Food talks: Using corpus data to link cooking methods with types of food

Food and language are means of socialization in several cultures, thus being extremely important in our lives. They come together, for instance, in popular and well-known reality shows like MasterChef and Bake Off, which are followed by numerous spectators around the globe. It is therefore hardly surprising that food features as one of the main topic in courses, language inventories, syllabi and textbooks aimed at students of English for general purposes (EGP). Students’ knowledge of food-related language starts at the elementary level, and this knowledge is expanded as they progress in their English language learning journeys. Aimed at intermediate EGP students, the present 60-minute lesson requires no preparation time. It employs a corpus of American English containing more than one billion words in order to review students’ existing knowledge of cooking methods, support their association of these methods with types of food and develop their speaking skills.