English, like any other language, is made up of single words and multi-word units, or chunks. Indeed, words have the tendency to group up with other lexical items to form larger linguistic strings. In our mental lexicon (hyperlink), by, the and way are stored both as isolated items and as the fixed expression they tend to be used.
Knowing the way in which words are arranged in phraseological units can help students familiarize themselves with the conceptualisation typical of the language they are studying (target language). Indeed, the greater the learner's knowledge of the repertoire of collocations, the higher their level of proficiency. Moreover, by doing so students can master the conceptual system underlying the language studied in a more efficient way and in the long run.
Chunks are particularly helpful when it comes to idiomatic expressions like fly the nest, which is used in a sentence like the following one:
Here, the expression refers to the idea of leaving the parents' house in the same way a bird starts to fly when its feathers are strong enough.
Since the idiomatic meaning is often related to a particular way of arranging words, variations in the syntax can bring the metaphorical meaning back to the literal one. For instance, the metaphor flying from the nest produced by an English learner is not referring to human beings anymore but to birds.
This shows that learners are often fearful to venture into the figurative realm of the target language and prefer combinations of words that are familiar to them. As a consequence, their productions appear to be characterized by anomalous collocations and literal translations of the phraseology of their mother tongue.
Therefore, students need to know the syntactic structure of conventional idiomatic sentences in which the metaphorical meaning is crystallized (lexicalized) in a rigid form. For this purpose, it is useful to put emphasis on the acquisition of vocabulary in small chunks.
Ludwig can be a useful resource in this regard. Whether we are teaching metaphorical collocations like heavy burden, sharp tongue, bumpy road; idioms like get the message across; or literal expressions like do homework, this sentence search engine can provide contextualized examples. Along with this, it can give immediate feedback when writing. This way, students can craft sentences more accurately.
Besides checking if a collocation is correct or not, it can also compare the frequency of occurrence of collocations that are similar in meanings by using the prompt VS, like in this example:
It is important to state that, unlike automatic writing evaluation (AWE) programs, Ludwig does not aim at simply correcting your mistakes but at guiding you in your choices, increasing student's autonomy.
Although AWE provides immediate feedback and can help educators to save time when correcting students' writing, learners might tend to rely too much on AWE programs and avoid looking up words.
Ludwig’s wrap up
When teaching English, it is important to show examples in context and to emphasize how meaning is conveyed by the specific phraseology of some fixed expressions. As students tend to produce unnatural strings of words and break the metaphorical spell of figurative expressions, a program like Ludwig can aid learners not only in the writing process but also in the learning one.
