Editorial
The article first appeared in a special issue of the ETAI Forum 2013, celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Lexical Approach.

Raising Awareness of Collocation in ELT

Simon Mumford,Turkey

Simon Mumford is an EAP instructor and Writing Centre advisor at İzmir University of Economics, Turkey. His interests include creative classroom activity design and he is a regular contributor to Humanising Language Teaching and Modern English Teacher. E-mail: simon.mumford @ieu.edu.tr

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Collocation box
Page-break collocations
New abbreviations
Collocations in authentic texts
Mind-reading dictation
Chunks in different languages
Guessing nouns from their adjective collocations
A metaphor for collocation
Conclusion
References

The way that words work together is an essential feature of language, and therefore it is important that language learners start to think in chunks rather than single words as early as possible in the learning process. The following activities are designed to make learners think about collocation or ‘chunks’, and the way particular words combine to create meaning.

Collocation box

Each pair of adjacent words forms a collocation. Different types of collocation are represented: noun + noun (eg pencil and paper), adjective + noun (eg hard fall), noun + noun (winter coat), verb + adverbial particle (to pencil in= to make an arrangement that may be changed later). Pairs of nouns (eg hat and coat) are the easiest to understand. Adjectives or nouns modifying a noun are more difficult, because they often have a specific meaning, eg a hard hat is a type of protective headwear, a paper hat is a hat make of folded paper, usually by children, snow fall describes the amount of snow on the ground. The verb + preposition combinations are the most difficult, as they have often idiomatic meanings, eg fall in (with someone or something) = agree to the course of action decided by another person or plan. After these explanations, give the students another box, with exercise, as below.

Identify the following (answers in brackets)

• a small lunch (light meal)
• to press a button on a machine (switch off)
• change the position of two things (switch around)
• eg a picnic (cold meal)
• a device to turn a lamp on (light switch)
• cancelled because of the weather (rained off)
• to change your plans due to a problem (work around something)
• praise for achievement (great work!)
• easy tasks, eg dusting (light work)
• praise for cooking (great meal!)
• bad weather (rainy and cold)
• bad weather that is not a serious problem (light rain)

Page-break collocations

It is possible to predict the next word when you turn the page of a book because a unit of meaning, i.e. collocation, can coincide with the end of one page and the beginning of the next. Guessing the first word of the next page can be a good activity for more advanced learners. The following examples are all from the ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ by John Steinbeck. The backslash (/) represents the page break.

• ‘And maybe twenty thousand / people’
• ‘Make out like he’s / dead’
• ‘You can’t stay / here.’
• Ma opened the oven and / took out
• The children walked away and left the scraped kettle on the / ground.
• Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, / New Mexico
• A walnut tree whose branches spread halfway across the / road
• The string band took a reel tune and played / loudly
• Pa looked at the western ills. Big grey / clouds

For lower level learners, use a graded reader at the appropriate level, or make your own page-break sentences on slips of paper with the last word on the back of the slip, for example:

• Please can you shut the / door.
• Could you tell me the / time?
• I want to be rich and / famous.
• Could I have a cup of / coffee?
• I come from a big / family
• Can you give me your email / address
• Please do not walk on the / grass
• I have been working all day, I am tired and / hungry.

Pass the strips around the class and let students guess before turning over. Then reverse the process, i.e. see if they can remember the sentence by looking at the last word. Then ask them to identify the collocations, eg come from and big both collocate with family.

New abbreviations

Personal adverts are creating new abbreviations for chunks, ie two or more words which combine to create a phrase. These are common in lonely hearts ads, eg

• ND - Non Drinker
• OHAC - Own house and car
• TLC - Tender loving care
• NS - Non smoker
• YO - Years old
• OFAC - Own flat and car
• WLTM - Would like to meet
• GSOH - Good sense of humour

Here are some abbreviations of my own invention. Students match the new abbreviations in the box with their meaning (answer:1 g, 2 b, 3 c, 4 i, 5 a, 6 e, 7 d, 8 f, 9 h). Then, they use them to fill in the blanks in the Lonely Hearts ad below (answers given in bold).

HEO ____ loneliness! I___ HBW_____ for the right person ____FALT _____. 30 YO Male, NS. __HGAN___ car. ___DNL____ loud music, dogs or sport, loves food, _REX____cook, WLTM Female with similar interests for days out ___ATW___. London area prefered but distance ____NAP___. If this is you, WayWaf?

Collocations in authentic texts

At more advance levels, different types of collocations can be highlighted in a reading text. In the three versions of the same text below, collocations are coded with different fonts as follows: verb + noun / noun + verb; adjective / noun + noun; preposition + noun.

George Osborne gives cautious welcome to rise out of recession

George Osborne was given (much needed but probably temporary) respite as the UK economy raced out of recession, growing 1 % in the three months to September, the fastest rate for (five) years. But the majority of the growth was due to one-off factors, leaving the chancellor to face business and political calls to do more to stimulate growth in the autumn statement in six weeks' time, or risk the economy slipping into recession for a third time in 2013.

George Osborne gives cautious welcome to rise out of recession

George Osborne was given much needed but probably temporary respite as the UK economy raced out of recession, growing 1 % in the three months to September, the fastest rate for five years. But the majority of the growth was due to one-off factors, leaving the chancellor to face business and political calls to do more to stimulate growth in the autumn statement in six weeks' time, or risk the economy slipping into recession for a third time in 2013.

George Osborne gives cautious welcome to rise out of recession

George Osborne was given much needed but probably temporary respite as the UK economy raced out of recession, growing 1 % in the (three) months to September, the fastest rate for (five) years. But the majority of the growth was due to one-off factors, leaving the chancellor to face business and political calls to do more to stimulate growth in the (autumn) statement in (six) weeks' time, or risk the economy slipping into recession for a (third) time in 2013.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/oct/25/george-osborne-recession

As can be seen, the text consists of chains of chunks which overlap to create a highly integrated and formulaic text. When you add other chunks, such as names (George Osborne) and adverb + adjective chunks (much needed), there very few words that are not deeply integrated.

This highlighting method can be used for a number of activities. For example,

• students look at the highlighted text then try to underline one type of collocation on an unmarked version of the same text from memory
• in pairs, one student reads 3 or 4 consecutive words aloud and, without looking at the text the other says whether it is a chunk or not. For example, a third time is a chunk, but needed but probably is not
• in pairs, one reads a collocation, the other says what type it is
• students highlight text in other paragraphs in the same way

Mind-reading dictation

Give a dictation (see text below), but tell students that some of the words will not be read aloud, instead they will have to ‘read’ your mind. Read the text slowly, but when you come to the words brackets, instead of reading, close your eyes and pretend to concentrate hard, and ask students to visualise the word.

I was born (in) England. When I was 10 years (old) my family moved to Italy. We lived there for 9 (years). Then we moved back to (England). I can still speak fluent (Italian), and I often visit Italy during the (holidays). Sometimes I miss Italian (food), especially real Italian spaghetti. Last year, I spent two (weeks) in Rome, and I met some of my old school (friends). I was really sad when I had to (leave). I am looking forward to my next (visit) in August. I think that I will return to live in Italy again one (day).

When you have finished, ask students to compare answers and then pretend to be amazed at their telepathic powers. Finally, discuss the reasons why they were able to find the unspoken words, i.e. because they form strong collocations with the surrounding words. This light-hearted activity makes a serious point: often we can finish other people’s sentences for them, or understand them even if they do not finish the sentence because our understanding of collocation allow us to predict words.

Chunks in different languages

Collocation means different things in different languages. For example, according to Google Translate, How are you? is expressed in five words in Afrikaans, four in Filipino, three in Irish and Latvian, and only two in many languages, including Greek, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Basque and Swahili. However, in Turkish, which is an agglutinative language, it is only one word. This means that the connection between ‘units of meaning’ in English may be less explicit than in languages like Turkish, and learners from these backgrounds may need help in recognising that separate words are part of the same unit of meaning. One possibility is to write English text in a way that reflects the word structure of the L1, as in the following story for Turkish learners.

One day, Iwaswalking along theroad, when Isaw acat. itwasbeautiful. Itwas aPersian cat and ithad wonderful soft fur. Isaid ‘hello, mydearlittlecat’. ‘Hello’, itreplied. Iwas shocked! Istood ontheroad side for afew seconds. ‘What didyousay?’ Iasked. ‘Areyoudeaf?’ itsaid. ‘Not deaf, but abit mad’, Ithink’. After that, Iwent tomyfriend’s house, and Itold him mystory, but hedidnotbelieve me!

This may help elementary learners understand how English words relate to each other.

Guessing nouns from their adjective collocations

In a collocation dictionary (eg Macmillan Collocation Dictionary), find a noun that your students will be familiar with. Read out a list of collocations, from the most difficult to the easier ones, until one student is able to guess the noun they collocate with. For example:

Hair: windswept, matted, unkempt, messy, cropped, shiny, ginger, shoulder-length, straight, curly, dark, blonde

Ask the class how many collocations they think they need to hear before they can guess the next word. If your class are competitive, ask individual students to bid for the lowest number. Alternatively, divide the class into two teams. The team who bids lowest gets the chance to guess, but they cannot find the word after the number of collocations bid, the other team get the chance. Here are some more nouns with collocations in order of difficulty.

• Conversation: meaningful, informal, lively, casual, face-to-face, telephone, private, brief, long
• List: chronological, impressive, endless, detailed, huge, full, alphabetical, short, long
• Manager: commercial, production, retail, effective, successful, experienced, middle, assistant, top, good, sales,bank
• Friend: lifelong, faithful, canine, long-lost , childhood, school, college, dear, close, new, best

A metaphor for collocation

The mathematical device known as pair of compasses (sometimes called dividers) can be a metaphor for collocation. The two parts are connected at the top, but the two arms are separate. The distance between the two arms can vary, and this decides the size of a circle drawn. Similarly, the words in a collocation are connected by meaning, but may be different distances apart. The words can be adjacent, eg He spends a lot of time sending emails, or distant, eg Emails complaining in strong terms about the poor service were sent to the manager. Students can be asked to search texts for collocations that are separated by other words, and compete to find the collocations that are furthest apart.

Conclusion

Collocation is an important concept at all levels of language learning, whether in simple texts about personal topics or academic reading texts, and in all four skills. It also has implications for grammar because of the way certain words and structures combine, for example, the verb wait often coincides with Present Perfect Continuous to emphasize duration. It is also interesting to compare languages; phrases with prepositions, eg at the weekend are strong collocations, and these concepts are expressed as a single word in some languages. Students will also need to be aware that collocations are groups of words unified by meaning, but that these are not necessarily consecutive words in texts.

An awareness of collocation can also help teachers produce new and motivating activities, based on the language as it is actually used, and thus help to bring about a fuller understanding of English, and languages in general.

References

Language in Use: Lonely hearts. Retrieved 5-11-2012 from
www.putlearningfirst.com/language/15doms/hearts.html

Macmillan Collocation Dictionary. (2010). Macmillan: Oxford, UK.

Steinbeck, J. (1981). The Grapes of Wrath. Penguin: Harmandsworth, UK.

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