Archive for the ‘Corpus linguistics’ Category

My first surprise was introducing students to the piece of ELT jargon “speech acts”, something I only vaguely remembered from my reading for my DELTA myself, but more about that when I get round to reviewing The Cambridge Grammar of English…

Some of the above were some I had never thought about, some are ones I still doubt, and the rest are just vaguely interesting (something that is worth celebrating when you are reading your way through a grammar book!) Any comments after testing these against your “native speaker intuitions” (also known as “TEFL teacher prejudices”) gratefully received:

“You must” and “you’ll have to” are often used to give non-specific invitations
 
“And you must come down to Barr at some stage or another”
 
“You’ll have to come round for a coffee”
 
What if…? is used for How about…? in “standard British and Irish English”
 
“What if I set the table?”
 
“What if we had it here?”
 
How’s about…? for How about…? in informal contexts in standard British and Irish English

Informal lexis softens a speech act:
“pop in” instead of “visit”/ “wee” in “a wee favour”
 
“Please” is usually used at the end of a question, but children often put it first:
 
“Please can I have some more bread?”
 
“so” and “then” are common in declarative clauses functioning as questions
 
“So you had a good day at work then?”
 
“Didn’t it just!” is part of a general pattern of interrogative structures used as explanations, like “Was I exhausted!” and “Hasn’t she grown!”

“Would you mind if one of our representatives comes and gives you a free demonstration?” Would you mind + present

“You want to sound-proof your room with egg boxes”- “want to” for advice in “standard British and Irish English”

I’ve been reading through the new Cambridge Grammar of English. Not something I usually do for pleasure (honestly!), but got a free copy for TEFL.net reviews and so felt like I ought to examine at least some parts in detail- and now I am reading it for pleasure!

Maybe the most interesting thing is that the use of corpora rather than just common sense (otherwise known as native speaker intuition) means there are bits on almost every page where you go “Really?” Below is a list of the “Oh yes, I suppose so.” and “No, I really don’t think so” moments so far based on British and American English. Most good science throws out counterintuitive things like this. Unfortunately, so does most bad science, so I’d appreciate it if you would comment on how the things below match with your own experience and instinct- there are a few I have doubts on myself.

- In AmE, the score in “The Seattle Sea Hawks beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-O is pronounced” “seven nothing” or “seven to nothing” or “seven zip”
 
- “Four from nine is/leaves five” is okay in BrE
 
- The form in “Eleven hundred pounds” (rather than “one hundred one hundred”) is more popular in AmE than BrE

- “isn’t” (rather than ’s not) is many times more frequent in BrE than AmE

- Interrogative tags are about four times more frequent in BrE than in AmE
 
- The “do” in reduced clauses with modal verbs
“Are you going?”
“I might do”
is only used in British English
 
- She lives on/ in Leonora Street is a Br/ Am thing

- “Must” is much more frequent in BrE than AmE
 
- “Had better” is six times more frequent in BrE
 
- “Going to” often used for direction giving (finding your way) in AmE: “You’re gonna go two blocks…”
 
- “I suppose” is much more frequent in BrE

If you ended up here wanting to find more more traditional stuff about British and American English, try:

Wikipedia (of course) American and British English differences

The American’s Guide to Speaking British English

BBC America British American Dictionary

If you are interested in worksheets for classroom use on British and American English, look here:

How British is your Financial English?

ESL Printable British and American English page

British and American English elesson from the (recommended) textbook Inside Out

British and American: The main differences from the (equally recommended) vocab book Word for Word

And if you’d like your own shiny new TEFL book hot off the press for free, see here.

If the amount of new stuff I learnt from the new book “Academic Vocabulary in Use” by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O’Dell is anything to go by (a book for students from “good Intermediate level”, not for teachers!), the answer about whether I should be teaching English for Academic Purposes is a resounding “No!”, although several things make me feel better about that:

- I detest universities as institutions and don’t want to work in one anyway
- I studied Physics, so the longest thing I ever had to write was 1500 words and no one expected me to have basic human communication skills, yet alone a grasp of academic prose
- With authors like those, I was hardly going to know everything they know
- Ditto with the Cambridge International Corpus, and anyway the whole idea of a corpus is that it is supposed to give counter-intuitive results

With those provisos to make you feel better about your results, without any further ado here is the “Should you be teaching EAP?” quiz.

Answer the questions below to see whether you should be getting into or out of the world of EAP. My own score was very nearly zero (which is why I picked them, but the first question is an easy one to get you started), so good luck. Answers in the comments section. Only the answers from the book are acceptable, so if there are several possible answers you will need to think of all of them before turning to the answer key. One point per answer, total possible score is 38.
The “Should you be teaching EAP?” quiz

Collocations

1. Pick out the two collocations that are not given in the book “Academic Vocabulary in Use” and so are presumably not common in academic English

“gently fondle”,  “intermittent contact”, “animated debate”, “excess energy”, “recent phenomenon”, “conflicting role”, “efficient way”, “conflicting role”, “break off contact”, “with the fashion sense of a physics grad”, “differentiate the elements”, “emerging phenomena”, “strengthened roles”, “important difference”, “major point”, “enormous amount” and “widespread assumption” are common collocations in academic English

British and American Academic English

2. List 20 verbs that always take -ise (and therefore never –ize) in both British and American English.
 
3. Give four words that are spelt with ae in British English but e in Am Eng
 
4. And two with oe/e

5. How many words can you think of with a -our spelling in British English but a -or spelling in American English? (you only get points if your answer includes the one word that from the book that I didn’t know)
 
6. How many words can you think of with an -re spelling in British English but a –er spelling in American English? (you only get points if your answer includes the one word that from the book that I didn’t know)

7. Can you explain when we use the spellings “humor”, “honor” and “glamor” in British English?

8. Can you explain when we use the spelling “meter” in British English?
 
9. What’s the difference between the British and American meanings of (exam) rubric?
 
The original meanings of words

10. Sophomore comes from the Greek for…
 
11. What did the “hyper” in hyperrealism originally mean?

12. What did the “quasi-” in quasigovernmental originally mean?

13. What did the “-ant” in “coolant” and “accelerant” originally mean?

14. What did the “-cy” in “accuracy” and “literacy” originally mean?

15. What two meanings does “-ism” have?

16. What did the “-ics” in “genetics” and “electronics” originally mean?

Abbreviations

17. What does e.g. stand for?

18. What does “i.e.” stand for?

19. What does “et al” stand for?

20. What does “ibid.” stand for?

21. What does “cf.” stand for?

22. What does “q.v.” stand for?

23. What does “LLB” stand for?

24. What does “FRS” stand for?

25. What does “CUNY” stand for?

26. What does “FAAFP” stand for?

27. What does “MRCS” stand for?

28. What does “AMA” stand for?

29. What does “ACA” stand for?

30. What does “FASB” stand for?

31. What does “AICPA” stand for?

Formal and informal English

32. What are more formal versions of recap, be based on, deal with, promise, write about, almost

33. What’s a formal way of saying ‘although’?

34. What’s a more informal way of saying ‘nevertheless’?

Misc

35. Why do the words “discipline”, “underline”, “solid”, “generate”, “turn”, “confirm”, “identify”, “character”, “pose”, “nature” and “focus” all appear in the same section of a book on academic English?

36. Rewrite the sentence ‘Radiation was accidentally released over a 24-hour period, damaging a wide area for a long time’ in a more academic manner and identify the general feature of academic grammar that it illustrates.

37. Rewrite the sentence “Marx’s contribution is very significant” in a more academic manner and identify the general aspect of academic English grammar that this illustrates.

38. What other expression does the book give instead of “mind map”?