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 22 TakeawaysAt the end of the new edition of Discovering English with VersaText, published yesterday, there is a list of 22 takeaways. These are the points that I hope I have instilled in the readers. They embrace teaching, learning, creativity, metalinguistics, metacognition (all things meta TBH), guided discovery, text, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, depth, respect and colour. Here they are.
 If I were a TKT, Trinity, CELTA or DELTA candidate, a CLIL, EMI, ESP or a private language teacher, or a primary or secondary teacher – indeed any creative teacher who develops lessons that revolve around texts, I would be devouring this book for its wealth of opportunities to create vocabulary, grammar and discourse tasks through one text at a time. Originally, a Kindle only, it is now also a print book with white space for readers' answers, notes, comments. The new edition reflects all the updates we have made to the free, online software, and AI appears at pertinent moments. The Kindle and book are available from Amazon. And there is also an e-course which has received high praise from the too few people who've done it so far. In fact, one of those students has invited me as a guest on her podcast next month.  Should you be interested in all things VersaText, or even some of them, feel free to join the Facebook group too.
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 One swallow does not summer make
Hoey in fact studied foreign languages so that he could experience the processes of language learning and the practical applications of linguistic and pedagogical theory. When he was observing language in context, that is by reading and listening, he would notice certain collocations but he needed proof of their typicality before he could consider them worth learning. Just because someone has combined a pair of words does not mean that this combination is a typical formulation in the language. The lexicographer, Patrick Hanks (1940–2024) felt the same: Authenticity alone is not enough. Evidence of conventionality is also needed (2013:5). Some years before these two Englishman made these pronouncements, Aristotle (384–322 BC) observed that one swallow does not a summer make. Other languages have their own version of this proverb, sometimes using quite different metaphors, but all making the same point. In order to ascertain that an observed collocation is natural, typical, characteristic or conventional, it is necessary to hunt it down, and there is no better hunting ground for linguistic features than databases containing large samples of the language, a.k.a corpora. In the second paragraph, Hoey experienced the processes … Is experience a process a typical collocation? This is the data that CorpusMate yields:  In the same paragraph, we have the following collocation candidates:
Here is some more data from CorpusMate.  In the following example, we have a wildcard which allows for one element to appear between the two words of the collocation. Even in these first 12 of the 59 results, other patterns are evident.  The process of validating your findings through multiple sources or methods is known as triangulation, and it is an essential stage in most research. When we train students to triangulate their linguistic observations, it is quite likely that they are familiar with this process from their other school subjects. This is not just a quantitative observation, i.e. this collocation occurs X times in the corpus. It is qualitative as well: the students observe other elements of the cotext, such as the use of other words and grammar structures that the collocation occurs in. They might also observe contextual features that relate to the genres and registers in which the target structure occurs. They are being trained in task-based linguistics as citizen scientists, engaging their higher order thinking skills as pattern hunters. This metacognitive training is a skill for life that will extend far beyond the life of any language course they are undertaking. Triangulation does not apply only to collocation. Any aspect of language can be explored in this way. You may have noticed the word order in the idiom: does not a summer make. Many people have run with this curious word order and exploited it creatively. It is thus a snowclone. Here are some examples from SkELL.  Respect our students' intelligence and equip them to learn language from language. ReferencesCroswaithe, P. & Baisa, V. (2024) A user-friendly corpus tool for disciplinary data-driven learning: Introducing CorpusMate International Journal of Corpus Linguistics.
Hanks, P. (2013) Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations. MIT. Hoey, M. (2000) A world beyond collocation: new perspectives on vocabulary teaching. Teaching Collocation. Further Developments in the Lexical Approach. LTP (ed. Lewis, M.)  Once you have learned how to ask questions, you have learned how to learnThe title of this post comes from Postman and Weingartner's influential book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969). This thinking can be applied to the study and teaching of any subject. In terms of language learning, it is safe to say tht once students are equipped with new linguistic concepts, they can formulate hypotheses and develop a new range of questions that can then be explored in texts. They write: Knowledge is produced in response to questions. And new knowledge results from the asking of new questions; quite often new questions about old questions. Here is the point: once you have learned how to ask questions – relevant and appropriate and substantial questions – you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to [1] know. Their statement, once you have learned how to ask questions, you have learned how to learn, could be a poster in every staffroom in the world. Learning how to learn lies at the heart of the metacognitive dimension of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Producing one’s own knowledge accords with Vygotsky’s knowledge creation and it happens through the data-information-knowledge. Postman and Weingartner’s fifty year-old revolutionary little book remains remarkably relevant. In their chapter, What's worth knowing, the authors bombard us with pages of questions that teachers could well discuss with their students. The first set of questions extracted below, prompts students to consider the nature of change, which they really should ponder if they are going to be subverted! What is 'progress'? What is 'change'? What are the most obvious causes of change? What are the least apparent? What conditions are necessary in order for change to occur? What kinds of changes are going on right now? Which are important? How are they similar to or different from other changes that have occurred? The second extract deals with relationships, another leitmotif of Learning Language from Language (the name of my unfinished book from which this blog post is extracted). What are the relationships between new ideas and change? Where do new ideas come from? How come? So what? If you wanted to stop one of the changes going on now (pick one), how would you go about it? What consequences would you have to consider? The third extract relates to the fundamental importance of language. What does man's language permit him to develop as survival strategies that animals cannot develop? How might man's survival activities be different from what they are if he did not have language? What other 'languages' does man have besides those consisting of words? What functions do these 'languages' serve? Why and how do they originate? Can you invent a new one? How might you start? The final extract contains questions about questions and questioning. They are for teachers to ask themselves. Will your questions increase the learner's will as well as his capacity to learn? Will they help to give him a sense of joy in learning? Will they help to provide the learners with confidence in his ability to learn? In order to get answers, will the learner be required to make inquiries? (Ask further questions, clarify terms, make observations, classify data, etc.?) Does each question allow for alternative answers (which implies alternative modes of inquiry)? Will the process of answering the questions tend to stress the uniqueness of the learner? Would the questions produce different answers if asked at different stages of the learner's development? Will the answers help the learner to sense and understand the universals in the human condition and so enhance his ability to draw closer to other people? Processing such questions leads to ditching old modes of thinking and replacing them with new modes of thinking, the very definition of subversion.
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