Applied Linguistics 24/2: 249±255 # Oxford University Press 2003

The Functions of Example Sentences:

A Reply to Vivian Cook
GUY COOK
University of Reading

In his reply to my article on invented sentences (G. Cook 2001), Vivian Cook
(2002) begins by referring to it as an `admirable essay', and immediately
`concedes most of [the] points'. Since, however, he goes on to question its
value, it is not easy to see just what either this admiration or concession
amounts to!
For Vivian Cook, the problem with my paper is that it fails to address the
fundamental question: `does a sentence such as In my beginning is my end1 help
students to learn English or not?' For him, this is a problem which can be
settled fairly straightforwardly on empirical evidence. But his argument makes
contestable assumptions about the nature of language knowledge and
language acquisition and begs two crucial questions: what is it that students
learn in learning English (or any other language), and how do example
sentences help them to do so?
For Vivian Cook, the examples used in language teaching are

Input for language acquisition [which] mostly provides data for the
mind to work on, just as the digestive system works on the vitamins in
one's food [ . . . ] [Their purpose is] to promote the acquisition of
grammar, vocabulary and so on, not to be real, not to be funny, simply
to aid learning.

Here, despite the hint of other things (`and so on'), knowing a language
means, above all else, knowing two separate areas: grammar and vocabulary.
Of the two, however, grammar is by far the more important. For although
vocabulary is mentioned here (and on one other occasion), the greater part of
Vivian Cook's argument is concerned with grammar, and his references to
what might be learned from an example are grammatical. Indeed, very often
he uses `the language' synonymously to mean `the grammar'. In his view, the
function and purpose of examples, whether real or invented, is to exemplify
abstract grammatical structures, and to act as `input' promoting their
acquisition. For him, this acquisition involves essentially the internalization
of grammatical rules through direct cognitive impact. He thus rejects my
argument that an imaginative engagement with language can actually
motivate the inference of generalities.
Is it true, though, that the only signi®cant function of examples is to act as a
vehicle for grammatical structures to enter into the subconscious processing
250 A REPLY TO VIVIAN COOK

mechanisms of the mind? Aptly enough, Vivian Cook uses a culinary

metaphor to claim that it is:
The message of the input sentences could be anything at all, provided
they contain the necessary language elements on which the mind can
build; it doesn't much matter what your food tastes like or whether you
eat liver or spinach provided you get iron in your diet (p. 265).

Whether of food or language, this is surely a grim, depersonalizing view. For

food, it certainly makes me glad that Vivian is a Cook only by name. For
language, it assumes an unconvincing discontinuity in human learning
between a€ect and cognition, content and form, experience and e€ect. My
argument would be, to borrow Vivian Cook's analogy, that just as we do
remember good meals, rather than vitamins in them, and use them to inform
future cookery and consumption, so we remember interesting examples,
rather than only their underlying grammatical structures. It may even be that
remembered instances work more on the subconscious system than discarded
ones.
At least, however, the food analogy is a `live metaphor' and one of Vivian
Cook's own making. More worrying is the `dead metaphor' with which it is
mixed. Language is `input' automatically causing `outcome'. The person who
receives it is compared to a machine. Neither their conscious perceptions, nor
their feelings, are involved. The `processing' (another metaphor) will take
place anyway. This computational metaphor of mind takes no account of the
learner as a conscious, sentient being, exerting control over what is
happening. For Vivian Cook, any stimulus of the imagination, any playing
with language, may even distract the learner's attention from the task at
hand. Yet in claiming that I am talking only about the pedagogic appeal of
examples and not about their `processing', his argument depends entirely
upon the acceptance of a clear dichotomy between the two: between what the
learners and teachers consciously think is happening, and what is actually
happening in the processing machine beneath the surface. So when he refers
to `the actual learning process in learners' minds' (my italics) he is presumably
contrasting this subconscious process with the apparent learning process as it
appears to learners in their conscious minds. The fact that people may
remember the examples, or like them (the two are perhaps often connected)
is beside the point, because, declares Vivian Cook, although
It may indeed be easier for people to remember actual sentences that
are interesting in some ways. . . . Unconscious knowledge of language is
not exact memory of thousands of sentences . . . it is knowledge of a
limited set of `rules' `patterns', `items', etc.

This is a view whichÐthough depressingly common in SLAÐnot only

imposes an empirically unwarranted theoretical assumption via a highly
loaded metaphor (the insentient processing machine), but also depends upon
three unproven assumptions: that it is unconscious knowledge which matters
 GUY COOK 251

most; that what we are learning is primarily `rules' and `patterns' (despite the
vague allusion to `items, etc.'); and that conscious memory for wording is not
important.
The roles of memory and of conscious learning are certainly key points in
the debate between us. Vivian Cook is aware of this and devotes a substantial
amount of his piece to belittling both, in favour of the standard model, in
which second language learning is primarily about the subconscious
acquisition of grammatical structures. I agree that there is need for more
evidenceÐthough this cuts both ways. Perhaps one of the reasons that we
have so little evidence, is that many SLA theorists have in general tended to
dismiss out of hand anything which might challenge the standard model.
There are, however, two sources of suggestive evidence which might give
Vivian Cook, and those who share his model, pause for thought. One dates
from some time ago, the other is much more recent.
The ®rst concerns the orthodox view that people do not remember exact
wording but only propositional content. `The book was given to me', `I was
given the book' `What was given to me was the book', etc. all merge together.
Evidence traditionally cited for this view is recall experiments in which
subjects, for example, confuse sentences with di€erent syntactic structures but
similar meanings (Johnson-Laird and Stevenson 1970); do not remember
whether sentences were active or passive (Sacks 1967); do not remember
whether information was presented in one or more sentences (Bransford and
Franks 1971). What we do, the research seemed to suggest, is divide the
`meaning' of language we encounter from the `form'. The meaning is then
stored, presumably in some sort of `mentalese', while the latter (if we are still
learning the language) enters our subconscious as a grammatical pattern
shorn of its actual words. This chimes well with Vivian Cook's model. But the
evidenceÐthough usually accepted as an item of faithÐis partial, largely
based on laboratory experiments in which people were shown inherently
confusing decontextualized sentences of no interest or personal signi®cance.
When recall for wording focuses upon contextualized and personally
signi®cant language quite di€erent results are found (Keenan et al. 1977;
Bates et al. 1980). In the same way, certain genresÐsuch as prayers, songs,
poems, jokesÐseem to lend themselves to verbatim recall. There is, in
addition, the unfashionable, but possibly very useful, pedagogic strategy of
encouraging learning by heart. So we should not hasten to over-generalize,
and say that wording is never retained. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But
when it is, it sits in the mind, available for conscious recall.
Perhaps this debate seems rather passeÂ. There is, however, a much more
recent and very live body of research which also challenges the irrelevance-
of-wording view in SLA.
This brings me to what I ®nd the most curious aspect of all in Vivian Cook's
argument: the failure to make anything but a passing reference to corpus
linguistics and its implications for language teaching. I ®nd it curious because
my own argument was quite explicitly against the assumption of many corpus
252 A REPLY TO VIVIAN COOK

linguists that their insights and ®ndings can be directly applied to, and indeed
determine, the kind of language used in language teaching. My argument,
however, as elsewhere, was not against these ®ndings per se but only their
unmediated pedagogic application (G. Cook 1998, 2000: 167±73). It seems
strange, given their contemporary currency, to have to spell out what these
conclusions are: that grammar and vocabulary are less discrete than
previously assumed, that native-like use is characterized by the deployment
of thousands of ready-made chunks (Sinclair 1991; Stubbs 1996 inter alia).
There is of course, as is widely recognized, an enormous amount of work to be
done on the relation between the behavioural evidence of corpora and the
psycholinguistic nature of language representation and use (Wray 2000;
Hunston 2002). Nevertheless, in the face of the evidence which does exist, it
seems odd still to be asserting that what is acquired (subconsciously or
consciously) by a language learner is only grammatical structures shorn of
their wording. Corpus ®ndings at least strongly suggest that this is not the
case. Memory for exact wording seems a much bigger part of language
knowledge than previously thought.
Vivian Cook omits all this from his argumentÐthus ironically highlighting
the common ground between my views and the corpus linguists. And the
reason is, as already suggested, that he still adheres to the view of language
and language processing which the corpus linguists have destabilized.
Vivian Cook's points, moreover, assume language use to be always fast and
unplanned. Much of it is. Yet there are also uses of language where there is
time for re¯ection and scope for conscious recall. This is particularly true of
writing and planned speech. Drafting a presentation, writing a thesis, sending
an email, organizing a report can surely be equally or even more important
for many learners than spontaneous speech. Conscious recall is also possible
in the arti®cial environment of the classroom, where (and this was a major
part of my argument) time can be given for re¯ection and recasting, without
the pressures of the real world (see also G. Cook 2002). Downplaying such
uses, whether in theories of acquisition or pedagogy, is surely part of the
legacy of communicative approaches where learning to speak spontaneously
in social situations and transactions was all that countedÐa point which
Vivian Cook has actually made eloquently himself elsewhere (V. Cook 2001).
My argument was that remembered examples can be a resource, allowing
conscious retrieval of model uses of grammatical patterns, lexis in context and
collocations. Vivian Cook's argument, however, only works if all learning and
use (and I concede of course that some of it is) is subconscious and reducible
to rule. But we seem to have very little evidence about just how conscious
noticing might contribute to learning or what it is that makes linguistic
examples noticeable. On the other hand, we do seem to have quite a lot of
evidence to suggest that knowing a language is not simply a matter of
ingesting grammatical rules. One might suggest that the absence of one kind
of evidence, and neglect of the other, may be accounted for by the fact that
SLA has been until recently exclusively focused upon certain types of
 GUY COOK 253

language knowledge and language useÐnamely subconscious knowledge and

fast automatic speechÐand has in consequence undervalued others.
This issue of evidence brings me to Vivian Cook's assumptions about the
nature of research. Is it true, as he claims, that uncovering the relation
between materials and language learning success is a `straightforward matter of
empirical research, whether into the outcomes of classrooms or into the actual
learning process in learners' minds' (my italics)? He argues that all I had to do,
and indeed should have done before I put pen to paper, was compare
say the knowledge of grammar or vocabulary of learners who have
studied the COBUILD dictionary with its authentic sentences with those
who have studied, say the Advanced Learners' Dictionary.

But what exactly would be `straightforward' about such a comparison? Even

leaving aside the inaccurate description of the OALD (which now uses attested
examples), it raises all the usual methodological problems so resolutely and
routinely ignored in a good deal of SLA research. For the experiment to have
scienti®c validity (an aspiration surely implied in the phrase `empirical
research'), variables would have to be controlled and terms precisely de®ned.
Yet neither of these conditions holds. How could one know that di€erences in
knowledge did not arise from some other factor than the examples in the two
dictionaries? How could one be sure that the learners were not receiving some
other kind of `input' between or even during lessons? (Unfortunately for
would-be scientists, learners are not actually processing machines which can
be switched o€ outside the classroom.) And what is meant by `knowledge'? Is
it long-term or short-term, productive or receptive, explicit or implicit?
Knowledge of a word can have all sorts of dimensions. And why is it only
discrete knowledge of grammar and vocabulary which is the measure of
language learning success? And what constitutes `success' in language
learning anyway? In short, the experiment does not strike me as straightfor-
ward, or even possible. It might provide some limited insight into two very
particular classrooms and the beliefs about language of the researcher, but
surely not allow us the formulation of the precise generalizations which are
the aim of scienti®c investigation. Yet Vivian Cook would have us believe that
it tells us something about `the outcomes of classrooms [and] the actual
learning process in learners' minds'. The audacity of the proposed general-
ization is somewhat disguised by the plural (`classrooms', `learners') rather
than the more familiar and notorious generic singular (`the learner', `the
classroom'). But the implication is the same. This ¯awed experiment, which
would not even tell us anything very de®nite about the two classes involved,
is assumed to provide insight into all language learners everywhere!
It would be easy to dismiss my stance here as relativist or post-modernist
anti-science. But it is not so at all. On the contrary, I strongly believe in the
possibility and validity of empirical scienti®c research. But science is only good
science if it knows its limitations. Two such limitations are relevant here. The
®rst is that science must con®ne itself to studying those phenomena which
254 A REPLY TO VIVIAN COOK

can be studied empirically. This is as true in linguistics as it is in the natural

sciences. There are facts about language and language use to be uncovered.
The ®ndings of corpus linguistics are a good example. The analysis of inputs
and outcomes in `straightforward' and unquali®ed terms of cause and e€ect is
not. A second condition for `good science' is the acknowledgement that even
empirical research must be theory driven. There is no use having evidence, as
Widdowson puts it, unless you know what it is evidence of (Widdowson
2003). Some speculative hypothesis is needed before the investigation,
otherwise it would be impossible to get started. It is this which justi®es the
kind of non-empirical speculative argument in which I was engaged.
Behind Vivian Cook's argument, lies a particular view, not only of the
nature of language and language learning, but also of research and
publication. Academic articles on language learning are only worthwhile, it
seems, if they report research ®ndings. `What is needed,' he declares, `is not
more argument but more evidence.' My o€ence, apparently, is to have
`advance[d] a research hypothesis . . . without having tested it'. Thus his
opening description of my article as an `admirable essay' works like Mark
Antony's `honourable man'. What starts o€ as praise becomes heavily ironic,
and it is quite clear at the end that by writing one in a serious journal, I have
stepped out of line.
The job of applied linguists is to present evidence to demonstrate the
learning basis for their claims, not simply to engage in citation,
acceptance and refutation of famous authorities (my italics).
Writing an essay, advancing an argument, is a simpler activity than reporting
research.
To me, however, it seems that this is not the case, and that speculation and
empirical research are necessary companions. If empirical observations of
language learning are to have validity, if ®ndings are to stand as evidence
rather than mere data, then they must be founded upon constant discussion
and re®nement of what we mean by knowing and learning a language. Vivian
Cook's argument rests upon very limited notions of both.
(Revised version received October 2002)

NOTE
1 The opening line of East Coker by T. S. Eliot.

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