Clusters
Hi Jihad!
I hope you’re well and had a good weekend.
At home today we received a leaflet from the National Health Service about swine flu, telling us how to recognise the symptoms and how to avoid spreading it, if we get it:
Swine Flu Information
There is a phrase in the leaflet that I have never heard before: flu friend. A flu friend, apparently, is someone who you call to tell them that you are ill and need medication, and who will pick up and deliver the medication to your house. New situation: new language!
The suggestion in the leaflet to set up a network of flu friends is in a section towards the end of the leaflet headed What else can I do?What else can I do? is an example of a sequence of words that can be re-cycled in a fixed, or semi-fixed, form.
These kinds of sequences (sometimes also called clusters) are very common in both written and (especially) spoken English. Clusters of words help us sound fluent and write quickly because we can easily glue them together, without having to think about word order, agreement (and so on). There are hundreds of clusters in the swine flu leaflet, including:
(it/they) can help (you/me/her etc.) to (recover/learn/walk)
this (type of flu) is (not) the same as (seasonal flu)
(it) can only be (developed/achieved/done) when (the specific strain) has been (identified)
and so on….
My grammar book says that the 10 most common five-word clusters (in the corpus used to provide examples) are:
(at/by) the end of the
for the first time in
at the (top/back) of the
on the other side of
in the centre of
the end of the day
for the rest of the
the middle of the night
Looking at the first two paragraphs in your last post Jihad, I can see that you are using clusters very effectively, for example:
Oh my God!
I can't believe that….
the (first) (week) has passed so quickly
the (proper/right) time to reply
… a very warm welcome
thanks a million!
on the other hand,
I have to tell you that
everyday life in (Egypt)
Noticing frequently occurring clusters in speech and writing might be a good way to improve your fluency and therefore your confidence. Particularly when you are at work in your pharmacy and need to talk to a tourist in English, you will probably notice frequently occurring patterns in your conversation. Do you have any audio recording equipment? Perhaps you could record some of the conversations you have in the pharmacy with tourists and then listen to them later, looking for frequently occurring clusters of words. If they don’t mind, that is!
OK, that’s it for now. Enjoy looking for clusters and have a good week!
Rachel
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Comments on the comments:
Jeronimo14 (from Valencia, Spain) – you’re right, I do like my job and I know that I’m lucky to have a job I like…
Soroush (from Toronto) – glad you like the videos!
Ernesto (from Chile) - I get really nice students from all over the world, and many lovely ones from China! This year they are a great bunch!
Hyoshil (from the UK) – I always cry at the graduation ceremony and always think that the new students cannot possibly be as nice as the old ones….
Comments
Hi Rachel, reading about 'clusters' has came across to my mind 'collocations'. Are they the same idea expressed with different words? I read as a collocation examples 'black and white' or 'close friend'. Thanks in advance for your time. Toni
Hello Rachel! What a master in the profession! The leaflet, and what a lecture you´ve made like a dissecting pathologist looking into a body! I was on a trip too. I visited my friend from our studies at Prague. She asked me to come to the vilage Osrblie.(known from WC in biatlon) The journey took me two hours driving by car the east-north dirrection which meant I saw the snow yet on hills of the beginning of the Tatra mountains. I spent wondeful 24 hours there in a typical original timbered house with a big oven on which she cooked the meal. I came with a sun-stroke and a burnt face from there back. She studied german and norwegian languages at our times at Prague. Now, I explained to her how I work with these blogs and learn here. The ´Learn it´ section was the first and for me still the most favourite tool for grammar. But, you know, there are still lots of difficult sections, like punctuation, which I have to study properly. Lastly, I repeated the same as Hyoshil did some days before to search my name here and she claims really truly that hers activity needs to be, except such excelent knowledge, rewarded. Lots of sunny days to England and to All!
Hi Rachel! The leaflet from the National Health Service about swine flu was delivered to my house, too. My son read it to me several pages and he started to go the loo every two hours in order to wash his hands. When I asked him why he washes his hands very often he said: he won’t let swine flue viruses get him. What a funny boy!! I quite like your profession because you meet fresh faces every year and will teach and can help them to inject their confidence in English. I go to my son’s school helping children out with listening to while they are reading a book to me two times a week. I feel so good after having witnessed the children’s passion for reading books more. I definitely think that Teaching is a very rewarding career. Thanks for your comment and hope you will get students who are as good as gold like you had in new term.
to Get fluency in english is necessary to leave the traditional way of tranlate everything we see,clusters are exemples that the use of dictionairies did not help so much. it help a lot in language working process.
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