Collocation In English Vocabulary: Concept, EFL Learner’s Problems And Solutions For Teachers

Definition of Collocation

Discuss about the Teaching Verb + Noun Collocations to Efl Learners.

When it comes to English vocabulary, collocation is a significant element in it. Collocation is a group of two or more words that forms naturally to make sense. Collocations are arbitrary; they do not maintain any pattern or follow every grammatical law. This essay will discuss the concept of collocation, the problems the EFL learners have to struggle with regarding collocation to learn the language, and solutions that a teacher must adopt to resolve those problems.

Lewis defined collocation in his Teaching Collocation, 2000 (Conzett, 2000:132), as, sets of words that in a particular order repeatedly occur together to form a meaning. Replacing a word from any set with its synonym could make unacceptable phrases or phrases that have different meaning, for example, if make coffee is changed to do coffee then the latter is unacceptable in the English vocabulary. Although Lewis’s view on collocation is widely discussed, it was J R Firth, who coined the term. According to Firth, 1957, collocation of words does not refer to the contextual meaning of the words, instead, he says the meaning by collocation is an abstraction at the syntagmatic level and is not directly concerned with the conceptual o idea approach to the meaning of words (Barrtsch & Evert, 2014:48). Like the often co-occurring words dark night. Although Lewis and Firth discusses different aspects of collocation, the true meaning of the term lies in the combination of both definitions.

Collocations are groups of words that naturally occurs together to build a meaningful sentence. On this context, collocation shows two different natures. The fixed nature of collocation refers to the collocation that has a particular combination of words. Like the combination utter disaster, this combination has the most tendency of occurring than any other combination as only a few words can possibly replace the word disaster. Fixed collocations occur when it becomes difficult to change a word in the combination with an alternative. In a few cases of collocation, there can be only one possible combination of words. Shrug shoulders is such a collocation as the verb shrug only pairs with the noun shoulders. On the other hand, the flexible nature of collocation involves words that can team up with other words. Like, in the phrase play football a number of other sporting activities can be used instead of football, such as, play hockey, play basketball. In flexible collocation, words are freer to allow a range of words to occur with a single word. These types of collocations can also be referred as the weak collocations.

Fixed and Flexible Nature of Collocation

The verb + noun category refers to the combinations of verbs and nouns that naturally occur together. The phrase compose music is a perfect example to demonstrate how verb and noun combine to create collocation. The verb + noun collocations can be further categorised into two types – delexical verb + noun collocations, and lexical verb + noun collocations. Delexical verbs are those that are vocabulary less content, which is why they can also be termed as light verbs. This means, delexical verbs have the ability to pair up flexibly with various nouns to form different meanings. There are only a few numbers of delexical verbs, such as make, put, give, take, go, get and have. The verb get can combine with nouns such as home, haircut, job and form different phrases like get home, get a haircut and get a job, which have different meanings. Although few in numbers, delexical verbs tends to occur most frequently and they are the most common verbs in vocabulary. In the of delexical verb + noun formations the meaning of the phrases change through the changes of the nouns as the verbs are general but the nouns have specific meaning. With a few exceptions, for example give birth, it is possible to replace these delexical structures with analogous single word verb like give advice can be replaced with advise.

The EFL learners frequently make mistakes in English collocations as their native language delexical verbs are not the same as English ones. This happens because different languages use different verbs with the same object to create the same meaning, and in the effort of trying to find the correct collocation, the learners end up translating the phrase from their native languages. As an example, the Italians say make a coffee when the correct phrase in English is have a coffee.

The first step I will take is to help the learners focusing on chunk words. They will be provided with audio clips that have samples of regular conversations in English (Mohammadi & Enayati, 2018:181), and then they will be asked to fill up sentences by taking phrases from what they have heard. In this way the learners focus will shift from the grammar to the practical use of the language. As, this problem occurs mainly because teachers usually follow a systematic process to teach a foreign language, this hearing and learning exercise will make the learners have a better understanding of the use of verbs.

Verb + Noun Collocation

Another habitual mistake that learners do while learning a foreign language is to use synonyms in a fixed collocation (Gulec & Gulec, 2015:440). Like the EFL learners, mistakenly use eat breakfast when it should be have breakfast. The lack of knowledge to comprehend the proper application of verbs is why these mistakes happen. The way words combine in collocation is unpredictable; it does not follow any rules.

In order to make a successful way to solve this problem, I will provide the learners lists of most common collocations that are used daily, and then ask them to write paragraphs and have conversations with other learners using the examples from the lists. Although it is impossible to memorise all the collocations, the most common ones that are used in everyday life can be learned by remembering and practising. One learns a language to utilize it in an accurate way, and a stronger vocabulary means more accuracy in the usage (McCarthy, 1990:125). Thus, learning by application can become a useful way to master the use of collocation.

Syntax is the systematic array of words that helps in constructing sentences that are well structured. This syntax varies between languages. In Spanish, the noun comes before the adjective as opposing to the English syntax where the adjective comes before the noun. The EFL learners make the mistake of not changing their native language syntaxes while translating it to English.

In some situations, the learners construct sentences with correct words that also convey proper meanings, but those sentences lack collocations. As the students, in order to make a correct sentence, focus on selecting words one by one, they mistake to understand that the words are making collocation or not. In order to solve this problem, I must introduce collocations while teaching sentence-making skills and encourage them to use more collocations in their writings. Simple and short passages and poems will be provided as reading materials. Learning collocations from the beginning will help the students to write with collocations naturally. The reading materials will help them recognize the uses of known collocations and identify new collocations (Boonyasaquan, 2009:102). This method of learning is practical as it makes the students habituated with the collocations.

There are learners who tend to make elaborate sentences to express their thoughts instead of using the collocations because they are not aware of them. Sentences such as people have the ability to say what they need can easily be shortened as people have the freedom of speech by using collocation. I will encourage the students to look up words in collocation dictionaries like the Oxford Collocations dictionary for Students of English and learn new collocations along with their meanings. The next step will be to give the students elaborate phrases and ask them to write the collocations for those. The dictionary will enrich their vocabulary and the classroom practice will make them aware of the collocations for those elaborative phrases (Lackman, 2011:21). This learning process can prove to be a convenient way of learning collocations.

EFL Learners Problems with Collocation

A very familiar mistake done by students who are learning English as a foreign language is to combine two words that are close in meaning, and by doing this the meaning of the phrase gets doubled up. As examples, students tend to write phrases like urban cities and quiet silent place where words have almost similar meanings.

In order to solve this problem, at first I will teach them the various constructions of collocations. Then, I will advise them to direct their focus on the chunk words rather than on each word separately (Mohammadi & Enayati, 2018:182). In this way, they will learn the proper way to make collocations and increase their stock of collocations. This method has the potential not only to increase the learners’ vocabulary but also to clarify the structure of collocations to them.

Conclusion

Accuracy and fluency in a language depends on mastering collocations. It is easier for the native English speaking people to use collocations as those come to them naturally. Whereas the people who are learning collocations as a foreign language, it is quite difficult to apprehend the concept of collocations and be comfortable writing them. The EFL learners make a few common mistakes while trying to learn and apply collocations. It is the responsibilities of the teachers to make the students aware of proper use of collocations. To conclude, it can be said that by the encouragements and directions of the teachers will make the learners master the art of collocations.

Reference List

Bartsch, S., & Evert, S. (2014). Towards a Firthian notion of collocation. Network Strategies, Access Structures and Automatic Extraction of Lexicographical Information. 2nd Work Report of the Academic Network Internet Lexicography, OPAL–Online publizierte Arbeiten zur Linguistik. Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, to appear.

Boonyasaquan, S. (2009). The lexical approach: An emphasis on collocations. ?????? ??????????? ????????? (MANUTSAT PARITAT: Journal of Humanities), 28(1).

Conzett, J. (2000). Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach. M. Lewis (Ed.). Thomson Heinle.

Gulec, N., & Gulec, B. A. (2015). Lexical Collocations (Verb+ Noun) Across Written Academic Genres in English. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 182, 433-440.

Lackman, K. (2011). Lexical Approach Activities. Ken Lackman & Associates Educational Consultants. Retrieved September, 2, 2013.

Lewis, M. (1993). The lexical approach (Vol. 1, p. 993). Hove: Language teaching publications.

McCarthy, M. (1990). Vocabulary. Oxford University Press. learning

Mohammadi, M., & Enayati, B. (2018). The Effects of Lexical Chunks Teaching on EFL Intermediate Learners’ Speaking Fluency. International Journal of Instruction, 11(3).