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Language in chunks!

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language in chunks

Do you remember when you started learning English? Were there ‘expressions’ you just could not understand? What did you think when you first learned the question ‘How old are you?’? Did you translate it into your mother tongue? It was weird, right? If it has been a long way since then, you probably have come to terms with it: English is just different.

The reason for this is very simple. Languages don’t work the way many people think. I mean, you may want to speak fluently and consider that memorizing a vocabulary list will help you to achieve that goal. Also, it is usually considered that learning all the grammar rules will make the trick. Unfortunately this is not always the case.

Don’t get me wrong. Vocabulary and grammar are essential components of learning a language. But for this entry in our blog we focus on another critical aspect when learning a foreign language: chunks!

A chunk in language is an all-purpose word that embraces any formulaic sequence, lexical/phrasal expression or multi-word item (from the Cambridge Papers in ELT series). In short, this includes phrasal verbs, idioms, verb patterns, collocations, sentence starters, catchphrases, etcetera.

An example of a chunk is the phrase “Under no circumstances“. This phrase is invariant, which means these two instances are wrong:

›under a circumstance*

›under circumstances*

There are other possible options, but these ones, even if they are grammatically and syntactically correct, are very unlikely to be heard. This also means that the probability of appearance of ‘under no‘ followed by ‘circumstances‘ is higher than the probability of, say, ‘three‘ followed by ‘circumstances‘.

And you may be wondering, ‘How on earth can I learn these chunks?!’ Well, there is a keyword in the previous paragraph: PROBABILITY! How likely are you to find these expressions in your everyday life? The answer is up to you! The more you expose yourself to the language, the more you will listen to all these chunks and the more you will be able to remember and use them. 

Maybe the first time you see a particular chunk you will find it odd and probably you will not be sure about its usage. The second time you see the chunk, you can get a better idea. What do you think will happen when you read/hear that chunk for the twentieth time? Of course! You will be able to use it confidently in your own sentences.

This is the reason I strongly suggest my students to do homework, read books, watch movies… If you want to go further, write down those chunks you don’t understand at first and look for examples on the web. You literally have a world of information in the palm of your hand. Expose yourself to the language as much as you can to increase the probability of being presented with these chunks!

And finally, remember that I am writing the second part of my series of entries about how infants acquire their mother tongue. I can tell you in that second part I will mention the role of probability in language development. Yes, probability also has to do with the acquisition of a language! In the meantime, if you want to read the first part, you can do so here! It is in Spanish, but you can use your browser translator if you want to read it in English (I don’t recommend it, but for now, I need extra time to translate my entries from English to Spanish and viceversa). I’d like to read your thoughts about it to improve!

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