Teaching Multi-Word Lexical Units in English for Specific Purposes

Abstract

One of the most challenging aspects of teaching non-native speakers at the tertiary education level is to develop lexical competences, which include competences in reception and production of multi-word lexical units (MWLUs), especially in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), which uses them to a much greater extent than General English. MWLUs are primarily found in written language, which is of particular interest in this paper, since the teaching of ESP at the tertiary education level predominantly relies on written materials. MWLUs allow a sequence of modifiers placed in front of a head noun, without functional words assisting in the reception, i.e. in the recognition of semantic relations among them. This paper deals with the most widespread subcategory of MWLUs which we have named multi-noun lexical units (MNLUs), referring to MWLUs consisting exclusively of nouns. The paper offers proven comprehensive teaching and learning strategies to be used in the classroom, since the majority of works dealing with MNLUs approach them in a theoretical way, and just a few deal with MNLUs taking into account the Foreign Language Teaching - FLT (Glottodidactics) point of view.