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Thu 28 May, 2009 05:55 am
Dear Sir,
Is the following sentence correct? SPEAKING GOOD ENGLISH IS NOTHING MORE DIFFICULT THAN MASTERING A FEW THOUSAND LEXICAL CHUNKS. Please help.
Mary
@coalblack,
coalblack wrote:
Dear Sir,
Is the following sentence correct? SPEAKING GOOD ENGLISH IS NOTHING MORE DIFFICULT THAN MASTERING A FEW THOUSAND LEXICAL CHUNKS. Please help.
Mary
Replace "nothing more" with "no more". There may be other problems, but I'm not an English teacher.
@Wilso,
Agree with Wilso. But I also wonder why you'd use the word "chunks." It's not incorrect but it's unusual.
@Merry Andrew,
Agree with Merry Andrew. "Colloquial phrases" could be substituted for "lexical chunks".
I would suggest that you are too fond by half of the word "lexical." Many English speakers could make if from one end of their lives to the other without once uttering the word "lexical." I think this is one of those instances in which a non-native speaker has gotten a hold on a word, and uses it because it says what he or she wants to say, or thinks that it does, never realizing that it is not commonly used by native speakers of English. I'm not saying it is incorrect, just unlikely to be used by a native speaker.
@Setanta,
I made it through 65 years without hearing it.
It's a virtual certainty that the choice is not that of the original poster. It's not at all surprising that anyone in the field of ESL/EFL, including students would come across the collocation
lexical chunks.
Quote:"According to Lewis (1997, 2000) native speakers carry a pool of hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of lexical chunks in their heads ready to draw ... "
The lexical chunk
up to speed comes to mind.
Setanta is right and JTT is wrong imho. The phrase "Lexical chunks" would not normally be heard outside of academia.
@McTag,
Quote:The phrase "Lexical chunks" would not normally be heard outside of academia
I agree, Mac, but JTT is correct to this extent -- the phrase was probably not of the poster's own choosing. It's insider jargon which the poster simply copied.
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