The Importance of Teaching Collocations

Firstly, if you do not teach collocations, you are ignoring a large set of items which express
often complex ideas very simply and yet precisely.

Secondly, the fewer collocations students are able to use, the more they have to use longer
expressions with much more grammaticalisation to communicate something which a native
speaker would express with a precise lexical phrase and correspondingly little grammar.

Notice too, that if native speakers usually express an idea lexically with a collocation, the
non-native speaker not knowing the lexical item, has to use grammar to express the idea in a
way which they have not heard in that context - they have no model to guide them.

Student attempt Collocation

We don't have things enough adequate supplies to meet the
so that every person who will demand
have one can have one.

You must know what you

want to do but it must not be
too much for it to be possible
for you to do.
Make problems which you
think have no answers
A very important moment
when things changed
completely
A new book which is very
similar to the old one but
improved and up-to-date

Many grammatical errors are caused by lexical deficiencies, and that the best response to
many of these errors at intermediate and advanced levels is to do more lexical work in place
of grammatical correction.

Task What event, situation or topic does each of these collocations suggest:

widely available
routine check-up
disperse the crowd
catch up with the news
boost employment

Are they typical of spoken English, newspapers, novels or what?

Task: Try to define the difference between the verbs treat and repair?

Here are some authentic examples from a corpora of the two verbs repair and treat:

1. One child was able to repair engines without being instructed.

2. He has had to work hard to repair his damaged reputation.
3. The natural tendency of the body is to repair itself given the opportunity.
4. It will take years to repair the economic damage caused by this policy.
5. Some dentists claim it is uneconomic to treat NHS patients.
6. In my profession, you learn how to treat your own wounds.
7. It is one of the few drugs approved to treat Alzheimer's disease.
8. Can you advise me on how to treat the problem?
9. You can treat tired, lifeless hair with this new shampoo.
10. They have a tendency to treat small customers with contempt.
11. It was no way to treat a dog.
12. We took the dog to the vet but he said it was too late to treat her.