Over use of common words can become a problem for more advanced language learners. Diane Nicholls explores ‘lexical teddy bears’ and how to help reduce student’s use of them.
Words like big, very, nice and beautiful collocate with a lot of other words and can, therefore, be used fairly safely in many contexts. These are words that learners learn early on in their language learning, become comfortable with quickly, and as they continue to learn, often find it hard to let go of. Learners could be said to cling to them like faithful old friends, using them too often, when they should be starting to set them aside in favour of more precise and varied language and stronger collocations. They become ‘Lexical Teddy Bears’*.
This doesn’t just happen with common adjectives and adverbs. ‘Signpost’ words, like however, nevertheless, moreover, furthermore, nowadays, are undeniably useful pegs to hang sentences on. They are also really help with structuring an essay. But, a learner’s writing can start to sound very formulaic if they are used repeatedly and interchangeably. Especially if they are used at the beginning of most sentences or phrases. Multi-word units (‘Lexical Bundles’ or ‘Lexical Chunks’), like in my opinion, in order to, as a result can also become beloved Lexical Teddy Bears.
There is nothing wrong with any of these old favourites in themselves. They are useful at the lower levels and help the learner gain confidence. But, from Intermediate level, the learner needs to become a more confident and independent user. That means letting go of these safe and comforting lexical friends. From this point, they should be used less frequently and with more discernment. One very good reason for this is that at this level a new feature is used to assess their writing: Lexical Resource. Lexical resource is used by examiners to measure learner’s ability to use a range of appropriate vocabulary.
Lexical Resource and Lexical Teddy Bears don’t belong together
I compared the frequency of the potential teddy bears mentioned above in the Cambridge Learner Corpus (CLC) at B1 and above with their use in the written part of the Cambridge English Corpus (CEC). The difference is striking. These two corpora are different in many ways. However, the difference in frequency of use of these words and phrases is great enough to indicate clear over-use by learners of English. Perhaps some of these words are being over-taught and over-used in teaching materials, too?
Let’s go on a bear hunt!
The following is an exercise that you could try with your students to reduce Lexical Teddy Bear use. Start by taking an essay, perhaps one that has failed to reach the Cambridge Advanced Exam level, and pick out all of the ‘teddy bears’ or words that are used unusually frequently. Then, together, write the teddy bears on the board and discuss which ones could be replaced. Think about what replacement words could be used to increase the ‘range’ of vocabulary used.
Use this activity to encourage learners to go on their own ‘bear hunt’ in future, each time they complete a piece of writing.
Do you have any lexical teddy bears of your own? Have you noticed them in students’ writing?
* Hasselgren, A. (1994), Lexical teddy bears and advanced learners: a study into the ways Norwegian students cope with English vocabulary. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4: 237–258. doi:10.1111/j.1473-4192.1994.tb00065.x