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What problems do learners have with collocation, and how can we help?Types of Collocation 1. De-lexicalised Verbs
In my experience, a lot of mistakes in collocations are made with de-lexicalised verbs, probably due to L1 interference (see below). 2. Nouns
Nouns are also important because they are usually the words that carry the most meaning within a sentence. Strong/Weak and Frequent/Infrequent Collocations
In the same way, a particularly strong collocation may be used very infrequently (e.g. bat your eyelashes). The most useful combination for teaching purposes, then, seems to be a combination of strong (but not completely fixed) and frequent. A strong/infrequent collocation may be worth mentioning to draw the learners’ attention to its existence, but little, if any, class time would need to be spent on collocations at the weak/infrequent end of the spectrum. Nation also makes the point that, in a classroom situation, frequent collocations only deserve attention if: “their frequency is equal to or higher than other high-frequency words.” This puts a greater pressure on the teacher when making the decision about whether to spend time on a particular collocation. I feel that if there are enough potential frequent collocations of one of the nodes, it is worth spending some class time on:
With the second two verbs in this example, the unpredictability of the combination is also a factor. Most learners at intermediate level or above would be familiar with all three of the verbs, but few would realise that it is possible to collocate ‘run’ and ‘risk’. Moreover, this would be a difficult collocation for learners to work out just by knowing the meaning of the individual parts, so would therefore merit some class time.
What problems do learners have with collocation, and how can we help? 1. Quantity/Arbitrariness If students are encouraged to record collocations as they occur, they have a permanent record of which combinations are possible. Class time can be given for learners to revise and practise the collocations they have learnt (see below for suggestions) or to add new ones. There are various ways for learners to record new collocations in their vocabulary notebooks. I have found that the most effective is to use a box format such as:
For lower level learners it might be helpful to organise their collocation boxes by topic (in the same order as their coursebooks) – jobs, family, food etc. Intermediate learners may prefer to organise by keyword – work, holiday etc – and advanced students by grammatical structure – verb + noun, noun + adjective etc. Organisation is really a matter for individual learners, though, as it should be done according to personal preference to minimise the learning burden. Learners can leave some entries in the boxes blank to be completed at a later date with other collocates that they have noticed independently. 2. L1 Transfer
Bahns argues that because of this untranslatability teachers should focus on collocations which can not be translated directly, pointing out contrasts to students instead of similarities. If learners fail to use a correct collocation, even if their utterance is grammatically and contextually correct, their English will still sound unnatural and ‘foreign’, to the extent that their addressee may not understand them at all. Compare the following (from a selection of my learners’ written work): He survived *very *strongly (from a Japanese student) We *own a shopping centre (from a Swiss student) I *took a good decision (from an Italian student) He knows what he’s *speaking about (from a German student) I can’t see any *problem why (from a Czech student) If we substitute the asterisked words for miraculously, have, made, talkingandreason, these utterances become more natural and nativelike. Collocation grids can be useful in helping learners to understand which words are possible collocates and which aren’t, by simply ticking the correct combination. These grids can be made from the students’ own written (or spoken) work as a correction exercise as well as more general ones in textbooks:
Such grids are also very useful for showing the difference in meaning or use between two or three words that appear almost the same. The grid may then be used to contrast with L1 possibilities for collocation. 3. Meaning and Noticing When working with text, it takes very little time to point collocations out to learners – or, alternatively, with higher levels or classes experienced in noticing to ask them to find collocations for themselves. In this opening paragraph , six collocations can be identified (my underlining):
Newspaper articles, opening paragraphs of books and videos of TV soap operas or sports commentaries also lend themselves to this kind of noticing activity. The advantages of using such authentic material are obvious – the language is used in a natural way and in context. However, we should be careful to choose which collocations we focus on in terms of frequency, level and suitability for our particular group of learners. Phonology (Chunking and Linking) 1. they pronounce every word with equal stress Without a knowledge of collocation, learners are unable to chunk, link and stress longer sentences correctly, making them sound unnatural. Even with advanced classes, choral drilling is the best way to give students extra time to work on this aspect of collocation. A demonstration on the board of where the linking and stress occurs (plus any schwas) can help students who learn more visually. Activities to help students with collocation Once the collocations have been pointed out, several activities can be produced to help the students become familiar with them. Recycling activities: · Matching activities in which the collocations are divided and written on separate cards: · Board races where the teacher calls out one half of the collocation and the students work in teams to write the other half on the board. This activity can be extended by asking students to suggest other possible collocates. · Cloze activities such as a gapped transcription of a listening text, or sentences in which half the collocation has been deleted. Communicative activities: I have used surveys, reports and stories with different levels of learners to practise previously-learnt collocations in context more communicatively. With collocations organised by topic, learners can conduct a survey among their classmates and follow it up with a written or oral report. In the topic of household chores, for examples, learners survey the following: In your house, who:
With collocations organised by key-word , learners can be given a set of cards with the collocations written on them which they have to put into some kind of chronological order. They can then use the cards to write a story :
The Bank of English make + NOUN I have found this very useful, especially when dealing with de-lexicalised verbs, with higher level and FCE classes, by taking the class into the computer room, having them look through their written work for mis-collocations, searching the database and then using the results to record the correct collocation (with other additions if appropriate) into their vocabulary notebooks. This is both an autonomous and personalised way of correcting written work.
Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1938
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