Further readings What is collocation
The way that w ords form predictable re lationships with other words.
Knowing the 'meaning' of a word is not only knowing its dictionary
definition but also knowing the kind of words with which it is often associated.
Why 'to do your homework' and not 'to make your homework'?
There is no rule and di ctionaries won't help us, collocation
are the re sult of many years of habitual use by fluent speakers of the language.
Why is collocation important
•it makes speech sound natural and a live
•it provides 'chunks' of English that are rea dy to use
•it saves us a lot of time and e ffort when we a re trying to express ourselves
How it is composed
Two or more w ords:
"Last year, w e spent our summer holiday in Oxford"
we can i dentify four groups of words or 'collocations':
•last + year
•spend + holiday
•summer + holiday
•in + Oxford
the meanings of such
words may be similar, but the
way that they combine
with other words may
be very different
Fixed phrases
are w ords have very little freedom to combine
with other words in English. If you learn these words,
it is best to learn them together, as fixed phrases.
e.g. a mends (she was sorry for what she had done and de cided to make amends)
which mea ns 'she decided to try to make the situation better'
Idioms We ca n guess the meaning of a n idiom if we
understand all the individual w ords that it is formed from.
For exampl e, it is difficult to see why 'spill the beans'
should mean 'to give awa y secret information'
We cannot say 'on top of the "weather' (but we ca n say 'on top of the world')
Phrasal verbs very common (in Eng) combinations of
verb + adverb or preposition (particle)
pick up, take up, bump into,
set off, put up with...
two layers of collocation if we w ant to use phrasal verbs correctly.
choose the correct particle to go with the ve rb
choose the right kind of word or phrase to express the meaning we want.
word order: changing the position of the particle in a phrasal verb ca n have a major effect on the meaning.
Compare She couldn’t get over the me ssage (She w as very surprised by it) and
She couldn’t get the message over (She couldn’t make other pe ople understand it).