What is a Collocation?
A Collocation is a pair or group of words that are often used together. These
combinations sound natural to native speaker, but students of English have to make
an effort to learn them because they are often difficult to guess.
Some combinations just sounds wrong to native speaker of English. 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.
Fixed collocations , or very strong are collocations that cannot be changed in anyway.
For example take a photo where no other word than take collocates with photo to give
the same meaning. It’s completely fixed. The meaning of some fixed collocations
cannot be guessed from the individual words. These collocations are called Idioms. A
collocation become an Idiom when it is Fixed.
Some collocations are more open , where several different words may be used to give
a similar meaning, keep to or stick to the rules.
Make an effort not do an effort – you have to make an effort and study for your
exams.
Watch Tv not look Tv
Powerful engine not strong engine
Ancient monument not antique
COMPOUNDS AND IDIOMS
Compounds are unit of meaning formed with two or more words. Sometimes the
words are written separately, sometimes they have a hyphen or sometimes they are
written as one word. Usually the meaning of the compounds can be guessed by
knowing the meaning of the single word. Examples : Car park, Post office, teapot ,
Shoelaces ecc..
Idioms are a groups of words in a fixed order that have a meaning that cannot be
guessed by knowing the meaning of the individual words. Examples : pass the buck is
an idiom meaning “to pass the responsibility for a problem to another person to avoid
dealing with it oneself”.
Why learn Collocations?
- To give you the most natural way to say something : smoking is strictly
forbidden is more natural than smoking is strongly forbidden.
