When learning a language, let it be English or any other, most people think about grammar

and long lists of words. It is true of course that knowing and acquiring grammar rules is a

must if one wants to use a language accurately, and that a good vocabulary is one of the main

requirements to language proficiency. Researchers like Chomsky (1995) argue that language

learning is generally learning the lexicon of the target language. Also, opposed to the

grammar-based approaches of the past, and which are still prevalent in many Hungarian

schools, the Lexical Approach was born. Lewis (1993) created the foundations of this new

view on language learning, although as Károly (2005:59) writes: “it develops the basic

principles in the communicative approaches to language learning.” According to Lewis, the

choice of words often determines what kind of grammar we need to use in our sentences, and

because of this the emphasis in language teaching should be shifted from grammar onto

teaching vocabulary and teaching how to use the vocabulary items we have learned. Also, as

words do not appear in isolation, teachers should concentrate on the importance of

collocations, not only on single words when teaching vocabulary.

But what are collocations? Generally speaking they are words that appear together, often next

to each other or at least very near each other. It is important to point out that they are not used

together only by random chance. As McCarthy (2009:22) points out “collocation is about

what the most likely combinations of words are; it is about possibilities.” From the

perspective of this paper, we mostly concentrate on collocations (word combinations), which

do not happen just by chance and also on those which may present difficulties to language

learners.

We know that (McCarthy 2009) there is much information to learn about words, and this is

also true for collocations. Students have to know a words spelling, its pronunciation, word

class, meaning, derivations, synonyms and know when and where, in which register to use the

given words. One of the main reason, why students have troubles with collocations is that in

the Hungarian TEFL practice teachers often use word lists which contain only a limited

amount of information about lexical items. Information about collocations and register is

virtually non-existent in most Hungarian EFL classrooms.

Most students naturally pick up a set of collocations from different sources (movies, music,

books, etc.), but without proper instruction it is no surprise that they have difficulties using

them. Some of the main mistakes students make when using collocations: overuse of a given

collocation, underuse, and also students resort to translating collocations from their native

language on a word-by-word basis. Also, it can be problematic in terms of fluency, when

students try to express their thoughts while lacking a desired collocation which would help

them be more accurate.

In order to help students acquire collocational knowledge successfully, there are a few points

in research to consider. Raising learner awareness is highlighted among these. According to

McCarthy (2009) we can do this directly and indirectly. The direct way is teaching explicitly

what collocations are, giving examples, etc. The indirect way is basically using tasks to teach

collocations and let the students figure out what was behind the tasks really, or the teacher can

explain afterwards. There is no better or worse way of doing this; these two approaches

should be used according to learner needs. This idea is prevalent in research. Many sources

say that students should become able to notice and identify collocations, and they should be

taught how to record collocational information in their vocabulary notebooks (McCarthy

2009). We have already determined that the way in which vocabulary notebooks are used in

most Hungarian EFL classes, that is by recording words and their L1 translation is not

effective enough. Lewis says “If you want to forget something, put it in a list” (1993:118).

McCarthy suggests that learning vocabulary may be more effective if we organized

vocabulary items in semantic groups, because this is how words are stored in our minds

anyway. Aside from all these, another methodological question arises when we think about

teaching collocations: what techniques and tasks to use? The importance of using effective

tasks is imperative in teaching. Fanaee (2014) writes about teaching collocations through task-

based instruction in an Iranian language school. Her quantitative research shows the

effectiveness of the instruction. In our paper we are also going to concentrate on tasks, which

we believe can be of great use when teaching collocations.

Tasks:

1) Find the Intruder (Vasiljevic 2008): This is a very simple, multiple-choice type task. The

teacher prepares a list of target words and mixes up the associate words with distracters. In

this task, students have to choose the correct answer, so the task emphasizes the recognition of

certain collocations.

Example: EFFORT make do increase resist

This type of task can be easily adjusted to learner levels, and it can concentrate on common

collocations and less frequent ones. The task can be easily incorporated in more complex

ones, like writing or reading tasks. According to Vasiljevic (2008), this task can be used as a

pre- or post-reading activity, to revise collocations which appear in the reading material. Also,

there is no native language translation provided, although in some cases it might be necessary

to ask the students to copy the collocations into their vocabulary notebooks. Because it directs

further attention to collocations, it can make reading tasks easier if it is used as a pre-reading

task, and if it is used a post-reading one it can help the students remember the collocations

better. The more the students encounter a given lexical item, the better he can retain

information about it.

For writing tasks, the teacher may collect sentence frames (e.g. On the other hand…, The

problem is…), institutionalized utterances (If I were you…) and text frames (Firstly, Secondly,

etc) to give the students lexical chunks they can use to make their compositions more natural

and accurate.

2) Post-it Warmers (Warre 2014): I found this on the British Council's webpage, where

there is a 10 item long collection of activities used for teaching collocations. The general idea

is to break collocations into two parts, and give them to the students. Then, they have to get

up, mingle and find their matching partners to form collocations.

In Warre's version, he uses post-its and sticks them to the students' back. The students must

not look at their own words initially. They have to ask others politely to tell them what is on

their backs. Polite requests and questions should be pre-taught before the activity if necessary.

This way it is a great combined activity, which lets students interact with each other, revise

collocations and use useful chunks of language. Because of its absurdity, it is also highly

enjoyable. It makes the learning situation more memorable, because it provides a context to it.

After the students have found their pairs, they sit down and create sentences.

I think this activity is very useful to revise already known collocations. I would use it at the

beginning of a lesson to bring back the collocations which were learned beforehand. I would

prefer to use it after the lesson when the collocations were introduced. It is good practice to

bring back new items of vocabulary in various contexts on the long run, because repeated

exposure makes them easier to acquire.

I have successfully used a variation of this activity recently when teaching a beginner level

Russian class. I used index cards instead of post-its and students had to ask each other, using

pre-taught questions. They practiced already known vocabulary, which they have already

acquired passively and they were able to identify the verb-noun collocations. The most useful

part of the activity was that when they used the collocations in questions and sentences,

because they practiced the accusative forms of the nouns and the different forms the verb can

take. Also, I made the part when they had to write sentences more complex. They not only

had to use the collocation they were given, but they had to come up with more of them by

changing the nouns with which the verbs collocate with. For example:

“listen to music” => “listen to rock music”, “listen to pop music”, “listen to the radio”

3) Dictionary entry: This activity is of my own design. I used it during my teaching practice

as a pre-reading activity to teach unknown and difficult vocabulary before reading the text

itself. I wrote each piece of vocabulary on index cards and I provided example sentences

along with synonyms or English language explanations. I used real dictionary and thesaurus

entries, but in many cases I had to adapt the language to the learners' level (elementary).

I gave the index cards to pairs of students and I told them how to pronounce the words the

were given. At first they had a few minutes to find out the meaning of the collocations based

on the examples and the synonyms. I monitored their work and checked when they were

ready with the Hungarian language translation. I made sure that at this point the pairs did not

know each others' answers. After a pair had found out what their collocation means, they had

to come up with their own example sentences and English language explanations, based on

what I wrote. Their task was to explain the collocation to the other pairs in English, so that

they could also find out the meaning.

Although I had my doubts about the activity before teaching the lesson, the students enjoyed

it and it proved to be useful and with sufficient scaffolding appropriate to their level. Aside

from encountering the given collocations in numerous contexts, they were also shown what a

monolingual dictionary or thesaurus entry would look like. They also practiced giving English

language explanations and their listening skill, when they were listening to each other. The

activity proved to be a successful pre-reading task, and as I observed during the following

lessons, the students were able to retain knowledge of the collocations they were taught.

List of literature:

1) Chomsky, Noam (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA:MIT Press.

2) Fanaee, Fahimeh (2014). Teaching Collocations through Task-Based Instruction: The Case

of Iranian EFL Students. International Journal of Linguistics. Vol 6, No 1.

3) Károly, Adrienn. (2005). The Importance of Raising Collocational Awareness in the

Vocabulary Development of Intermediate Level Learners of English. Eger Journal of English

Studies V 58-69.

4) Lewis, Michael (1993). The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and the Way Forward.

Hove: Language Teaching Publications.

5) McCarthy, Michael (2009). Vocabulary Matrix: Understanding, Learning, Teaching.

Cengage Learning.

6) Vasiljevic, Zorana. (2008). Developing Collocational Competence of Second Language

Learners. The East Asian Learner, Vol 4., No 1.

7) Warre, Tim R. (2014). Fun ways to teach English collocations. Bitish Council,

http://www.britishcouncil.org/blog/fun-ways-teach-english-collocations (23.04.2015.)