Phraseology refers to the study of word combinations or collocational behavior of words (Howarth, Reference Howarth1998). The past two decades have seen a growing interest in phraseology in the fields of applied linguistics, cognitive linguistics, language testing, and foreign and second language (L2) pedagogy. As Ellis states in the preface of this work, “phraseology is everywhere in current SLA research” (p. 7), and, as the title suggests, this book presents cutting-edge research on the role of phraseology in L2 learning and teaching.
This book brings together a collection of chapters that attempt to define phraseological units, investigate L2 learners’ problems with phraseology, and propose solutions to incorporate phraseology into L2 pedagogy. Chapters are classified into three main sections; however, many chapters deal with two or more issues. For example, Wray and Fitzpatrick offer a new perspective on developing L2 learners’ phraseology use profiles through the investigation of L2 learners’ processing of phraseology and analysis of learner variation. Moreover, they argue that memorization of phraseology should be promoted as an evaluation tool. This book is also notable in its introduction of technology to facilitate phraseology learning. For example, Wible introduces the development and use of Collocator, a digital tool that automatically spots multiword expressions during online learning, which turns out to be a successful application of the latest development in pattern recognition technology in computer science.
This book is aimed at researchers and teachers who are interested in the patterns of language use. A majority of the chapters present empirical studies and findings that are concrete and convincing. The concluding chapter brings forward issues for future research, which include the availability of phraseological information and the lexis-grammar interface, which may be enlightening to researchers in the field. It should be noted that despite an increasing number of studies that suggest a role for phraseology in L2 learning and acquisition, this area occupies, at best, only a supplementary role in pedagogical practice. This work is, therefore, a timely addition to the mounting evidence of the need to introduce a phraseologically oriented approach to language teaching.
