Teaching grammar and vocabulary with collocations

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Teaching grammar and vocabulary with collocations

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Luca Marchiori
Luca Marchiori has been involved in ESOL since
1992, as a teacher, Director of Studies and a
materials developer with companies including
Oxford University Press. He was previously
Director of Studies at the EF International
School of English in Bournemouth, before joining
the Efekta team full time. He holds the
Cambridge / RSA Diploma in TEFLA as well as an
M.Ed. In Educational Technology and English
Language Teaching.
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Welcome
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Main Topics

• What are collocations and why are they important?
• How can a knowledge of collocation help us in our
  teaching?
• What practical things can we do?

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Outline of Presentation

• Introduction
• What does collocation actually mean?
• Developing noticing
• Teaching Vocabulary
• Teaching grammar
• Summary and Questions Answers

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Michael Lewis (1993) The Lexical Approach Hove
LTP
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What does collocation actually mean?

• When two words co-occur, or are used together
  frequently, they are said to collocate.
• Gairns and Redman (1986)
• Some pairs of words occur together very rarely
  but other pairs occur together so often that when
  you see one word, you strongly expect that the
  other word might be there too.
• Hill and Lewis (1997)
• Two words collocate if they occur together with
  more than random frequency.
• Thornbury (2002)
• A collocation is a pair or group of words that
  are often used together. These combinations sound
  natural to native speakers, but students of
  English have to make a special effort to learn
  them
• McCarthy and ODell (2005)
• Collocation is the tendency of words to be
  biased in the way they co-occur.
• Hunston (2002)

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Examples

• the car
• drive a car
• salt and pepper
• I look forward to hearing from you.
• immediate family

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Taxonomies of lexical chunks
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Grammar vs. collocation
The cat sat on the elephant. Ill be right back!
Slide 14
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Why learn collocations?

• Learning collocations is a good idea because
  they can
• Give you the most natural way to say something
  smoking is strictly forbidden is more natural
  than smoking is strongly forbidden
• give you alternative ways of saying something,
  which may be more colourful / expressive or more
  precise instead of repeating It was very cold
  and very dark, we can say It was bitterly cold
  and pitch dark
• Improve your style in writing instead of saying
  poverty causes crime, you can say poverty breeds
  crime instead of saying a big meal you can say a
  substantial meal. You may not need or want to use
  these in informal conversations, but in writing
  they can give your text more variety and make it
  read better
• McCarthy and ODell (2005)

Slide 14
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Noticing
Teachers in English secondary schools will be
given more freedom to tailor lessons to pupils
than they have for 20 years, the government's
curriculum watchdog promised today. Launching a
wide-ranging consultation on the national
curriculum for 11 to 14-year olds, Ken Boston,
the chief executive of the Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority, said the proposed
programmes of study would give teachers a "more
flexible, less prescriptive framework for
teaching". The education secretary, Alan
Johnson, promised "more flexibility for teachers,
more interesting for pupils". He added "These
proposals move us away from a 'one size fits all'
curriculum to one that offers more flexibility to
tailor teaching to pupils' needs and
aspirations." The Guardian 3 February 2007

• Underline all nouns
• Underline the verb used before the noun
• Underline the whole phrase
• (from Hill, Lewis and Lewis (2000))
• This produces such phrases as
• be given more freedom to
• to tailor lessons
• launch a wide-ranging consultation

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Noticing using corpora
(Team Manager), Sue Lore and Janet Sutton."
NOTICE BOARD Three ACET staff members,
Peter me, I hope to continue for some time yet.
NOTICE BOARD Maurice Adams, General Manager
of But often the person infected doesn't
notice anything wrong. What to do If you're
worried volunteer coordinator and give us as much
notice as possible. ACET volunteers carry out
the "counter-revolutionary rebellion". A court
notice reported the economic loss of the two
vehicles, investigate allegations of torture
brought to its notice, appears to be condoning
the use of torture. AI the newspaper Al-Fajr to
close until further notice on 8 February 1991.
Hamadi Jebali's sentence knowing by a reader,
who may occasionally notice that it underlies
the degree of attention being Several features
of its history are worth notice. for one
thing, the group did not choose the than one
review of any exhibition. The notice board at
a show where notices are pinned up
http//view.byu.edu/ http//www.collins.co.uk/Corp
us/CorpusSearch.aspx
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Practical ideas vocabulary
Recording activities Choose from these words five
of which make strong word partnerships in
business English with each of the verbs
below Bill presentation costs invoice discount
Debt lunch message expenses deal Service calcul
ation mistake money promise Lewis (1996a
92)
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Practical ideas vocabulary

• Practice activities
• One verb in each line does not collocate with the
  noun. Cross out the one which does not fit.
• accept, act on, disregard, follow, ignore, make,
  solicit, take ADVICE
• Come up with, do, expect, get, require,
  supply AN ANSWER
• Build up, close down, set up, put off, take over,
  wind up A BUSINESS
• Deal with, do, examine, ignore, reject, respond
  to A COMPLAINT
• Accept, answer, come in for, give rise to, make,
  reject CRITICISM
• 6. describe, do enjoy, have, recall, share AN
  EXPERIENCE
• Hill, Lewis and Lewis (2000 113)

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Practical ideas grammar

• Teach structures as phrases at lower levels
• e.g. Ive just / nearly / almost finished.
• Teach word grammar as collocation
• e.g. gerunds and infinitives, dependent
  prepositions
• The grammar of collocation
• adjective noun
• noun verb
• noun noun
• verb preposition
• verb adverb
• adverb adjective
• Grammar of keywords (Thornbury 2004)

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Further reading
Gairns, Ruth and Redman Stuart (1986) Working
with words Cambridge CUP Hill, Jimmie and Lewis,
Michael (1997) The LTP dictionary of selected
collocations Hove LTP Hill, Jimmie, Lewis,
Morgan and Lewis Michael (2000) Classroom
strategies, activities and exercises in Lewis,
Michael ed. Teaching collocation Boston Thomson
Heinle Hunston, Susan (2002) Corpora in applied
linguistics Cambridge CUP Lewis, Michael (1993)
The lexical approach Hove LTP Lewis, Michael
(1996) Implications of a lexical view of language
in Willis, J and Willis D, eds. Challenge and
change in language teaching Oxford Macmillan
Heinemann Lewis, Michael (1996a) Implementing the
lexical approach Hove LTP McCarthy, Michael and
ODell, Felicity (2005) English collocations in
use Cambridge CUP Thornbury, Scott (2002) How to
teach vocabulary Harlow Longman Thornbury, Scott
(2004) Natural grammar Oxford OUP
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