What is it about?
A short extract of a text from a coursebook is analysed to show the phrases it contains based on frames composed of grammatical words (e.g. the ... of, in ... ways). Each phrase is discussed and the ways it is identified are shown. The potential utility to learners and teachers of academic English is discussed and sample teaching materials are provided.
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Why is it important?
Corpus-based studies of language typically propose lists of items such as formulas (on the other hand) but these phrases are rather inflexible and are of limited pedagogical value. There is also no guarantee that they will occur in a text one is focusing on. This study looks instead at how, once one has decided on a text, potentially useful phrases it contains may be identified and then checked in an appropriate corpus.
Perspectives
This article was really an exploration of academic phraseology and how it can be identified. It illustrates a somewhat labour-intensive approach to identifying phrases that may not be realistic on a day-to-day basis but also bears testimony to the brilliance of the 'picture' software available only through the Bank of English at Birmingham.
Dr Benet Vincent
Coventry University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Investigating academic phraseology through combinations of very frequent words: A methodological exploration, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, March 2013, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2012.11.007.
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