名古屋外国語大学論集

第7号

2020年7月

ArticleTeaching Collocations to EFL Students
Lidija ELLIOTT

Abstract
The topic of this article is teaching collocations to university EFL students. It
focuses on different techniques and activities that are used to present collocations
to English learners, and provides historical background of collocation studies andinterpretations. In addition to that, the systematization and the categorization ofcollocations types are provided in this article. The activities proposed are basedon and inspired by Michael Lewis`s (1993) Lexical Approach which emphasizes
the importance of vocabulary acquisition to language learners. Collocations
are an important part of vocabulary, according to this approach, and they are
regarded, as one of the important elements that language teacher should focus
on in the language classroom.
Key words: collocations, vocabulary, Lexical Approach, English language
teaching, EFL

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Introduction
The main topic of this article is teaching collocations, which is a relatively recent
concept in second language learning. It consists of different techniques andactivities which aim at raising both learners’ and teachers’ awareness of their
existence and at the same time importance of relatively fixed word combinations. Koya (2005) states that interest in teaching and developing its vocabularyincreased from 1980’s. However more attention has been given to this concept
lately due to Lexical Approach to second language teaching, the term being
described by Lewis in the early 1990s. Collocation is”the readily observablephenomenon whereby certain words co-occur in natural text with greater thanrandom frequency” (Lewis 1997, p.8). This approach, is an alternative to grammar base approaches, and draws attention to the significance of lexis, or words,
or word combinations in language acquisition. Nation (2001), argues “Language
knowledge is collocational knowledge”. Hence to speak English naturally andfluently learners need to pay attention to them.
The aim of this article is to clarify the importance of teaching collocation inclassrooms, to present the different ways collocations can be taught, and to givesome feedback on the implementation of techniques and activities designed toteach collocations in English language classroom.

Collocations
The study of collocations as a part of vocabulary study was neglected in the past
because the focus of language studies for a long time was mainly on grammaticalstructures, “mastery of the grammatical system is a prerequisite for effective
communication” (Lewis, 1993, p.133). Sinclair (1991) points out, it is obviousthat words do not appear at random in texts, and people cannot produce naturalsentences simply by operating on the principle of grammar.
Palmer (1933) first coined the term “collocations “in its modern linguistic sense.
He defined collocations as “succession of two or more words that may best be184

Teaching Collocations to EFL Students ■learned as if it were single word” (Cowie 1999, p.54). Collocations can be also
defined as the restrictions on how words can be used together, for example,
which prepositions and verbs are used together, or which nouns appear withparticular verbs (Richards, Platt &Platt, 1992). “Although collocations can beclassified in any different ways, the most common classification is the one intogrammatical and lexical collocations” (Begagic, 2014, p.47).
British linguists, mostly Halliday and Sinclair, maintain that lexical theory
is needed to complement grammatical theory, and that grammatical description
does not account for all the patterns in a language. In the 1970s and 1980s, thecommunicative and natural approaches, changed the focus of language studies.
The interest increased in the 1990s. The focus was on vocabulary development
which resulted in more interesting vocabulary teaching because learning suchrich activities are needed to help learners acquire, practice and get better knowledge of the lexical parts of the language. Chung (2018) states how interesting
vocabulary activities can help to cultivate an interest in learning.
Lewis insisted that his Lexical Approach is not simply a shift of emphasis
from grammar to vocabulary teaching, “as language clearly consists not onlyof traditional grammar and vocabulary, but often of multi-word prefabricatedchunks” (Lewis, 1997, p.3). According to Lewis chunks include collocations,
fixed and semi-fixed expressions and idioms, and have an important role infacilitating language production, being the key to communication and to nativelike fluency. The Lexical Approach is important because it includes not only thesingle words but also the word combinations that we store in our mental lexicons.
The basic principle is: “Language is grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar” (Lewis 1993, p.89). In other words, lexis is essential in creating meaning,
while grammar plays a less important or secondary organizational role. If teachers follow this rule then the conclusion is that teachers should spend more time
helping English learners develop and understand collocations, and less time onteaching grammar. Wilkins (1972, pp. 111–112) wrote “. . . while without gram185

mar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”.
As the awareness and importance of the role of collocations in language
teaching developed, progress in the field was made such as computer based studies of language. It is one of many tools and techniques that can help teachers tofacilitate the language learning process and improve the learners' language competencies. The introduction of language corpora and corpus analysis techniques
into language research made it possible to conduct studies that involved a large
amount of data involving freely produced language, a large variety of language
samples, and cross-corpora comparisons. Software packages like WordSmith
Tools- Lexically.net provide tools for calculating frequencies of words specified
by researchers in a corpus. (Laurance, 2013).
Two main views can be identified in the study of collocations:1)   “Frequency-based approach” or “distributional” which draws on quantitative evidence about word co-occurrence in corpora (Granger & Paquot, 2008;
Nesselhauf, 2005; Paquot & Granger, 2012). Among main representatives are
J.R. Firth, M.A.K. Halliday and J. Sinclair.
2)   “Phraseological approach” which focuses on establishing the semantic
relationship between two (or more) words and the degree of noncompositionalityof their meaning (Gablasova, Brezina, & McEnry, 2017). Main representatives
are A.P. Cowrie and F.J. Haussmann.

Types of collocations
Lewis (1997) suggests that collocation is not decided by logic or frequency, but
it is arbitrary, decided only by linguistic convention. This means that there areno certain rules or any logic for them. Some collocations are fully fixed, suchas catch a cold or drug addict, while others are more or less fixed and can becompleted in a small number of ways such as:·

Blood/close/near relative or186

Teaching Collocations to EFL Students ■·Badly/bitterly/deeply/seriously/severely hurt

Lewis (1997) proposes the following categories for collocations:1.   Strong: A large number of collocations are strong or very strong, and they
are combinations that frequently occur together, for example we talk mostly
about rancid butter, but other things can be described as rancid as well such as
rancid breath.
2.   Weak: These are words which co-occur with a greater then random frequency, or combined with a lot of different words, for example many things
can be long (long coastline or long friendship) or short (short vacation or shortmemory), good (good news or good time) or bad (bad fish or a bad cough), cheap(cheap tickets or feeling cheap) or expensive (an expensive hobby or expensive
shops). However some things are more predictable than others which than could
be called collocations such as, white wine or red wine, etc.
3.   Medium strength: These are words that go together with a greater frequency
than weak collocations but not as limited in combinability as strong collocations
such as hold a meeting, carry out a study, make a mistake.
Hill (1999) states that:
Unique collocations, denotes word combination which is not usually found incombination with any other word for example with the word foot when used asa verb in the collocation foot the bill, since we cannot say for example foot theinvoice etc. Similarly, we shrug the shoulders, but we do not shrug anything else.

Importance of Teaching Collocations
There are many strong arguments for the focus on teaching collocations in
the language classroom. Collocation is an important aspect in vocabularyacquisition and knowledge of collocations is a good indication of general EFL
proficiency. By comparison with native speakers, language learners overusesome collocations, for example, collocations constructed with core verbs (be,have, make, etc.) or particular amplifiers (very, completely, highly, strongly),187

whereas they do not use other native like collocations (Altenberg & Granger,
2001; De Cock, Granger, Leech, & McEnery, 1998; Granger, 1998; Howarth,
1996; Laufer, 2010).
According to Lewis (1993) the reason we should teach collocations is that
“Collocation…provides the most powerful organization principle for language
teaching…In many cases collocation is a principal characteristic by which words
may be located or even defined.” (p.119). Also, the vast majority of written andspoken language is composed of a relatively small number of high frequency
words (Nation, 2001), so focusing on these very common items seems likely
to be helpful for learners. The other very important reason for teaching collocations to students is to increase their efficiency when using English, whichleads to increased fluency. As Hill (1999) argued that: “Collocation is the key
to fluency.”
He further explains that:
Native speakers can only speak at a relatively fast speed because they
are calling on a vast repertoire of ready-made language in their mental
lexicons. Similarly their reading and listening comprehension is “quick”
because they are consistently recognizing “chunks” of language. The
main difference between native speakers and non-native speakers is thatnative speakers have met more examples of the language. It is this thatenables them to process and produce language at a much faster rate than
the average student. (Hill 1999, p.5)
The common way for students to learn English vocabulary or any other foreign
language is by writing down the translation of the word. However this is notalways the best way since many words change their meaning in combination
with other words thus they are not always translated in the same way. One way
to overcome this is to focus more on lexical chunks/blocks rather than a single
188

Teaching Collocations to EFL Students ■word because that make the process of learning English time saving and more
beneficial. If students memorize lexical chunks rather than individual words, itwill enable students to quickly and easily use the appropriate phrase rather than totry to construct it one word at a time. Therefore students’ speech becomes more
fluent, in addition to that, it will become more accurate, as it takes less time tothink of the right expression or word. It will provide alternative and richer ways
to express themselves and it will give students more confidence. The increased
efficiency and fluency of a non-native speaker is beneficial to both native andnon-native speakers. Native speakers will most likely predict what is going to besaid based on common phrasing patterns even if the pronunciation is not as good.
On the other hand familiarity with collocations should increase a non-native
speaker’s efficiency as a listener or a speaker.
Increased efficiency and fluency facilitate better communication between nativeand non-native speakers. Hill (2000, p.53) estimates that “collocations are foundin up to 70% of everything we say, hear, read, or write is to be found in someform of fixed expression”.
Hence, teaching collocations to students is important as it will make it easierfor non-native speakers to improve not only their vocabulary and speaking but
also writing performance “Mere practice of particular word combinations - will
result in improved performance.” (Zaabalawi&Gould, 2017, p.21) Apart fromthese benefits, students when familiar with collocations will be less likely totranslate literally. Literal translation of phrase and students’ failure to use thecorrect collocations, even if their utterance is grammatically and contextuallycorrect, will lead to their English still sounding unnatural and ‘foreign’ to theextent that they may not be understood at all. According to Gledhill (2000, p.5),“it is impossible for a writer to be fluent without a thorough knowledge of thephraseology of the particular field he or she is writing in.”189

Different types of collocations
According to Benson, Benson & IIson (1986) grammatical collocations fall into
several different types. Some of the most common types are:1) adverb+adjective collocations
Absolutely terrified
Deeply concerned2) adjective+noun collocations
Native speaker
Heavy rain
3) noun+noun collocations
Comfort zone
Credit card4) noun+verb collocations
Thunder rumbled
Rumors spread5) verb+noun collocations
Commit a crime
Make mistakes6) verb+preposition collocations
Agree with
Participate in7) adverb+adverb collocation
All alone
Right now8) adverb+verb collocations
Strongly agree
Completely forgot

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Teaching Collocations to EFL Students ■Activities to teach collocations
In order to teach collocations, firstly teachers should make students be awareof their existence. Collocations exist in students’ native language, therefore theconcept will be easily understood. Intensive and extensive listening and reading
should be encouraged in order to expose student to those forms. For example
to teach English collocations to Japanese learners through the use of movies.
(Furuhi, 2011)
More exposure to collocation has no or only a slight effect, Collocations
are largely transparent and therefore easily understood, so that learners
probably often do not realize that they are expressions that have to belearnt. The starting point for teaching collocations should therefore be to
make learners more aware of the phenomenon. It is essential that learners
recognize that there are combinations that are neither freely combinable
nor largely opaque and fixed (such as idioms) but there are neverthelessarbitrary to some degree and therefore have to be learnt. (Nesselhauf,
2005, p.252).
Teaching collocations should be present at all levels of learning. It is essential
to start teaching collocations at elementary level for it is then that students aretaught how to learn. Some collocations in the students’ native language can betranslated directly into English and consequently they will be easier to learn.
Therefore, more attention should be given to collocations that are different in
the two languages pointing out those differences to students. This should bedone whether students use collocations correctly or not, and examples should be
provided. Once students are made aware of collocations, they need to be trainedon the identification of collocations in different texts. In this regard, students
must be trained to identify useful collocations in oral or written texts.
For example: Learners should underline chunks they can find in the text.
191I met Ryoko five years ago. We became friends immediately, because we
had so much in common. She has a very outgoing personality and she isvery patient. We don't keep in touch regularly these days, because she hasa very demanding job and my young children keep me busy too. I would
say she is one of my closest friends, even though I don't see her often.
Fuscoe (2014) and Deveci (2004) give more ideas on how to present collocations
to EFL students:
1. Learners should underline chunks they can find in a text. It is helpful forstudents to get different kinds of chunks to look for. For lower levels, it is betterto restrict students to noun + noun, adjective + noun, or verb + noun collocations
because more complex chunks would confuse them.
2. Small extracts from the concordances published by Cobuild can be used to
explore the possible environments of a word. However, ready-made concordances would be more suitable for higher levels because they do not include
enough context for lower level students to understand the meaning without
help. Ready-made concordances may also include too many unknown words
for lower-level students. Teachers who want to use concordances with lower
levels should write their own, bearing in mind their students’ level of grammar
and lexis.
3. After reading a text, students can be given a set of incomplete phrases takenfrom the text and asked to complete them by scanning the text again. This canbe done at any level.
For example, intermediate students have read a text on time management. Somepossible incomplete phrases from the text could be: [on] time; [in] time; [on]the dot; [at] times; [from] time [to] time. These phrases focus on a preposition+ noun collocation.
4. After they have seen certain collocations in a text, students can be asked tofind pairs of collocations arranged randomly.
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Teaching Collocations to EFL Students ■If students have read a text on traffic, a possible matching activity could be:
1. traffic

a. traffic

2. heavy

b. warden

3. rushc. trafficking

4. drug

d. jam

5. traffic

e. hour

5. It is useful for learners to find certain collocations in the dictionary bythemselves because they will memorize them faster. They can use dictionaries
of collocations such as the LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations and The
BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations. These can be useful in drawing
students’ attention to collocations.
6. Give students phrases in their native language and equivalent phrases inEnglish, and ask students to match the phrases. This activity will help students
see that collocational ideas are not always formed in the same way in English.
It is also important to engage students in a variety of collocational activities
that enhance both their receptive and productive knowledge of collocations.
On the receptive front, gap-filling activities with words from a list/box can beadapted to introduce collocations. The example below from McCarthy et al.
(2010) enhances the receptive knowledge of collocations.
Fill in the gaps with collocations from the box.
pay good interest/ set aside money / get an allowance
When Andrew was growing up, he was careful with his money. He____________________ every week from his parents, and because he wanted
to go to college, he ___________________ every month. He opened a savings
account that____________________, so his savings grew.
Another useful activity in this regard is “crossing odd words out” or what issometimes known as “finding the intruder”. In this task, learners need to identify
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the word that does not collocate with a target word. McCarthy et al. (2010) also
provide the following example:
Cross out the food that is the least likely to go with the preparation.
a.   smoked cheese / turkey / bread / meatb.   fried noodles / yogurt / chicken / potatoes
Matching word can be another effective way, as in the following example:
A.
have
do
traffic
makeannualtake
waste
marketB.
forcestime
notes
progressturnoverjam
nothing
sympathy

Words can be arranged into groups that take the same collocations for example
with city:
City: sprawling, rich history, steep, narrow streets, constant problem, tasty local
food, etc.
Communication activities are an effective way to practice collocations.
Students can conduct a survey among their classmates and follow up with awritten or oral report. This is very useful when learning collocations which arecovered by the same topic, an example can be a survey on sports where students
are asked which sport activity and how often they play, do, or go. This type ofactivity is popular with students at lower level, whereas students at higher levels
find them boring and time consuming. For a higher level learner the following
activity can be used: students are given a topic and a list of collocations which
they need to use to write an essay on the topic. As a more challenging and more
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Teaching Collocations to EFL Students ■creative task, students can only be given a list of collocations without a topic andthey should use their own ideas to write a story or an essay.
Scrivener, (1994) proposes three activities: quick choices, guess the collocation and chunk watching (p. 251)
Quick choices start with the teacher choosing two to three nouns, e.g. food,cooking and meal that have a number of possible confusing collocations. In thisparticular case, the list might include fast, health, dog, baby, delicious, light,
balanced, Italian, vegan, frozen, dog, etc. Then the list is read item by item andstudents must indicate which three nouns at the beginning given by the teacher
is the best collocate, or if the item goes with more than one word. Students canwrite their answers on a paper which is a quiet way of doing it, or it can be doneby calling out their choice of words that is a noisy way, or by pointing at words
written on wall notices or even by running to the right part of the room designatedfor a certain words.
Guess the collocation starts by dividing the class into four or more teams. In
each team students are given a same word (e.g. town) and teams have to prepare
a list of five common collocations (e.g. constant problems, home, supermarkets,
center, new, tasty food, etc). Each team has a different starter word. When allteams have completed the task, students read their lists out one item at a time andthe other teams try to guess the original word. If the word is guessed immediately
on the first clue, both teams get ten points. The scoring scheme encourages
students to find the most likely and distinctive collocations.
Chunk watching is done in groups of three students, two of them face eachother. The teacher gives them a topic to talk about for a few minutes. The third
student just listens carefully and takes no part in their conversation, and takes
notes of as many chunks as he/she can catch. At the end of the time, the listenershows his/her list to the speakers and they discuss it together.
There are many other activities or games such as quizzes, memory game,
guessing game, etc. Teachers can choose the activities that suit their teach195

ing contexts best or make their own activities. While teaching collocations,
repetition is very important for their memorization. It is also important to teachcollocations that are active and appropriate for learners’ needs (e.g., computerscience, law or engineering). Learners will be more interested and motivatedto learn relevant collocations to their field of study than general collocations
or collocations related to other areas of specialization. El-Dakhs (2015) states
that”It is not advisable to teach collocations that learners will rarely encounterin natural English.”Conclusion
The main aim of this article is to show the importance of teaching vocabulary to
EFL learners, and by no means denies the importance of grammar. It is showing that apart from the knowledge of grammar, that there are other importantelements of language knowledge that contribute to the accuracy and fluency ofspeech. Collocation activities can be incorporated into most language classes andit is important to consider students’ needs, level, and motivation when choosing
what to focus on. Collocational competence in EFL environment deserves special
attention from both researchers and language instructors.
Therefore more awareness should be raised regarding teaching collocations
and stronger emphasis should be given on studying collocation in the process ofcurriculum development.

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