Why language is like cooking

The article below is worthy of taking note of. The writer is disagreeing to grammar being the most important area of language to nail down and saying that lexis is far more important.
THE STAR'S MIND OUR ENGLISH Friday October 5, 2007
Why language is like cooking
By TOM HAYTON
LEXIS is another word for “vocabulary”. The words you store in your head and pull out as and when you need them.
A lot of people with hang-ups about their language proficiency think that grammar is the most important area of language to nail down.
I disagree. Lexis is far more important. Here’s why.
1) Without lexis, you can’t say anything. It’s theoretically possible to know the rules of English grammar without being able to put a sentence together. However, if you know just one word, say, ‘‘water’’, then you can communicate, provided that you know the meaning of the word (more on this later).
2) Much of language is ready-made. It’s a lot quicker to take a packet of Maggi noodles off the shelf, add hot water and eat than it is to make the dough, toss the noodles, prepare the sauce and put it all together while following a recipe in a cookbook.
Similarly, when we utter phrases like ‘‘Good morning’’ or ‘‘I look forward to hearing from you soon’’, we are pulling ready-made phrases off the shelves of memory.
Of course, it is possible to generate these sentences from scratch by following a grammatical recipe (I get a lot of people asking me why we say ‘‘I look forward to hearing ?’’ as opposed to ‘‘I look forward to hear ?’’) but it is much faster and more efficient to memorise the phrase as a ready-made linguistic chunk.
3) Most sentences have been uttered before. Take this snippet of dialogue that just took place behind me:
A: Good luck, mate.
B: Thanks. See you later.
There is nothing unique about this dialogue other than the time and place when it was created. It was built entirely of ready-made chunks that the speakers retrieved without conscious appeal to grammatical rules. This leads us to the next point.
4) Most grammaticalisation (application of grammar) happens unconsciously. Otherwise, speech or writing becomes very slow as the user consciously joins words together. Over-focusing on grammatical accuracy can therefore damage fluency. You see this happening with the most fluent native speakers when they have to explain delicate points they have never articulated before – in debates, for example.
More experienced debaters, such as politicians, come across as more fluent and confident not because they have better grammar knowledge, but precisely because they have been in many debates before, and have therefore ‘stocked up’ on phrases they can use in times of difficulty. Stand-up comedians don’t make up jokes on the spot – they rely on canned material. Most of language is canned material.
5) Mastering English grammar takes an extremely long time for non-native speakers – of course, grammatical accuracy is important, but lexis should take priority if communication is your goal.
This view of language has become known as the Lexical Approach, a term coined by Michael Lewis in his book of the same name.
Practically speaking, it makes more sense to focus on acquiring natural-sounding chunks of language by listening to and reading the utterances of competent native speakers than it does to slave away with a grammar book.
Let’s say you want to learn how to write a report. You should take examples of best practice (say the annual reports of FTSE-listed companies) and underline the phrases that are used to express and link the main points. You will find chunks such as:
‘‘We experienced slow growth ?’’
‘‘We expect to bounce back ?’’
‘‘These results are encouraging.’’
And so on. Obviously you could sit around and pull apart the internal grammar of these sentences, just as you could analyse the chemical composition of Maggi noodles. But there is no need to do that if you just want to consume the product.
Just as in cooking, there are some linguistic recipes that are more complete than others. Maggi noodles just require hot water and a stir, just as “Good + time of day” just needs you to insert the time of day to get “Good morning”, “Good afternoon” and so on. Some phrases require no preparation at all, such as “How are you?”
The key thing that you need to ensure is that you are following the conventions for using chunks correctly. This includes the meanings of each chunk, its uses, its pronunciation, collocations (what you can combine it with), synonyms, antonyms and variations.
With the phrase
“We experienced slow growth.”
you need to realise that this chunk is used to refer to past performance. At this point, you might want to explore collocations such as
“We experienced slow growth in the first/second/third/fourth quarter.”
Or
“We experienced slow growth initially.’’
And so on.
Conversely, the chunk can be cooked up with slightly different ingredients to give a completely opposite meaning:
“We experienced rapid growth.”
Language proficiency involves stockpiling lexical ingredients. The key to mastery is to get cooking!
Tom Hayton is a Business Trainer with the Professional Development Unit (PDU), at the British Council Malaysia. The PDU offers a wide range of learning opportunities from management and communication skills training to developing English skills. Visit its website at www.britishcouncil.org.my or e-mail thomas.hayton@britishcouncil.org.my