WELCOME LINGUISTS

About this project

This project is submitted

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

at Colorado State University

Although there are many studies that concern formulaic language in general and lexical bundles in particular, pedagogical research that investigates teaching formulaic language and lexical bundles has been scarce. Previous studies pay attention to the frequent use of bundles in general and specialized corpora. However, Eriksson (2012) points out that “the teaching and learning of bundles still remains relatively unexplored. There are several strands that need to be investigated in much greater detail” (p. 206). Chen and Baker (2010) claim that although many researchers generated many lexical bundles in recent years, this does not motivate ELT publishers and practitioners to use bundles in their curricula and classroom materials. In addition, Jones and Haywood (2004) state that writing books do not provide learners with tasks for learning bundles.

This is consistent with the needs analysis conducted for this project. The needs analysis shows that lexical bundles are not taught or even presented in the books students using in the target Intensive English Program. Therefore, this project aims to fill the gap in previous studies. The project provides some activities for teaching lexical bundles. The activities reflect ways in which practitioners can introduce lexical bundles to learners and give students some exercises to practice. The activities are influenced by Nation’s (2001) three psychological processes that can lead words being remembered: noticing, retrieving, and generating.