Estimating the Chances of Incidental Uptake of L₂ Chunks

Abstract

Native speakers build up an impressive repertoire of thousands of lexical phrases, but in doing so they can rely on floods of authentic input and innumerable opportunities both to use and play with their mother tongue. Time is hardly an issue: uptake of chunks begins in early childhood and seems to carry on more or less until life’s end. It is clear that the input and time available to teenagers and adults learning a foreign language in a classroom setting cannot amount to anything like what is available to native speakers. This is why it is so widely agreed that it is necessary for students to learn outside the classroom as well as in, and to do so independently. It is also why advocates of the current, standard version of the LA argue that the number of chunks worth learning is so vast that it makes little sense for teachers to spend much precious class-time teaching individual specimens. Rather, it has been stated, teachers should set aside time in class not so much for teaching chunks as for teaching strategies that learners can adopt in order to be able to learn chunks on their own. Michael Lewis, for instance, is very clear about this:

You won’t be there outside the classroom. Your whole purpose is your learners’ autonomy and your own redundancy. Encourage strategies which help learners to help themselves. (1993: 193)