Multi-word Clusters, Keywords and Key Terms in English Car Reviews: a Preliminary Corpus Linguistic Study

Abstract

Classroom use of authentic texts used in everyday communication has not always been an inseparablepart of foreign language teaching. According to Grigaliuniene (2013, p. 17), “the structures manycurrent textbooks teach for certain functions are either never used or used infrequently whilequite unexpected structures are the ones that actually occur”. Despite the awareness of the importanceof authentic patterns of language use, students often learn structures (lexical or grammatical) whichare rarely used in actual communication. Teaching authentic phrases is even more important inEnglish for Specific Purposes (ESP) where learners’ specific needs impact the design of a course(Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998). What is more, ESP students need to acquire vocabulary of atarget profession. Thus, in this preliminary study, conducted using corpus linguistic methodology,an attempt is made to identify and explore the use and discourse functions of frequent and typicalpatterns of language use, i.e. keywords, recurrent clusters and multi-word terms (nominalizations),found in a custom-designed corpus of car reviews written in English. As shown by examplesof student tasks, the results have pedagogical potential in that they can be used as a useful resourcewhen designing or supplementing teaching materials for secondary-school ESP students (automotivetechnicians and car mechanics).1)