Skype English School

 Collocations

 A collocation is a pair or group of words that are often used together. These combinations sound natural to native speakers, but students of English have to make a special effort to learn them because they are often difficult to guess. Some combinations just ‘sound wrong’ to native English speakers. For example, the adjective fast collocates with cars, but not with a glance .

Learning collocations is an important part of learning the vocabulary of a language. Some collocations are fixed, or very strong, for example take a photo,  where no word other than take collocates with photo to give the same meaning. Some collocations are more open, where several different words may be used to give similar meaning, for example keep to/ stick to the rules.

Examples:

You must make an effort and study for your exams ( NOT do an effort)

Did you watch TV last night? (NOT look at TV)

This car has a very powerful engine. It can do 200km an hour (NOT strong engine)

Sometimes, a pair of words may not be absolutely wrong, and people will understand what is meant, but it may not be the natural, normal collocation. If someone says I did a few mistakes they will be understood, but a fluent speaker of English would probably say I made a few mistakes.

Compounds and Idioms

Compounds are units of meaning formed with two or more words. Sometimes the words are written separately, sometimes they have a hyphen and sometimes they are written as one word. Usually the meaning of the compound can be guessed by knowing the meaning of the individual words. Some examples are car park, post office, narrow-minded, shoelaces and teapot. 

Idioms are groups of words in a fixed order that have a meaning that cannot be guessed by knowing the meaning of individual words.

Why Learn Collocations?

Learning collocations is a good idea because they can:

a. Give you the most natural way to say something: smoking is strictly forbidden is more natural than smoking is strongly forbidden.

b. Give you alternative ways of saying something, which may be more colorful/expressive or more precise: instead of repeating "It was very cold and very dark", we can say "It was bitterly cold and pitch dark".

c. Improve your style in writing: instead of saying poverty causes crime, you can say poverty breeds crime.  You may not want to use these in informal conversations, but in writing they can give your text more variety and make it read better.

Finding Collocations 

There are two main ways in which you can find collocations.

You can train yourself to notice them whenever you read or listen to anything in English.

After giving Mark a lift to the airport, Cathy made her way home. What an exciting life he led! At times Cathy felt desperately jealous of him. She spent her time doing little more than taking care of him and the children. Now her sister was getting divorced and would doubtless be making demands on her too. Cathy had promised to give her sister a call as soon as she got home but she decided to run herself a bath first. She had a sharp pain in her side and hoped that a hot bath might ease the pain.

Get into the habit of noting good collocations when you come across them.

You can find them in any good learner’s dictionary. For example if you look up the word sharp you will find some of these collocations:

A sharp pain

A sharp bend/ turn

A sharp contrast

A sharp rise