That's why we wanted to go. (29)b We went by plane. As a result we had more time inParis.c My favourite was always English because I likedwriting stories (58) :d It's a very pleasant school, and I'd be sorry to leaveit. (2)e . . . a woman . . . looking a bit angry as it's one inthe morning by then. (78)f I can't see the TV with you standing in front of it!g He worked hard and did very well as a result.h Finally, tired out, they fell asleep.

But this language was still indexed lexically and therefore retrievable by the students using theword as a starting point. The approach in these grammar exercises, therefore, was to present learners with the rawmaterial of language (almost always language which was already familiar), and to provideprompts of different kinds to encourage learners to analyse and categorise language forms.Other exercises were devised to highlight other features of language. Language Study exercises were used to lead in to detailed study of specific texts,particularly where the immediate context was an important aid in clarifying a point aboutlanguage:

70 Language study a Giving advice· Read the transcripts for section 69 carefully. Pick out seven useful phrases you might use if youwere starting to give advice to someone.e.g. Well, I actually did that last year. We . . .


We included Wordpower exercises which focused on important words and showed how thefrequent words in the language often have a number of meanings. This again led learners tothink analytically about words, and often made the point that abstract meanings are by far themost frequent:

195 Wordpowerthing1 replacing another word or phraseShe likes to eat sweet things.Think of three things the driver might ask the hitch-hikernext. (97)

2 referring to the situation in general or life in generalHi! How are things with you?Business is bad. Things don’t look good.

3.1 introducing an idea that you want to developBut tell me just one more thing: what do I do with myhusband and the three kids?(188)I think the first thing he might say is ‘Do you know whatseed you were doing?(136)

3.2 highlighting the importance or the important aspect ofwhat you are sayingThe thing is, he has a skilled job.The silly thing is, the car was parked at the time.

Look at these phrases using the word thing. Do they belong to category 1, 2 or 3?

a) The news is bad today. Things are veryworrying.

b) We went out in a boat one day and saw sealsand things.(29)

c) Has any of these things ever happened toyou?(103)

d) The important thing is you must report theaccident.

e) Could you bring it first thing tomorrow?f) The awful thing is, I had totally forgotten her

name.g) I’m afraid I’ve got no time. Things are very busy

at present.

(Note: cartoon illustrations omitted)

In Level 2 we introduced Phrase-building to highlight common language patterns. Again thephrases were associated with words rather than with abstract patterns:

Thefactpointtroubleproblem

is

living in London is more expensive.transport’s easy in Central London.it’s difficult to park your car.shopping is such fun, you spend toomuch.you can find whatever you want.

196 Phrase-building

Here are some other words which are used in thesame way as thing category 3(see section 195).a Make up five sentences and try to rememberthem.b Now make up some similar sentences aboutthings in yourcountry.

The questiontroubleproblem

ishow to get home after 11o’ clock.where to park.what to eat and where.

At Level 3 we incorporated exercises of a similar type and went on to develop exercises whichwould draw attention to the structure of such common text patterns as ‘situation - problem -solution – evaluation’:


78 Looking at adverts

a Look carefully at these items from the NewHorizons catalogue. Which things:

are ideal for people who travel a lot? could be classified as containers? are made of the same material? would be the best gift for an absent-minded

person? might be useful for a person who lives in or travels

to a cold climate?

b Which adverts do these phrases come from?The fold-away handle makes for easy pouring andstorage wearing a jacket. a pushhutton light topquality hand-made this new version This is theone they use, warmth and comfort

c Find the word but in the left-hand adverts. Whatdoes it signal ? Think of other words like but.78d d Which of the adverts are Edmund andElizabeth talking about here? What do they mean:There you’ve killed two birds with one stone?

Note: in the original version this columncontains five facsimile advertisements for:

Leather Jackets

Time folds flat

The unbreakable flask

Designer shirt wallet

Keyminder

79 Language study

SITUATION—PROBLEM—SOLUTION—EVALUATIONNotice the structure of these adverts. Read the notes in the table carefully, then suggest what words or phrases from thetexts could go into the empty spaces. Then continue building up the table with notes from the other adverts.

SituationGeneral topic

Leather jacketspopular andcomfortable

Men often carry awallet

Car keys

The problem isthat…

In winter, don’tkeep cold out (toothin)

when not wearinga jacket(too bulkyfor shirt pocket)

(people losethem)(difficult touse in dark)

The solution isto…

line jacket withsheepskin

Slim leather 4X2,5, fits in shirtpocket

Bleeper devicewhen you whistlelight

Evaluation Warmth andcomfort combinedwith style

All of the exercises reinforced the same methodological approach. They encouraged learners tolook critically at the corpus, and to make generalisations about the language to which they hadbeen exposed. We also encouraged learners to refer back to the language they had experiencedearlier. All of the target words at each level were listed alphabetically in the coursebook withreferences to the sections in which they occurred. Levels 1 and 3 contained a grammar sectionreferenced to items in the corpus. Levels 2 and 3 incorporated lexicon or dictionary entries toencourage the development of reference skills, with exercises to reinforce this. The aimthroughout was to develop familiarity with a carefully selected and weighted corpus oflanguage, and to enable learners to exploit that corpus to good effect. While the basicmethodology was taskbased with a focus very much on outcome, the language associated withthose


tasks was examined in great detail in the light of a precisely specified syllabus. The problem ofordering was solved partly by recycling. This recycling is naturally built into a corpus whichrelies on natural language. It was reinforced by the way we selected items from the corpus forillustration and analysis. Finally, learners were able to use indexes and reference sections torecycle for themselves.

Grading and ordering

It is clear, therefore, that our decision to adopt a task-based methodology and to restrictourselves almost entirely to authentic/spontaneous text had implications for grading andordering language material. We wanted first to build up a learner's corpus, and then gradually toincrease the learner's familiarity with and conceptual understanding of significant parts of thatcorpus. In order to achieve this, we began by ordering not language items but tasks At first thiswas done intuitively by identifying those tasks which we thought would present relatively fewproblems for elementary learners, usually because the outcome was highly predictable. We thenchecked our intuitions during our own piloting, and then against feedback from other pilot runs.This led to some reordering, until we had a sequence of tasks which the learners couldreasonably be expected to handle both receptively and productively. The very commonest forms of English occurred not only in the earliest tasks, but again andagain right through the corpus. We were able, therefore, to draw attention to the present tense ofthe verb be and to common question forms in the very first unit:

8 Language study ‘s, is, ‘re, areRead these examples. They am all from Unit 1. Find all these words: ‘s, is, ’re, are.1 What does ‘s mean?2 When do we say is (or ‘s) and when do we say are (or ‘re)?

Who's that? Do you know where they're from ? Tell him or her where you're from. This is -. She's from-.

Where's David from?Who's Chris? What's his surname?Who are these people? What are their surnames?


11 Language studyAsking for addresses and phone numbers

11 First read the questions below and then listen.David, Bridget, Chris and Philip use eight of these questions. Which questions do they use? What's your phone number? Have you got a phone number? And your phone number? Have you got a phone? What's your number, then?

Can you give me your address? Could you give me your address? Can I have your address? What's the postcode?

Sorry, could you repeat that? Sorry, how do you spell that? Can you spell your name for me? Can you tell me how you spell your name?

We did not believe that in Unit 1 these would be learned in the sense that learners would be ableto produce them with consistent accuracy. The first stage was simple awareness raising. Weknew that these items would occur again and again until they were finally incorporated in thelearner's repertoire. Unit 2 built on questions marked by intonation, and drew attention toinversion:

20 Language study

a have got

Look at these examples from the recordings of Bridget and David.There are no full stops ( . ) or question marks ( ? ).1 Which examples are questions?2 What is the word ‘ve?3 Which words come before and after got? :

DF: Have you got any brothers and sistersBG: Yes, I've got one sister called RosemaryDF: Okay

BG: And have they got any childrenDF: Mhm. Two children, two girlsBG: Yes

BG: and you've got one sister called FelicityDF: Mhm

BG: And they've got two daughters called . . . Emma :and...


DF: SarahBG: SarahDF: Mm20 b Listen and repeat each phrase. Then practise saying some of these phrases with your partner.Listen for two stresses in each group of words.

Have you got any brothers and sisters? I've got one sister called Rosemary. Two children. Two girls.

Question forms occurred again when the models and auxiliaries were treated:

132 Grammar wordsdo

What is the difference between sets 1 and 2?

Set 1Ask your teacher if you don't understand.How do you know?It doesn't matter.What does Chris say?I didn't get up until 8.30, so l was late.Did Chris give good directions?

Set 2I usually do the cooking and cleaning in the morning.My husband does the gardening at weekendsHe did the meals when I was ill.What are you doing?All right. You do it first, then it's my turn. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------These examples are a mixture of sets 1 and 2.Sometimes both types appear in the same sentence. Which is which?

a What does your brother do?b Did you do your homework?c No, I didn't, because I had a lot of other things to do.d Who's going to do the dishes?e Which bus? A 62 or 63 will do just as well.f Is this yours? No, it's nothing to do with me.g Have you done your homework?h It doesn't matter.

Look at the Grammar Book. Which categories do the last eight examples go into?


and again with wh- words. Finally, certain sections in the Grammar Book reference sectionsummarised the use of questions:

can, could (93,138)

1 ability/possibility

What things could you describe as sort of reddish? (37)What other questions could I have asked?Can you explain the answers? (46)How much can you remember? (48)She ran awe' as fast as she could. (198)Ten twelve. That could be the time. (78)Oriental definitely. It could be Thailand. (171)_______________________________________________________________What can you see? I couldn't hear what he was saying._______________________________________________________________Look at the picture on page 58.Make three sentences starting:I can see…_______________________________________________________________1.1 ‘could’ for suggestionsYou could look in the newspaper._______________________________________________________________2 permissionYou can go out now, but come back in ten minutes.Could I do it tomorrow instead of today?

3 offer / requestCan you give me your address? (11)Can you spell your name for me? (11)Can I speak to Dr Brown please? (89)Can I take a message? (89)Can you tell me the time, please? (94)Can you tell me how long it takes?Could you give me your phone number please? (11)Could you look after the children for me? (97)

There was, then, massive coverage of question forms. But generally they were treatedfrom a lexical starting point. This not only gave the opportunity for recycling, but alsohighlighted holophrastic forms such as ‘Can I . . . ?’, ‘Can you . . . ?’, ‘Could you . . . ?’. TheGrammar Book also gave learners an opportunity to retrieve items from their corpus and (asthey were referenced to sections of the text) to go back and retrieve the original contexts inwhich they occurred. Some forms were more difficult to retrieve. The word by, for example, was not highlighteduntil Unit 8, because it was not until then that we had a context


for all of its common meanings:

111 Grammar words

by


2 howShe begins by asking what time they start. I do my shopping by car. I come to work by bus.


4 whereThere's a phone box by the school. It's over there by the post office.______________________________________________________________Find examples for each category.

a She starts by asking what time they begin work.b She usually gets back home by 9 a.m.c. . . handicrafts made by people in the Third World.:d Come and sit here by me.e Guess what your partner's number is by asking 'Is it under 50. . .'f I think I left it by the telephone.g I have to finish this by tomorrow.

Compare the examples in each category with the examples in the Grammar Book.

This too was further exemplified in the Grammar Book:

by (111)1 who / what did itWally is awakened by the phone ringing. (91)Handicrafts made by people in the Third World.(104)Is that a magazine published by Macmillan? (146)

2 how

You solve it by elimination. (158) English by Radio. (146) London is only 55 minutes away by train. (179) Find out by talking to people.


3 when

Everyone helps to clear away after dinner. By then it's about 7.15 or 7.30 p.m. (113)Even though the Forth River is only 66 miles long, by the time it reaches Edinburgh it is over 4miles wide. (179)

4 where

Behind the chair? Of the person sitting by the desk?(72)

Just by the bus stop. (122)On the wall by the entrance was a notice. (173)

This strategy affords the teacher and the learner a great deal of flexibility. First Df all anitem is not highlighted until they are able to refer to examples of use. Secondly, most of theseitems will occur again and again. If they continue to cause problems they can be located in texteither by referring to the Grammar Book or by looking at an index which references some of thesections in which the items occur and further exposure or practice is given. Finally, thecommonest items are summarised in the Review pages and in the Grammar Book. TheGrammar Book entries can be used for intensive practice and pattern drills if the teacher orlearners feel this to be necessary. The stage at which this might best be done can be determinedby teacher and learner rather than imposed by the coursebook writer. What is offered is alearner's corpus together with the wherewithal to exploit that corpus to the maximumadvantage. Problems of grading were obviously less acute in Levels 2 and 3. But here again the samestrategy was employed. Learners were given the opportunity to familiarise themselves with thecorpus in a principled way. To enable them to do this it was necessary to use the word as thereference point. The lexical basis on which the course was built became a valuable part of themethodology. At first this caused some concern. We were reluctant to lose well known andloved structural labels such as the passive, the second conditional and reported speech. As weworked with our lexically based grammar, however, we became mole and more convinced thatthis outcome, too, was more than justified.


CHAPTER 7: Word, structure, function and discourse

The lexical syllabus - a resume

The impetus for the lexical syllabus came from the research which lay behind the Collins COBUILDEnglish Language Dictionary. We believed that the patterns and meanings associated with thecommonest words of English would afford a basis for syllabus specification which would providelearners with good coverage - and would provide that coverage economically. Once we movedtowards the concept of the learner's corpus (our collection of texts and recordings), we saw thesyllabus specification as helping us to describe that corpus and to identify items within the corpuswhich should be highlighted for the learner. The lexical syllabus would derive from research into alarge corpus of natural language, and would use that research to highlight significant items within asmaller learner's corpus. We believed that this approach to syllabus specification and design wouldgive us better coverage than the more traditional syllabus based on an inventory of grammaticalpatterns and/or functional realisations. We also believed that taking lexis as a starting point would give us new insights into the structureof the language and the way it might usefully be viewed by learners. It led us to reject somecategories, such as reported speech and the three conditionals, which figure prominently in mostpedagogic grammars. It also led us to focuis on some features of language, such as the complex nounphrase and items which structure discourse, more systematically and thoroughly than structurally orfunctionally based syllabuses. The fact that we were concerned with exploiting the learner's corpusenabled us to help the learner look at language in use, and at language within a clear context ofmeaning and intention. This freed us from the constraints which force most approaches to languageteaching into a sentence level description of grammar. Finally, the lexical syllabus, by taking the word as its point of departure, would afford learnersan easy way of referencing the language they had experienced. The word indexes and referencesections provided with each Level would enable learners to re-examine their language experiencesystematically when they wished to do so. This is not an easy thing to do if one is dependent ongrammatical metalanguage. Learners are much more likely to recognise the need to check up on theuse of who or which than to feel the need to check up on adjectival relative clauses, and who andwhich are much easier to index and to retrieve. As I outlined in Chapter 2, when we started writing CCEC we were critical of traditionalapproaches to syllabus design, and some of our criticisms sharpened as we developed the lexicalsyllabus. Most approaches to syllabus specification give an inordinate prominence to the verb phrase,and largely neglect the noun


phrase for example. They set up categories like reported speech which are uneconomical andpotentially confusing. In a few cases, such as some and any, they may perpetuate false beliefs andassumptions about the language. We wanted, however, to take full account of approaches which had served the teachingprofession, and many would say had served it well, for many years. We were anxious to compare ourfindings and our coverage of language against a consensus derived from coursebooks which werewidely used and presumably, therefore, accepted by teachers and students as providing a usefuldescription of the language. We would then need to identify omissions and departures highlighted bythe COBUILD research or by what we were prepared to defend as a more pedagogically satisfyingdescription of the language. The consensus syllabus was provided by our analysis of the TEFL SideCorpus which provided an inventory of the linguistic structures and speech functions commonlycovered at the elementary and intermediate levels. We were able to check the coverage offered in ourlexical syllabus against this consensus syllabus and to look critically at ways in which we haddeparted from the consensus. This chapter goes on to describe how the lexical approach is different inits treatment of some grammatical features.

The verb phrase - tense, aspect, mood and voice

Most formal grammars describe the verb phrase in English under four headings:

Tense Present or past.Aspect Simple or progressive/continuous and/or perfective.Mood - as realised by the models can/could, may/might, must, will/would and (according to some

descriptions) going to, have/had to, need to, ought to.Voice active or passive.

Strictly speaking there are only two tenses in English, present and past. Together with the othercomponents these generate all the verb forms in English, from the simplest:

1 We test the machines every week.

to the most complex:

2 It will have been going to be being tested every day for a fortnight soon.

This last example, at first sight an almost impossible occurrence, is attested by Halliday (1976) asbeing recorded from conversation. Pedagogical grammars handle the verb phrase quite differently. The label ‘tense’ in a pedagogicgrammar normally covers the formal grammarian's tense and aspect together with the modal will. The‘tenses’ in a pedagogic grammar include:

Present simple We test the machines regularly.

Present continuous We are testing the machine.

Word, Structure, Function and Discourse 93

Future We'll test the machine tomorrow.Future continuous We'll be testing the machine soon.Past Simple We tested the machine.Past simple Past continuous We were testing the machine.Present perfect We’ve tested the machine.Present perfect continuous We’ve been testing the machinePast perfect We had already tested the machine..etc.

Voice is combined with these forms to produce, for example, the past perfect passive:

3 The machines had already been tested.

Or the past continuous passive:

4 The machine was being tested.

The models are usually taught lexically alongside concepts like ability:

5 I can speak a little Spanish.

possibility:

6 You can learn Spanish at evening school.

and function like asking and giving permission:

7 Can I go early please? Yes. You can go as soon as you've finished.

In addition to this, certain verb forms are taught within a particular structural context, such asthe second conditional with the past tense and would marking a hypothesis:

8 You would soon learn Spanish if you went to evening classes.

and the third conditional with would have and the past perfect:

9 You would have learned Spanish if you had gone to evening school.

Our own treatment of the verb phrase came somewhere between the formal grammar approach,and that of the pedagogical grammar. In many ways it followed the traditional pedagogic description,but there were significant differences. We did not, as most pedagogic grammars do, identify a ‘futuretense’ with the modal will. Instead we identified ‘ways of referring to the future’. We treated allmodels lexically. Although we took conditional sentences as our starting point for the description ofwould we were careful to remove the dependence on if at an early stage. Although we used the terms‘present continuous’ and ‘past continuous’ we did not teach these forms as such. Instead weencouraged learners to build them from their component parts, the verb be and the present participleending in -ing, which was treated as an adjective. The past participle, too, was treated as an adjective,and from this we derived the passive voice. Finally our exploitation of the learner's corpus meant thatwe did not have to rely on sentence level citations to illustrate the use of verb forms, or indeed of anyother forms.


Tense

Our treatment of the past and present tenses was similar to that found in most pedagogic grammars,but learners were exposed to both tenses right from the beginning. Specific exercises draw attentionto the two tenses throughout Level 1. They are contrasted in Unit 4 of Level 1:

58 Becky’s homes

The authors' teenage daughter, Becky, wrote this.

We live in a four-bedroom semi-detached house in a town calledHemel Hempstead, about twenty miles from London. It was builtin about 1960.When we lived in Birmingham, from 1979 to 1981, we lived in anold house in a district called Harborne. It was a largesemi-detached house built in the 1 890s with five bedrooms andnice big rooms downstairs. It had a big garden at the back but nofront garden. It was a really nice house, much nicer than our housein Hemel Hempstead. BW

Unit 5 draws attention to the commonest past tense forms in English:

A psychiatrist, receiving a new patient saw that she was carrying a duck under her arm.Saying nothing about the duck he asked her to sit down.‘Well,’ he said, ‘can I help you?’‘Oh, it’s not me who needs help, doctor,’ she replied, ‘it’s my husband here. He thinks…

Past and present forms Match the verbs.

askedwentsawthought

saidwasheardhad

isseegosay

hashearaskthink

Units 9 and 11 give practice in the use of the past tense in narrative. By the end of Level 1 studentshave had ample exposure to both tenses and their basicuses. The negative and interrogative forms also occur right from the beginning of Level 1. In line withour lexical approach they are brought together in an analysis exercise on the words do and did in Unit9:

Cartoonpictureomitted

95

132 Grammar wordsdo

What is the difference between sets 1 and 2?Set 1 Ask your teacher if you don't understand. How do you know? It doesn't matter. What does Chris say? I didn't get up until 8.30, so I was late. Did Chris give good directions?

Set 2 I usually do the cooking and cleaning in the morning. My husband does the gardening at weekends. He did the meals when I was ill. What are you doing? All right. You do it first, then it's my turn.

________________________________________________________ These examples are a mixture of sets 1 and 2. Sometimes both types appear in the same sentence.Which is which?a What does your brother do?b Did you do your homework?c No, I didn't, because I had a lot of other things to do.d Who's going to do the dishes?e Which bus? A 62 or 63 will do just as well.f Is this yours? No, it's nothing to do with me.g Have you done your homework?h It doesn't matter.

Look at the Grammar Book. Which categories do the last eight examples go into?

This exercise asks learners to distinguish between two extremely common uses of the word do. It isused as an auxiliary in Set 1 and in Set 2 it is a delexical verb - a verb which does not carry meaningitself but takes its meaning from the noun which follows it. More examples of do as an auxiliary aregiven in the grammar reference section at the back of Level 1:______________________________________________________

do, did (132)

1 used to form questionsHow many things did he remember? (42)Where did you live? (57)Why did you move? (57)Did you have a look at the shops?Where did you go yesterday?Do you know your teacher's name? (2)Do you live in a house or a flat? (52)

96 Lexical syllabus

Do you want milk and sugar?Do you work in the evenings?How many children does he have?When does she go to bed? (212)

Your friend, John has just introduced you to another friend of his, Peter. Use theseframes to make questions you might ask Peter.

Where…………come from? When …………meet john?What work……..? Where…………?……….live?

Make questions from this table.

WhenWhat time

dodoesdid

youMyf

start work?finish work?get up?go to bed?have lunch?get home in the evening?

2 used to make a verb negative

I don’t go to work as such. (118)I don’t always have lunch actually. (113)A: Do you know where Green Park is? B: No, I’m sorry, I don’t.I didn’t do anything interesting.I do not know yet whether I shall be staying with Vijay Bhatia. (193)Do not insert money.

Say which of these things you do and which you don’t do.

Speak English/Italian/Spanish/German/French/ Chinese/ JapanesePlay football/tennis/cricket/golf/chessRide a bicycleDrive a carFly a plane

The use of the past tense for hypothesis occurs in Unit 6:

10 If you were counting how would you say these numbers?11…depending whether it was English or American.

and is reinforced in association with would and with if:

if (209)

1 in conditions

1.1 when the speaker thinks something is likely to happen.What happens if the person isn’t there?It will help if you know where the hole or button is on your phone. (205)


1.2 for something imagined, not real (see would 2)

Which examples would be useful if you went to Britain?If you were counting, how would you say these numbers? (79)

2 for something imagined, not real (‘would’)

Imagine that to see theperson

What do you think the weather would be like if you were:

In London? In Rome? In Madrid? In Moscow? In Cairo?

If you were asked to make a film:

what book or play would you choose?who would the stars be?what parts would they play?

Suppose an English friend asked you what to do and what places to visit in your country. What would youtell them?__________________________________________________________________________________

If you wanted to save money, which of these things would you do?Eat less?Drink less?Spend less on going out?Sell your car?Spend less on clothes?

208 What would you do if….?

Discuss briefly what you would do if you were in one of these situations.

-if you heard the fire alarm in the building you are in now-if the electricity went off in your home, and you thought it might be a power cut-if you were by the sea and you heard someone shouting for help

Together with your partner, plan what you would say. If you were with a friend, what would you tell them to do?

Act out the situation in front of the class. Don’t say which of these three situations it is. Can the others guess what hashappened?

Cartoon picture omitted here


This is further developed in Level 2:

90 Language study

Woulda Look at the verbs in colour. What tense are they in? Do they refer tp past time?

JV: Are we ready: Yes, erm, now what would each of you cook if someone dropped in unexpectedly and stayed for a mealin the evening?JV: What would you cook, David?DF: Whatever vegetables happened to be there. JV: Supposing they arrived after the restaurants had shut.JV: But, er, and if you’d made it at home…

Why are they in past tense?

b Look at these sentences. What does would mean? Why is it would, not will?

We asked Jenny, Bridget, David and Danny what they would cook for an unexpected guest.

JV: What would you do, Danny?DL: Would I have to cook them something, because I’d prefer to take them out for a meal.JV: It says here ‘What would you do if each of you cook?’DL: Erm…JV: So, to summarise, Bridget would cook sausage and beans, Danny would cook an omelette, David would cooksomething exotic that he’d rustled up from bits in the fridge, and I would cook a cheese flan.

and Level 3:

115 Grammar

Past forms and past participles

a Say when the underlined words refer to past time.

1 If I saw a man-eater I would be terrified.2 The man-eater nearly killed the caretaker.3 Assuming a man-eater attacked you and your family, what would you do?4 The man-eater was sent to Tsavo by mistake.5 Suppose one of your friends was attacked by a leopard, what would you do?

Word structure, Function and Discourse 99

A future tense is not identified but attention is drawn to ways of referring to the future:

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY

Dr. Markham L. TickooChairman,Seminar Planning Committee,REGIONAL Planning Committee,30 Orange Grove Road,Singapore 1025

Dear Dr. Tickoo,

SEAMBO Language Seminar 1985I am writing with regard to my traveling arrangements for the aboveseminar. I shall be travelling by Jordanian Airways and should arrive inSingapore at 13.50n on 18th April. The return booking is for 05.30 on 4th

May.

I have not yet got confirmation of the arrangements for the Amman-Singapore section of the journey so I shall have to confirm these timingsas soon as I receive further information.

I look forward to seeing you next month.

Yours sincerely,

J. F. MorrittProfessor of Teacher education

c.c. Dr. J. D. Willis, English Language officer,British Council, Singapore.

194 Language Study

Look at this extract from John Swales’sletter.

I do not know yet whether I shall bestaying with Vijay Bhatia. I’ll let youknow as soon as I have heard from him.

Do the highlighted words refer to the past,the present or the future?

In Professor Merritt’s letter there are fourways of referring to the future. Can youfind them?

192 Language study

Talking about the futureFind the verbs in this transcript.Find all the verbs which refer to the future. How many differentways of referring to the future are there?DF: Will your paths cross? What about this coming week andweekend? Will you be going to the, er, Nisa this weekend?BG: Probably, yes.DF: Er, I might be as well, so that’s a possibility. Erm…are yougoing the th—Are you going out this weekend to anything? Haveyou got any plans?BG: Erm, I’m staying in London. I’m going to a concert onSaturday night.DF: Where? Where’s that?BG: At Wembley.DF: Uhuh. What are you going to see?BG: Tina Turner.DF: Uhuh. Great!BG: Erm, ..Then I’m going out to lunch on Sunday.DF: Where are you going out t lunch?BG: Parson’s Green.

DF: Ah. I’m going out to lunch in Putney, which is close-ish.After that?BG: Erm…I don’t know. I haven’t really got anything elseplanned.DF: So what about shopping?BG: Oh, I’ll probably-I’ll have to go shopping at some stage,probably on Saturday.

Say whether these sentences are about the present or the future.a Are you going to play tennis?b For the time being I’m happy.c I’ll just see what happens.d I am writing with regard to my travel arrangements.e Are you planning to stay with a friend?f If you come home tomorrow I won’t be here.g Which examples would be useful if you went to Britain?h Take a good look and tell me if you see anything different.

These uses are highlighted separately under the modals and under have:6.2 for something that will have happened at some time in the futureHe’ll be homeTell me(We can also use the present tense.He’ll be home when he finishes work.Tell me when you finish.)

and brought together in the sections given above.

100 Lexical Syllabus

The decision no to treat will as the future tense was a deliberate one which was taken for a number ofreasons. First, there seemed to be no good reason for treating will as being different from any of theother modals. It can be treated lexically, and we could see no reason why it should not be treated inthis way. Secondly, treating will as the future tense implies that this use is in some way neutral interms of modality. But this does not seem to be the case. The closest it comes to a neutral form iswhen it is used to express certainty or prediction:

12 If it’s midday in London Chicago will be 7 a.m.13 In some areas you will find green cardphones.

But the fact that will is not normally found in clauses with if and when:

14 *If it will rain we’ll get wet.15 *When you will finish you can go home.

shows that it is not neutral. It cannot be used in these clauses with its casual meaning of certainty orprediction, because the words if and when are selected in order to avoid the notions of certainty andprediction. Will is not acceptable in such clauses precisely because it carries a modal meaning. It is,of course, acceptable after if or when when it is used to express volition and to realise a request oroffer:

16 If you will agree to the price we can sign the contract.

Treating will as the future tense actually draws learners into the kind of error exemplified in 14 and15 above. Probably the closest thing we have in English to a future tense is the present simple, whichmany formal grammars treat not as present but as ‘not-past’, descr ibing English as a system whichhas a marked tenese form for the past and realises other time references, present and future, throughthis unmarked form unless some modal meaning is carried in addition. This accounts for uses like:

17 Give it to the first person you see.18 I can't come next week. I'm on holiday.

Progressive aspectA description which conflates tense and aspect means that the concepts of progressive andperfective aspect are not taught as such. In the case of progressive aspect, this omission meansthat the description is highly uneconomical. For example many coursebooks identify a use whichis labelled the 'interrupted past'. This is realised by a pattern with the verb in one clause in thepast simple tense and the verb in the other clause, usually a temporal clause, in the pastcontinuous:

The postman called while I was cooking breakfast.

But the notion of 'interruptedness' is a feature of progressive aspect, not simply of the pastcontinuous tense'. The sentences:

The postman usually calls while I'm cooking breakfast.

Word, Structure, Function and Discourse 101and:

I'll probably be cooking breakfast when the postman calls.

are equally possible.Progressive aspect in English is marked by the suffix -ing. Although our syllabus was basicallylexical, we covered the uses of ring in all three levels. A consciousness raising activity comestowards the end of Level 1:

Grammar words.-ing

1 describing something :There were two girls eating fish and chips. Write down oneor two interesting things about eacb person.

2 after am, is, be etc.One girl was carrying a white bag. The S student will beasking you questions about things that you usually doduring the day.

3 after see, look at hear, listen to etc.Listen to them talking about when they go to bed.

4 before am, is etc.Dialling 999 is free.

5 after stop, start, remember, like etc.I remember going to London many years ago. She likeswatching television.

6 after when, before, instead of etc.Remember that when dialling a number from within thesame area, you do not need the prefix.Before attempting to break down the door, the man tried …

Write down five of these things.

something you like doingsomething you stopped doing a long time agosomething you can see someone doingwhat you were doing at this time yesterdaywhat you will be doing this time tomorrow somethingyou remember doing as a childsomeone who is sitting at the front of the class

What categories do these sentences belong to?

a Put in the money before making your call.b Listen to David and Bridget discussing the same

problem.c The conversation ceased and she heard gasping

sounds.d Using a cardphone is not difficult.e You can telephone your family back home without

using money.f The special cards are available from Post Officesg and shops displaying the green 'Cardphone' sign.h I really like running. Swimming is nice too.

i You have quite a long working day, don't you?

The grammar section in Level 1 offers this summary:

-ing (213)

1 describing somethingI've got a man wearing a hat.There was a man carrying a brown bag.You hear a ringing tone. (206)A purring sound.

2 after 'am','is','be' etc.At one o'clock I'm normally eating my lunch. (143)They were walking past the newsagents.

3 after 'see','hear' etc.If you heard someone shouting for help. (208)He saw a woman Iying on the floor. (210)

4 before 'am','is' etc.Learning English is easy, difficult.Watching TV is. . .

5 after 'stop', 'start', 'remember', 'like' etc.He stopped talking and began to eat.


6 after 'vvhen', 'before', 'instead of' etc.Instead of putting your money in first, you dial the number... (206)Can you use the cardphone without using coins?

Certainly categories 1, 2 and 3, and possibly all six categories carry the notion of progressiveaspect. Levels 2 and 3 draw particular attention to the use of progressive aspect in setting a scenein narrative, a scene which is soon to be 'interrupted' by a chain of events. Of course one of themain uses of the -ing form is category 2, which goes with the verb be to form what pedagogicgrammars call the continuous tenses. By highlighting the use and meaning of -ing and also of theverb be:

3 '. .. be' + ringI shall be staying with Vijay Bhatia. (193)

2 used to make the present perfect w~th ringI've been doing it since I was sixteen. (98)I've been working here in Top Shop for 3 months. (98)

8 Grammar revision

am, is, are, was, were

Look at these uses of the verb to be.

1 Who or whatIt's a very pleasant school.I was an insurance broker.

3 WhereIt's near Birmingham, isn't it'That was in Warrington.

5 With -ed, -en.He's married.Where were you born and broughtup?

2 DescribingHe's about fifteen months.She's quite small.

4 With -ingHe's getting to the more interesting stage isn't he?At the moment I'm looking for jobs.

Which category do these examples belong to ?

a John is trying to get a new job.b It's a new town I think.c Now it's in Cheshire.d Hillingdon is a suburb of London.

e It's two miles from Uxbridge.f His son is called Joe.g Joe is just starting to get mischievous.h Catherine left Dublin when she was seven.

we can enable students to produce for themselves the verb forms which carry progressive aspect.The fact that the present participle -ing is treated as an adjectival form gives learners a powerfulindication of its use. The sentence:

A man was carrying a brown bag.

is descriptive in exactly the same way as:

There was a man carrying a brown bag.

Word, Structure, Function and Discourse 103or:

I saw a man carrying a brown bag.

To bring out this feature of English, it is important not to treat the present continuous as a"tense', but rather to make a broader generalisation by treating the ring form as adjectival, withthe collocation with be as one of its common uses. As we shall see below there are otherimportant reasons for treating the present participle with -ing as adjectival.

Perfective aspect

The treatment of the present and past perfect tenses is very similar to that found in mostpedagogic grammars, with two important exceptions. One of the consequences of working fromresearch data and working with authentic text was that we identified the use of the presentperfect tense with reference to the future:

I'll let you know as soon as I've heard from him.Let me know as soon as you have fixed your travel plans.Answer the questions after you have read the passage.

The second difference is methodological. The examples which illustrate the use of perfectiveaspect are taken from the learner's corpus:

173 Language study

had

a In each example below there are two or morethings that happened. Which thing took place first?

1 One evening the wife, white as a sheet, called me overto her flat saying that it had been burgled.

2 Her husband had dropped in briefly while she was out(before she got back), to look for his driving licence.

Now what aboue these sentences from other units?

3 The assistant sold more ice-cream in the interval thananyone had ever done before. (55)

4 And I won the next year but not as much as I'd won thefirst year.

5 . . . they arrived after the restaurants had shut. (86)6 The pilot then discovered the cockpit door had locked

itself and he'd mislaid the key. (104)7 One morning he found that someone had parked in

front of his garage door. (150)

b In what ways are had or 'd used in the story below?

SB: Well, my girlfriend's very frightened of flying,and she had a bad experience. IDescribes how planeengine caught fire.] And they had to take the planeback to Heathrow.CM: Does that mean that nobody else had noticed?SB: I think maybe the pilots had noticed, butcertainly nobody else on board had noticed, [ ] sothey drugged her up with [ ] valium for the nextflight, by when she'd missed her connection in NewYork to Texas and so she had to go on . . .

This helps the learners to build up a picture of the use of perfective aspect in real contexts of use,and also encourages them to look critically at the texts to which they are exposed.

The modals

As we have seen from looking at will and would all the modals were treated lexically in CCEC.

Cartoon picture omitted


can, could (93, 138)

1 ability/possibilityWhat things could you describe as sort of reddish?(37)What other questions could I have asked?Can you explain the answers? (46)How much can you remember? (48)She ran away as fast as she could. (198)Ten twelve. That could be the time. (78)Oriental definitely. It could be Thailand. (171)

Make sentences from this frame.

I can ……………… but I can’t …………………

Here are some ideas to help you.speak English / Italian / Spanish / French / Japaneseplay football / chess / cricket / basketballswim / ski / sail a boat / canoe

What can you see?I couldn't hear what he was saying.

Look at the picture on page 58. Make three sentences starting:I can see …

1.1 'could' for suggestionsYou could look in the newspaper.

Make suggestions in answer to these questions.1 I want to go out for a good meal. Where could I go?2 I've lost my book. Where could it be?3 The telephone's ringing. Who could it be?4 It's my birthday. What could we do?

2 permissionYou can go out now, but come back in ten minutes.Could I do it tomorrow instead of today?

3 offer / requestCan you give me your address? (11)Can you spell your name for me? (11)Can I speak to Dr Brown please? (89)Can I take a message? (89)Can you tell me the time, please? (94)Can you tell me how long it takes?Could you give me your phone number please? (11)Could you look after the children for me? (97)


Make six sentences from this table (two offers and four requests).

CanCould

Iyou

help youtell me the timehelp mego home earlygive me a liftcarry that for you

(please)

4 can/could beThat could be John . . . but I thought he was at work.(92)It could be China or Thailand. (171)Bring lots of jumpers as it can be quite cold. (176)

Imagine you are woken up by a loud noise at night. Whatcould it be?. . . the cat? . . . a burglar? . . . someone coming home late?. . . someone in the kitchen? . . . someone falling out of bed?. . . the neighbours? . . . the traffic?Imagine you are telling someone about it the next day. Say:It could have been . . .

Say which of these things can be:dangerous / interesting / fun / funny / exciting / boring

driving fast TV programmes partiesvisiting relatives travelling by plane ski-ing

This is very much in line with other approaches, which also tend to treat modality lexically. Thelexical research did, however, add certain insights. For example about 15% of the occurrences ofcan and could are followed by the word be. This is so common that we took special account of itin category 4.

The passive voice

I have already argued that the passive is best treated by regarding the past participle asadjectival. It is introduced in Unit 2:

DF: Yes, my brother's married.BG: And what's his wife called?

and is recycled throughout Level 1:

5 + -ed / -enYour father's called John? and your mother's called

Pat? (19)It was built in 1890. (55)It was built for William Randolph Hearst. (55)


This street is called Montague Street Precinct. (67). . .teenage girls who are interested in fashion.. . (95)Are you tired?Wally is awakened by the phone ringing. (91). . .so that I can make sure that you are properly looked after. (193)Listen for the words that are stressed. (103)

There is a series of activities throughout the course recycling this concept and encouraginglearners to analyse the use of verb forms and of other words:

111 Grammar wordsby


2 howShe begins by asking what time they start.Idomy shopping by car.I come to work by bus.


4 whereThere's a phone box by the school.It's over there by the post office.

Find examples for each category.

a She starts by asking what time they begin workb She usually gets back home by 9 a.m.c handicrafts made by people in the Third Worldd Come and sit here by me.e Guess what your partner's number is by asking 'Is it under 50. . .' .

f I think I left it by the telephone.g I have to finish this by tomorrow.

Compare the examples in each category with the examples in the Grammar Book.

by (111)

1 who / what did it

Wally is awakened by the phone ringing. (91 )Handicrafts made by people in the Third World. (104)Is that a magazine published by Macmillan? (146)


This work is brought together and reviewed half way through Level 3:

125 Grammar revision

Past participles and words ending in -ingLook at sentences 1-6 and find seven past participles.How many of them are in passive verbs? What about the one(s) leftover?

Look at sentences S-12 and find ten -ing forms. Howmany of them are adjectives? What about the others?

2 . . . the sunrise is sometimes filmed separately and then thrownon a studio screen. (118)

3 Do you think they (crocodiles) should be kept in special places . .. (97)

4 . . . storms. . . I don't really like being caught in the middle ofthem. (121) :

5 It (the airbag) cannot totally prevent somebody being thrownforward . . . (83)

6 A man-eating leopard was trapped at Siaya Location... forkilling a young girl... (113)

7 What might have happened if the Webbers had run screamingout of the banda . . . ? (110)

8 The following morning, the crew returned without the sunrise.(118)

9 I don't like getting wet. (121)10 I remember once being really cold in Japan . . . (121)11 . . . we went to bed thinking what an exotic place … how

exciting (109)12 . . it started looking in at the window, at my baby son. (109) . . .

such a frightening time. (109)

All the examples given here and all the sentences in the rearranging exercise are part of thelearner's corpus. Most of them occur in texts which come shortly before this particular activity.The result of this is that learners have a context for these sentences. They are involved both inconsciousness raising and in developing a greater familiarity with and sensitivity to particularfeatures of their corpus. The great difficulty with the passive and the present perfect is not whatthey mean but when they are used. Only by drawing attention to occurrences in text can learnersbegin to build up a picture of these forms in use.A final summary of the passive is given in the Grammar Book at the end of Level 3:

be (am, is, are, was, were, be, been)5 for the passive, followed by a past participle ending in redor -en. EG They were chosen from about 31,000 entries.(45b) The world population of them has been drasticallyreduced. (97) Stories about people being eaten by crocodiles


by 161 (l50a, 163a ) issued by the Home Office/might be askedquestions by the programme presenter

A note on methodologyOne point which has emerged strongly in the discussion of the verb phrase above is theimportance of retrieving examples of language in use from the learner's own languageexperience. We have several times made the point that language use involves choice and thatlearners must learn to exercise that choice. At the beginning of a lesson a teacher may choose toannounce:

Last lesson we looked at the present perfect tense.

Or:

Okay, we've had a look at the present perfect tense.

Why does a teacher on a specific occasion choose one rather than the other? Learners need toacquire the ability to select the appropriate form to encode the desired meaning. They cannotlearn to do this by working with decontextualised examples at the level of the sentence. Theymust have as many opportunities as possible to see and hear these forms in use.A second important feature is a refusal to resort to a contrastive methodology. There is little realgain in contrasting, say, the present simple and the present continuous tenses. Even if thisstrategy is successful, all it does is contrast uses in which the choice between the two seems to beclear cut. The present continuous and the present simple, for example, are often contrasted toshow that the simple tense is used for an action which happens frequently, the continuous for anaction which is happening at the time of speaking. The presentation may be made with a picturewith the legend:

John is going to school. He usually goes to school on his bike.

But this ignores some important features of English. First, it ignores the convention in Englishthat the simple tense is normally used to caption pictures.

Johnny goes to school.

would be a more likely caption. Secondly, it ignores the fact that the present continuous withadverbs of frequency is not uncommon. We have a recording in which native speakersrepeatedly produce sentences like:

Oh, I'm usually leaving for work at around that ~me.

One of the dangers with contrastive teaching of this kind is that teachers spend a good deal oftime making a straightforward contrast between two forms which holds true for most of theoccurrences of those forms, but which does not create any learning difficulty. It is a timeconsuming process which achieves very little. Adult learners are very quickly aware of the 'rule',although they will take some time to incorporate it in their language use, no matter how long isspent drilling and contrasting at this particular stage. A more insidious danger is that once thesecontrasts have been made, they become institutionalised. What I mean by this is that materialswriters often


redraw the language to make very specific contrasts between certain forms. Once they have donethis, they allow learners to see only those forms which exhibit this contrast. They begin by doingfor the learners what is easy, and then leave them to make for themselves the subtler moredifficult inferences about language use. They compound this by concealing from the learner anytext which runs counter to the 'rule' they have set up. Simplistic choices are dictated, subtlerchoices are avoided. This is a process which protects learners from language in the classroom, bypreventing them from coming to terms with language choice. Choice operates in conformity to asimple set of rules, not as a response to the need to encode precise meanings.

The noun phrase.

One of the texts we selected for Level 3 threw up this sentence:

So, during the winter months, a van equipped with a loudspeaker and tape bearing the agonised squawks ofa captured seagull held upside down slowly toured the reservoirs for two hours after dusk.

According to some grammars this is a simple sentence - the only finite verb it contains is toured.By any reasonable criteria, however, it is an extremely complex sentence. Given a context andappropriate introductory activities, the sentence did not cause too many comprehension problemsand it was not difficult to devise an exercise to draw attention to the structure of the complexnoun phrase:

81 Language Study

Understanding a complex sentencePractise reading these sentences quickly. After eachone, say what the new information is about.

A van …………………………toured the reservoir.

A van equipped with a loudspeaker and tape …………………………. toured the reservoir.

A van equipped with a loudspeaker and tape bearing

the agonised squawks of a ………… seagull

………………………. toured the reservoir.

A van equipped with a loudspeaker and tape bearing

the agonised squawks of a captured seagull held

upside down slowly toured the reservoir.

Look at paragraph 5 of the newspaper article; howmany additional phrases are there? Now work outhow to read the whole paragraph out loud.

81: Listen to it being read on tape.


But how could learners begin to produce sentences of this type? The example given may be anextreme example, but a look at any written text will show that complex phrases of this kind are acommon feature of the language. The first sentence of the article from which this sentence istaken reads:

Tape-recorded squawks of a seagull in distress have enabled water authorities in Strathclyde to cleanse two reservoirs at Milngavie, near Glasgow, by frightening away an estimated 5,000 seagulls which were polluting the water.

The main clause in this sentence, in italics, consists of 28 words. But most coursebooks offerlearners virtually no help with the kind of complex phrases involved in a clause of this kind. One feature of the first example given above is the use of participles - equipped, bearing,agonised, held. The recognition that participles play such an important part in the constructionof noun phrases was a vindication of our decision to treat participles as adjectival. Thisparticipial use of the -ing form is, in fact, much commoner than its use in the continuous tenses.Similarly, the adjectival use of the past participle is much commoner than its use in thetraditional passive. Another common feature of complex phrases is the use of prepositions, particularly withand of. But again we rarely find a principled treatment of these uses of prepositions in traditionalcoursebooks based on an inventory of structures or functions. This is hardly surprising since,almost by definition, such approaches are concerned with clause and sentence structure and payrelatively little attention to phrase structure. A lexically based syllabus, however, cannot fail torecognise the importance of prepositional phrases in building more complex phrases. Theprepositions of, to, in, for, on, with, at, by, from, about and up all feature among the fiftycommonest words of English. Any approach which recognises the importance of lexis, therefore,is bound to analyse carefully the uses of these words and to make sure that they are highlightedfor the learner. Both with and of are comprehensively covered in Level 1:

of (17, 139) 1 used in expressions of quantity, size etc. I've got those. (25) your brothers. (26) Where's that (107) the yellow shapes are squares. (35) He talked to other people. (107) I did work last weekend. Bring jumpers. (176)

1.2 containing / consisting of somethingHere are twoLet's find a place to have

1.3 'part of’, some of’ etc.the morning. (84)

Tell the class. (106)Tell each other your the story. (115)

Saint Laurence Road. (125)

Word, Structure, Function and Discourse 1112 belonging toDo you know the names of the students in your class? (2)David tried to remember the names of Brigid’s family. (19)The number of a house. (77)What’s the name of the college? (109)

3 ‘sort of’ etc.3.1 spoken only – used to show the speaker doesn’t want to sound very exact; or usedinstead of a pause or hesitationThe watch is sort of next to the glass of water. (42)We sort of get on well. (53)3.2That sort of roof? (171)Three types of telephone. (206)

4 dates, times, agesMy father is the first of May. (81)

with (99, 204)1 together withI’ve come to Liverpool to stay with my parents (98)Discuss with your partner (78)I worked with her a long time ago.

2 used to describe things or peopleIt was very very big, in very good condition with a thick lining. (104)How many expressions can you hear with ‘think’ or ‘thought’? (92)A shirt with no buttons. (38)

3 howSomething you’re not going to actually work with.your friends need a watch to time you with.

and again in Level 2:

d ????What's the missing word?He is married a 15 month old son called Joe.What words do your questions begin ?. . . is a suburb of London a population of. . .It is a large hotel 64 rooms, each bathroom and shower.


It has something to do the rhythms of the language.Do you have anything in common any other students?. . . wait a moment and I'll be you.

In which sentences does the missing word mean 'and has'?

160 Preposition spot

of1 with quantity (to answer the question ‘How many?’ or ‘How much?’)There’s an awful lot of bad writers around. (121)

etc (rest of example omitted)

Yet another feature of English which is often incorporated in the complex noun phrase is the useof one noun to modify another. There are two examples above - winter months and waterauthorities. It is impossible to treat these noun + noun combinations systematically, let aloneexhaustively, because the relationships which can exist between the two or more nouns arealmost infinite. Nevertheless it is important to draw the attention of learners to this feature ofEnglish:

50 GrammarNoun plus nounIn English we often put two nouns together to express quite complexmeanings:1 Have a one minute conversation. (a conversation lasting one minute)2 I have had a Saturday job. . . (24) (a job on Saturdays)3 What were your childhood fears? (34)(fears when you were a child)4 . . . a back page summary of this news report. (38)(summary of a report containing news on the back page of a newspaper)


5 I was behind a big food shelf when the door wasIocked behind me. (38) (a shelf to keep food on)6 . . . his original ambition was to be an engine driver likehis father. (16) (a man who drives engines)

Try to explain what these phrases mean:

a I left school at the end of the summer term. (24)b . . . on the factory floor and in school playgrounds. (14)c . . . a great interest in country life. ( 16)d You are at a small dinner party. (59)e . . . John Helms clung to the safety fence. (36)f Grimble's home toast delivery service. (48)g . . . started a folk-dancing evening, in the village hall. (17)h They must have left the car engine on. (72) :i . . . to prevent serious injury. (83) :j . . . the position of Trainee Assistant Manager. (24)k A learner driver. . .l He had been put in the front passenger seat . . .(72)m Listen to the rain drop falling. (124)n This one is a news article.

Once elements of this kind have been treated, Level 3 begins to look in detail at the complexphrases involving the elements, and to give examples of the way they can be structured:

155 GrammarNoun phrases Who's it about? a Newspapers pack a lot of information into a short space.One way of doing this is byexpanding the noun phrasewhen introducing the person the story is about:

Mr. William Casey, the former CIA head . . .(150)A 16 week old kitten named Mor. . .( l50)

A common pattern is: NAME AGE PLACE JOBJohn Brown, a forty-five year old London policeman.

Sometimes the name comes at the end:

Forty-five year old London policeman, John Brown. . .

Write descriptions like this for some of your family andfriends.


b Sometimes the description can be even more extended:

Handsome smiling forty-five year old former Londonpoliceman, John Brown . . .

Can you write some like this?

c The same thing often happens when the newspaper refersto the source of a story. Make some examples from thistable:DESCRIPTION PLACE/ EMPLOYER STATUS NATION senior British government spokesman official French hospital official London prison representative Paris school trade union

165 GrammarFronting informationIn Unit 15 we saw how newspaper articles pack a lot ofinformation into descriptions of people:

Handsome smiling forty-five year-old Londonpoliceman... (155)

They do the same with events. Opening sentencesparticularly highlight a lot of information to set thescene for what follows:

Police investigating the mysterious disappearance inDorset of Mrs. Etty, a local farmer's wife . . . (161)

Opposition party spokesmen, who have been calling forgovernment action to bring piped water into the centreof the town . . . (161)

Rearrange the following phrases to make openingsentences which you have seen before:

1 on how to reduce the risk – A free booklet – offalling victim – of advice to women – to violentcrime - … has been issued by the Home Office.(150)

2 yesterday – by Madrid underground workers – Astrike – demanding a pay rise - … cut the number ofmorning rush-hour trains by half … (158)

3 and crew members – on board a Dutch plane – lastnight – All 91 passengers – were releasedunharmed – hijacked to Rome … after brief butintense negotiations

4 at Great Ormund Street Hospital, - Up to 20children a month – London, - through lack ofequipment – are refused treatment – and a shortageof nursing staff - … says Professor Lewis Spitz, apediatric surgeon.

189 Language StudySentence buildinga We have seen how news reports pack a lot ofinformation into a single sentence. See how thissentence is put together:

A young man was senously injured. (What young man?)A young man, identified as Jack, was seriouslyinjured.(Who identified him?)A young man, identified in an official statement asJack, was seriously injured.(How was he injured?)A young man, identified in an oflicial statement asJack, was senously injured when he tell down the hill.(What hill?)A young man, identified in an official statement asJack, was seriously injured when he fell down the hillwhere the well was located

b Now look at this sentence:

The Ministry stated repeatedlythat there was nodanger.

(No danger to whom?)

The Ministry stated that there was no danger to thepublic.

How is sentence b related to the first sentence?Now see how the two sentences fit together.In spite of repeated statements by the Ministry thatthere is no danger to the public, a young man,identified in an official statement as Jack, wasseriosly injured when he fell down the hill where thewell is located

Word, Structure, Function and Discourse ll5

Again most of these exercises are consciousness-raising activities. The complexity andunpredictability of these phrases are such that we can offer no prescriptions. All we can do isoutline the elements, and encourage learners to examine their experience of the language. It is,however, most important that we do this. It is difficult to see how anyone could become acompetent speaker or writer of English without recourse to the kind of complex phrase structurewhich is too often overlooked in course design.

Discourse structure

In the past it has been very difficult for syllabus designers to offer learners systematic insightsinto the structure of discourse. The work of Hoey (1983) building on Winter (1977) suggestedthat a lexical approach might offer the most promising starting point. I have shown above theimportance of words like thing, fact and idea in structuring discourse. In Level 3 we took alexical starting point to look at a number of common discourse patterns.In Level 3 we used advertisements to illustrate a common discourse structure incorporatingsituation - problem - solution - evaluation:

Leather JacketsLeather jackets have become increasingly popular and fashionable over the last few years, butin the long winter months they just don't keep the cold out. Here's the solution. These beautifulXXXXXXXXXXXX jackets from Somerset combine the suppleness and style of real leatherwith the unbeatable XXXXXXXXXXXXXX of genuine 100% British sheepskin . . .

Time folds flatOur buyers stay in hotels all over the world sothey are very aware of the need for a goodalarm clock a that doesn't take up space in thesuitcase. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXJust 3” square with all the latest functions, thesoft black leather look case folds flat fortravel. An inexpensive and very personal giftPersonalisation: Up to 3 initials.Fold Away Alarm £6.95JS3633C*

The Unbreakable FlaskThe problem with flasks is that theytend to break easily, but now we’vefound one that should serve you fora lifetime. An elegant andcontemporary design in solidstainless steel, it will retain thetemperature of hot or cold liquid forhours. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX while thethreaded stopper preventsUnbreakable Flask 1 litre capacity£24.95 JS4046C

Designer Shirt WalletThere are times when you need tocarry a wallet but you're notXXXXXXXXX This slim leatherwallet (4" x 2 ½") will hold creditcards and notes, and slips discreetlyinto your shirt pocket.From the house of Piem Cardin, this isthe most elegant shirt wallet currentlyavailable at such a low price.Plerre Cardin Shirt Wallet£6.95 CZ847

KeyminderNot only does the Keyminder bleepwhen you whistle, enabling you toeasily locate your keys, butXXXXXXXXXX incorporates anLCD clock and XXXXXXXXXXXXXX to illuminate yourlock. A great gift.Keyminder £4.95 JS4708C


79 Language study

SITUATION—PROBLEM—SOLUTION—EVALUATIONNotice the structure of these adverts. Read the notes in the table carefully, then suggest what words or phrases fromthe texts could go into the empty spaces. Then continue building up the table with notes from the other adverts

SituationGeneral topic

The problem isthat …

The solution is to…

Evaluation

Leather jacketspopular andfashionableIn winter, don’tkeep cold out (toothin)

Line jacket withsheepskin

warmth andcomfort combinedwith style

Men often carry awallet

when not wearinga jacket (too bulkyfor shirt pocket)

slim leather wallet4 x 2½, fits in shirtpocket

_____________

car keys

(people lose them)(difficult to use indark)

bleeper devicewhen you whistle,light

____________

This structure is further exemplified in a short anecdote:

STICK AT NOTHING

My three-year-old brother, who had been playing outside all morning, came intothe kitchen begging for a snack. I gave him a slice of bread and peanut butter.Holding the bread carefully in both hands, he started to leave, but when hereached the closed kitchen door, a puzzled expression came over his face. He wastoo small to open the door without using both hands to turn the door knob.After a moment's consideration, he found a solution. He plastered the sticky sideof his bread to the wall, used both hands to turn the knob, peeled his bread off thewall and went out happily to play. J. WHITE

SITUATION small hungry child is given bread andpeanut butterPROBLEM . . .SOLUTION . . .EVALUATION . . .

Before seeing this text learners were asked to speculate about it:

82 Peanut butter

(Photographs of jar of peanut butter and slice of bread stuck to wall next to a dooromitted


Why do you think the boy did this? This was the solution - can you work out what theproblem was? Clue: The boy involved was three years old.~ Tell the class what you think. ~

This idea was then further developed:

85 GrammarThe problem is that … the solution is to . . .We use that to introduce a situation or problem. We use to to introduce the action youwould take in finding a solution:

My brother's problem was that he couldn't open the door without using both hands, andhe was carrying a slice of bread and peanut butter at the time. His solution was to plasterthe sticky side of the bread to the wall while he opened the door.

What bothered the old man was that he had borrowed his mother's car without asking, sohe begged the police not to tell her.

If you see smoke the obvious thing is to telephone the fire brigade.

Which of these phrases do you think would introduce problems and which wouldintroduce solutions? Are there any that might do either?

The best thing is . . .I What worries me is . . .It was too big . . .One possibility might be …The answer could be …The trouble is …The only thing is …One difficulty is …One way out would be …The worrying thing is …The disadvantage might be …


85 Grammar

Problems and solutions

Look at this example:Lots of jobs around the house would be simple enough to do yourself, if onlyyou had the tools the professionals use.

trouble isThe problem is I don't have the right tools. thing is

answerThe solution is to buy some good tools best thing

Make sentences using words like TROUBLE, PROBLEM, ANSWER,SOLUTION and THING based on the following sentences:

a. Let this electronic dictionary check your spelling.b. This revolutionary new mobile baby alarm enables you to listen in to

your little ones wherever you are in the house - or even the garden.c. Cleaning brass, copper and silver is a dirty task, but these new Magic

Gloves provide their own polish and keep hands clean.

Exercises of this kind both highlight patterns in text and also show how lexical items signalelements in these patterns:

Problem - What worries me is . . . Solution - The best thing is . . .It was too big . . . One possibility might be . . .The trouble is . . . The answer could be . . .One diffculty is . .. One way out would be . . .The worrying thing is . . .The disadvantage is . . .

All of these items are strongly predictive. A statement of a problem strongly predicts an attemptto identify a solution. The exercises not only serve to highlight these functions in discourse, butalso provide a structural environment for the predictive items:

What worries me isThe trouble is that . . .One difficulty is

The best thing isThe answer could be to . . .One way out would be


Other discourse patterns were treated in a similar way:

123 Language Study

HYPOTHESIS—EVIDENCE—CONCLUSIONDiscuss a-c below, rereading the relevant sections from earlier units if you can't remember thefacts, so that you can answer the questions. Then write a short paragraph about each one, like theparagraph in a.

See Unit 11 (sections 109 - 116).What did Mr Woodley think about the leopard? What did he finally decide? Why? Mr Woodley thought the leopard could have been either a stock-killer or a man-eater.Because of the way it behaved he concluded that it must have been a man-eater.

What did Richard Webber and his wife think about the leopard when it was outside their hutIooking in the windows?They thought (that) . . .

What did they finally decide? : They decided that . . .

What was their reason? : .. . because. …

See Unit 10 (section 100). :The Yetties lost their flight case on their way to Nepal. What did the Yetties think could havehappened to it? Write a list of possibilities. (For example it could have been left in London.)

What had actually happened?

162 Language StudyClassifyingBob Jobbins talks about diferent kinds of newsbroadcast. He begins by pointing to the difference:

Different radio programmes require differentstyles of writing and broadcasting …

Then goes on to describe types and examples:

… some programmes, for example on a pop musicchannel, like short snappy reports. Others onmore serious channels want more details andperhaps some analysis.

Can you expand these opening sentences in thesame way? There are some notes in 1 to help you.Write notes, then full sentences.

1 Not all jobs require the same kind of qualifications.

Some – e.g. teaching – academic qualifications – eg a degree.Others – eg newspaper reporter – personal qualities – egstamina, the ability to assimilate information quickly andaccurately

2 Different sports appeal to different people …

3 Different countries seem to enjoy different kinds of food …

4 Different means of transport offer different advantages …

Read one of your completed paragraphs out to the class. Findout who has thought of a similar way to continue. Listen totheir report and continue in the same way.


A lexical approach to discourse structure affords us a way of identifying those language itemswhich the writer uses to give shape to the discourse, and which the reader uses to makepredictions and to develop his mental map in line with the writer's intentions. Nowadays a featureof most EFL courses is 'the skills lesson', in which learners are given opportunities to practise theskills which go to make up successful communication. I have no doubt about the value of theskills lesson as one item of the EFL menu. But I am sure that such skills as prediction, skimming,scanning and so on are much more readily accessible to the learner if we can highlight thoselanguage items which enable us to predict and which, because they mark the macro-structure oftext, provide important clues as we skim or scan a given text.

Coverage of functions

There is little danger of a task-based syllabus failing to provide good coverage of the mainlanguage functions. The content of Level 1 lists among other things the 'Social Language'covered. This incorporates most of the functions covered in courses which take languagefunctions as a basic element in syllabus planning. Units 6 to 10 in Level 1 list the following:

Unit 6SOCIAL LANGUAGEAsking where people are.Telephoning: getting put through.Agreeing and disagreeing.Asking people to wait.

Unit 9 Asking for and giving directions.Making suggestions, offers, requests.Asking about someone else's education.

Unit 7 Informal inviting, accepting,refusing and giving reasons.Shopping for clothes:asking for other things, makingqueries

Unit 10 Comparing experiences to find outsomething or someone in common

Unit 8 Asking about what people doMaking and responding to moreformal invitations.Classroom questions, instructionsand queries

Many of these functions are highlighted when the models are dealt with:


138 Grammar Words

can, could(For meanings 1 and 2, could is the past tense of can.For meaning 3 could is a more formally polite form than can.)

1 ability/possibilityCan you follow these directions?It must be John. It can't be anyone else.I was so tired I couldn't stay awake.What can you see from your classroom window?

1.1 could for suggestionsA: What shall we do? B: We could go to the cinema.What about 1989? Could it be a telephone number?

2 permissionYou can write three words to help you remember.I asked if I could go home early.

3 offer/requestCan you open the window a bit please?Could you open the window a bit please?Can I help you?

Say if these sentences are expressing meanings 1, 2 or 3.

a Close your books and see how much you can remember.b You can go out now, but come back in ten minutes time.c Do you think you could help?d I can understand English but I can't speak very well.e I can't come tomorrow. I've got a meeting.f Can you spell that for me please? :g Can I carry that for you?h The tape was so fast that we couldn't understand. :i That could be John.j Can you hear me?

Compare the examples in each category with those in the Grammar Book.

The expression can be is very common.'Housework can be very hard work' means

'Housework is sometimes very hard work'.


What can you say about learning English?

Learning English can be. . .interesting, easy, difficult, very difficult, hard work, : very hard work, exciting, boring,horrible, en1oyable, fun, good fun

More important is the way native speaker recordings illustrate important language functions:

b Reaching agreement

MS: Well when I see . . . er . . . a windmill I always think of Holland, so I would say Holland, forthat.PK: Mhm. Yes I think I agree with you.

Have they reached agreement that it is a picture of Holland?Look what they go on to say. At which point do they actually reach agreement?

PK: Mhm. Yes I think I agree with you. It's flat as well isn't it?MS: Yes.PK: So it must be Holland.MS: The -PK: And the third one along the top?

171a How do they reach agreement on the other countries?

This shows that a function like 'reaching agreement' can be socially and linguistically complex,and is not simply a matter of saying 'Yes, I agree with you':

PK: It's - Yes, yes. We ve got North Africa, soMS: Right. Okay, let's say North Africa.PK: I think that's North Africa.MS: Right.PK: I don't think it's anywhere else that's on the list, soMS: No.PK: North Africa. Mhm. Right, now this one on the leftdown here. That looks a bit like the Grand Canyon tome.

The important thing here is that it shows that the realisation of a particular language function isvery often a cooperative venture. It is certainly the case that such realisations are often, indeedusually, much more complex than functionally based syllabuses normally acknowledge.Learners are not likely to acquire the ability to negotiate language functions by acquiringlinguistic realisations such as:

Yes, that's right.Or:

Yes, I agree with you.


Much more important is experience of the way such functions actually are negotiated and agreedin authentic discourse.

Summary

When we checked against the TEFL Side Corpus the language coverage we had achieved inCCEC, we found that we had either covered all the items traditionally covered or, as in the caseof reported speech, had made a deliberate decision to omit them. We found that even with itemslike the verb phrase, which are covered with great thoroughness in traditional approaches, wehad achieved comparable coverage. Given lexis as our starting point, there were differences inour treatment, particularly the decision to treat participles as adjectival and to derive progressiveaspect and passive voice from this description. The lexical approach also led us to treat will, likeother models, as a lexical item, and therefore to deny the notion of a future tense.

We also found that our lexical approach had highlighted many important aspects of languagewhich are largely ignored in many other courses. I have already mentioned the treatment ofparticiples as adjectives. These were combined with prepositional phrases and noun modifiers,all of which assume great importance in structuring complex phrases in English. Similarly, wewere able to identify and highlight for learners lexical items which are important in structuringdiscourse and which make up the hidden agenda in many skills lessons. Finally, we were able tooffer good coverage of most language functions. This was a feature of our methodology and ourreliance on authentic or spontaneous material. This led us to look at the negotiation of languagefunctions, rather than simply to list idealised realisations of target functions.

Central to all of this is the notion of the learner's corpus. What we need to do is provide learnerswith a corpus which contains the language potential that they need, and then to enable andencourage them to look at that corpus in detail. In this way we move from an itemised syllabusto a dynamic description of language which learners can make their own.

t24


CHAPTER 8: A brief review

Real language

The lexical approach as we have described it so far is firmly based on real language. It drawson the COBUILD research which provides an analysis of a corpus of natural language oftwenty million words. The COBUILD corpus provided the content of the lexical syllabus- thecommonest words and phrases in English and their meanings. It also provided some insightsinto that content which modified and shaped the way we treated the language in thecoursebooks. As aresult, thepicture we presentedof the language was quite different fromwhat we might have offered intuitively. intuition alone would not have identified the mostfrequent words and phrases of the language, or recognised their importance. In the past thecoursewriter's reliance on intuition has led to distortions in the treatment of the language.Pedagogic grammars have placed great emphasis on the verb phrase to the detriment of otheraspects of language. The basic meanings of prepositions, usually to do with space and time,have been thoroughly treated, but other prepositional meanings have been undervalued. Lessthan half the uses of the preposition in, for example, are temporal or spatial. The centralfunction of lexis in structuring discourse has also been largely overlooked. These and otherfailings of established approaches to syllabus specification amply justified the decision to goback to a description of real language. There were, in addition, many specific insights intothe language - the use of some and any; the use of would for past habit; the collocationbetween can and be, and so on. The description of language implicit in the CollinsCOBUILD English Course is very different from other courses. We would argue that it is amore accurate description, and that this derives from the fact that it is based on real language.

The CCEC materials offer a corpus of language to illustrate the insights derived fromthe original research. This corpus is in part natural language drawn from a number of sources(mainly written), and in part spontaneously produced spoken language drawn mainly fromrecordings of native speakers carrying out the tasks which form the basis of the course. Thisagain is a departure from usual practice. Up to now no other coursebook at the elementarylevel offers predominantly authentic language. But i do not feel that there is any need tojustify the decision to use almost exclusively authentic language. The onus rests with thosewho provide simplified and contrived language. They are the ones who should justify theirprocedures. The only real criticism of the use of authentic language would be if it proved toodemanding for its target audience. That has not turned out to be the case.

Indeed, it is not difficult to provide justification for the decision to use authenticlanguage. The spontaneous recordings provide listening material which is very different fromscripted material. The structure of overtly interactive spoken discourse is extremely complexand extremely difficult to simulate. There are a number of features in the CCEC recordingswhich are typical of spoken discourse, but which are often omitted in scripted dialogues:

A Brief review 125

1 9 1 aDF: So. What do you do, again? You're asecretary, orBG: Yes.DF: more than-BG I'm a secretary for Alistair.DF: Okay. Erm...BG: And I also do all his admin. And I work for John, who's our African Manaser.DF: Okay, so like a PA.BG: To Alistair, yes.DF: Yeah. Okay.BG: And then. I sort of helo John out with allhis administrhtion.DF: Right. Erm... Are you planning to stay where you are?BG: Yes.DF: In your job?BG: For the - for the time being.DF: Erm... So you're quite happy with it?BG: Yes.DF: Erm... Have you got any long-term plansfor the future, in terms of work?BG: Erm. . . I'm not sure. I - it depends sort of what happens between nou, and then really.Erm But, for the time being I'm happy. I'11iust see what happens.DF: Right. How long have you been ' 're?

BG: Since May, last year.DF: Oh. So you've oniy - you have - have youBG: I haven't even been there a vear vet. DF: Yeah. Yeah.... Okav. Risht.

The turntaking is not as neatly organised as in most scripted dialogues. David andBridget build up a description of Bridget's job over ten turns. The basic structure of theirdiscourse is not simply a series of question and answer pairs. David constantly uses itemslike yeah, and okay, to signal that he has received and understood the answer to his question,The basic structure, therefore, is a three part exchange with question and answer followed byan acknowledgement of the answer before the next question. This structure has been familiarto discourse analysts (see Sinclair and Coulthard 1975) for many years, but these insightshave rarely been incorporated in teaching materials. The word right is used twice. Each timeit indicates the end of one part of the agenda and the beginning of another. The use of againin David's opening utterance links back to an earlier stage in the discourse.

There are two important points here. The first is that there is a great deal happening inspontaneous discourse which is idealised out of scripted dialogues. The second is that thesefeatures are a result of the fact that discourse is negotiated interactively. It is not a question ofinterlocutors taking turns to encode meanings. It is a matter of interlocutors combining tocreate a discourse. Scripted dialogues usually have more in common with written than withspoken language. There is an implied attempt to teach learners to speak written English. Notsurprisingly this is something they find difficult to do.

t26 The Lexicctl Svllabus

When we began to pilot spontaneous recordings, we were worried that they might causeinsurmountable problems for remedial beginners. This did not turn out to be the case. Ifanything, the spontaneous recordings were easier to process. We were surprised at this, butwe should not have been. Interactive spoken discourse is structured the way it is in order tomake comprehension easier, not in order to make it more difficult. The redundancy and overtdiscourse signals built into it do not obscure the message. Just the reverse - they make thediscourse more accessible both to the participants and to other listeners. The reason whyspontaneous discourse is often inordinately difficult to understand is that there is sharedknowledge and shared assumptions between the participants which are not shared by otherlisteners. In the case of taskbased listening the tasks can be designed to ensure that sharedknowledge between the participants which is not shared by the listener can be kept to aminimum.

Written texts in EFL coursebooks are often used simply to illustrate the pedagogicgrammar which the coursebook writers want to impart to learners. But as we have seen, thisgrammar is often of doubtful validity. It is also based on the belief that the selection of, say,the past simple rather than the present perfect is a function of meaning in some objectivesense. In fact the selection of one form rather than another is a result of the speaker's orwriter's choice. It is difficult to see how one might justify contrived texts which are designedto present a precise contrast between past simple and present perfect, when we know thatvery often the contrast is not precise but a matter of choice. A procedure which focuses on aclear cut contrast and ignores cases in which choice operates, obscures the fact that veryoften no such contrast exists objectively. Language use is not a matter of conforming to a setof restrictive rules. It is a matter of exploiting the language system to achieve communicativeintentions. The language used is shaped by the purpose for which it is being used. Languagewhich is being used simply to illustrate an abstract grammatical system has no purpose andtherefore offers no basis for choice.

Some coursebook writers defend the use of simplified language on the grounds thatsimplification is a natural phenomenon. We simplify our language when we are speaking tochildren and also when we are speaking to language learners. There is therefore no reasonwhy writers should not simplify their language in this way when they are writing material foran EFL coursebook. This might be acceptable if they then took the trouble to ascertain thatthe language produced in this way is in fact typical of the target language, and that the wordsand phrases which their students are likely to meet outside the classroom are indeed coveredby the simplified language they are offering. It may be that what they are offering is notsimplified, but simply restricted. They would also need to show some principleddevelopment from the simplified code in the direction of the target language as used by adultnative speakers.

On the question of how far simplified language is typical of language as a whole - howfar it exploits the typical words and patterns of English - I would suggest that there are atleast two reasons why simplified language is not typical of language as a whole. Whensimplifying our language we use specific techniques- repetition, paraphrase, exemplificationand so on. Simplified language is, therefore, likely to be different in discourse structure fromother manifes-

A Brief Reviex,J2T

tations of natural language.There are also doubts about the simplification techniques used in selecting or creating

examples to demonstrate features of language form for the learner. A language descriptionwhich focuses on sentence structure is likely to simplify out any features which detract fromthat focus. Thus the sentence:

Yes I do, I like being a father.

is a very likely sentence at the presentation or practice stage of a lesson. A sentence like:

Yes, my wife and I both like having kids around the house.

is very unlikely as a pattern sentence in a teaching context, but it is by no means an unlikelysentence of English.

Language materials based on a functional description of language tend to producehighly explicit realisations of language functions. In such materials suggestions are realisedby:

l f l w e r e y o u l w o u l d . . .

or:

Why don't you. . .

They are rarely realised by:

Well what I do is . . .

or:

One answer would be to . . .

Simplification, therefore, is not neutral. It is conditioned by the description of thelanguage which materials wish to present. If they wish to describe the language structurally,that will dictate certain priorities and omissions. Contrived simplification of language in thepreparation of materials will always be faulty, since it is generated without the guide andsupport of a communicative context. Only by accepting the discipline of using authenticlanguage are we likely to come anywhere near presenting the leamer with a sample oflanguage which is typical of real English.

Task-based methodologyBy a task I mean an activity which involves the use of language but in which the focus is onthe outcome of the activity rather than on the language used to achieve that outcome. It iswhat I described earlier as a replication activity, because it replicates important features ofcommunication outside the classroom. Most teachers are well aware of the value of tasks inlanguage learning. Most teaching centres have shelves full of books which help teachersbring activities of this kind into their classrooms. But tasks have rarely been used as the basisof published coursebook materials. This is because there is a basic contradiction between thestructural syllabus and the use of tasks. The structural


syllabus depends on gading language patterns according to certain notions of difficulty, andthen presenting these patterns to the learner one at a time. Control of language is essential tothe structural approach.

A task-based methodology on the other hand, does not control in the same way thelanguage demands placed on the learner. It encourages learners to make the best use they canof whatever language they have. It assumes that learners will find ways of encoding themeanings they need in order to achieve the desired outcome, but it does not try to predict orcontrol the language that will be used to achieve the outcome. One way of looking at theopposition between form-focused and task-based approaches is that form-focused approachessee language as a system of pattems or structures. Learners are gradually introduced to moreand more complex patterns until they have built up a picture of the whole language.Task-based approaches see language as a system of meanings. This view is succinctlycharacterised by Halliday (1975) in the title of a study of child language acquisition,Learning How to Mean. For Halliday, 'the leaming of a language is essentially the learningof a semantic system'. Language develops in response to the demands made on the leamer'smeaning system. The crucial thing is what meanings can the leamer encode? How well canlearners exploit the language they have in order to meet the demands imposed upon them?From a learning point of view, how readily can they expand their language system inresponse to the demand placed upon them?

When one looks at language as a semantic system, this offers a whole new perspectiveon the dichotomy between fluency and accuracy. The concept of accuracy relates very muchto a form-focused view of language. In thinking of accuracy, most teachers are addressing thequestion ofhow far the language tokens produced by learners do accurately reflect thegrammar of English. But one might ask another question. How precisely are learners able toencode the meanings they wish to encode? This is an ability which requires them,particularly in the early stages of learning, to exploit their language learning resources in away that distorts formal code:

(Errors) take place because the leamer attempts to adjust the language he islearning to make it an effective instrument of communication and he does this bycalling upon those strategies which he employs in his own language. Errors are theresul t o f the leamer 's at tempt to conver l h is l inguist ic usage into communicat i rcuse. (Widdowson 1979)

It is these demands on the leamer's system which oblige learners to refine and expand theirlanguage resources. The exercise of choice will lead the learner into error because only inexercising choice in this way are learners obliged to create new meanings, and, in creatingthem, to extend their language resources. This creation of meaning is the first stage oflearning. Refining the language used is a later stage. A presentation methodology is based onthe belief that out of accuracy comes fluency. A task-based methodology is based on thebelief that out of fluency comes accuracy, and that learning is prompted and refined by theneed to communicate.

Once we view language as a semantic system, the arguments for a task-basedmethodology of some kind are overwhel.ning.The problem then is to devise a

' A Brief Review, 729

methodology which will place appropriate demands on the learner's system. The CollinsCOBUILD English Course attempts to do this first by ordering tasks as far as possibleaccording to the communicative demands they place on learners, and secondly by varying thecommunicative circumstances through a basic Task - Planning- Report cycle, so as to placevarying demands on the need for formal accuracy.

A form-focused approach does not place such demands on the leamer. It requires thelearner to produce target forms to a large extent irrespective of meaning. In the final event itis still rooted in a behaviourist theory which believes in controlling and shaping the learner'scode towards a desired outcome. Advocates of such approaches argue that we cannotreasonably expect leamers to carry out certain tasks because 'they don't have the language todo it' because 'they haven't done conditionals yet', and so on. But trying to carry out taskswhich stretch their language resources is useful to leamers in two ways. It obliges them tomake the best possible use of the language they do have. And it makes them aware of failingsin the meaning system they have developed - it highlights the need for leaming.

A shortcoming of task-based approaches is that they make it difficult to specify syllabuscontent, and as teachers we cannot be sure what is being leamt in the course of a givenlanguage activity or in a given unit. What we can do, however, is define a learner's corpuswhich covers the most important meanings and patterns in English. We can then exploit thatcorpus by using it as a source for language awareness activities, and we can enable theleamer to exploit it by referencing and recycling the material it contains. An approach of thiskind takes account of the fact that we cannot describe the logic by which a learner's systemdevelops. We must equip learners to take advantage of whatever learning opportunitiesoccur, not by presenting language to them a piece at a time. but by enabling them to lookmore and more critically at their own language experience.

The lexical syllabus

Taking lexis as a starting point enabled us to identify the commonest meanings and patternsin English, and to offer students a picture which is typical of the way English is used. Wewere able to follow through the work of Wilkins and his colleagues in their attempt to specifya notional syllabus. We were also able to offer learners a way of referencing the languagethey had experienced. Thus learners were able to use their corpus in the same way asgrammarians and lexicographers use a corpus - in order to make valid and relevantgeneralisations about the language under study.

We did not work from other pedagogic grammars, but from a body of research intonatural language. This meant that we were able to offer a more complete pedagogicdescription of the language and also a better balanced description. Coursebooks which takeother coursebooks as their starting point draw on the strengths of accumulated experience.But unless they go back to look at language they are also likely to perpetuate the failings ofother courses. They spend an inordinate amount of time on the verb phrase and ignore other

130 The Lexical Sl,llabus

important features of language. We not only took a lexical description as our starting point,we also checked the course content against other courses by checking against the TEFL SideCorpus.

We found that we had covered to our satisfaction all that is traditionally in elementaryand intermediate courses in terms of structures and functions, and had covered a good dealmore besides. Where we made omissions, we did so on the basis of a deliberate decision. Wedecided, for example, that reported speech was not a valid category in a pedagogic, or indeedin a formal grammar. We did not, therefore, find it necessary to spend a large amount of timeon tenses in reported speech. Similarly, by highlighting the meaning of would andencouraging learners to identify these meanings for themselves we avoided the need to spendtime focusing specifically on the second conditional.

There were several reasons why we were able to offer more complete coverage. Thefirst reason of course was that we were working from a more complete description of thelanguage than most materials writers are able to work from. The data sheets for Level I aloneran to hundreds of pages which we had to distil into fifteen units (around one hundred andtwenty hours of study for remedial beginners). Secondly, having omitted items like reportedspeech and the second conditional, we made time to look at other features of language whichwe felt to be more important or more problematic. We looked, for example, at the use ofprepositions and participles in the noun phrase, and at those lexical items which areimportant in the structuring of discourse. This gave us a more balanced picture of languagethan pedagogic grammars normally achieve.

Most important of all, we shifted responsibility for learning onto the learner - where itbelongs. A presentation methodology purports to teach the language, resting on the beliefthat there is a close relationship between input and intake. A methodology of this kind spendsa large amount of time on a very limited number of language patterns. It fails manifestly towork in the way it is supposed to work. Learners do not extend their control of the languagepiece by piece. It cannot work in the way it is supposed to, because we do not have adescription of language which might enable us to input the grammar in any worthwhilesense. Instead of presenting discrete patterns to the learner, we enabled the learner toexperience a corpus of language which is in many ways typical of the language as a whole,and to learn from examining and analysing this corpus. By offering learners exposure tocarefully selected language, and by equipping them to analyse that language for themselves,we are enlisting the learners' help. There is no longer an appearance that learning isdependent on teacher control. The most dynamic element in the process is the learner'screativity. By exploiting rather than stifling that creativity, we make learning vastly moreefficient.

The role of the teacher

We hear more and more frequently nowadays that the role of the teacher is not so much toteach as to manage leaming - to create an environment in which leamers can operateeffectively. Sometimes this is taken further, and the job of the teacher is to help learnersmanage their own learning. This is the teacher

A Brief Revieu, 137

helping leamers to discover for themselves the best and most effective way for them to leam.Cerlainly there is a move to a much greater focus on the learner, and a greater recognition ofthe fact that the most important variable in the language leaming process is the individuallearner.

We are much more likely to realise this ideal if we abandon the idea of the teacher asoknower' and concentrate instead on the notion of the learner as 'discoverer'. There isnothing new in this notion. It was put forward by interlanguage theorists like Corder andSelinker almost twenty years ago. But there is an understandable reluctance on the part ofteachers to abandon the role of 'knower'. It is a comfortable role in a number of ways, notleast because, since the role of 'knower' is a high status role, it paradoxically allows us tocover up or redefine what we do not know. But even when teachers wish to break away fromthe role, it has not been easy for them to do so. Materials which are based on the assumptionthat the best way for leamers to learn is to discover the grammar for themselves and that theteacher is a guide to this discovery process, have been few and far between.

It is to be hoped that techniques which specify a learner's corpus, and provide learnerswith a framework within which to examine that corpus. will enable teachers to place learnersat the centre of the learning process.

The way ahead

Most of the things we have tried to do in the Collins COBUILD English Course have beendone with varying degrees of success by other materials writers and teachers for years.Language tasks which focus on outcome rather than form are part of the repertoire of mostteachers, and there is a wealth of material to support activities of this kind. The promotion oflanguage awareness and the analysis of language by learners are also established techniquesbut, although other materials writers have used authentic materials, to my knowledge nonehave made spontaneous spoken interaction the basis for a course at the elementary level. Butthis is not a denial of the desirability of using language of this kind - simply anacknowledgement of the difficulty of doing so.

The notion of a learner's corpus and the deliberate attempt to reference and exploit thatcorpus are, I think, innovations. The learner's corpus is a direct consequence of taking theCOBUILD corpus as a stafting point. lt was this starting point which gave us the idea ofenabling the leamer to work with a corpus just as a lexicographer or grammarian works witha corpus. It was the computational techniques used in the COBUILD project which enabledus to exploit the learner's corpus in this way.

As computers are used more and more in the study of large corpora of text and as aids toteachers and learners of languages, so these techniques will be further developed. In theCollins COBUILD English Course we, as materials writers, acted as intermediaries betweenlearners and corpus, taking decisions as to what was worth highlighting and when. It is nowtechnically possible to bring decisions of this kind much closer to the classroom. Teacherscan scan a corpus and decide for themselves which features are likely to be most useful andvaluable for their students. Students themselves can have access to a i'orpus. Using the FINDcommand on a word processing package they can examine

132 The Lexical S),llabus

a range of uses of a given word in its original contexts. Using a concordancing programmethey can bring those uses together and either compare them with a description provided by ateacher or a set of materials, or produce their own description. Given the rapidly improvingstate of technology it is more than likely that the notion of the learner's corpus will play aprogressively larger pafi in the repertoire of the coursewriter, the teacher and the learner. Infuture we may come to think of the business of designing a syllabus as a process ofconstructing and exploiting a corpus of language with a particular group of learners in mind.A process of this kind acknowledges the proper respect due to both the learner and thelanguage.


Bibliography

Bongers, H. 1947. The History and Principles of Vocabulary Control, Wocopi: Woerden.Brumfit, C. J. 1984. Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching, CUP.Caroll, J. B., P. Davies, and B. Richman 1971. The American Heritage Word FrequencyBook, New York, American Heritage Pub. Co.Corder, S. P. 1967. The Significance of Learners’ Errors, IRAL.Corder, S. P. 1978. Language Learner Language, in Richards, J. C. (ed.).Ellis, R. 1984. Classroom and Second Language Development, OUP.Halliday, M. A. K. 1976. Learning How to Mean, Edward Arnold.Halliday, M. A. K. 1976. The English Verbal Group in System and Function in Language,(ed.) Gunther Kress OUP.Halliday, M. A. K. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic, Edward Arnold.Hanks, P. 1987. ‘Definitions and Explanations’, in Looking Up, Collins.Hoey, M. 1983. On the Surface of Discourse, George Allen and Unwin.Krashen, S. D. 1981. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning,Oxford, Pergamon Press.Krashen, S. D. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, Oxford,Pergamon Press.Krashen, S. D. and T. D. Terrel 1983. The Natural Approach, Oxford, Pergamon Press.Lewis, M. 1989. Unpublished paper delivered at IATEFL Conference, Warwick.Littlewood 1981. Communicative Language Teaching, CUP.Long, M. H. 1982. Does Second Language Instruction Make a Difference? Paper deliveredat TESOL Convention, Honolulu.Maley, A. and A. Duff 1978. Drama Techniques in Language Learning, CUP.McTear, M. F. 1975. Structure and Categories of Foreign Language Teaching Sequences,Unpublished mimeo, University of Essex.Nation, I. S. P. 1983. Teaching and Learning Vocabulary, Victoria University of WellingtonEnglish Language Institute.Prabhu, N. S. 1987. Second Language Pedagogy, OUP.Quirk, R. et al, 1972. A Grammar of Contemporary English, Longman.Renouf, A. 1987. ‘Corpus Development’. Looking Up, Collins.Rutherford, W. E. 1987. Second Language Grammar: Learning and Teaching, Longman.Selinker, L. 1972. Interlanguage, IRAL.Sinclair, J. M. 1987 (ed.). Looking Up, Collins.Sinclair, J. M. 1988. Foreword to The Collins COBUILD English Course, Collins.Sinclair, J. M. and R. M. Coulthard 1975. Towards an Analysis of Discourse, OUP.Tickoo, M. L. 1988. ‘Michael West in India: a Centenary Salute’, in ELTJ vol 42 no. 4.West, M. 1953. A General Service List of English Words, Longman, Green and Company.Widdowson, H. G. 1978. Teaching Language as Communication, OUP.Widdowson, H. G. 1979. Explorations in Applied Linguistics, OUP.Wilkins, D. A. 1976. Notional Syllabuses, OUP.Willis, J. R. 1981. Spoken Discourse in the ELT Classroom, Birmingham University,unpublished M.A. thesis.Willis, J. D. 1983. The Implications of Discourse Analysis for the Teaching of OralCommunication, Birmingham University, unpublished Ph.D. thesis.Winter, E. O. 1977. ‘A clause relational approach to English texts; a study of somepredictive lexical items in written discourse’, in Instructional Science, vol 6 no. 1.

Index

ability to learn/generalise/activate knowledge iiif, viii, 8ff, 12f, 22ff. 41 ff, 64. 129, 131 seeacquisition; knowing a language; learner’s role

about 110abstract use of language 50faccumulated entities 7, 42ff see structural syllabus; synthetic approachesaccuracy v 495. 42, 60ff 86.124. 128f see form-focused activitiesacquisition 22. 24. 41. 5i, 59, 69. 81.108active voice 18activities see communicative activities; form-focused activities: tasksadapted texts see inauthentic textsadequacy 60fadjectival relative clauses 91adjectives 8, 16ff. 23. 93,102f. 105ff, 110, 123adverbial phrases 43adverbials 26adverbs of frequency 108affirmative sentences 9, 49, 51again 125agent 17analysis of language vii, 12, 68. 72, 82, 85, 106, 123,130fanalysis stage 64f, 68, 72f, 94f see Language Studyanalytic approaches 42. 44ff. 72 see synthetic approachesanv 9,13. 49, 5L 53ff, 70, 76, 92,124appropriacy see styleare 87articles 24aspect 15, 17, 24, 92, 100ff see -ed/-en; -ing; perfective aspect; progressive aspect;

tenseassimilation see acquisitionat llOauthenticity 74ff see language useauthentic language 74ff, 85,123,124,127authentic materials 26, 45f, 74ff, 85,103.123, 131auxiliaries 87 95awareness raising 23f. 86. 101, 107, 115, 129, 131

be v 16f 38 85. 93 102. 105. 124beginners 42 see false beginnersbehaviourism 129Birmingham University vfBongers, H 46 broad 40Brumfit C J 6 by 17, 48f, 68f, 88ff. 106ff see passive voice

can 88,104. 124Caroll, J B et al.46categories 40ff, 48ff. 77fl, 82, 91,102 see description of the language structural

syllabuscause and effect 6, 81fchoice see communicative purpose; contrastive presentation; language use‘chunks’ of language 39, 72f see collocation; fixed phrases; holophrasescircumstances of communication 59ff, 129citation 57ff. 93 see controlled pattern practiceclassroom see language classroomclassroom talk 12ff, 34f. 63f, 77clause structure 3, 7. 15, 43closed grammatical systems 43COBUILD corpus vii, 18, 27ff, 46, 48ff, 74. 78f, 91,124,131COBUILD project/research vff, 27ff, 46, 47ff, 72, 76, 92. 105, 124, 131Collins v, 15Collins COBUILD English Course (CCEC) vf, 15.17,19ff, 28, 32, 34ff, 47ff, 52, 59.61,

63, 66ff, 74ff, 91ff, 124ff, 129.131 see teacher's notesCollins COBUILD English Language Dictionary 18, 27ff, 41. 52, 78, 91 see dictionary

entriescollocation 40f. 52, 124 see 'chunks'of language; fixed phrases; holophrasescommon meanings ivff, 15, 46ff, 70, 74, 79,124,129common patterns ivff, 15, 38. 51f, 70. 72. 74. 77. 83,129common phrases 31common words vff, 15. 28, 38, 39, 46ff. 51. 70f, 74. 77. 80. 83, 85, 91 110 124 see

frequencycommunicative ability see skillscommunicative activities iii, 1, 495. 57ff see replicationcommunicative aims iv. 5 see communicative effect; communicative purposecommunicative approach v, viii, 2, 4ff, 57ff, see communicative methodologycommunicative context 60, 127, see circumstances of communicationcommunicative effect 10f see communicative purposecommunicative methodology 6,14,57ff,see communicative approach; methodology;

task-based methodology

communicative purpose 5. 12, 60, 74f, 126 see communicative aimscomplements see adjectivescomplex phrases 123 see noun phrasescomputer input slips 29ffcomputers 131f see COBUILD project; concordances; corpus; databaseconcordances 28ff. 48f, 53, 69. 76ff, 132concrete objects 51conditionals 15f. 1 8f. 22f. 50f. 81. 91, 93 see first/second/third conditionalconsciousness raising see awareness raisingconsensus syllabus see TEFL Side Corpuscontinuous tenses 102, 110 see -ing; progressive aspectcontrastive presentation 25.108.126controlled pattern practice 1, 72f, 90 see drills; form-focused activitiesconventions of communication 11co-occurrence see collocationCorder S P iii 24 42 131corpus 68f, 72 74 77 84f, 91,124,129ff see COBUILD corpus; learner's corpus; TEFL

Side Corpuscorrection see teacher's rolecould 6 13. 18f. 63f 88, 104fCoulthard, R M 125Council of Europe v. 6, 42 44f see notional-functional syllabus Wilkinscourse writers see materialscoverage 77f see syllabus; TEFL Side Corpus

Dahl, R 20.78database vi, 30ff. 48, 78 see COBUILD corpus; COBUILD projectdata sheets 32ff. 52. 54ff, 71. 74. 76ff, 130definite articles 24delexical verbs 95description of the language iiif, vii. 7f, 10ff, 15. 20ff. 23f, 27, 69, 73, 123, 124, 127,

129f see formal grammars; pedagogic grammarsdeterminers 24dictionary entries 30ff, 48, 78, 84 see Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionarydid 94fdifficulty v, 9, 15f, 19ff, 24ff, 39, 44, 77, 85, 107, 108, 124, 126, 128, 131discourse v 11f, 30f, 50ff, 70, 74, 77, 91,123,124ffdiscourse structure 50, 83, 115ff. 123, 124ff, 130do 87, 94fdrills 58, 72f. 90, 108 see controlled pattern practiceDuff, A iiidynamic adjectives 8, 16f

economy of description 100economy of syllabus v, viii, 19, 21, 23, 41, 44, 51, 75, 91f--ed/-en 17, 81,105ffefficiency 61elementary level 50ff, 77. 85, 92.124,130f see false beginnersEllis, R iii. 59fEnglish as a lexical language 22ffEnglish text vi 46 74 see COBUILD corpus, natural languageestablished approaches 43, 52, 92, 129examples 74, 90, 108,.127exercises 36 see communicative activities; form-focused activities; grammar exercises;

tasksexperience of language 14, 41, 51, 63, 91,. 108, 123, 129f see exposure to language

learner's corpusexposure to language iiif, vii, 9, 14, 24, 26, 40, 42ff, 47, 50, 51f, 63, 74f, 79, 84, 90,

91ff, 130events 51

false beginners iv, 47, 74, 76f, 126, 130 see elementary levelfirst conditional 9f see conditionalsfirst language 12, 51fixed phrases 31, 39, 41 see 'chunks' of language; collocation; holophrasesfluency v, 6, 11, 42, 72f, 128 see communicative activitiesfor I 10formal grammars 15. 60. 92f, 100 see description of the languageformality see styleform-focused activities 1ff. 10. 14, 26, 57. 62. 64. 72f, 90form-focused approach 128f see presentation methodology; structural syllabusfrequency 28. 46ff, 52. 74, 7'fffrequency bands 46f, 74frequent words see common wordsfromfunctional labels 81functional syllabus see notional-functional syllabusfunctions 3, 6, 15, 44, 47, 72, 91ff, 110, 118, 120ff, 127, 130 see notional-functional

syllabus

Index 135

future 3f. 9f, 12. 42.51, 68, 93. 99,103future continuous 93future tense 93, 99. 100, 123

games see communicative activities; replicationGeneral Service List 47gerund 57 see -inggoing to 4 42 51grading ivf, 44, 85ff, 128grammar 70. 79ff, 81, 90, 91ffsee description of the language; formal grammars;

pedagogical grammars: user's grammarGrammar Book 88ff. 95f, 101f, 107 see reference sectionsgrammar exercises 35, 37. 68, 79ff, 87. 89. 94f, 98. 101f, 106f, 112ff, 117f. 121grammar-translation 12fgrammatical behaviour 39. 80grammatical description see description of the languagegrammatical syllabus see structural syllabusgrammatical system 14, 24. 43f, 126 see user's grammar

Halliday, M A K 92. 128Hanks, P 40fhas 81have 99have got 86fHoey, M 115holophrases 72f see chunkst of language; collocation; fixed phraseshypothesis 1 8f, 23, 50f. 64f. 68, 93, 96f, 119 see would

idealised language 123 see inauthentic texts; simplified language; TEFLeseif 18f. 93. 96ff, 100imperative 17in 110 124inauthentic texts 12, 26, 75.124 see idealised language; simplified languageindefinite articles 24indexes 82. 90f see reference sectionsinfinitive vi. 35f, 38 see toinflection 24, 81-ing vi If 36f 49 57 81 93.101ff. 107,110input iii, i4, 22f, 64f, 76. 80.130instructions 13 see rubricsinterlanguage24, 131intermediate level 49. 52, 92, 130interrogative forms 9. 49. 94finterrupted past 100fintonation 86introduction stage 63ff, 72introspection 27 see intuitionintuition v, 41, 49f, 52. 77, 85,124is 81invented texts see inauthentic textsinversion 86

knowing a language 10f. 41, 51, 60, 70 see ability to learnKrashen. S D 65

Labov 59language awareness see awareness raisinglanguage behaviour 7flanguage classroom iv, 7, 12ff. 42, 51, 57, 59ff, 75,109language in use see language uselanguage lesson as social event 13. 60fLanguage Study 19, 67, 82. 84ff, 98, 99. 103. 109, 114, 119 see analysis stagelanguage system 59language usage 10ff. 26, 45f. 71,129language use ivff, 2ff, 10ff. 14,15,18, 22f, 26, 39ff. 45f. 50f, 58f. 63f 68ff. 73, 74f, 90, 91,

103, 10.'f. 126, 127f see possible language use, typical language uselanguage varieties 59fflearner's corpus viif. 49, 65ff. 72, 74. 76ff, 84f. 88. 90. 91. 93, 103. 107. 123, 124.

129fflearner's role 10,13, 90, 128fflearner's system 129 see user's grammarlearning objectives 70f, 79learning strategies 8 see learner's rolelevel of detail 52. 70f see syllabusLewis, M 10lexical items31, 118.123,130 see common wordslexically-based grammar 80ff, 90lexical objectives 71, 79lexical research see COBUILD projectlexical sets 77lexical syllabus vff 15ff 22ff. 27. 32. 46ff, 52. 59ff. 70ff, 76, 81, 88 90, 91ff. 124ff. 129lexicon entries 36 see dictionary entries; reference sectionslike 78flinguistic syllabus see structural syllabuslistening and repeating see form-focused activitieslistening stage 64f, 72f see recordingsLittlewood 5

Main Corpus 28, 48 see COBUILD corpusMaley. A iiimanagement of learning 130fmaterials 10. 69. 90.131McTear. M F 2meaningful use of language 58 see language usemeanings see categoriesmetalanguage 43, 91 see semantic labels; structural labelsmethodology iiiff vi ii, 1ff. 15. 42ff. 57ff. 61. 65 72f. 76, 84, 90 103.108f. 123. 129 see

communicative methodology; presentation methodology; task-based methodologymight 4. 18fmini-corpus see learner's corpusmodal verbs v. 6,13.18f. 42, 87. 92f, 99f, 103ff, 120f. 123mood 92morphemes 81motivation 60, 75f

Nation, I S P 46native speaker language 39.41 see language use; natural language, recordingsnatural language 85, 91. 124. 127. 129 see language usenaturally occurring text 27 see authentic text; language usenaturalness 40 see language useneed for language forms 65needs of learner 39ff, 47.70negative forms 9, 49, 94fnegotiation of meaning 61, 125notional-functional syllabus iii. 6. 15, 42. 44ff. 57, 91, 110.122, 127, 129not-past 100noun 16noun clauses 22fnoun clauses with that v, 21fnoun modifiers see noun plus nounnoun phrases 15 17. 43, 91f. 109ff, 123,130noun plus noun 1l2ff, 123

objects see concrete objectsoccasion for use 41of vi 36f, 52. 110ffokay 125omissions 77, 92,123, 127,129fon 110open-ended grammatical systems 43operational system see user's grammarordering of syllabus content 42f, 45. 85ff see grading; syllabusorder of acquisition 24 order of tasks/texts 77, 85outcomes see communicative activities; language use; tasks; task-based methodology

Palmer, H E 46participles 110. 123,130 see adjectives; past participles; present participlespassive voice v 16ff 22f. 42. 44. 48. 72, 90. 93, 105ff. 110. 123past continuous 24, 93, 100past habit 49ff, 124past participles 16ff. 23, 81, 93. 105ff, 110past perfect 93,103past simple 10. 24ff, 93,100,126past tense 19f. 23, 64f, 81, 92ff, 96fpast time 2()past time adverbials 26pattern practice see controlled pattern practicepatterns 51f see controlled pattern practice; structural syllabuspedagogical grammars iii. 8ff. 15. 22. 43. 49. 63ff. 69f. 91ff, 102f. 124 126.129f see

description of the languageperfective aspect 24,100,103person 21.81Phrase-building 83phrase structure 110 see noun phrasespiloting 76ff. 85.126place 21f, 23 see spaceplanning 61ff, 72f, 129plural 81point 41possession 81possible language use 40f see typical language usepossibility 18. 64f. 68. 88, 93Prabhu, N S iii, 8, 24.43practice see controlled pattern practice; presentation methodologypragmatics 31. 39, 48prediction 14. 118ffprepositional phrases 16. 110ff. 123prepositions 69.110ff. 124, 130presentation methodology iiif. 395, 12ff, 57f. 60. 69, 72. 127f, 130presentation practice and production see presentation methodologypresent continuous ivf, 2ff, 8, 12, 24, 42, 92, 103, 127present participles 102 see -ing; progressive aspectpresent perfect 9f, 25f, 93, 103, 127present perfect continuous 93

Index 136

present simple iv, 9f, 24, 92, 108present tense 9f, 20, 85, 92ffpresent time 9prestige variety 59ffpriority 15fproblem solving 63 see communicative activities; replicationproduction see presentation methodologyprogress 5, 24progressive aspect 17, 24, 49f, 92f, l00ff, 123proliferation 40 sec difficultypropositional adequacy see adequacy

questions 295. 59. 85ff, see interrogative formsQuirk, R et al. 17 r

‘re 85real English see language use; real languagereal language 124ff see language usereal meanings see language usereal outcomes see language userecordings 34f 62, 64, 74ff, 91,108 sec spontaneous recordingsrecycling 69 8Sf 88, 90, 105f, 129reference sections 80, 84f, 88, 90, 91. 95freference skills 84referencing 81. 90f. 129,131rehearsing 61f, 74 sec form-focused activities; report; task-based methodologyrelative clauses vi. 43, 91remedial beginners see false beginnersRenouf, A Z7, 76repetition see controlled pattern practicereplication 58ff, 127report 61ff, 72. 129reported speech 16. 20ff, 23,44, 51, 81.90. 91f, 123,130reported statements see reported speechreported thought 22reporting verbs 20ffrequests 6Review pages 34f, 90right 125role of teacher see teacher's rolerole play 58 see communicative activities; simulationrubrics 34. 77frules 7f, 20f. 23. 26, 40, 108f, 126Rutherford, W E iii, 7f

-s 81’s 81, 85scripted dialogue vii, 75, 124f see inauthentic texts; recordingsscripted recordings see scripted dialoguesecond conditional 18f, 23, 44, 50f, 90, 93,130second language acquisition 59 see acquisitionsee 50selection of syllabus content see syllabusselection preference 40Selinker, L iii, 24, 131semantic distinctions 40semantic fields 30semantic labels 81semantic system 128sentence structure 3, 6f, 10,15 see structural syllabusshared knowledge 126signalling see discourse structure; predictionsimplified language 45f, 74, 124f. 126f see inauthentic texts; TEFLesesimulation 57ffSinclair, 3 M v, 12; 46,125skills 5, lOf, 14,120,123 see reference skillsso 80fsocial context see style; language lessonsocial language 70, 120ffsocial pressures 60f see circumstances of communicationsome 49, 92. 124 we anyspace 50, 124specialised text 46fspecially written text 26 see inauthentic textspecific needs 47 see needs of learnerspoken discourse see spontaneous recordings; discoursespontaneity 74ff see language usespontaneous language use 61, 74ff, 85,123 see language usespontaneous recordings vii, 64. 74ff, 85, 124ff, 131stative adjectives 8.16fstative verbs 49structural labels 82 see metalanguagestructural syllabus iii, vi, 2f. 5ff. 14, 1 5ff, 22f, 27, 41ff, 52, 60, 91, 110, 127f, 130style 59ffsubject 18

subject-verb concord 22.24subordinate clause 9surrender value 42, 45f see economy of syllabussyllabus ivf, viii, Iff. 15, 27. 39ff. 50. 52. S7ff. 65, 70f, 74ff. 91. 120ff, 123, 124ff. 129.

132 see economy of syllabus; level of detailsyllabus coverage sec syllabus; TEFL Side Corpussyllabus design see syllabussyllabus organisation 74ff see syllabussyntactic environment 31, 38, 39, 48, 52, 118synthetic approaches 41 ff see analytic approaches; structural syllabussystem see grammatical system; language system; rules; semantic system

task based methodology 15. 61ff, 70, 77, 84f. 90,120,123.126,tasks iv, vii, 19, 34, 35. 61ff, 70, 72f. 74ff, 84f, 97.124,126, 127ffteacher control sec teacher's roleteacher's notes 70fteacher's role 3ff, 10,13, 26. 42, 59ff, 69, 90,130fteaching strategy 24ff. 42, 44, 57TEFLese vii see simplified languageTEFL Side Corpus 16, 79, 92, 123, 130temporal clauses 9 see time adverbialstense 15f, 20f, 23.81, 92ff, 100 and see tenses listed separatelytext see corpus; English texttext-patterns see discourse structuretexts vii, 14, 6Sff, 68. 70, 74. 76ff. 91. 103. 107,126 see authentic materials, inauthentic

textsthat v, 21f, SO, 52thing 39ff, 50, 52third conditional 93this 50Thorndike viThreshold Syllabus v, 6, 45Tickoo M L 47time 21f, 23 26, 50,124see future; present time; past time; past time adverbialsto vi, 35f, 38. 52, 110topics 1, 76transformation 18.23 see form-focused activitiestransitivity 15turntaking 75,125 see scripted dialoguetypical language use 40f, S l. 69, 126f, 129f see collocation

unscripted language see recordings; spontaneous languageup ll0usage see language usageuse see language useused to 49ffuser's grammar 8, 10, 24, 60utility 44, 47, 74, 77

variable competence methodology 61ffvariable competence model 59varieties see language varieties verb group 43verb phrases 15, 91ff, 123,124,129verbs of motion 50vocabulary 39 46voice 15, 92f see active voice; passive voice

way vi. 28ff, 40ff, 50.69Waystage Syllabus v, 45West, M vi, 46fwhen 100which 91who 91wh- words 88Widdowson, H G lOff. 26, 45,128wide 40Wilkins, D A 42, 44f, 72,129wil1 4 18f 42, 92f, 100, 103, 123Willis, Dave (J D) v, 15, 57, 61Willis, Jane (J R) v, 1.15, 61Winter, E O 115with 110ffword indexes see indexesword meanings see common meanings; lexical syllabusword order 24Wordpower 36.83written language 65, 74, 76. 78, 124ff see textswould 6.18f, 23. 49ff, 56, 65f, 70, 76, 77, 79, 93. 96ff. 103, 124, 130#

yeah 125

Documents

Willis, Dave, The Lexical Syllabus