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Highlighting lexical chunks with Diigo




Image by photosteve101 on Flickr

www.planetofsuccess.com/blog



Diigo is a social bookmarking tool which allows you to save and access all your bookmarks online. But it's not only a great app for keeping your links in one place; its highlighting function can be used in class for drawing students attention to and keeping track of lexical chunks in online articles, texts and web pages.





You will need to be in a connected classroom (computer, projector, access to the Internet). After your students have read the article for meaning - and possibly discussed it - ask them to underline lexical chunks, collocations and other useful bits of language. Then display the text on the board and highlight the chunks with the whole class on the board using the Highlight function on Diigo:













For example, I recently used a BBC article about Cricket making an Olympic bid - click here

At this point I should say that I have no qualms about using what might be considered an outdated article, particularly if it has relevance to today or can be used to discuss how the situation described has changed or developed.



After highlighting all the useful lexical chunks in the text you click on Share, choose email and enter your students emails. If you tick Include notes, your students will not only get the link to the annotated version of the article but also all the lexical chunks you have highlighted in the body of your email.









To see the annotated article click here.



Now students can go over the language at home or be assigned between-class work. A group of politicians (upper-intermediate) I used this article with found that most of the highlighted chunks can also be used metaphorically to talk about politics. Here is a list of all the chunks we focused on:



still in the running 

inaugural season 

take on (smb) 

preliminary discussions 

making a case 

further down the line 

expressed initial interest 

on track to 

will take place at 





Diigo has always been my tool of choice for saving bookmarks. But ever since I started using the Highlight function, it has earned its place in my collection of Essential lexical tools. And, in case you're wondering, Cricket is still not recognised as an Olympic sport.



For ideas on how to work with lexical chunks extracted from texts, read my article "Revisiting texts" on the TeachingEnglish website - click
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