TEACHING COLLOCATIONS AND CONNOTATIONS: ADVANCED ENGLISH: collocation

Showing posts with label collocation. Show all posts

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Collocations of have

Examples for collocation

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Collocation exercises

Which word collocates with all the words given?

1. fried, poached, fresh, raw, frozen, grilled, smoked _________________

2. summer, warm, winter, tatty, shabby, trendy, second-hand _____________

3. dangerous, desperate, common, born, hardened, master _______________

4. massive, huge, crowded, packed, outdoor, indoor, sports _______________

Answers. 1 = fish, 2 = coat, 3 = criminal, 4 = stadium

Speaking and writing activities for collocations

Speaking activities

Get the students to do creative drills. For example, devise a 'Find somebody who...' activity for them to practise collocations. For example,

Find someone who

.....has been on a strict diet

.....has been in an embarrassing position

.....has made a critical choice in his/her life etc.

The students themselves could make up similar activities.

Get the students to repeat the same activity, for example giving a short talk or telling a story, perhaps three of four times. This has been shown to boost fluency by activating collocations.

Ask the students to brainstorm nouns on a particular subject, perhaps for a

writing task e.g. what are the collocations of 'money'. Then get them to suggest verbs

and adjectives that collocate with those nouns, then adverbs with the verbs, thus

building up a number of lexically dense collocational fields.

collocation of power

Friday, May 24, 2013

Collocations of job

Collocations of technology

Collocation examples

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Collocations of sympathy

Teaching collocations

Teaching Collocation

Vocabulary instruction in general, and certainly the instruction of collocation, is not much emphasized. However, there are some general principles for teaching collocation:

1

Teach students the term “collocation” and the rationale for learning it. Once they know the rationale behind instruction, they become more motivated to learn.
2

Notice which words go together when giving out a new reading. Call students’ attention to key words and the words that “go” with them, and have them underline collocations. On any given page, for example, there is likely to be numerous collocates. Spend some time practicing and interacting with these collocations with each reading.
3

Focus on “salient language,” language students may use a lot or that is related to the curriculum: for example, the phrase “on the other hand” is used a lot in academic language, and students often make mistakes in it: “in the other hand,” “on the other hands,” etc. Explicitly teaching the phrase and practicing it is a valuable investment of course time.
4

Contrast two words:
- make do
- list their collocates
5

Extend it: Have students make a list of things they need to accomplish that week, using “make “ and “do.” This establishes some of the differences between the two words (which are largely collocational).
6

Matching exercises/completion exercises: have students complete a sentence with the correct collocation or match words to their collocates: do homework, give a presentation.
7

Surveys: have students survey their classmates about their activities, including verbs and their collocations, for example.
8

Have students practice the phrases you’ve targeted. Once students been explicitly taught “in contrast to” and “on the other hand,” for example, have them practice these collocations in journal and essay assignments.
9

Write a sketch/dialogue. Put some collocates on the board learned from reading over the last week: e.g., “regular exercise,” “healthy diet,” “small portion size” and have students create a dialogue in pairs and practice it.
10

Write poetic descriptions of beloved person or place with adjective+noun combinations or adverb+adjective combinations. Again, give students some of the language for the task on the board or in a handout: “dear friend,” “old friend,” “passionately embrace,” “fond farewell,” etc.

Then have them create a poem with it.