Customer Reviews

Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching (Oxford Applied Linguistics)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book because it was extensively referenced as a seminal book in its field by nearly every other book I have read on the subject. I'm glad I did. It's an excellent aid for teachers of English, especially for teaching English as a Second Language. The first half of the book deals with theories of language learning and teaching, but the second half gives great practical tips for helping students understand how to use "chunks" of language as shortcuts to organizing their own discourse, and as aids in understanding the discourse of others. The chapter on learning more efficient ways of comprehending classroom lectures is one that is especially useful for students. I've used many ideas from this book in my classes with GREAT success.

You do need a basic understanding of applied linguistics in order to read this book, but I found that it was well worth the extra effort it took to work my way through some of the more difficult concepts in Part I. By the time I got to Part II, which focuses on the more practical aspects of classroom application, I was glad I did. I loved this book!

I'm shocked this got a good review in the TESOL Quarterly. It's really pretty awful. The basic idea is that a phrase such as "If I were you..." is psycholinguistically distinguishable from "If I were the king..." because the former has a pragmatic function (giving advice) and was therefore selected to be used as a "formula" or an unanalysed chunk. The idea is interesting, but he does an awful job of presenting it. The book is filled with contradictions. For a phrase to gain the status of being a "lexical phrase" it must have a function, and it has a pragmatic function if Natinger says so, and not otherwise. Thus "a ___ ago" has the "function" of expressing time relations, and so gets to be a lexical phrase. Likewise "How do you do?" has the function of greeting. But "Have a nice day" is not a lexical phrase, but rather a cliche, because the function of "saying goodbye" for some reason doesn't count. It's ironic that a man who teaches others how to communicate in English is himself barely capabale of this task.