W

Collocational
'What collocates with collocation?' wonders Jimmie Hill.
but which for the past ten has come to dominate my thinking about English teaching. I am not alone. John Sinclair, Dave Willis, Ron Carter, Michael McCarthy. Michael Lewis, and many others, have all made a significant contribution to the way in which teachers think about lexis and its implications for their teaching. (interna! + injury, but bullet, stab, knife. gunshot, self-inflicted, gaping and deep + wound). It seems that when we have checked the meaning of a word in a conventional dictionary, we have only started on the process of knowing it. This is not new. Even if the word 'collocation' is new to students (and to some teachers, for whom the basic unit of language is still the individual word), the concept is not. We've all heard the question, Can you say X? and had to give the reply, ' Well no, not really. It's just not English. We don't say it.' The reason why we don't say it is usually to do with collocation, Corpus linguistics has taught us the importance of looking at natural language in large enough quantities to see recurring patterns of lexis. Any analysis of naturally-occurring text shows how densely collocations occur. While it can be difficult to define the boundaries of a collocation, every text I have analysed has seven out often words occurring in some kind of collocation; even a figure of 50% would have serious consequences for comprehension and choice of text. There are immediate classroom implications for how we deal with texts. We should be focusing on collocations by asking students to predict them

hen 1 first started leaching English, we were encouraged to think of grammar as the bones of the language and vocabulary as the flesh. The 'skeleton image' has now been consigned to the proverbial cupboard and the current view is that language consists largely of prefabricated 'chunks' of lexis. The key feature to the formation of these chunks is "collocation', the thought of which scarcely entered my head for the first 15 years of my career,

breath of open air'} If we have open-air cafes, why not Afresh-air cafes'} Every word has a collocational field, ie that range of other words with which it collocates. Very often the difference between words of similar meaning is defined partly by their different collocational fields. How many teachers have tried to explain the difference between wound and injury'} The two do share some collocates (nasty, fatal, serious, etc), but some are very strongly linked to one or other

What is collocation?
Collocation is a feature of all languages. At its simplest, according to Rutherford, collocation is 'what goes together with what". I like to define it as 'the way words occur together in predictable combinations'. We find phrases such as an utter disaster or a shady deal quite unremarkable. Although we are familiar with the use of shady with nouns like place or corner, we are not surprised by its metaphorical use with deal. Language is intrinsically metaphorical. Having a thorough knowledge of the word shady involves knowing the range of words it collocates with. It's easy to smile at the student who talks about *silly cow disease when you know the correct expression, mad cow disease, but this is a tricky area. If we can say both It's nice to get out into the fresh air, and It's nice to get out into the open air, why can't we say, */ need a

Issue Eleven April 1999 ENGLISH TEACHING professional 3

Collocational
using gap-filling exercises. We should be asking students to notice and underline useful collocations, translating complete collocations rather than individual words, and working out systems for storing them in their notebooks so that they are retrievable. Stop for a moment Re-read the article so far and underline all the groups of words which occur in predictable combinations. (Some answers at the bottom of the page.)

competence
Different kinds of collocation
Collocations consist of (wo or more words. Simple examples might be: verb + noun make a mistake adjective + noun adverb + verb adverb + adjective adjective + preposition noun + noun heavy traffic totally misunderstand extremely generous guilty of (-ing) a ceasefire agreement 1 Unique collocations We can think of collocation on a scale from 'probably unique', through 'fixed. strong' to 'flexible, weak'. I say 'probably' unique, since as soon as I say that X does not exist, 1 come across it within 24 hours! I have often used the example leg room (meaning the distance between two seats in, for example, a plane) and maintained that leg space was not possible. Recently, though, I discovered that the correct technical term in the airline industry is, in fact, leg space. A (probable) example of a unique collocation was given by Gwyneth Fox of Cobuild in her 1998 IATEFL plenary talk, when she pointed out the uniqueness in their corpus of foot used as a verb in the collocation foot the bill. We cannot imagine * footing the invoice, or "footing the coffee. Similarly, we shrug our shoulders, but no other part of our anatomy.

often contain information about strong collocations, but they remain patchy in the quantity and quality of information. 3 Weak collocations Even elementary students create combinations of words which verge on the area we define as 'collocation', ie those words which co-occur with 'a greater than random frequency.' Colours arc a good example. Early on, students learn the primary colours. They are able to make combinations such as blue shirt, red. car. etc, which will be similar in their own language. The picture is not as simple as that, but for most teaching purposes we pretend that it is. However, there is something 'more predictable', more fixed, and therefore collocational, about a white shirt, white wine, red wine. red hair, black hair, a blue film or a yellow submarine] Many things can be long or short, cheap or expensive, good or bad. The adjective good occurs in many weak collocations, in that it can be applied to almost anything: a meal, a journey, a government. But even this all-purpose word finds strength in: It '11 take you a good hour. Oh. he's a good age. He'll do it in his own good time. We need to recognise that even simple words have many uses, even if our primary duty to our students is to make sure that they are aware of (he more predictable collocations. 4 Medium-strength collocations The main learning load for all language users is not at the strong or weak ends of the collocational spectrum, but. as with so many aspects of language learning, in the middle. This is where the many thousands of collocations which make up the most part of what we say and write occur. Most intermediate students know the words hold and conversation, but may not know the expression hold a conversation. They know the words make and mistake, but have not stored make a mistake in their mental lexicons as a single item. Consider the example of the average 'Sun reader' in the UK, ie a native speaker often of less education and with a 'smaller vocabulary' than the
Some collocations from the beginning of the article: encouraged to think, consigned to the cupboard, a key feature, for the first X years of my career, has come to dominate my thinking, made a significant contribution, at its simplest, such as, etc

They can be much longer. When analysing text we often find that collocations of six or more words are common, for example seriously affect the political situation in (Northern Ireland). Anyone who looks at examples of text with an open mind must immediately be persuaded to stop thinking in terms of individual words. The English language teaching world has always recognised two types of collocation where the patterns have been clear: idioms and phrasal verbs. Everything falling outside those two categories was conveniently, but confusingly, labelled 'idiomatic'. Some of the lexical categories proposed by Michael Lewis in Implementing the Lexical Approach help us to t h i n k more coherently about lexis from a student's point of view.

Collocation -the way words occur together in predictable combinations

2 Strong collocations A large number of collocations, although not unique, are very strong, in that the words occur frequently in a particular combination. We often have ulterior motives or harbour grudges while being reduced or moved to tears. Further examples might be trenchant criticism or rancid butter, even though we might well come across other things which are trenchant or rancid. Such strong collocations are not unique, but it is clear that any knowledge of the words trenchant, rancid, motive, grudge, or tears would be incomplete without some idea of their strong collocates. The new corpus-based dictionaries

4 ENGLISH TEACHING professional' Issue Eleven April 1999

"Times reader', the so-called educated native speaker. Interestingly, Sun readers arc still colloeationally competent with the smaller number of words they have, and it is this which enables them to function perfectly adequately in most normal situations. I speculate that a total vocabulary of 5000 words is adequate for all day-today linguistic functions, as long as the user is colloeationally competent with those 5000. Size is not the issue. It's what you do with what you've got! This would explain why learners with even 'good vocabularies' still have problems. They may know a lot of words, but typically their collocational competence is very limited. My view is that the main thrust of vocabulary teaching in the classroom at intermediate level and above should be to increase students' collocational competence with the basic vocabulary they've already got. It is relatively easy for them to acquire individual words in their own time. For example, a nomadic tribe, is a strong collocation because nomadic collocates with a limited number of nouns. Such a collocation needs to be learnt in its entirety. A big flat is a weak collocation. At elementary level, we should be concentrating on teaching large numbers of words which collocate freely. He's recovering front a major operation is a complex medium-strength collocation in that it seems to consist of three collocations: recover from, a major operation, and the whole expression recover from a major operation. Rach individual word may be known to students, but they are unlikely to produce the whole collocation. They are more likely to say: My father ... lie's getting better ... he had a big operation. Full marks for communicating meaning, but more of an effort for both speaker and listener. It is this area of medium-strength collocation which is missing from traditional dictionaries.

comprehension is 'quick' because they are constantly recognising "chunks' of language. The main difference between native speakers and non-native speakers is that native speakers have met more examples of the language. It is this that enables them to process and produce language at a much faster rate than the average student. Much of the published material which aims to teach fluency concentrates on g e l l i n g students talking. This is futile if students haven't got enough 'chunks' of language to draw on.

The pronunciation pay-off

Because students create most of what they say from individual words, their pronunciation, stress and intonation can be difficult for the listener. The added bonus of collocations is that students learn the stress pattern of each item as a whole, As they learn more and longer lexical items, their stress and intonation is bound to improve - and they will be better able to concentrate on the content of what they are saying. There are immediate methodological

Collocation is the key to fluency

All that happens in such lessons is that students are exposed to the low-quality output of other students. Typical intermediate student speech uses simple vocabulary to express both simple and complicated ideas and is a laboured putting together of one word at a time. I propose that we should be placing a much greater-emphasis on good-quality written and spoken input at all language levels to enable them to develop their awareness of the lexical nature of language, and thereby to recognise and eventually produce longer chunks themselves. Fluency is a natural consequence of a larger and more phrasal mental lexicon. implications. Teachers should read aloud in class so that students hear texts correctly chunked. We should avoid asking students to read aloud unless they have had time to prepare. We should do less silent reading, which students find difficult because they don't recognise the chunks; they read every word as if it were separate from every other word. During silent reading students may be chunking totally wrongly, and they cannot store items in their brain correctly if they have not identified them correctly. If they are not stored correctly, they cannot be retrieved.

The role of memory

Collocation is intrinsic to all natural native speaker language and is therefore a normal component of students" use of their own language. Every parent knows how children love to hear the same rhymes and stories night after night until they know them by heart - and woe betide the parent who misses out a word! As adults we all have a huge store of memorised text in our heads. Think about all the addresses, telephone numbers, proverbs, idioms, sayings, cliches, catch phrases, jokes, songs and snatches of poetry that pop into your head, often unwittingly. These are not things we have put any effort into learning, we just know them. How do I know the quality of mercy is not strained, coughs and sneezes spread diseases, flavour of the month, free gratis and for nothing, each and every one of us, don't forget the fruit gums Mum, and even That's the way the cookie crumbles'! 1 may rarely use them, but the fact of the matter (itself a good example) is that everyone has a vast store of these fixed expressions. We have an even

Collocational competence
We are familiar with the concept of communicative competence, but perhaps we should add the concept of collocational competence to our thinking. Any analysis of students' speech or writing shows that this lack of collocational competence is one of the most obvious weaknesses. Students could easily invent the cumbersome His disability is forever because they lack the adjective+noun collocation He has a permanent disability. Analysis of students' essay writing often shows a serious lack of collocational competence with the English 'de-lexicalised* verbs get, put. make, do, bring, take. Students with good ideas often lose marks because they don't know the four or live most important collocates of a key word that is central to what they are writing about. When students do not know the collocations which express precisely what they want to say, they create longer utterances which increase the likelihood of further errors.

Fluency
You may very well look at this last example and ask why students need to learn to say something the way native speakers say it. Why not just make it up? flic answer cannot be over-emphasised: collocation is the key to fluency. 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

Issue Eleven April 1999 ENGLISH TEACHING professional 5

bigger store of simple collocations, ready for use when required. We know collocations because we have met them. They are part of what David Brazil lias called 'used language' which native speakers meet and on which they base their own language. We retrieve chunks of language in their entirety when we want to use them too.

competence
lexis' with techniques for recording and storing lexis in ways which allow for easy retrieval. 5 The language of many current textbooks and syllabuses is at odds with our current understanding of language and how it is acquired. This needs to change. There is no point in teachers changing their classroom practice if students then fail examinations. 6 How docs this affect examinations? Clearly, it is easier to test the Present Perfect Continuous than 'collocation'. Given the size of the menial lexicon, is it even fair to attempt to test it? Who chooses which items are tested? Why those and not others? 7 There are implications for reference books too. Conventional dictionaries cannot give all the necessary information about collocation. A fresh look needs to be taken at bilingual dictionaries, since translation may be one of the keys to dealing with collocation. 8 Translation may regain its importance, Apart from the fact that many learners (especially in business) have to do it. lexis is an area where literal translation is often impossible. A collocation in English may be totally different in Spanish or Japanese. The unique skills of the non-native speaking teacher will come to the fore in this area. 9 There are obvious implications for grammar teaching. Greater emphasis on lexis means less emphasis on grammar. Accuracy must be treated as a lateacquired skill. Considering language in 'larger chunks' also means that grammar and vocabulary merge into one another. The dividing line is much less clear cut than teachers and textbooks often pretend. 10 Finally, and crucially, all this raises the issue of what our model should be. English is taught throughout the world, predominantly by non-native speakers,

Collocational

so that their students can communicate mostly with other non-native speakers. Yet collocation is dictated by the nativespeaker community. The English language teaching profession considers that the mistake in she work in a hospital is something that teachers should be concerned about. Is the missing '-' on work really important? Does it matter if a student always uses a big/small operation and never uses a major/minor operation? is collocation worth learning? Is it really (he key to fluency or is it just one more way for the native speaker establishment to force its methodologies and materials on non-native speakers? At present we have more questions than answers. Recent developments in corpus linguistics have forced us to change our view of language. It is time for a reevaluation of many of our accepted ideas about learning and teaching, Corpus linguistics is going to change the content of our teaching. These ideas on collocation are only the first rumblings.
You might like to try the activities on the next page with your students.
ANSWERS Matching 1-b 2-c 3-1 4-e 5-d 6-a 7-j 8-i(or k) 9-I 10-k 11-g 12-h Clarifying collocations 1 speak 2 talk 3 tell 4 say 5 talk 6 tell 7 talk 8 say 9 tell 10 say 11 speak 12 speak Word order 1 fairly average monthly salary 2 extremely costly mistake 3 very happy working environment 4 rather delicate matter 5 amazing photographic memory 6 stunningly beautiful rose garden Improvements 1 harmful 2 dire 3 an exhausting 4 filthy 5 severe 6 miraculous 7 distorted 8 first-rate Common verbs MAKE 1, 7, 9 13 1B 23 DO 4, 5, 12. 14, 18. 20 GET 2, 6, 11, 17, 21 24 HAVE 3, 8, 10, 15, 19, 22

The issues
Many teachers are trying to incorporate lexical ideas into their teaching, and what we now know about the nature of English lexis and collocation raises important issues for us all. 1 Lexis should be one of the central organising principles of the syllabus. Unfortunately, grammar (sentence grammar) still rules. 2 When we redefine vocabulary as words, collocations, multi-word items, and expressions, (he vocabulary learning load is very much greater than we used to think. Educated native speakers have many hundreds of thousands of items stored in their mental lexicons. We need to question the 'present, practice, produce' paradigm and think more about quantity of input. The teacher's role should change from language practiser to language provider. 3 We need different strategies for vocabulary learning at different stages of learning. Beginners need words plus simple collocations and expressions. In class, intermediate students need collocational competence with the words they know; outside class they need to be increasing their store of new words. Advanced students need more and better strategies to build on what they know, while vastly increasing the number of words they meet ouside the classroom. 4 We need to give more thought to how best to manage learning in class. Students need to become 'collectors of

If you would like to receive a copy of LTP's complimentary booklet Collocation Exercises, please fax your request to +44(0)1273 775361 email LTPsample@aol.com or write to LTP, 114a Church Road, Hove, Sussex BN3 2EB, UK. Remember to send your full address. Jimmie Hill first taught English as a foreign language in 1974. He is an author and the co-founder of LTP and he was the main editor of the LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations. His most recent book is The Working Week with Anne Watson-Delestree.

ENGLISH T&kCHimprofessional Issue Ereven April 1999 .

COLLOCATION
MATCHING
Match an adjective on the left with a noun on the right. 1 tricky 2 wedding 3 luxury 4 religious 5 golden 6 organic a farming b situation c reception d opportunity e festival f hotel Match a verb on the left with an adverb on the right. 4 5 6 7 8 9

D E S I G N E D

TO

P H O T O C O P Y

CLARIFYING COLLOCATIONS
Use the following words to complete the expressions. speak talk tell say 1 2 ....... your mind. ......... utter nonsense.

COMMON VERBS
List these expressions under the verbs to make common expressions. Then look in a dictionary to choose five more collocations to add to each list. 1 amends 2 the sack 3 a good time 4 5 6 7 8 the washing evil lost a fortune a baby

3 ........................ the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. ........ one thing and do another. ......... behind someone's back. ........ lies. ........ rubbish. ........ what you're thinking. ........ me what you're thinking.

9 time 10 a good memory 11 a cold 12 housework 13 a profit 14 nothing 15 no choice 16 or break 17 wet 18 the ironing 19 no objection 20 some work 21 your hair cut 22 a problem 23 something up 24 moving MAKE DO

10 ......................... the first thing that comes into your head. 11 12 ...... English. ...... more slowly, please.

WORD ORDER
Put the words on the right in the correct order to make longer collocations. 7 speak g briskly 8 sleep 9 live 10 die 11 walk 12 give 1 They pay a 2 It was an 3 Our company has a 4 I'm afraid it's a 5 My wife's got the most 6 The castle's got a h generously i deeply j fluently k peacefully I dangerously salary fairly monthly average costly extremely mistake environment working happy very matter delicate rather memory photographic amazing

rose beautiful garden stunningly

IMPROVEMENTS
Choose a word on the right to replace the words in italics to make more interesting collocations. 1 I think TV has a bad influence on children. 2 The mistake had very bad consequences. 3 We had a very tiring journey. 4 We had a very dirty room. 5 The lack of rain is causing a very bad famine. 6 It was a special feat of bravery. 7 You've got a wrong view of things. 8 Our products are of very good quality. exhausting harmful distorted severe dire first-rate miraculous filthy GET HAVE

COLLOCATIONAL COMPETENCE Jimmie Hill

> Issue Eleven April 1999 ENGLISH TEACHING professional