Collocations: Make – Do

Ayşegül Özdemir, Turkey

Ayşegül Özdemir is an instructor at Bahcesehir University, Istanbul. She holds a DELTA, and she is doing a master’s degree in Educational Administration.
E-mail: aozsarac@bahcesehir.edu.tr

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Introduction
Activities
Conclusions
References

Introduction

“Without grammar little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. It is true that collocations make up much of vocabulary; therefore learning collocations will provide my students with variety, which is an essential component of the criteria used in my institution to assess their range of lexis. It will also contribute to their productive skills; speaking and writing. They will not only learn the alternative ways of saying something which may be more colourful, expressive or precise; but also improve their style in writing. In addition to these, they can improve their receptive skills too. They can listen to any speech understanding it better, and they can read faster since they will be able to recognize multi-word units better and communicate more effectively.

Bearing in mind the fact that achieving proficiency in a second language is strongly connected to learning word combinations rather than just learning words in isolation, I will focus on collocations in this specific lesson. Although my students have relatively good learning habits like keeping a vocabulary journal, they still get confused with several word combinations because learning collocations is frequently open to errors. This definitely reduces their fluency both in writing and speaking. As Hill (1999) explained, the reason why even the students who have got good vocabularies have problems with fluency is due to the fact that they lack collocational competence. Therefore, they need to learn word combinations. As these combinations can later be retrieved from memory, this will reduce processing difficulties for learners and it will increase their fluency.

In this lesson, I chose to focus on de-lexicalized verbs ‘make’ and ‘do’, two verbs that many learners have problems with. My students, too, confuse these words since they have quite similar meanings but different collocates. For example, they say ‘do a mistake’ instead of ‘make a mistake’; or ‘make research’ instead of ‘do research’. Besides, Turkish translation for both is the same; which is ‘yapmak’. For this reason, my aim is to help my students understand the idea of collocations and improve their language.

Activities

This is a pre-intermediate group of 20 monolingual Turkish students who are aged between 17 and 22. They are studying English at the English Preparatory Program of Bahcesehir University, where the medium of education is English.

By the end of the lesson, the students will have had the opportunity to practise and to be more aware of collocations – de-lexicalized verbs ‘make’ and ‘do’ – and also they will have practised gist listening.

1. Lead-in (to introduce the theme of the lesson)
   • T draws ss’ attention to “Teachers’ Day”. She writes ‘24th Nov’ on the board and asks ‘What do we celebrate on that day? T tells ss that they are going to listen to a letter and she asks them what they think it is about.
2. Gist listening (to find the author, audience and the purpose)
   • T tells ss to work in pairs and listen to the text (see appendix 1a) to find:
   • Who is the letter from? (from the teacher)
   • Who is it written for? (for the class)
   • What is the purpose? (to thank and appreciate their work and effort)
   • T gets feedback from a couple of pairs
3. Awareness raising (to raise ss’ awareness of learning collocation strategies)
   • T asks ss what collocation is. She elicits some examples. She asks ‘Are there rules to learn collocations?’, ‘What is the best way to learn collocations?, ss answer. T gives the listening text script (see appendix 1 b) to the ss and tells them to circle the collocations with ‘make’ and ‘do’.
   • T writes MAKE and DO on the board
   • Ss circle the collocations in the text.
   • T tells them to write their answers under the correct heading on the board.
   • T tells the class to check the board.
   • T asks if they know the meaning of the collocations on the board;
   • ss predict the meanings by using the context of the text.
4. Practice (to give the Ss the opportunity to use the target collocations)
   • T gives them a handout (see appendix 2) where they have to fill in the blanks with a collocation either with ‘make ‘or ‘do’ and match the phrases to make a meaningful sentence.
   • T tells them to compare their answers with their pairs when they finish.
5. Production (to give the ss further opportunity to practice the target collocations writing a reply to their teacher in small groups)
   • T tells ss to get into small groups.
   • T tells ss to write a short reply to their teacher using at least three or four new collocations they have learnt.
   • A s from at least one group reads their reply aloud. Other ss listen and note which collocations they have used. They use the chart T has given (see appendix 3).

Conclusions

Generally, students do not learn what the teachers teach. In contrast, they learn what they are ready to learn. In order to overcome this teaching-learning dichotomy, we – as teachers – should design instruction to focus on what our students need to learn. According to Lewis, “noticing is the means by which teachers introduce and encourage learners to make use of the various word combinations in English.” In this way learners can understand the importance of the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to other collocations they encounter in their language studies.

References

Lewis, M. (1993). The Lexical Approach. LTP.

Lewis, M. (2000). Teaching Collocations. LTP.

McCarthy, M. & O’Dell, F. (2005). English Collocations in Use. CUP.

Thornbury, S. (2002). How to Teach Vocabulary. Heinle & Heinle.

Thornbury, S. (2005). How to Teach Speaking. Longman

Hill, J. (2000). Revising Priorities: from grammatical failure to collocational success.

M. Lewis (Ed.) Teaching Collocations (pp.47-69). LTP.

Gairns, R. & Redman, S. (1986) Working with Words. CUP.

Appendix 1

a. Listening script

Dear class,

You know, it was ‘Teachers’ Day’ on Monday. When you celebrated my ‘Teachers’ Day’ I thought how lucky I am as a teacher because I have such great students. It is obvious that you are making progress with your English, and I feel really happy. Do you remember that we talked about the factors that lead to success? It was self-discipline and self-motivation. I’m happy to see that you are all responsible students because you do your homework on time, you do the exercises in your workbook and submit your assignments before the deadlines. You also make aneffort to improve your paragraphs after you get the feedback for your first drafts. As another good habit, you keep vocabulary journals and make a contribution to your improvement. When you make a mistake, you don’t give up; instead, you try harder. So you do the right thing. I love your energy. I love the positive attitude you have towards learning. One can easily feel the sense of togetherness you have; you always help each other. Remember your positive comments about Emre A. in the second speaking task. You can be very inspiring to each other at times. I will always remember this class, every one of you… And I think you will also remember each other, too. For example, we will always remember that Emre cannot do without Russian girls. Çağla is very good at cooking. (By the way, she promised to make a cake for us). Seray needs her mother to tidy her room; but I’m sure she is getting better each day. Kadir is the earliest to get engaged. Damla is the most unlucky while dancing. I’m sure Sedef will remain as ‘the teacher’s pet’ in your memories. We’ll say “There was a Ray Charles in our class” when we remember Doğukan; and we’ll never forget those big sun glasses. All in all, it was a pleasure to have such students. Thank you for being good students. And I know that you will be very successful in the future.

Lots of Love,
Ayşegül

b. Student handout

Dear class,

You know, it was ‘Teachers’ Day’ on Monday. When you celebrated my ‘Teachers’ Day’ I thought how lucky I am as a teacher because I have such great students. It is obvious that you are making progress with your English, and I feel really happy. Do you remember that we talked about factors that lead to success? It was self-discipline and self-motivation. I’m happy to see that you are all responsible students because you do your homework on time, you do the exercises in your workbook and submit your assignments before the deadlines. You also make an effort to improve your paragraphs after you get the feedback for your first drafts. As another good habit, you keep vocabulary journals and make a contribution to your improvement. When you make a mistake, you don’t give up; instead, you try harder. So you do the right thing. I love your energy. I love the positive attitude you have towards learning. One can easily feel the sense of togetherness you have; you always help each other. Remember your positive comments about Emre A. in the second speaking task. You can be very inspiring to each other at times. I will always remember this class, every one of you… And I think you will also remember each other, too. For example, we will always remember that Emre cannot do without Russian girls. Çağla is very good at cooking. (By the way, she promised to make a cake for us). Seray needs her mother to tidy her room; but I’m sure she is getting better each day. Kadir is the earliest to get engaged. Damla is the most unlucky while dancing. I’m sure Sedef will remain as ‘the teacher’s pet’ in your memories. We’ll say “There was a Ray Charles in our class” when we remember Doğukan; and we’ll never forget those big sun glasses. All in all, it was a pleasure to have such students. Thank you for being good students. And I know that you will be very successful in the future.

Lots of Love,
Ayşegül

Appendix 2

A. Complete the sentences with a collocation using make or do. Use each word/phrase once only. (Be careful with the tense!)

1. I know you don’t like her, but please _______________ to be polite.
2. She promised to _______________ to get higher grades.
3. Here’s your coffee but I don’t have any sugar so you’ll have to ______________.
4. All her teachers are pleased with my little niece because she is ______________ with all her schoolwork.
5. She ________________ to the discussion with her interesting ideas.
6. All the food in the menu looks delicious; I can’t _______________.

B. Match the sentences in column A with a meaningful ending in column B.

Appendix 3

Collocations recording chart

Collocations used by each group

Answer key

A. Complete the sentences with a collocation using make or do. Use each word/phrase once only. (Be careful with the tense!)

1. I know you don’t like her, but please make an effort to be polite.
2. She promised to do her best to get higher grades.
3. Here’s your coffee but I don’t have any sugar so you’ll have to do without
4. All her teachers are pleased with my little niece because she is making progress with all her schoolwork.
5. She made a contribution to the discussion with her interesting ideas.
6. All the food in the menu looks delicious; I can’t make a choice.

B. Match the sentences in column A with a meaningful ending in column B.

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