Lexical chunks

Second language (L2) theories have for long acknowledged the importance of focus on formulaicity or conventionalized lexical chunks. Yet, there has been little attempt to examine the impact of this on foreign language learners’ development of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) measures. The purpose of this study was twofold: First, to see whether lexis-based instruction had any significant effects on EFL learners' oral CAF, and, second, whether different types of lexis-based instructions (e.g., using corpus-based concordances, textual lexis enhancement, and audio-visual captioned lexis) had differential effects. Participants were 54 EFL undergraduates at an Iranian university. After checking the initial homogeneity, <em>2</em> groups of participants were randomly assigned to experimental (lexis) and control (non-lexis) groups. After pretesting on CAF, the lexis sub-groups received the <em>3</em> types of lexis-based instructions in a counterbalanced manner. After each lexis instruction, students’ oral data were also obtained. The control group received mainstream non-lexis instruction. One-way MANCOVA results pointed to the significant effects of lexis instruction on oral CAF measures. Specifically, repeated-measures MANOVA results revealed that audio-visual captioned lexis was the most effective modality in heightening formulaicity. The findings suggest that focus on lexis is beneficial to L2 learners’ oral skills. Further theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

The impetus for conducting the present study came from Thornbury's (2005) approach to teach speaking in which he claimed that awareness-raising techniques, along with appropriation strategies, facilitate the process of teaching and learning speaking. Therefore, the present study attempted to explore the impact of the appropriation-based syllabus to teach speaking by using chunks-on-card activity. Accordingly, 60 female and male Iranian advanced EFL learners were selected from a private language institute and were assigned to four groups. The four groups were male experimental and control groups as well as female experimental and control groups. To examine the effect of the treatment, the participants were pre- and post-tested on speaking skill. They took part in 14 treatment sessions in which the experimental group practiced the chunks-on-card method through drilling while the control group practiced the conventional approach. The results of one-way ANOVA revealed significant differences among the posttest scores of the four groups. According to the findings, the mean score for male learners in the experimental group differed significantly from female and male learners in the control groups. Similarly, the mean score of female learners in the experimental group differed significantly from female and male learners in the control groups. The results of paired-samples t-test for each group also indicated that the appropriation-based teaching of lexical chunks had significant impacts on both genders’ speaking skills.