BEC Wizard

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,...