Learning English Collocations
One of the biggest difficulties for many English learners is knowing which words are commonly used together in the English language – collocations – by native English speakers.
Like grammar and vocabulary, collocations can be learned by studying and exposure to ‘real English’.
Collocations
Does a person...
- do a mistake or is it more normal to make a mistake?
- Do students give a test or do they take a test?
- “Please, make a photo of us” or “Please, take a photo of us”?
- Do you admit a friend or relative in hospital or to hospital?
English learners often have difficulty when they are faced with collocations.
An oral examiner for the Cambridge Business English Certificate exams recently examined over forty candidate pairs over a period of two days.
He observed that “many of the candidates exhibited inadequate competence with regard to using collocations.” BEC speaking is assessed using criteria which include grammar and vocabulary, discourse management, pronunciation skills and interaction.
Examples of collocation errors
Here are some of the incorrect collocations and the correct ones are within parentheses:
- My boss did a mistake (My boss made a mistake).
- My colleague has not yet made the assignment (My colleague hasn’t yet done the assignment).
- Who makes the laundry at home? (Who does the laundry at home?).
- The patient was admitted in hospital (The patient was admitted to hospital).
- The candidates gave the test (The candidates took the test).
- She would better do it now (She had better do it now).
What is collocation?
Collocation can be described as a natural combination of certain words or the correct grouping of words as part of a phrase or sentence.
For example, the phrase ‘heavy rain’ and also ‘strong wind’ are naturally used by English native speakers and are correct.
However, ‘strong rain’ or ‘heavy wind’ would not be correct collocations.
Are there any set rules for collocations? No, not really.
There is little or no logic behind which combination of words is correct as a collocation.
Why are collocation errors common for English learners? It is mainly because they lack exposure to the English language.
English learners who make a habit of reading books, magazines and online articles, and other written sources of English, watch English language movies and listen to English news and music, tend to make less collocation related errors than learners who don’t do these things.
Another reason is the interference of the first language (L1) or mother tongue which can cause problems.
For many years, English teachers have taught individual vocabulary words but not concentrated on learners acquiring commonly used English collocations.
However, the focus in recent years on the teaching of co-occurrence of words or chunks has been increasing.
How to learn collocations
Plenty of exposure to examples of real English and constant practice help learners develop real competence in recognizing and using collocations.
Here are some common collocations of the popular verbs ‘make’ and ‘do’:
Collocations with Make
- make an offer: They made an offer to buy the company.
- make arrangements: His secretary made all the arrangements for the conference.
- make an attempt: The sales department made an attempt to boost the number of new clients last month.
- make a phone call: The CEO made a quick phone call to head office.
- make money: The company made more money this quarter than in the previous quarter.
- make peace: After negotiating for days, the unions and company representatives finally made peace and agreed upon a new plan.
- make a plan: The marketing department has made a strategic plan for the new product launch.
- make progress: The research and development department reported that they are making progress with some new and innovative products.
Collocations with Do
- do harm The bad sales figure last month did a lot of harm to the company.
- do research The R & D department are doing research into new materials.
- do one’s best The sales manager and his team did their best to meet the new sales target for the month.
- do business The two companies have done business for several years.
- do a deal They did the deal last week.
- do a report They are doing a report on the incident that happened last month.
- do a course Customer service representatives are all doing a training course this week.
