Rules, Patterns and Words

Rules, Patterns and Words

This book takes the idea of the nowadays well-known ideas of collocations and “chunking” several steps further towards developing a theory of explaining how lexis determines grammatical patterning, and offers many examples to illustrate how and when this happens. More precisely, this book shows how lexical phrases, frames and patterns give the reader links between grammar and vocabulary, and suggests that by studying this the learners will be empowered with added meaning-making ability. As such, it does a good job of placing this link between grammar and vocabulary at the centre of language learning pedagogy. Furthermore, the book made me aware that recognizing these patterns is a crucial skill that all teachers should have and learning teachers must develop.

To support his hypothesis, the author has littered the book with task-based teaching activities. These are followed up by commentaries that help the teacher really understand the purpose of the activities and the outcomes that should be expected from the tasks. Many of these tasks are text-based, with an exploratory component designed to help the students learn by exploration through the suggested sequence of recognition, system building and exploration.

In many ways, this book is a shortcut to many years of studying the output of a concordancer, as the author willingly shares the patterns that he has discovered over the years. Several times I had to put the book down to look at the patterns he was describing in a concordancer to help me amalgamate all the information that was included there.

Although I found this book to be written in a style that was easy to read, accessible for a wide range of teachers and thoroughly engaging, it failed to convince me that this approach was going to solve all of my problems with getting the students to learn what I was teaching – an idea that is emphasized throughout the book. I also felt that there was some contradiction in the basic premise that this approach was based on making meaning of language whereas I felt that, on the contrary, it depended on students memorizing vast lists of lexicalized grammatical structures. I would have preferred if the author had concentrated on the development of theory rather than confusing it with its application to teaching.

However, every book has a place and a purpose. I would suggest that the approach suggested in this book would be very helpful when you are teaching ESL students who are studying pre-university English, or who are receiving English support during university study. I was not convinced that this approach was overly helpful for students below this level, but I’m not ruling out that some gentle guidance to begin seeing patterns at lower levels is a good habit to have.

Overall, I learned some great tips that I will build into my everyday teaching, and would highly recommend this book to anyone working with university level ESL students or who wants to take teaching of collocations to a new level. I also think this book would stimulate very good discussions in a teacher training course that is focused on teaching methods, or for teachers who are restlessly looking for alternative approaches to try out.