Although Reflecting on Classroom Communication in Asia has many strengths, there arealso some weaknesses. First, Farrell does not explain how to transcribe a recording.Although he provides examples of transcripts, he does not explain what has been includedand what has been omitted. The transcripts include body language, but there are no sym-bols to indicate other important communicative devices such as intonation. The reader isleft wondering if intonation is not important in classroom communication or if the authormerely forgot to include it. Furthermore, Farrell admits that transcribing is not an easyprocess since one recorded hour may take up to 8 h to transcribe. Thus, upon completionof the book, the reader still does not know important practical information such as how totranscribe or how long it will actually take.

The second weakness of the book is the underlying assumption that by reading transcriptsteachers will know what students understand. In the preface, Farrell states that teachers ‘‘cancheck that their students understand the academic task structure they have set and if the stu-dents are able to perceive what is expected of them’’ (pvi, emphasis added). However, he doesnot comment on the possibility that teachers may misinterpret their own transcripts. Re-search has shown that teachers sometimes misunderstand their students because they are fil-tering their knowledge of classroom occurrences through schemata that are different fromtheir students’ schemata. For example, teachers who do not share the same culture as theirstudents may assume that the students are misbehaving when in fact they are acting in accor-dance to the norms of a different culture. Thus, teachers may analyze their transcripts, mis-interpret the students’ communication, and subsequently misinterpret the effectiveness (orlack of effectiveness) of the communication pattern that they established. It is unfortunatethat Farrell did not include some strategies for critically interpreting student utterances.

These weaknesses are, however, outweighed by the strengths of this book, and theundeniable importance of its basic premises for all teachers. Given the privileged positionteachers hold in the classroom, it is without question that they should be responsible forthe framework of communication in their classrooms. Farrell provides teachers with thebackground information they need in order to make their first step toward truly takingthis responsibility. For this reason alone, Reflecting on Classroom Communication in Asiashould be read by all teachers, not just those in Asia.

Sonia MartinDepartment of Applied Linguistics,

Brock University, 500 Glenridge Avenue,

St. Catharines, Ont., Canada L2S 3A1

doi:10.1016/j.system.2006.07.002

Textual patterns: Key words and corpus analysis in language education, M. Scott, C. Tribble.

John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2006). x + 203 pp

Scott and Tribbles’ Textual Patterns is volume 22 in Benjamins’ Studies in Corpus Linguis-

tics series which is designed to focus on the development of a quantitative approach to thestudy of linguistics. It is intended for a readership of ‘‘language teachers and teacher educa-tors’’ who cannot be expected to be expert in the subject. All writers of this genre will face the

452 Book reviews / System 34 (2006) 451–457

difficulty of adjusting the content of their work to provide the background, which non-ex-perts will need to understand the subject matter. Part of the success of the book will resttherefore, on the writers’ ability to condense and simplify the content to make it accessibleenough for the target readership. A further difficulty lies in the subject matter itself. Corpusanalysis tends to generate very large quantities of data and there is a danger that work in thearea is, or appears to be, data driven rather than driven by theory or a relevant application. Itcan also be recondite and writers often struggle to make non-specialists see the relevance ofthis type of analysis. The success of the book will further rest, therefore, on the ability of thewriters to make the subject matter relevant to readers and to persuade the reader that thistype of analysis is useful and has a contribution to make to language education.

The writers tackle these two problems by dividing the book into two halves, one con-tributed by each author. Scott contributes the first section, which attempts the task ofexplaining the background to the area. The first chapter explains the background of theoryto the work and places the writers’ concentration on the study of particular texts or texttypes, in contrast to the use of corpora to study the language, the culture and the brain.Subsequent chapters attempt to explain and illustrate wordlists (chapter 2), concordances(chapter 3) keywords (chapter 4) and the way keywords may associate and connect (chap-ter 5). It is these associations among keywords which give rise to the textual patterns of thetitle. Keywords may associate with each other in a variety of different ways which, poten-tially, contribute to the individual nature of a text and which, potentially also, offer a newtool in the analysis of texts. Tribble contributes the second section, which is also made upof five chapters and offers five separate case studies, which attempt to apply the analysis ofkeywords. Chapter 6 focuses on English language teaching and examines keywords in aca-demic and non-academic, and in spoken and written, texts. Chapter 7 examines businessand professional communication. Chapter 8 attempts to use keyword analysis to illumi-nate the differences between native and non-native speakers in academic writing in Eng-lish. Chapter 9 examines keywords in newspaper reporting. Finally, Chapter 10 applieskeyword analysis to a very short text, Beckett’s Texts for Nothing 1, in an attempt to revealtext structure and confirm intuitive responses to the piece.

The first section of the book is clearly an attempt to make the subject matter of corpusanalysis accessible to the interested outsider. In general, I think this is successful and theexposition pauses frequently for examples of wordlists and graphs, which illustrate variouskinds of distribution, to be discussed. The result is surprisingly readable. The students Iteach concordancing to will surely find both the style of the book approachable and thecontent highly relevant to their own studies in their analyses of texts. The weakness of thissection is the first chapter, which is unfortunate. I suspect this is a misjudgement on thepart of the writers in that a focus on the analysis of individual texts probably requiresno justification on the part of most potential readers. Readers will assume, in my experi-ence, that this is what corpus analysis is for anyway. The argument Scott makes for the‘‘upheaval’’ corpus-based methods of analysis have created, misses the mark and is unper-suasive. A few well-chosen examples of its impact on dictionary creation and foreign lan-guage testing would have been better. The background this chapter contains on theanalysis of context tends to get lost as result. The final chapter of this section introducesthe subject of linkages between keywords and so also introduces the networks they can cre-ate. Various of these, strings, stars, cliques and clumps, are illustrated as visual networkshence, presumably, introducing the patterns of the title. The application of this type ofsmall world network analysis to texts is little researched and there is a dearth of good

Book reviews / System 34 (2006) 451–457 453

examples of this genre for people who are interested to draw on. The first half of the bookhas met one essential condition of success by being so generally accessible. It has alsoraised the enticing prospect of some highly original analyses using corpora and networks.But have the authors also succeeded in making the content demonstrably relevant and use-ful to its readership in the applications included in the second half?

The second half of the book contains the applications which should serve as examples ofhow corpus, keyword and network analysis can produce useful insights into education. Inone important sense this is a very useful section. It is often hard to find good examples ofthe use of keywords and corpus analysis for exploitation in the classroom, but this book con-tains both the background ideas and five, clearly explained examples of their application.These are exemplary studies, typical of the genre, which students can draw on for guidancein pursuing their own investigations. If work of this kind is not entirely original, and I canthink of similar examples by Stubbs, it is still unusual to see corpus analysis linked with lit-erary criticism. The final chapter, called Counting things you cannot count on and which stud-ies Beckett’s Texts for Nothing 1, is an excellent example of just how telling some statistics ona text can be. Other chapters which consider the effect such analyses might have on languageteaching seem less persuasive compared with the final chapter. It is much harder to demon-strate a significant impact in this area and the language of the writers themselves seems toreveal their own doubts. After the assertions about the ‘‘upheaval’’ (p. 5) corpus analysishas created at the opening of the book, the writers comments on their own work are muchmore reserved, even muted, in their claims. They ‘‘hope’’ their approach can ‘‘enrich analy-sis’’ (p. 192), and inform the testing of hypotheses (p. 177) – but they do not seem very cer-tain. They ‘‘feel’’ the analyses ‘‘can be helpful’’ and ‘‘have demonstrated the value’’ ofexamining 3 and 4-word clusters (p. 157) – but, again, they do not seem certain. They con-sider some of their advice drawn from their analysis to be ‘‘not strikingly original’’ (p. 126). Itis ‘‘possible’’ to give users access to key information (p. 108) – but they do not see this as obvi-ous or inevitable. Their analyses suggest ‘‘something about style’’ (p. 63) – but we are not toldwhat. Whatever hope corpus analysis holds out for the future of language teaching, it seemsclear the writers do not really believe in the obvious benefits of their own applications.

It is also disappointing to see that the networks explained in chapter five, at the end of thefirst half of the book, do not make a reappearance in the applications in the second half. Thiskind of analysis is genuinely in its infancy and practitioners are still experimenting to find outhow best to take advantage of the opportunities it seems to offer. If network analysis had beenapplied to some of the examples in part two of the book then this would have been a veryhighly original and important piece of work. But drawing up these networks is very hardand it is even harder to make visual sense of the results that emerge. Tribble’s analysesabound with lists of collocates, left and right, which does half the work but leaves the analysisincomplete. In the absence of any kind of exploitation of such a method of analysis in the sec-ond half of the book, it is to be wondered why Scott introduced the idea in the first half.

Jim MiltonApplied Linguistics – School of Arts,

University of Wales Swansea,

Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK

E-mail address: j.l.milton@swansea.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.system.2006.07.003

454 Book reviews / System 34 (2006) 451–457