collocations worth memorizing - suggestions?

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James Trotta
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collocations worth memorizing - suggestions?

Post by James Trotta » Wed Apr 09, 2003 5:56 am

Recently I've been reading about semantics for my MA. One of the items discussed was collocations like "last but not least". It occurred to me that these are probably the types of phrases most worth memorizing (I like Skehans model of SLA where there are two parts of oyur brain, the fast part with memorized phrases and the slow part where grammar rules and vocabulary are combined to creat new utterances).

It seems like my Korean students love memorizing sentences, but how often will they be able to say "Did you see the black cat run underneath the table?" ?.

Seems to me that they're better off practicing using grammar rules and vocab to make those kinds of sentences. Howevere, many of them are really comfortable memorizing things and I am thinking I can take advantage of that by having them memorize phrases that really do go together all (or at least most of the time).

A few that I just htought of were: Do you mean..., I think that..., I disagree with you because..., I couldn't catch that.

These are phrases worth memorizing because they can use them as is over and over again. I'm looking for more phrases like this. Any suggestions?

jly_eslcafe
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Post by jly_eslcafe » Wed Apr 09, 2003 8:36 am

James,

I agree with you totally - about memorizing or getting use to commonly used phrases. While I am not a teacher by trade, I do spend alot of time teaching my fellow friends spoken English. And lately I have been teaching them idioms. Ones like "a piece of cake", "bite the bullet", "fair go", "raining cats and dogs" - just to name a few. Besides being very common in the spoken form, they can be interesting for students to learn.

I hope that helps!

~ Jennifer

Celeste
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Post by Celeste » Thu Apr 10, 2003 12:35 am

A book that I really like for giving students some practice with useful phrases is called Conversation Strategies by Kehe and Kehe. It is full of exercises that practise sentences like "I didn't catch that." and "Can you explain _____?" I find this much more useful than giving the students little folk sayings that they often have memorized. (I mean, how often are they going to have cause to say "A stitch in time saves nine."?)

Pink Piggy
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More on Collocations

Post by Pink Piggy » Fri Apr 11, 2003 4:04 am

First of all, I think you have to ask yourself what your students' goals are. What kind of English do they want to learn for what purpose? If they are interested in English for business purposes, for instance, then any of the TOEIC books out there have lots of business idioms and collocations listed for students to memorize (high stakes, raise the bar, red tape). Ditto with TOEFL for basic listening. I use a book called "Gambits" for conversational collocations (well, moving on..., may I add something here, etc.)
Personally, I think the thing to remember is that any time you teach vocabulary in context, to also try to discuss any word that vocabulary is commonly collocated with. For instance, too often we teach a verb without explaining which prepositions it takes, or whether it goes with 'make' or 'do' (do business, make a deal). Or, why do we SEIZE an opportunity, but GRAB a bite to eat? I'm trying to get better at drawing student attention to the ways words are and aren't used. This way students can learn collocations, but still learn vocabuary in context.
If you students are into lists, why don't you do what I do. Create a running list in the classroom (flip chart paper is good for this), of vocabulary learned in context. Then have students memorize that list. Then they have the classroom or reading context to fall back on. The list is a good reminder for you, the teacher, to reinforce the vocabulary in a natural way day to day as well.
Cheers!
-Pink Piggy

joon
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Post by joon » Fri Apr 11, 2003 7:16 pm

I personally think collocations should not be ignored by ESL students.

They usually focus on vocaburary instead of collocations.

I think this is the usual way why they failed in English.

We have limited memory.
We can't momorize all the generally-used vocaburary.
We can just experience the gernerally-used vocaburary if you use the
target language.

Collocation is the matter of the usage while vocaburary is near to the matter of memory.

Roger
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Post by Roger » Sat Apr 12, 2003 1:09 am

Hello,
here in China slang dictionaries are rather popular, and many kids stun expats with "it's a piece of cake" and "*beep*". So much for their personal preferences.
My observation is that phrases are much the same as words - they are lexial units, that is a quantifiable amount of phonemes with a defined meaning. The meaning is often not immediately clear. What would an Asian student make out of "a baker's dozen"? It's beyond his or her grasp! Memorising does not put people into a cultural mould. They are still alien to the culture where such expressions are native. That's why I am not very fond of "teaching" such stuff. I don't teach "vocabulary" either - I teach in a way that students have to find out what any lexical unit means. SOmetimes we read a list of words with Chinese translations, but I don't think a teacher should always initiate such activities. Students should learn to guess and to think for themselves. They should learn to be naturally curious! If you don't push them to taking their own responsability they will soon tell you "these esxpressions are useless" or "boring". Who told my Chinese charges words like "*beep*"? This beats me! I think the contributor who suggested making a running list of colloquialisms as they crop up has the approach I would adopt too in certain classes.
Having said this, I do think a good dictionary of idiomatic expressions is useful. I personally like Collins Cobuild. It lists idioms in alphabetical order, and it has a section where they are grouped under topics.
The one disadvantage that I see is that such dictionaries tend to assume excellent English comprehension skills. They are more geared for native speakers than for EFL students. For English-students, there ought to be a kind of "bilingual" dictionary - it should list normal English and its equivalents in non-standard English, so a CHinese student could look under "easy" and find "a piece of cake, a cinch, no sweat", etc.

James Trotta
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idioms

Post by James Trotta » Sat Apr 12, 2003 1:08 pm

I don't set out to teach my Korean students idioms. The usefulness of idioms in an EFL context is severely limited so I only deal with students questions when it comes to idioms. If they want, they can go buy a book, but it's very difficult to use an idiom appropriately when you are in Korea...

I'm looking for non-idiomatic collocations like "could you tell me...?"

At the moment many students are memorizing sentences:

Could you tell me where the bus stop is?
Could you tell me where the taxi stand is?


However, this does not facilitate creative utterances. So the student who has memorized the sentence above may not be able to produce:

Could you tell me what time it is?
Could you tell me how to get to...?
Could you tell me a little about yourself?

I want students to learn collocations and the grammar rules needed to use them in any situation. Where can I find non-idiomatic collocations?

Pink Piggy
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Functional Grammar

Post by Pink Piggy » Sat Apr 12, 2003 8:48 pm

Hi!
It sounds that you are not looking so much for collocations (words that are naturally "located" together in English, like 'heavy smoker' rather than 'big smoker'), but functional grammar for beginners.
For a grammatical approach that is functional and quite well-rounded for beginners, I suggest the "INTERCHANGE" series. It's put out by Cambridge, and they know their ESL stuff. It's got grammar and role plays based on how the grammar is used. That way students can learn the grammar, and plug it into situations where they might be able to use it.
http://www.cup.org/esl/nic/
There are other grammar books that teach grammar in context that are highly recommended, such as "Grammar in Context" and the "GRAMMAR DIMENSIONS" series.
http://www.heinle.com/cgi-heinle/course ... er=menuESL
http://www.heinle.com/cgi-heinle/course ... er=menuESL
If you want purely functional English the Gambits book I mentioned early is good, but not very beginner. May I ask for what purpose the majority of your students are learning English?
-Pink Piggy

James Trotta
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Post by James Trotta » Sun Apr 13, 2003 10:11 am

Here in Korea there are 3 main reasons to study English. It helps you find a job (or do your job better) is perhaps number 1. Also, reason 2, is that many of my students want to study in America or Canada (so they can learn English and get a good job). The third reason is for tourism.

Honestly I'm not too worried about teaching grammar and I'm aware of the good grammar book, English Grammar in Use (which I prefer), and the New Interchange series.

I really am looking for collocations and the reason is that my students love memorizing lists of words or sentences. Memorizing collocations seems more useful to me than memorizing sentences because they can be combined with grammar rules for creative utterances, while a memorized sentence doesn't have that kind of felxibility.

However, just like my Korean students will rarely ahve an opportunity to use their memorized sentences appropriately, they are equally unlikely to find memorized idoms helpful. As a result I'm looking for non-idomatic collocations, words commonly used together, so that I can try to persuade my students to memorize these rather than those awful books of useless sentences with Korean translations....

jd
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Post by jd » Sat Apr 19, 2003 3:47 pm

Hi, James,

I'm a teacher of English as a foreign language and a native speaker of Spanish [also my students' mother tongue]. My subjects are Grammar and Language [post intermediate to relatively advanced level] at a university training future translators and teachers.

One of the problems my students have is producing authentic, genuine English [something not so easy to achieve for a non-native, as I know through experience.]

It's a long time now that I first realized how important the learning of collocations is/was. In my opinion, not exclusively, but to a considerable extent, it means the difference between SpanEnglish and anything that approximates genuine English as used by EDUCATED natives - we are interested in achieving a fairly high degree of proficiency, the sort of thing that will eventually enable our students to do postgraduate work.

I've read some of the answers to your question, rather quickly I must admit, for I'm pressed for time.... but it seems to me that they reflect some confusion about the meaning of the term 'collocation'.

In the simplest terms, what I understand by collocation, is 'lexical chunks' , 'natural [= like those used by educated natives] combinations of words', etc.

For example, when a foreign student of English looks up a word in the dictionary [in addition to a number of other things that are also important], if he/she wants to be able to use the word correctly, they should focus on the examples provided. If the aim is learning to use a noun, they should notice the verbs that can be used with this noun, both as subject and as object, plus modifiers, interesting adjectives that tend to go with this particular noun.... [the noun may also itself be used as a modifier or to form compounds] and, of course, other interesting phrases or idioms in which this noun appears.

Sorry I don't want to sound pedantic.... it's just that I consider this a very important subject. So much so, that, to improve my own English, when I deal with any text, I keep my eyes open trying to spot interesting collocations. [But spotting them, obviously, is just the first step.... then you need to internalize them, so that you can eventually use them automatically, while concentrating on your message.

By the way, there is an excellent dictionary that came out last year: the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English - OUP. Another excellent tool for the analysis of collocations is the concordancer.

Anybody interested in pursuing the subject any further could send me an email, as I don't want to bore the rest of the audience.

One more thing, if I've expressed myself in any unsuitable way, I apologize. It's not been my intention. Actually, it's the first time I've participated in a forum [believe it or not!], as I'm trying to get some first-hand experience because at the moment I'm getting embarked on an entirely new experience: the creation of a virtual classroom/centre.

jd

joon
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Hi, jd

Post by joon » Sat Apr 19, 2003 9:23 pm

Collocations are the matter of how to use the word.
Vocaburary is the matter of what the meaning of the word.

If you focus on vocaburary, I bet that you'll fail in reaching the target language speaker.

If you start to focus on collocation, I think you are already near to the target language.

I agree that this is very important matter as jd said.


By the way,
I am glad to see jd here.
I hope I sometimes see him here.

Roger
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Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2003 1:58 am

Post by Roger » Mon Apr 21, 2003 7:31 am

A BIG hand for jd and joon, guys!
Once again, two non-native English speakers have taught us a lesson! Thanks, jd and joon!
I checked it in my OXFORD GRAMMAR. Lo! and Behold!
The term 'collocazte" means
"...a word that co-occurs with another word, so as to form a collocation...
...a word that collocates with another."

An example given in that dictionary: "'A person' collocates with 'old' and 'young'"

ANd under "COLLOCATION", it quotes the author of this term, J. R. Firth:
"Collocation is a kind of sntagmatic relationship between words. Two kinds should be distinguished:
- Grammatical collocation: a type of construction where a verb, adjective etc. must be followed by a particular preposition, or a noun must be followed byb a particular form of the verb (e.g. account for, afraid of; foresight to do it (not 'doing it').
- Lexical collocation: A type of construction where a verb, adjective, or adverbs form predictable connections with each other (e.g. cancel a luncheon, engagement or break off an engagement (to be married), not normally *revoke, or *discontinue an engagement; compare also such collocations as take advantage of).

I understand now the original poster's intention! There does not seem to be a mountain of reference works here! Good luck!

James Trotta
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Luck

Post by James Trotta » Mon Apr 21, 2003 12:38 pm

I certainly need all the luck I can get, though as soon as I ahve a chance I'll check out the Oxford Dictionary of collocations suggested previously. Still looking for more...

metal56
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Collocations books

Post by metal56 » Tue May 06, 2003 12:47 am

Try to buy:

Teaching Collocation: Further Developments in the Lexical Approach
Michael Lewis (Ed.) (2000)

This is a review:

http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej16/r12.html

metal56
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More collocations

Post by metal56 » Tue May 06, 2003 12:49 am

Here's a few business English collocations:

- answer a question
- avert a crisis
- be in the same boat
- bear in mind
- beat about the bush
- break off negotiations
- break the deadlock
- broach the subject
- call an adjournment
- call it a day
- chair the meeting
- clarify the situation
- clinch/close the deal
- close the meeting
- come to an agreement
- come to the point
- deal with the problem
- dismiss his offer out of hand
- do our best
- dodge the issue
- draw the conclusion
- draw your attention

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