Class 18 - Collocations

What is a collocation?

A collocation is two or more words that often go together. These

combinations just sound "right" to native English speakers, who use them
all the time. On the other hand, other combinations may be unnatural and
just sound "wrong".

natural English... unnatural English...

the fast train the quick train

fast food quick food

a quick shower a fast shower

a quick meal a fast meal

Types of collocation

There are several different types of collocation made from combinations

of verb, noun, adjective etc. Some of the most common types are:

 adverb + adjective: completely satisfied (NOT downright satisfied)

 adjective + noun: excruciating pain (NOT excruciating joy)
 noun + noun: a surge of anger (NOT a rush of anger)
 noun + verb: lions roar (NOT lions shout)
 verb + noun: commit suicide (NOT undertake suicide)
 verb + expression with preposition: burst into tears (NOT blow up
in tears)
 verb + adverb: wave frantically (NOT wave feverishly)

Sample Collocations
There are several different types of collocation. Collocations can be
adjective + adverb, noun + noun, verb + noun and so on. Below you can
see seven main types of collocation in sample sentences.

1. adverb + adjective

 Invading that country was an utterly stupid thing to do.

 We entered a richly decorated room.
 Are you fully aware of the implications of your action?

2. adjective + noun

 The doctor ordered him to take regular exercise.

 The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage.
 He was writhing on the ground in excruciating pain.

3. noun + noun

 Let's give Mr Jones a round of applause.

 The ceasefire agreement came into effect at 11am.
 I'd like to buy two bars of soap please.

4. noun + verb

 The lion started to roar when it heard the dog barking.

 Snow was falling as our plane took off.
 The bomb went off when he started the car engine.

5. verb + noun

 The prisoner was hanged for committing murder.

 I always try to do my homework in the morning, after making my
bed.
 He has been asked to give a presentation about his work.

6. verb + expression with preposition

 We had to return home because we had run out of money.

 At first her eyes filled with horror, and then she burst into tears.
  Their behaviour was enough to drive anybody to crime.

7. verb + adverb

 She placed her keys gently on the table and sat down.
 Mary whispered softly in John's ear.
 I vaguely remember that it was growing dark when we left.

Noun-Noun Collocations
advertising agency
advertising campaign
age discrimination
balance sheet
bank loan
benefits package
brand awareness
brand identity
brand name
brand recognition
budget increase
budget reduction
budget surplus
business ethics
business model
business partner
business people
business plan
business trip
company policy
conference call
conference room
cost reduction
customer base
customer satisfaction
customer service
employee benefits
government regulation
human resources
interest rates
labor market
labor union
market leader
market share
mission statement
operating costs
performance review
price controls
price range
price tag
price war
product launch
product line
product placement
profit margin
sales figures
sales team
stock exchange
stock market
stock options
time management
trade secrets
web page

Verb-Noun Collocations
accept an apology
accept a job
accept a meeting request
accept an offer
accept a position
accept responsibility
admit fault
admit a mistake
apply pressure
attract investors
boost confidence
borrow money
break a law
break into a market
build trust
calculate risk
call attention
cancel a meeting
cancel an order
chair a meeting
change one’s mind
choose sides
close a deal
complete a task
confirm suspicion
consider the fact
consider the possibility
consider the risk
cut costs
deliver an order
develop a strategy
exchange ideas
exchange a product
fire someone
fix a problem
gain access
gain experience
gain ground
gain knowledge
hire staff
invest money
invest resources
invest time
join forces
join an organization
join a union
keep someone’s word
launch a product
lend a hand
lend money
lower prices
lower taxes
manage a business
manage a company
manage a store
manage stress
measure progress
meet criteria
meet a deadline
open an account
pay attention
pay bills
pay dividends
pay a fee
pay an invoice
pay taxes
place an order
present a problem
provide assistance
provide support
raise awareness
raise money
raise an objection
raise prices
raise questions
raise taxes
reach an agreement
reach a compromise
reach a consensus
reach a decision
reach a point
recall a product
receive compensation
receive a discount
receive payment
run a business
save money
save time
sell a business
sell shares
send a copy
send a message
send a letter
sign a contract
take out a loan
waive a fee
waste time
waste money
write an email
write a letter
write a note

Collocations with Make

make an appointment
make an attempt
make a change
make a choice
make a comparison
make a complaint
make a connection
make a decision
make a demand
make a difference
make an effort
make ends meet
make an exception
make an excuse
make a fortune
make a living
make a mistake
make money
make an offer
make payments
make plans
make a point
make a profit
make progress
make a promise
make a request
make sense
make something clear
make a suggestion
make sure
make a telephone call
make the best of something
make the most of something
make time

Collocations with Do
do business
do damage
do an experiment
do a favor
do good/bad
do harm
do research
do right/wrong
do something/anything
do well
do your best
do your duty
do your part
do your share

Collocations with Take

take advantage
take a course
take notes
take action
take a break
take a decision (British — make a decision in American English)
take a message
take part in
take responsibility
take a test/quiz
take your time

Collocations with Have

have an appointment
have an argument
have a conversation
have a meeting
have problems
have a talk
have time
have trouble
have coffee/tea
have breakfast/lunch/dinner
have work

Collocations with Get

get a job
get a certification
get angry
get better/worse
get excited
get going
get the message
get motivated
get paid
get permission
get ready
get somewhere/nowhere
get started
get used to

Collocations with Go
go ahead
go bankrupt
go forward
go home
go out of business
go to work
go well

Collocations with Prepositions

accused of
adapt to
agree on something
agree with someone
apply for
approve of
argue about something
argue with someone
aware of
believe in
blame for
by accident
by mistake
cause of
comment on
complain about
concentrate on
consist of
contributed to
count on
credit for
decide on
decrease/increase in
demand for
depend on
fear of
from scratch
good at
graduate from
in charge of
insisted on
matter to
object to
on purpose
participate in
pay for (something)
plan for
plan on
prepare for
proud of
reason for
relationship with
reply to
respond to
responsible for
return to
satisfied with
smile at
take advantage of
tax on
trouble with

Collocations with in
believe in
in a car/taxi
in a fight/argument
in a group
in advance
in charge
in conclusion
in control
in denial
in depth
in detail
in private
in return for
in the mail
in the process of
in trouble
Interested in
involved in
participate in

Collocations with on
ban on something
blame something on someone
decide on
depends on
focus on
on a committee
on a list
on a plane/bus/train
on a team
on average
on call
on display
on duty
On one hand…/On the other hand…
on purpose
on sale
on someone’s side
on the phone
on the radio
on TV
rely on
restrictions on
vote on

Adjective-Noun Collocations
big break
big chance
big decision
big disappointment
big improvement
big mistake
big surprise
bright future
competitive advantage
daily commute
daily routine
deep thought
deep trouble
false advertising
friendly reminder
good chance
good faith
good news
good time
looks good/bad
golden opportunity
great admiration
in great detail
gray area
great pride
great respect
great skill
harsh criticism
heated debate
heavy rain
heavy traffic
hidden agenda
high/low costs
high/low degree
high/low level
high/low price
high/low profile
high/low quality
high/low risk
high/low salary
high/low standards
honest answer
hot topic
huge loss
huge problem
immediate impact
large amount
large number of
large quantity
perfect example
positive attitude
private sector
public sector
raw materials
rising costs
slight chance
sound advice
stiff competition
straight answer
strong belief
strong feeling
strong opinion
top priority
wise choice

Summarize the following text in 320 – 450 words.

The fear of immigration is poisoning Western politics. Donald Trump owes

his job to it. Brexit would not be happening without it. Strident
nationalists wield power in Italy, Hungary, Poland and Austria, and have
gained influence elsewhere.

In the West, the rise of nationalism derives from the fear of immigration.

Even Sweden, long a country of refuge, has soured on migrants. The

Sweden Democrats, a thunderingly anti-immigrant party, could win the
most votes at an election on September 9th. Though it will not form a
government, it has already transformed Swedish politics as mainstream
parties seek to halt migrants.

In Sweden, despite its pro-migrant tradition, nationalists have gained

prominence, leading all parties to adopt tougher platforms on immigrants.

The West risks a backlash of the sort that ended the previous great age of
mobility, before 1914. That would be a tragedy. Societies that close their
doors to migrants will be poorer and less tolerant. Meanwhile, those to
whom the doors are closed will see increased suffering, unable to escape
the poverty, climate change or violence that prompts them to move.

The blowback of such policies could cause great damage. Receiving

countries become poorer and more intolerant, while those suffering from
poverty, climate change or violence are stuck in dire straits.

The stakes could not be higher. Yet advocates of liberal immigration, such
as this newspaper, are losing the debate. They need to find better
arguments and policies. That demands more honesty about the trade-offs
immigration involves.

Those who defend the right to migrate need, thus, to present solid
arguments about the pros and cons of migration.

International law categorises migrants either as refugees, who are entitled

to sanctuary, or as economic migrants, who have no right to go anywhere
that does not want them. Yet the distinctions are blurry. Poor countries
next to war zones receive huge influxes, while rich countries try to shirk
their obligations. And since rich countries admit virtually no economic
migrants from poor countries unless they have exceptional skills or family
ties, many of them try their luck by posing as refugees. It does not help
that states have different rules on who is a refugee. Or that they struggle
to send home those who are denied asylum, not least because many of
their countries refuse to take them back.

According to international law, migrants fit into two categories, refugees

or economic migrants. Yet the distinction is not as clear cut. Countries that
neighbor war zones are burdened with thousands of migrants, while
developed dodge their commitments. Meanwhile, these very countries
refuse to receive economic migrants, save for those with outstanding skills
or family ties. This creates a severe imbalance between states.

This mess feeds disaffection in the West, and it is a waste. The act of
moving from a poor country to a rich one makes workers dramatically
more productive. A world with more migration would be substantially
richer. The snag is that the biggest benefits of moving accrue to the
migrants themselves, while the power to admit them rests with voters in
rich countries. Fair enough: democratic accountability is vested largely in
national governments. Yet most Western countries, struggling with ageing
populations and shrinking workforces, need more migrants. So they have
to find ways to make migration policy work for everyone.

This situation is unproductive. Migration increases workers’ efficiency and

makes countries richer. However, while most of the benefits are enjoyed by
the migrants, the citizens of rich countries are those who decide their
admittance. In states with ageing populations and decreasing workforces,
those migrants would provide an important boon.

The first step is to recognise the causes of the backlash against

newcomers. Several stand out: the belief that governments have lost
control of their borders; the fear that migrants drain already-strained
welfare systems; the perception that migrants are undercutting local
workers; and the fear of being swamped by alien cultures.

These negative reactions have several causes: the fear of insecure borders,
the fear of migrants burdening welfare systems, the supposed harm to
local workers, and the fear of being overtaken by foreign cultures.
Assuaging these concerns requires toughness and imagination. Start by
regaining control. Overhaul the outdated international systems for aiding
refugees; at the same time, open routes for well-regulated economic
migration to the West. This will require countries to secure borders and
enforce laws: by preventing the hiring of illegal immigrants and deporting
those denied asylum, for example. Where they do not exist, the
introduction of ID cards can help.

Handling these concerns demands creativity. The world needs to assist

refugees at the same time that it promotes legal economic migration.
Furthermore, it should prevent illegal migration and deport those who are
denied asylum.

Second, encourage all migrants, including refugees, to work, while limiting

the welfare benefits that they can receive. In America, where the safety
net is skimpy, labour rules are flexible and entry-level jobs plentiful, even
migrants who dropped out of high school are net contributors to the
public finances. Sweden, by contrast has a policy that seems designed to
stir resentment, showering refugees with benefits while making it hard for
them to work. Turkey does a better job at integrating refugees, even if it
does not recognise them as such.

Second, migrants should be encouraged to work and they should have

limited access to welfare systems. The United States does this well.
Sweden does not, for example.

A sensible approach would be to allow migrants to get public education

and health care immediately, but limit their access to welfare benefits for
several years. This may seem discriminatory, but migrants will still be
better off than if they had stayed at home. An extreme illustration can be
seen in the oil-rich Gulf, where migrants are ruthlessly excluded from the
opulent welfare that citizens enjoy. The Gulf is not a model. Migrant
workers receive too little protection against coercion and abuse. But
because they so obviously pay their way, the native-born are happy to
admit them in vast numbers. Elements of that logic are worth considering
in the West.

Migrants should also have immediate access to education and healthcare,

so that they can work and contribute to society. This, for instance, works
well in oil-rich Gulf countries.
Third, ensure that the gains from migration are more explicitly shared
between migrants and the native-born in the host country. One way is to
tie public spending, particularly on visible services such as schools or
hospitals, more directly to the number of migrants in a region. Another,
more radical idea might be to tax migrants themselves, either by charging
for entry or, more plausibly, by applying a surtax on their income for a
period after arrival. The proceeds could be spent on public infrastructure,
or simply divided among citizens. The more immigrants, the bigger the
dividend.

Third, the benefits of migration should be more evenly shared between

migrants and citizens. The government could increase public spending in
migrant-welcoming regions, or apply a surtax on migrants and spend that
money with the general population.

Cultural objections to immigration are harder to assuage. Newcomers

flavour the host culture. And there will inevitably be people who resist
that change. History suggests that over time more pluralist countries
become more tolerant of immigration. They do so most easily when the
flow of migration is smooth (to prevent the sudden surges that make host
societies feel swamped) and when newcomers are integrated into the
local culture. Ensuring that they work and learn the local language are two
powerful levers for achieving that.

Finally, for cultural integration to happen, migrants should work and learn
the local language. That way, resistance against them is reduced.

How much migration makes sense? The answer will vary from country to
country. Belgium is not Canada. Done properly, migration brings economic
dynamism. But the shortcomings of today’s policies mean that most
Western countries are far more closed than they should be, and they feed
the rise of populism. That is both a colossal wasted opportunity and an
unnecessary danger.

These imperfections in the migration system mean increased populism and

wasted opportunities. That is an unnecessary risk for the world to face.

The way forward on immigration to the West – The Economist

Composition
Belief in “the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes
before us,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby, is a
characteristic American trait. But hope in a better future is not uniquely
American, even if it has long been a more potent secular faith in the
United States than elsewhere. The belief has older roots. It was the
product of a shift in the temporal location of the golden age from a long-
lost past to an ever-brighter future.

That shift was conceived and realized with the Enlightenment and then
the Industrial Revolution. As human beings gained ever-greater control of
the forces of nature and their economies became ever more productive,
they started to hope for lives more like those of the gods their ancestors
had imagined.

People might never be immortal, but their lives would be healthy and
long. People might never move instantaneously, but they could transport
themselves and their possessions swiftly and cheaply across great
distances. People might never live on Mount Olympus, but they could
enjoy a temperate climate, 24-hour lighting, and abundant food. People
might never speak mind to mind, but they could communicate with as
many others as they desired, anywhere on the planet. People might never
enjoy infinite wisdom, but they could gain immediate access to the
knowledge accumulated over millennia.

All of this has already happened in the world’s richest countries. It is what
the people of the rest of the world hope still to enjoy.

Is a yet more orgiastic future beckoning? Today’s Gatsbys have no doubt

that the answer is yes: humanity stands on the verge of breakthroughs in
information technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence that will dwarf
what has been achieved in the past two centuries. Human beings will be
able to live still more like gods because they are about to create machines
like gods: not just strong and swift but also supremely intelligent and even
self-creating.

Yet this is the optimistic version. Since Mary Shelley created the
cautionary tale of Frankenstein, the idea of intelligent machines has also
frightened us. Many duly point to great dangers, including those of soaring
unemployment and inequality.
 The tecno-optimists are wrong – Martin Wolf – Foreign Affairs Magazine

Taking due consideration of the above text, write a 400-450 words

composition on the impact of technology on 21st century international
relations.
TPS
Read the text and answer the following questions.
Pity the UN ambassador of a small African country each time a vote is
called in the General Assembly. Many of the resolutions will be ones that
their president and most of their compatriots neither know nor care
about. Take Resolution 70/230, adopted just before Christmas and New
Year, last year, when the world’s mind is on how it will recover from one
hangover while bracing for the next. The UN resolved, among other things,
to hold a symposium on basic space technology in South Africa and a
workshop on “human space technology” in Costa Rica. It passed easily.

But what of more contentious resolutions, such as one condemning North

Korea for abuses of human rights? Deciding whether to vote yea or nay
ought to be easy: North Korea has one of the worst records on Earth. Yet
19 countries voted against the resolution, among them Zimbabwe,
Burundi and Algeria. Another 48 abstained, among them Kenya,
Mozambique and Ethiopia. One reason, perhaps, is that China (which
dislikes criticism of its pals in Pyongyang) smiles on nations that agree with
it.

AidData, a project based at the College of William and Mary in Virginia,

keeps a huge database on official aid flows. Its number-crunching shows
how much China appears to reward African countries that vote with it.
The relationship is not a simple one, according to Brad Parks, a director of
the organisation. China gives proportionally more money to poorer
countries, for instance. But by and large countries that support China do
better. AidData reckons that if African countries voted with China an extra
10% of the time, they would get an 86% bump in official aid on average. If
Rwanda, for instance, were to cast its ballot alongside China 93% of the
time (instead of its current 67%), its aid from China could jump by 289%.

A purely self-interested foreign policy would need to take into account

donors other than China, too. America’s Congress receives an annual
report from the State Department showing which countries voted with
Uncle Sam. Many academics claim to have found evidence that America,
too, buys UN votes with aid. (If so, it is hardly consistent. Afghanistan
routinely opposes American positions at the UN, yet still gets great dollops
of cash.) Even so, cash-strapped African leaders should probably hire a
data scientist or two to optimise the yield on their votes, or at the very
least make sure their ambassadors turn up. Burundi, Gabon and the
Democratic Republic of Congo missed almost half of the votes that
America considers key. Swaziland missed two-thirds of its opportunities to
cosy up to America or China. Surely in the business of vote-buying the
principle of “no vote, no pay” applies.
China and Africa: A despot’s guide to foreign aid – The Economist

1 – Choose right or wrong for each item below.

1 – Most African countries are keen on using their participation in the UN
General Assembly to receive foreign aid.
2 – Most Africans do not care about UN resolutions.
3 – The United States and China follow similar practices, evidence
suggests.
4 – The rate of return per vote in the UN General Assembly, in terms of
foreign aid, is steady.
2 – Choose right or wrong for each item below.
1 – Resolution 70/230 is meaningless.
2 – China’s sole standard for giving out foreign aid is other countries’
voting pattern in international organizations.
3 – Afghanistan is one of China’s main recipients of aid.
4 – The workshop in South Africa and the symposium in Costa Rica
evidence the broad scope of the UN’s actions.
3 – Choose right or wrong for each item below.
1 – Ideology is important in the way donor and recipient countries use aid
policy.
2 – During the voting regarding a UN resolution, not voting is worse than
voting against a great power.
3 – Data scientists play an increasingly important role, even in poor
countries.
4 – All Africans that frequently vote with China are autocracies.