Image
Dr Eric Nicaise, Haute Ecole Louvain-en-Hainaut/ UCLouvain, Belgium
Room: LC1-016
Abstract: Traditionally, the three areas of language, lexis, grammar and phonology (or vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation), have been kept apart in EFL teaching (Webb & Nation 2012). However, one major finding of corpus linguistics research over the past decades is probably that language is highly patterned (see e.g. Röhmer, 2009). To a large extent, language is made up of fixed or semi-fixed chunks. Corpus studies, based on large collections of authentic texts, have highlighted the massive importance of collocations and phraseology in language study, and have provided evidence for the interdependence of lexis and grammar.
The talk will take this claim even further and will address the need for a holistic approach, in which vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation are inseparable from one another and should be woven throughout every lesson.
Indeed, given the high discrepancy between what we write in English and how we say it, we cannot overstate, from elementary level onwards, the importance of pronunciation - a broad term which includes both segmental phonology (the study of the sound system of English), as well as work on the suprasegmentals, such as word stress, sentence stress, weak forms rhythm and intonation. Here too, the advent of spoken corpora has led to deeper language awareness and has highlighted the need to teach vocabulary and grammar through phonetic association.
Through a corpus exploration of classroom English (Nicaise 2021, 2022), we will be looking at attested examples of expert EFL teachers highlighting the interdependence of lexis, grammar and pronunciation. Strategies for integrating these components of language will be provided. Such examples will include the teaching of pronouns and negative contractions at beginner’s level, and phrasal verbs at more advanced levels.
Bio: Eric Nicaise is a teacher trainer and a lecturer in Dutch and English at University College Louvain-en-Hainaut and a scientific collaborator at the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics and TeAMM research group at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. His doctoral research focused on the teacher talk of native and non-native EFL teachers. He has written extensively on this topic and has given lectures at conferences across Europe, notably at IVACS and IATEFL.