Elisheva Barkon: Lecture: Fluency Fitness! One larger size fits all! Research has established fluency as a critical factor in smooth, efficient language processing. In this presentation, I will discuss approaches to language acquisition and reading that encourage recognition and use of chunks/multi word units as a way forward in the promotion of fluency.

1. Elisheva Barkon
ETAI International
Jerusalem 2010

2. Presentation outline:
The nature of fluency
Evidence for the importance of fluency
Fluency development and fluency activities
Closing comments

3. Characteristics of speech
A speaker with a normal speech rate produces some 150 words
per minute…- on the average, one every 400 milliseconds. Under
time pressure the rate can easily be doubled to one every 200
milliseconds. A normal, educated adult speaker has an active
vocabulary … of about 30,000 words. A speaker makes the right
choice from among these, 30,000 or so alternatives not once, but
in fluent speech, continuously two to five times per second – a
rate that can be maintained without any clear temporal limit.
There is probably no other cognitive process shared by all normal
adults whose decision rate is so high. Still, the error rate is very
low. Garnham (et al .1982) found … 191 slips of the tongue in a text
corpus of 200,000 words – about one slip per 1000 words.
Levelt 1989:199
Cited in, Field, 2003:33

4. What makes fast speech possible?
The question is how is it possible to maintain such a
fast speech rate, make so many correct lexical
decisions when there are so many lexical options, with
such a low error rate and still stay focused on what one
has to say?
Before we attempt an answer let’s clarify the
terminology we’ll be using.

5. Terminology
Different terminology has been used over the years to
describe the phenomena of multi-word vocabulary or
chunks. Labels include lexical phrases, prefabricated
patterns, routine formulae, formulaic sequences, lexicalized
stems, chunks, (restricted) collocations, fixed expressions,
multi-word units/expressions, idioms etc.
O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter, 2007:63

6. Language is made up of formulaic sequences
One of the most important findings from corpus research
is that language is made up of not only individual words,
but also a great deal of formulaic language.
Formulaic language has been defined in a number of ways,
but in essence, most definitions indicate that individual
formulaic sequences behave much the same as individual
words, matching a single meaning or function to a form,
although that form consists of multiple orthographic or
phonological words.
Martinez and Schmitt (forthcoming)

7. Lexical phrases and language acquisition/input
…vocabulary is not necessarily learned word by individual
word, but is often learned initially in ‘lexical phrases’
several words long.
Lexical phrases are sequences of words which the mind
learns as wholes and attaches a single meaning to.
They are single lexical items which are cognitively
processed much the same as single words.
Schmitt and McCarthy, 1997

8. Multi-word units/output
What corpora reveal is that much of our linguistic
output consists of repeated multi-word units rather
than single words.
Language is available for use in ready-made chunks to
a far greater extent than could ever be accommodated
by a theory of language which rested upon the primacy
of syntax.
O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter, 2007:60.

9. Chunks and the creation of meaning
Pursuing this radical view that it is lexis, rather than
syntax, which accounts for the organisation and
patterning of language, Sinclair argues that there are
two fundamental principles at work in the creation of
meaning. He calls these the ‘idiom principle’ and the
‘open choice principle’.
The idiom principle is the central one in the creation
of text and meaning in speech and writing.
O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter, 2007: 60

10. Chunks and the creation of meaning
The idiom principle holds that speakers/writers have
at their disposal a large store of ready-made lexico-
grammatical chunks (i.e., the grammar of such chunks
is preformed as part of their lexical identity, rather
than vice-versa).
Syntax, the slots where there are choices to be made
(the open choice principle) far from being primary, is
only brought into service occasionally, as a kind of
‘glue’ to cement the lexical chunks together.
O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter, 2007: 60

11. Chunks and fluency
Chunks are ready for use at any moment and do not
need re-assembling every time they are used.
Thus we can also partly account for the notion of
‘fluency’, a term frequently used to describe smooth,
effortless performance in a language but one that is
often only loosely defined.
O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter, 2007:61.

12. Lexical phrases and fluency
Native speakers have a repertoire of lexical phrases
running to tens of thousands. Fluency is based on
these lexical phrases.
Hill, 1999
Fluency is a natural consequence of a larger and
more phrasal mental lexicon.
http://stewardess.inhatc.ac.kr/philoint/usage/collocation-4.htm

13. Ready-made language is the key to fluency
Native speakers can only speak at the speed they speak
because they are calling on a vast repertoire of ready-
made language in their mental lexicons.
Similarly, they can listen at the speed of speech and
read quickly because they are constantly recognising
used chunks.
http://stewardess.inhatc.ac.kr/philoint/usage/collocation-4.htm

14. Reading fluency
Now that we’ve seen that the key to fluent speech and
listening is a phrasal lexicon let’s consider how this
applies to reading.

15. Definition of reading fluency
Fluency combines accuracy, automaticity, and oral
reading prosody, which, taken together, facilitate the
reader’s construction of meaning. It is demonstrated
during oral reading through ease of word recognition,
appropriate pacing, phrasing, and intonation. It is a
factor in both oral and silent reading that can limit or
support comprehension.
Kuhn et al. 2010:240

16. Automaticity
According to Logan (1997) processes are considered to
be automatic when they possess four properties:
speed, effortlessness, autonomy and lack of conscious
awareness.
Speed is thought to emerge concurrently with accuracy
as learners engage in practice.
Effortlessness refers to the sense of ease with which a
task is performed and to the ability to carry out a
second task while carrying out the first automatic one.
Kuhn et al. 2010: 231-232

17. Automaticity
Autonomy : automatic processes are autonomous in
the sense that they occur without intention, beginning
and running to completion independent of the
direction or intent of the person undertaking the act.
Lack of conscious awareness: Once lower level word
recognition skills become automatic, the conscious
awareness of the subskills that comprise them
disappears.
Kuhn et al. 2010: 231-232

18. Prosody
A second critical component of reading fluency is
the ability to read with prosody; that is, with
appropriate expression or intonation coupled
with phrasing that allows for the maintenance of
meaning .
Kuhn et al. 2010:233-234

19. Prosody
Prosody is the music of language. Indeed, some
anthropologists have claimed that speech prosody served
as the protolinguistic base from which music itself may
have emerged (Simpson, Oliver, & Fragaszy, 2008).
Prosody captures the rise and falls of pitch, rhythm, and
stress—the pausing, lengthening, and elision
surrounding certain words and phrases that is found in
the pull of linguistic communication (Hirschberg, 2002).
Kuhn et a.l 2010:234

20. Prosody features
Pitch rising and falling pitch. Needs to be considered
relative to a speaker’s voice range and native language.
Duration Vowels in stressed words are usually longer than
in unstressed words and even longer in phrase final
position. Stressed syllables tend to also have greater
intensity, or volume. Duration has to be taken in context
with the speaker’s overall speaking rate.
Kuhn et al, 2010:234-235

21. Prosody features
Stress is a property in speaking that makes one syllable
in a word more prominent than its neighbors.
Function words tend to be unstressed. English favors a
regular distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Pausing is noted by a spectrographic silence in oral
reading beyond that invoked by some consonant
combinations. Intrasentential pauses tend to be shorter
than intersentential ones. Pauses tend to be larger both
preceding and following syntactically complex phrases
and as information load increases.
Kuhn et al.2010:234-235

22. Appropriate pacing/reading rate/reading speed
What are good reading speeds?
A good oral reading speed is around 150 words per
minute.
A good careful silent reading speed is around 250
words per minute.
A good skimming speed is around 500 words per
minute.
Nation 2009;72

23. Fluency, rate and phrasing
Reading rate may be an indicator of fluent or disfluent
reading.
A slow reading rate may be symptomatic of inefficient
word recognition or lack of sensitivity to the phrase – the
natural unit of meaning in reading.
Rasinski, 2000

24. Fluency development: Changing the size of the basic unit
Readers develop skill in decoding in two related ways:
Through practice they become faster at recognizing
the unit they are working with
They change the size of this basic unit
Fluency development involves not just becoming
faster, it also involves changing the size and nature of
the basic unit that the reader is working with.
Nation 2009:64

25. The nature of fluency development:
Changing the size of the basic unit
What this means is that fluency in reading, like in speech
and listening, depends on a larger basic unit, namely, the
phrase.
You could argue that learning to read means learning
to recognize increasingly larger units:
letter parts to letters (e.g., circles: location – top/bottom,
direction – left/right and stalks: straight or bent)
letters to word parts (initial, medial, final position)
word parts to words (developing sight vocabulary)
words to phrases (automatic recognition of phrases)

26. Summing up: The nature of fluency
In speech and listening, fluency is linked to a phrasal
lexicon (chunks/multiword units etc).
In reading, fluency is linked to prosody which depends
in part on the ability to recognize phrases (chunks etc).
We will now look at evidence for the importance
of chunks/phrases in language acquisition and
language processing, especially in reading.

27. Learning from input: Needs Only Analysis
Within first language acquisition (which continues
through an individual’s life), a major strategy for
learning from input, and indeed the one that operates
by default, is Needs Only Analysis (NOA):
The process of analysis which the [native speaker]
child engages in is not that of breaking down as much
linguistic material as possible into its smallest
components. Rather, nothing is broken down
unless there is a specific reason.
Wray, 2008:17.

28. Needs Only Analysis: Minimizing processing
The impetus for NOA can be conceptualized in terms
of minimizing the speaker’s and/or hearer’s
processing, in that it is preferable to engage in as few
operations as possible to express or interpret a
message.
Fewer operations are required to select a partly-fixed
unit and apply one or more lexical insertion rules,
than to select individual morphemes and words and
assemble them using rules.
Wray 2008:18

29. Needs Only Analysis: Social pressure
Another way to conceptualize the motivation for NOA
is in terms of the social pressure to speak like others,
something that can be achieved by adopting the
multiword patterns already in use in the speech
community.
Wray 2008:18

30. Needs Only Analysis: Minimizing processing as default
The default is to engage in the least processing
necessary in order to map the intended idea(s) onto
linguistic forms that can be understood effectively by
others.
The need to communicate effectively, however, means
that along with the speaker’s own needs or preferences
for how an idea is expressed, the needs and
expectations of the hearer must also be taken into
account.
Wray 2008:20

31. Needs Only Analysis: Formulaic language
makes for easy encoding and decoding
Taking the hearer into account will generally
encourage the speaker to be more formulaic. Just as
formulaic material is easier for the speaker to encode,
so also, when hearers have a lexical entry for a word
string, they will find it easier to decode, compared
with something more novel.
That is, where a novel word string could be interpreted
on the basis of any reasonable meanings arising from
the word combination, a formulaic one will often be
pre-associated with particular overtones or
significance.
Wray 2008: 20

32. Needs Only Analysis: Directs interpretation
As a result, a great deal of meaning can be triggered
with very little processing and, more importantly,
other possible meanings can be downgraded as
candidates for interpretation.
Wray 2008:20

33. Collocations and expectations
…collocations permit people to know what kinds
of words they can expect to find together.
We have certain expectations about what sorts of
information can follow from what has preceded,
and so often are able to guess the meaning after
hearing only the first part of familiar collocations.
This is another demonstration of the fact that we
understand in ‘chunks’.
Nattinger, 1988

34. Evidence for the essentialness of formulaic language
Formulaic language is ubiquitous in language
use.
Formulaic language makes up a large proportion of
any discourse.
Meanings and functions are often realized by
formulaic language.
Formulaic language items realize a wide number of
referential, communicative, and textual functions in
discourse.
Martinez and Schmitt, forthcoming

35. Evidence for the essentialness of formulaic language
Formulaic language has processing advantages.
Automatic use of acquired formulaic sequences allows
chunking, freeing up memory and processing
resources.
Formulaic language can improve the overall
impression of L2 learners’ language production.
The attainment of fluency, in both native and foreign
languages, involves the acquisition of memorized
sequences of language.
Martinez and Schmitt, forthcoming

36. Chunks liberate the learner
There is evidence that the use of chunks ‘frees up’ the
cognitive processing load so that mental effort can be
allocated to other aspects of production such as
discourse organization and successful interaction. In
that sense, chunks liberate the learner and allow a
degree of automaticity to take over in both
comprehension and production.
O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter, 2007: 77

37. What Are the Psycholinguistic Functions of Prosody?
1. Prosody provides a variety of natural breakpoints in
continuous speech that allow parsing.
2. Prosody provides a basic cognitive skeleton that allows
one to hold an auditory sequence in working memory.
3. Prosody serves to disambiguate semantically and
syntactically ambiguous sentences.
4. Different prosodic patterns convey different emotions.
5. Prosody carries discourse information.
Kuhn et al. 2010:235 236

38. Summing up: Evidence for the
importance of fluency
Memory span is limited by the number of chunks it
can hold where a chunk is a meaningfully coded unit.
The idea of chunking is that a group of pieces of
information can be organized into a new unit that is
easier to process mentally than the several individual
units of which it is composed.
Clark and Clark, 1977

39. Summing up: Evidence for the
importance of fluency
One of the earliest findings from memory research
was that short term memory holds a fairly constant
number of units, units likely to be chunks of
information, composed of several rather than single
items.
Even though these chunks may be larger and contain
more information than discrete items, their number
still remains fairly constant in memory, and their size
increases as we become more familiar with
remembered material, permitting us to store and
recall more information.
Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1992

40. Fluency development and fluency activities
Now that we have seen the evidence for the
importance of chunks/phrases and in language
acquisition, language processing it is time to consider
the how fluency can be promoted.

41. The four strands
A well-balanced language course should consist of four
roughly equal strands:
meaning-focused input (receiving ideas and messages)
meaning-focused output (conveying ideas and messages)
language-focused learning (deliberate learning of language
items and features such as pronunciation, spelling,
vocabulary, grammar and discourse)
developing fluent use of known language items and
features over the four skills of listening, speaking, reading
and writing (becoming fluent with what is already known)
Nation 2009:1-3

42. The fluency strand
The fluency development strand should involve all the
four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.
In this strand, the learners are helped to make the best
use of what they already know. Like meaning-focused
input and output, the fluency development strand is
also meaning-focused. That is, the learners’ aim is to
receive and convey messages.
Nation 2007:7; Nation 2009 :9.

43. The fluency strand
The fluency strand only exists if certain conditions are
present.
(1) All of what the learners are listening to, reading,
speaking or writing is largely familiar to them.
That is, there are no unfamiliar language features,
or largely unfamiliar content or discourse features.
(2) The learners’ focus is on receiving or conveying
meaning.
Nation 2007: 7

44. The fluency strand
(3) There is some pressure or encouragement to
perform at a faster than usual speed.
(4) There is a large amount of input or output.
Nation 2009, p. 9
3. There is support and encouragement for the learner to perform at a
higher than normal level. This means that in an activity with a
fluency development goal, learners should be speaking and
comprehending faster, hesitating less, and using larger planned
chunks than they do in their normal use of language. A fluency
development activity provides some deliberate push to the higher
level of performance often by using time pressure.,
Nation and Newton 2009:153

45. The fluency strand
If the activity involves unknown vocabulary, it is
not a fluency activity.
If the focus is on language features, it is not a
fluency activity.
If there is no push to go faster or more smoothly, it
is not a fluency activity.
The fluency strand should make up about one-
quarter of the course time. It is time out from
learning new items and is a time for getting good
at using what is already known.
Nation 2009:9

46. The fluency strand
In most language courses not enough attention is
given to fluency development, possibly because it does
not involve the learning of new language items and
thus is not seen as moving the learners forward in
their knowledge of the language.
Nation 2009:10
Fluency development activities are a very useful bridge
between knowing and using.
Nation and Newton 2009:163

47. Fluency development and larger
language chunks
Schmidt (1992) describes a range of theories to explain
fluency development. What is common to many of
these is that fluency development involves more
formulaic use of larger language chunks or sequences
(Wood, 2006). Fluency, accuracy and complexity are
most likely interdependent.
Nation 2009, p. 9

48. Paths to fluency
There are two main paths to fluency:
The well beaten path: using repetition to develop
fluency (e.g., the 4/3/2/ activity).
The rich and varied map: doing things which differ
slightly from each other but draw on the same kind of
knowledge (e.g., extensive reading - the stories differ
but vocabulary and grammatical structures recur).
Nation 2009

49. Fluency development: Speaking
Speaking
Studies of the 4/3/2 technique where the same talk is
repeated to different listeners in a decreasing time
frame have shown increase in fluency during the task,
but surprisingly also increases in grammatical
accuracy and grammatical complexity.
Nation and Newton 2009

50. Fluency development: Memorizing phrases
In the early stages of language learning especially,
there is value in becoming fluent with a repertoire of
useful sentences and phrases.
This fits with Palmer’s (1925) fundamental guiding
principle for the student of conversation-Memorise
perfectly the largest number of common and useful
word groups!
Palmer explains that “perfectly” means to a high level
of fluency.
Nation 2009:10

51. Longer expressions and the
pronunciation pay-off
Because students create most of what they say from the
individual words they know, their pronunciation, stress,
and intonation, can be difficult for the listener.
The great added bonus to knowing a large number of
collocations and other longer expressions is that we learn
the stress pattern as a whole when we meet the item.
The more longer lexical items students know, the better
their stress and intonation will be.
The more and bigger the lexical items students know, the
more brain-space they have to think about the content of
what they are saying.
http://stewardess.inhatc.ac.kr/philoint/usage/collocation-4.htm

52. The nature of fluency development
activities in order of development
Increasing oral reading speed:
Reading aloud
Repeated reading
Paired reading
4/3/2/ reading
Extensive reading aloud
Read- and-look-up
Nation 2009:67-68

53. The nature of fluency development activities
Increasing careful silent reading:
Speed reading course
Easy extensive reading
Silent repeated reading
Issue logs
Nation 2009:69

54. The nature of fluency development activities
Increasing silent expeditious reading speed:
Skimming
Scanning
Nation 2009:70

55. Read-and-look-up
The read-and-look-up activity does not meet many of
the conditions for a fluency activity but is one that
encourages learners to work with a larger basic unit.
Michael West (1960: 12-13) devised this technique as a
way of helping learners to learn from written dialogues
and to help them put expression into the dialogues.
Nation 2009:68

56. Read-and-look-up
West regarded the physical aspects of read-and-look-
up as being very important for using the technique
properly.
The learners work in pairs facing each other.
One is the reader the other the listener.
The reader holds piece of paper/book containing the
dialogue at about chest level and slightly to the left.
This enables the reader to look at the text and then at
the listener moving only their eyes, not their head.
Nation 2009:68

57. Read-and-look-up
The reader looks at the text and tries to remember as
long a phrase as possible.
The reader can look at the paper for as long as is
necessary.
When ready, the reader looks at the listener and says
the phrase.
When looking at the text the reader doesn’t speak.
When speaking the reader doesn’t look at the text.
Nation 2009:68

58. Read-and-look-up
These rules force the reader to rely on memory.
At first the technique is a little difficult to use because
the reader has to discover what length of phrase is
most comfortable and has to master the rules of the
technique.
The technique can also be practised at home in front
of a mirror.
Nation 2009:68

59. Read-and-look up
West saw value in the technique because the learner
“has to carry the words of a whole phrase, or perhaps a
whole sentence, in his mind. The connection is not
from book to mouth, but from book to brain, and then
from brain to mouth. That interval of memory
constitutes half the learning process… Of all methods
of learning a language, Read-and-Look-up is, in our
opinion , the most valuable” (West, 1960:12).
Nation 2009:68

60. Summing up: Fluency development
We first saw that fluency means a larger more phrasal
lexicon.
This phrasal lexicon makes for more efficient
comprehension, memory and production.
In terms of fluency development this means that
learners need to be pushed to recognize, store and use
larger basic units.
In other words, fluency fitness entails stretching
language units!

61. Two final points:
1. One addresses the reciprocal relationship between
fluency and accuracy.
2. The second closing comment addresses cognitive
analysis in the learning/ teaching of collocations.

62. The reciprocal relationship
between fluency and accuracy
Fluency and accuracy are not competing factors in
language performance. Instead, fluency builds
automaticity and chunking (recognizing bigger units).
As a result, fluency promotes accuracy, and accuracy is
an indication of increasing fluency in language
performance (as well as in other types of cognitive
performance).
Grabe 2010 p.76

63. The reciprocal relationship
between fluency and accuracy
Nation (1989, 1991, 1996) made a strong argument for
rejecting the distinction between fluency and accuracy,
showing that this distinction misrepresents the long-term
reciprocal supportive relationship between fluency and
accuracy. Increasing fluency should lead to increasing
accuracy, as more time can be devoted to quality of
production or reception.
As Nation states, “it is not surprising….that developments
in fluency are related to developments in accuracy”
(Nation, 1996, p. 10), and 13 years later, “fluency
is….accompanied by improvements in accuracy and
complexity” (Nation 2009, p. 65).
Grabe 2010, p. 78

64. Processing efficiency
Wray (2000) stresses the non-analytical nature of
formulaic language in native speaker competence.
Attempts by teachers and textbooks to encourage the
analysis of chunks by learners are, in Wray’s words,
‘pursuing native-like linguistic usage by promoting
entirely unnative-like processing behaviour’ (p.463, her
emphasis).
O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter, 2007:78

65. Processing chunks
The more the learner has successfully acquired a
repertoire of chunks, the easier it becomes to reflect
and analyse them at a later stage, so that certain
aspects of grammatical acquisition may flow from the
knowledge and use of chunks, rather than vice-versa.
O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter, 2007:79

66. Cognitive analysis in the
learning of collocations
Liu argues that students will benefit from knowing why the
words in L2 collocations collocate the way they do.
p. 11
For example, a cognitive analysis of strong wind versus
heavy rain shows that these collocations (like many others)
are not really arbitrary.
Rain is made up of water and as such, it has weight.
Therefore, the use of heavy to modify rain makes perfect
sense.
In contrast, wind has basically no weight, but it has force.
Hence, the use of strong to describe wind is entirely logical.
Liu 2010: 20

67. Take/make/have/do a trip
Take a trip-used for a trip of leisure
Take a field/boat trip
Make a trip- typically used for business or a trip that appears
particularly purposeful/effortful from the speaker’s point of
view
Make a special trip
Have a trip used as an expression of good wishes for a safe trip
Have a wonderful trip.
Do a trip -used to convey the meaning of complete a trip as an
achievement
My wife and I just did a 9,200-mile trip around the country in
1991.
Based on his analysis concludes that, “…the make/take/have/do a
trip collocations are not arbitrary but semantically motivated.”
Liu: 17

68. Dominant practices in
collocation teaching
Collocations are primarily taught as fixed units – most of the teaching
activities, including cross-linguistic, are noticing-memorization.
Activities include:
Identifying or marking collocations in a passage or in collocation
dictionaries
Reading passages with collocations highlighted or marked
Filling in the blanks with the right word in a collocation
Choosing or matching correct collocates
Translating collocations from L2 back into L1 or vice versa
Memorizing type activities like repetition and rehearsal
Liu 2010:21
Liu’s suggestion is to add cognitve analysis (semantic-anaylsis )
learning activities

69. The rationale for incorporating a cognitive
analysis in the learning/teaching of collocations
Although collocations are generally not arbitrary, they are
taught mostly as prefabricated chunks using primarily
noticing-memorization strategies. This approach is
problematic because:
It ignores the motivated nature of most collocations
It takes away from the study of collocations any
cognitive and linguistic analysis, a very important and
useful part of any language acquisition process.
Bottom line: This approach does not allow students to
generalize what they learn.
Liu 2010: 22

70. Useful collocation learning and teaching strategies
that incorporate corpus-based cognitive analysis:
Comparing-contrasting-explaining differences between
similar pairs of collocations (e.g., make/take/have a trip
and the typical make vs. take vs. have vs. do collocations).
Examining the motivations of collocations in comparison
or contrast with their counterparts in learners’ L1 (e.g., take
medicine vs. eat medicine in Chinese).
Making good use of corpora and (general and collocation)
dictionaries in identifying collocations and learning their
motivations
Organizing collocations by meaning, based on semantic
motivations rather than in an undifferentiated way.
Liu 2010: 26

71. Benefits
Corpus-based cognitive analysis can:
help learners better understand collocations
help learners use collocations more productively
This is because there are too many collocations to
memorize.
Knowing the different motivations for typical
collocations of e.g., make/have may help students
understand and use the verbs more accurately.
Liu 2010

72. Benefits
Because not all collocations are motivated a search for
motivation(s) may fail. Still the cognitive exploration
process provides additional opportunity for processing
the collocation and directs attention to its
composition.
The exploration process raises consciousness to the
collocation, which, in turn, should result in better
retention.
A cognitive analysis enables students to gain a better
understanding of the key words in the collocations.
Liu 2010: 26

73. Benefits
For example, in the process of gaining an
understanding of the semantic motivations of make a
trip vs. take a trip, the students should simultaneously
learn, explicitly or implicitly via corpus examples, the
core meaning of the two verbs involved.
This can result in a better understanding of the make
+ noun collocations vs. the take + noun collocations.
Liu 2010:.27
(You can generalize what you learn)
Note: corpus-based cognitive analysis might not work
well for everyone.

74. References
Clark, H. H. and Clark, E. V. (1977). Psychology and
Language. HBJ.
Field, J. (2003). Psycholinguistics A resource book for
students. Routledge: UK.
Grabe, W. (2009). Reading in a second language –
Moving from theory to practice. Cambridge University
Press.
Grabe, W. (2010). Fluency in reading—Thirty-five years
later.
Reading in a Foreign language, 22, 1,. 71–83

75. References
Hill, J. (1999). Collocational competence. ENGLISH
TEACHING professional, Issue 11, 3-7.
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