How to learn new words, deal with chunks (Lexical Approach)? Is there any alternatives?

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QwestDay
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#1

Сообщение QwestDay »

What is the best way of learning new meanings? If it's all about chunks, how to store and retrieve them?

I read an interesting article "Why I won’t say good-bye to the Lexical Approach" (https://vk.com/doc64622969_477539477?ha ... f277d2aa8e). It was published in 2000 and recently posted by @September in her vk community. If you don't want to read the whole article, there are some theses (which I recognised as useful) below (I wanted to hide them using a spoiler, but I don't know how to):

Recognizing and learning the right chunks is a part of learner training and helps to form good learning habits.
The students need to develop the skill to select, store and retrieve chunks. Learners need to learn from the very start that words appear in a certain context or environment of words.
Firstly, when the students come across a new word, say take they need to write down in their exercise book or remember the whole chunk in which the word take appears, e.g. take a rest.
Secondly they need to be aware that the meaning of the word take is different in You are tired. I take it and He was taken to court.
Thirdly, similar chunks can have different meaning although the form is the same, for example the chunk take it for granted. , as in: I take it for granted and He takes his wife for granted. These two very similar chunks in form differ in meaning and usage.
Fourthly similar but not identical forms of chunks are misleading and students find it hard to recognize that small differences in form, lead to differences in meaning and usage. If they fail to do so, it leads to mistakes, for example lose weight versus lose a weight, or make toast versus make a toast

A student must be taught that they need to learn chunks with great precision and not ‘approximately’. An additional factor is that students must be aware that what they recognize as a chunk might not be one, for example used to is a misleading chunk. There is either used to + inf or to be used to + gerund.

Many teachers agree that at proficiency level (CPE) there is hardly any new grammar, most of the structures will have been taught at the advanced level.

Learning sophisticated vocabulary, like one hundred different verbs describing the ways of walking or looking at something does not make the learner a proficiency level student. Progress at higher levels means to a great extent learning ‘old’ well known words in new chunks and contexts, for example make breakfast, make the bed, make money, make do, kiss and make up, etc.

The problem of chunking and looking words up in dictionaries is a very important part of learner training: If you look up the word, look for its
meaning in the chunk, its place in a chunk and then learn the whole chunk
.

The teacher must be aware of the right ways of selecting the chunks he or she teaches to their students. Recently a teacher was telling me he taught his learners the idiom cat’s whiskers meaning be important. This is wasted time and effort. How will the students use the idiom? They may produce sentences like The President is cat’s whiskers in the country. , This exam is cat’s whiskers for me. Or even I am cat’s whiskers. The chunk the teacher gave the students was incomplete hence misleading. The chunk is he/she thinks he/she is the cat’s whiskers. Another example is the chunk: If I were you. We, teachers, tend to believe that there is a chunk is If I were you but in fact it is If I were you I’d

Exam preparation - In my exam classes when preparing my students for the Cambridge Esol exams (FCE, CAE and CPE), especially for Paper 3 in Use of English, I find chunking and collocation are the basis on which some tasks are written and how distracters are generated.
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#2

Сообщение gavenkoa »

QwestDay пишет: 14 окт 2018, 19:58 The President is cat’s whiskers in the country. , This exam is cat’s whiskers for me. Or even I am cat’s whiskers. The chunk the teacher gave the students was incomplete hence misleading.
I was asked to make 3 sentences for each phrasal verb / phrase from list of 40. I remember "all over the world". It was meaningless to me 2 years ago even after reading 20 dictionary articles. I understood meaning, occasionally I see it in text but I've never used it as I am afraid of it (= don't know collocations).

Discussed problem is more likely severe only on higher levels. When you on A1-B1 you should stick to vocabulary from frequency list. For example here is my stats of words from famous word lists that I haven't learned:
#TOTAL #MISSING
GSL 1816 468
AWL 256 314
NGSL 2135 666
NAWL 231 732
KET 1369 167
PET 2354 654
Primary meaning of these words is straightforward. You don't need a context to understand "to open" or "an apple".

While above quotation it great is leaves open main question: how can I pick those context chunks?

You'll die before you finish copying all examples from modern exhaustive dictionaries... The only choice is to stick to sentences that you find in your learning materials if you find them useful...
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#3

Сообщение gavenkoa »

I'd like to add that modern good dictionary should provide frequency of word or phrase. You can throw anything below 1/1.000.000 or something like that unless you have infinite time for learning.

I use free offline Wordnet 3.0 dictionary for this purpose. It contains only nouns/verbs/adverbs/adjectives.
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