Beyond single words
A better way to learn vocabulary
Hello!
I sent this to my email subscribers yesterday, but I thought it was worth sharing here too.
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So here’s yesterday’s newsletter for you:
When you learn a new word, do you usually write down the word and its meaning?
That’s useful, but there’s something else you can do that will help you use your new vocabulary more naturally and fluently: learn the words that go with it.
These groups of words are often called “lexical chunks”, or just “chunks”.
What are chunks?
Chunks are groups of words that we often use together.
Some are fixed phrases that don’t normally change:
if I were you
by the way
on the other hand
Nice to meet you
Others are semi-fixed phrases or frames. Part of the phrase stays the same, but you can change the rest:
Have you ever + verb 3 (past participle)
I’m (really) looking forward to + noun/pronoun/__ing
There’s no point in …
Collocations can also be thought of as chunks. These are words that naturally go together:
heavy rain
make a mistake
highly unlikely
Phrasal verbs (look after, take off) and idioms (once in a blue moon, piece of cake) are also types of chunks.
You don’t need to worry too much about the terminology (fixed phrases, collocations etc).
The important thing is to notice when words commonly occur together and learn them as a group.
Why is this important?
Think about how you use your first language. You don’t create every sentence word by word. You already have a huge number of familiar groups of words in your memory, and you can retrieve them quickly without thinking about them.
English works in the same way. A lot of what we say is built from common sequences of words.
So if you learn some of these chunks in English, it can help you to find words faster and therefore become more fluent.
It also helps you sound more natural because you’re using combinations of words that English speakers commonly use.
And you don’t always need to understand all the grammar inside a chunk. For example, you can learn “If I were you, I’d…” as a useful way to give advice without knowing exactly why we use “were” rather than “was”. You can learn the phrase first and understand the grammar later.
How can you find and learn lexical chunks?
There are thousands of lexical chunks, and that sounds like an impossible task for the language learner. But don’t panic!
You learnt chunks in your first language unconsciously, just by being surrounded by the language, and I think you can pick up a lot of English chunks naturally the same way, simply by reading and listening to a lot of English.
Having said that, actually looking for and noticing the common chunks is also a good idea and it can help you learn them more quickly.
So next time you read an article, don’t just look for new words. See if you can spot groups of words that often occur together.
When you learn a new word, look at the words around it. What usually comes before it? What comes after it? Does it have a particular preposition? Is there a particular grammar pattern that follows it?
For example, if you learn “recommend”, you could also learn:
recommend doing something
I’d recommend...
I wouldn’t recommend it.
When you use a dictionary, look at the collocations and example sentences rather than just the definition. Write some useful combinations in your vocabulary notebook instead of writing down the single word on its own.
Another useful free resource for this is ozdic.com, an online collocations dictionary. Type in a word and you can see lots of words that commonly go with it.
Choose two or three useful chunks at a time – things you can imagine yourself actually saying. Write them in your vocabulary notebook and practise using them until they become familiar and automatic.
Final thoughts
Again, there are a lot of chunks in English but don’t worry about trying to learn them all. You’ll learn some naturally and others by noticing and practising them.
Thinking more about chunks can make a big difference to your vocabulary – and to your fluency.
See you next week!
Katie 💙
Thank you for reading! I’m Katie Salter and I help adult learners – especially women – feel more confident using English.
This is my free newsletter, where I share weekly learning tips, quizzes, and lessons to help you improve your English.
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Thank you for the tip. Definitely, chunks help with remembering the words and using them correctly!