Chunks consist in a group of words that generally appear together. In other words, if one considers the corpora of the English language, it may see a lot of words that have their higher frequency while linked to others. They are also called collocations. Expressions as ‘this is mine’, ‘leave me alone’, ‘get rid of’, etc are chunks. The memorization of such groups of words consists in the basis for the so called Lexical Approach, since this ‘approach’ intends to achieve fast results and a high fluency in the students’ speech.
In my opinion, the study of chunks may be very useful for a foreign student who needs to learn fast, or even for those who want to take a full-time course. Chunks are highly-frequent in the language, and it is very important to manage the use of them. However, studying and memorizing chunks is not enough in the process of learning a language. It is necessary, therefore, to complete the study of chunks with the study of the four abilities.
‘Chunks’ on the Internet:
http://www.slideshare.net/denilsolima/chunks-of-language-dealing-with-them-in-the-classroom
http://denilsodelima.blogspot.com/2009/02/chunks-of-language.html
www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/.../vocab.pdf
www.everythingesl.net/.../language_stages.php
Bibliographical Sources:
HAMM, Albert. Language chunks and linguistic units. Univ. des Sciences Humaines, 2005.
HINKEL, Eli. Teaching Academic ESL Writing: Practical techniques in vocabulary and grammar. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004.
LEWIS, Michael .The Lexical Approach. 1993.
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