A Fresh Approach to Teaching Lexical Phrases and Collocations

The production of learners' dictionaries raises a number of specific problems regarding the treatment of collocations and examples. It has been claimed, among other things, that example sentences should not be based exclusively on collocations. The present article argues that a clear distinction must be drawn between collocations and examples, and that, under certain conditions, collocations must also be exemplified. It discusses various approaches to the microstructural arrangement of collocations and establishes guiding principles for the choice and presentation of examples.

Cihan University-Erbil Scientific Journal, 2017

Learning vocabulary is the most important prerequisite for learning any foreign language because one cannot communicate precisely without words. But unfortunately many students are still asked to learn word lists with explanations in English or even equivalents in their native language. This method of learning is faulty not only because each word is usually associated with its mother-tongue equivalent, but also because each word is linguistically and situationally isolated. Words are not learnable as isolates, but in chunks which fall into categories like collocations, idioms (e.g.: kick the bucket), phrasal verbs (e.g.: give in) or proverbs (e.g.: like father like son).... etc.). In this research, emphasis is laid on the treatment and the relevant techniques for teaching colocation by investigating the notion of collocation and providing a brief conceptual framework that deals with the issue in a practical and interesting way. The paper may have some useful implications for specialists in technical translation in the sense that it helps them to translate language as chunks rather than single words. Conclusions and recommendations concerning the notion of collocation and the appropriate method of its treatment have a place at the end of this research.

Jurnal Sosial Humaniora, 2014

This research was to give insight to English teachers and practitioners who had the same problem faced by the writer and his students especially dealing with the lack of collocation. Moreover, this research inspired particularly those who involved in teaching practices for how to improve their professionalism by implementing Lexical-Based Approach in class activities and to find the solution and hindrances for a better teaching technique in the future. For students who had problems in collocation, this Lexical-Based Approach as used in Made Frida Yulia's Vocabulary: Lexically-Based Second Thousand Words of General Service List book might improve the awareness toward lexical phrases, chunks and collocations. For teachers and practitioners who want to use this Lexical-Based Approach in the future could use bilingual explanation that is needed for Indonesian students rather than monolingual explanation in English, try to create a good note taking habit for lexical phrases as soon as possible, and use vivid pictures or audio visuals to kill the boredom of the students.

Journal on English Language Teaching, 2018

Vocabulary knowledge is considered essential in using a foreign language either in spoken or written forms. Therefore, it is common to hear language learners referring to their poor vocabulary knowledge when they fail to produce enough content in writing or speaking. As it is estimated that there are almost 20,000 million words in English, they mention it as a reason for their misuse of words, phrases and collocations. It is too ambitious to aim language learners to learn that many words to communicate effectively in English, yet because language is phrasal in its nature, awareness and knowledge of collocations, i.e. words that occur together, may help learners comprehend written and spoken discourse (Wray, 2002). This article focuses on the nature and formation of collocations and the issues in learning and teaching collocations especially in foreign language settings. In an attempt to raise awareness of collocations, some practical ideas are also suggested. Article visualizations:

The last two decades have witnessed a growing interest in vocabulary items consisting of more than a single word in the field of English language teaching (ELT) (Nation & Meara, 2002, p. 36; Schmitt, 2000, p. 96). Researchers in the area came to notice that language is produced by native speakers as 'chunks' rather than single words (Schmitt, 2000, p. 42; Read, 2000, p.20). This entails that if language instructors wish English as a foreign language (EFL) learners to attain native-like proficiency, they should be trained on the use of chunks of language and equipped with a large number of them. Such multiple-word items, Schmitt (2000) explains, constitute a rather high percentage of the English language and are drawing more attention. Thus, these chunks of language are worth spending time on in any language course. The purpose of the following paper is twofold: on the one hand, the researcher intends to get ELT instructors aware of the concept of collocations and its significance, for those who are not already aware of this aspect of language. On the other hand, the researcher aims at suggesting ways to help learners develop collocational knowledge.

Universal Journal of Educational Research, 2019

The difficulty in learning vocabulary is a problem that lies in not anchoring the new items to relevant established entities in cognitive structure. Different categories of associations have been reported to aid facilitating vocabulary acquisition. Collocating vocabulary items is a type of association that is considered to be more efficient in retrieval. The present study sought to investigate whether collocating the lexical items on Quizlet can facilitate acquisition of the vocabulary items, and whether it is likely to be more effective than learning decontextualized individual words. In so doing, 70 upper-intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with homogenous knowledge of vocabulary were conveniently assigned into two groups: the learners in the first group were assigned a list of vocabulary items with their synonyms in English, while the learners in the other group were assigned the identical vocabulary items with their frequent collocations written in complete sentences. The targeted collocations were verb-nouns, propositional verbs, and noun-nouns. The assignment continued for two months. At the end, an independent sample t-test applied on the scores achieved from a posttest indicated a significant difference in scores of the control group and that of the experimental group. This study sheds light to the significance of contextualizing a lexical item with collocations through which acquisition of vocabulary item is enhanced.

2009

ABSTRACT Why are children better language learners than adults? Intuitively, there is a difference between the unstructured (yet successful) way a child learns language and the effortful and often frustrating experience of trying to master a new language as an adult. On an empirical level, non-native speakers rarely reach native proficiency in pronunciation, morphological and syntactic processing, or in the use of formulaic language and idioms.

Language Teaching Research

Recent years have seen two special issues dedicated to vocabulary published in Language

2020

People of various professions, such as merchants, seamen, statesmen, diplomats and many others have always been using languages of various occupations and professions. As Hutchinson and Waters (1987) put it, after the Second World War English becomes very important in the domain of economy owing to the economic predominance of the Unites States which made it international language of technology and commerce and established its status of lingua franca. Therefore, of all the languages for specific purposes, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has been studied and learnt most. There is an immense number of scientists dealing with ESP, approaching it from various scientific angles, predominantly from the linguistics point of view. This paper adopts the approach of Foreign Language Teaching (Glottodidactics), focusing primarily on the learner and his/her needs, as long time ago established and suggested by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) and pursued later by other theoreticians and practiti...