LANGUAGE SYSTEMS ASSIGNMENT

Raise awareness of delexicalised verbs and their

collocates to intermediate level students

Table of contents
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………….p2
2. Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………p2
2.1 Collocations………………………………………………………………………………….p2
2.2 Delexical Collocations…………………………………………………………………..p2
2.3 Form and use of delexical collocations………………………………………….p3
2.4 Raising awareness to intermediate level students………………………..p3
3. Students’ problems and solutions………………………………………………………p4
3.1 Intermediate learners lack of collocational knowledge…………………p4
3.2 L1 interference……………………………………………………………………………..p4
3.3 Treat words in collocations as separate meaningful units…………….p5
3.4 Quantity of collocations………………………………………………………………..p6
3.5 Difficulty recalling collocations……………………………………………………..p6
3.6 Pronunciation……………………………………………………………………………….p7
4. References………………………………………………………………………………………….p8

1. Introduction

Raise awareness of delexicalised verbs and their collocates to intermediate level students 1
This essay focuses on collocations as they are frequently used in spoken and written
language by native speakers but neglected in the EFL classroom. Lewis (2000) argues
that intermediate students learn single words and know their grammatical function
but they are not aware of their collocations as they are not trained to notice them.
Considering my teaching experience and the intermediate level course books I have
processed, I have observed that there is no reference to the concept of collocations,
based on the assumption that students once they are exposed become aware of
them and their function. This does not seem to be true as I have noticed that Greek
intermediate students transfer collocations from L1 to L2 incorrectly, use collocation
inappropriately and consequently they do not achieve fluency. Therefore, raising
awareness of collocations and their function should be a teacher's priority in the ESL
classroom. Woorland (2000) supports the idea that collocations with delexicalised
verbs are a good starting point to familiarize students with collocations and their
function in the English language.

2. Analysis
2.1Collocations
The term “collocation” was first introduced by J. R. Firth in 1957 and his supporters
like Hasan and Halliday (2001:317) defined collocations as the “co-occurrence of
lexical items” that have the tendency to be found in the same environments and “in
some way or another are typically associated”. Additionally, there is a “scale of
collocations” with regards to the degree of occurrence of one constituent being
conditioned by another one and they could be classified as: free collocations (e.g
open the gate), restricted collocations (e.g. make/reach a decision) and idioms (e.g.
kick the bucket) (Wang & Shaw, 2008). According to Besnon et al. (1986) collocations
fall into two main categories, lexical (e.g. adjective + noun) and grammatical
collocations (e.g. noun + preposition) while Lewis (1997) classified them into four
groups: strong, weak, frequent and infrequent in terms of restriction and co-
occurrence in the corpus. The main characteristics of these fixed combinations are
that English speakers can effortlessly recall them, use them frequently as well as how
their meaning reflect the meaning of the constituents they consist of (Bahns,
1993:57).

2.2 Delexical collocations

Hill (2000) suggests that tutors should draw attention upon medium-strong
collocations, such as delexicalised verbs (e.g. have, do) that constitute most of the
everyday language of native speakers and can develop learners’ lexical competence
and fluency. According to Lewis (1993:126), delexicalised words have an important
role to play within the lexical approach, which he presented. “Delexical verbs” are
defined as the verbs that are part of a collocation and the meaning is transferred on
the noun ([Link], 2015). The examples of most common

Raise awareness of delexicalised verbs and their collocates to intermediate level students 2
delexical verbs are “give, make, have, take, do, be, go, pay, and hold” (Guňková
2011, in Kittigosin and Phoocharoensil, 2015:64)

2.3Form and use of delexical collocations

Delexical collocations combine a grammaticalized verb, which is an item that is
frequently used in spoken and written situations co-occurring with a direct object
(Fontenelle, 1994). It is the fixed pattern mentioned by Lewis (2000): “verb + noun”.
The role of the verb in delexical collocations is to support the noun that it is
combined with and create a link with reference to the subject by giving grammatical
and syntactical information (Fontenelle, 1994). Based on the low lexical content of
these verbs, they are called delexical (O’keefee et al., 2007). Delexical verbs are
frequently and generally used by native speakers as they allow fluency, natural
speaking and alternative ways of expressing ideas and thoughts. Due to its function
as a support verb that loses its semantic value, L2 learners get really confused. Their
restricted role in relation to the noun that they co-occur with, are characterized by
polysemy which hinders learners’ acquisition of them and hampers their accurate
use (Wang & Shaw, 2008).

2.4Raising awareness to intermediate level students

Currently learners’ need to acquire collocational knowledge and the difficulties they
face in the learning process is getting more attention from linguists and ESL teachers
(Wang & Shaw, 2008)). However, the collocational input in ELT materials is
insufficient and the limited exposure to collocations do not allow learners to become
competent, hence, Bahns (1993) stresses the importance of the teachers’ role to
guide and assist learners to acquire collocational knowledge. Following Lewis (2000),
it would be important for learners not to focus only on improving their grammar and
learning exceptional words but on learning how to appropriately use the corpus of
words they already know in a variety of combinations to become more fluent. Hill
(2000) supports that collocational knowledge can satisfy the need of intermediate
students to be able to understand and covey ideas faster and more easily. He also
argues that intermediate students know a load of words in isolation but they are
unable to recognize them as chunks.

3. Students’ problems and solutions

3.1 Intermediate learners lack of collocational knowledge

Raise awareness of delexicalised verbs and their collocates to intermediate level students 3
It has been observed that intermediate level students lack collocational knowledge
and as a result they are not able to recognize collocations in written or spoken form.
As a result, they misuse collocations and this hinders their communication and
writing, as what might seem as reasonable use in L2 to them, in many cases is not
understood by native speakers. I have seen intermediate learners who lack fluency
as they are not aware that they are able to combine the corpus of words they have
already acquired to express themselves in alternative ways with the use of
collocations. Likewise, writing becomes a difficult task for them as they try to
translate words, unknown to them, from L1, instead of using collocations of words
they already know.

Solution

I believe it is essential to introduce the term “collocation” and the rational for
learning it in the beginning of the lesson. When learners are aware of the objectives
of the lesson, they become more motivated to learn. “Noticing” is a term in lexical
approach (Lewis, 2000) and it could be the initial stage of the learning process.
Noticing can take place in reading activities in order to raise consciousness of
collocations to learners and according to Lewis (1993), the texts given to the learners
should be short in order to allow them to explore collocations and authentic ones
which include more natural language and facilitate vocabulary acquisition. Use of
authentic materials is advantageous for the leaners as language is used in a natural
way and in context, however, the choice of these materials should be according to
the frequency of collocations, and the suitability for our particular group of students
([Link], 2015). Intermediate students could be asked to identify a
certain number of collocation in the given authentic text and they will be asked to
identify the patterns of collocations through critical discussions in groups. This will
raise collocational awareness in learners and they will become able to transfer this
knowledge of collocations in a later stage. However, it is not a fact that learners will
be able to notice collocations even after introducing them but they might need
examples to be pointed out to them first.

3.2L1 interference
A common misuse of collocation as observed with Greek native intermediate
learners is due to L1 interference. With reference to delexical collocations, the
majority of students translate the meaning of both lexical units of the collocation
and the result is to use “do” rather than “make mistakes” and “eat” rather than
“have breakfast”. Mainly this relates, as previously stated, to lack of collocational
knowledge. As McCarthy (1990) suggests, it is part of native speakers’ linguistic
competence to use collocations appropriately as it is part of their daily use of
language, but for learners of the L2 this could be problematic as collocations which

Raise awareness of delexicalised verbs and their collocates to intermediate level students 4
are language specific and are not determined by universal rules and cannot be
automatically acquired.

Solution

Students may understand how L1 interferes when using collocations through

comparison. The learners should become aware of this mistake by noticing and
discussing the differences between collocations in L1 and L2 in terms of meaning. For
instance, learners will be given a contextualized collocation in English that is unlikely
to have an accurate translation in L1 and encourage them to translate it in the same
context followed by a discussion. This will help students understand that literal
translation is not always possible and encourage them to treat collocations as fixed
expressions and not words in isolation. Bahns (1993) supports the idea of using
collocations in class that cannot be translated directly in order to stress the contrasts
in meaning rather than the similarities. Another activity that could show learners the
variations of meaning that a delexical verb may carry in a collocation could be
through collocational grids. Learners could be asked to match a delexical verb with
possible collocates in order to use them in contrast to L1 collocation that seem
accurate because of language interference ([Link], 2015).
However, Nesselhauf (2005) believes that grids are not so effective as they only
provide information on the form rather than use and meaning.

3.3Treat words in collocations as separate meaningful units

The majority of intermediate learners have been trained how to process and use
single words, for instance translating word by word, and not lexical chunks.
According to Thornbury (2002) even the slightest change in a collocation, like the
substitution of one of its components cannot be considered Standard English which
shows why vocabulary should be learnt as chunks. Therefore, students might use
collocations that they have been exposed to but they do not use them accurately
either because they do not have collocational knowledge or they overgeneralize
delexical patterns as there is not a particular rule that links words together. As a
result, non-native speakers avoid the use of collocations in contrast to native
speakers and they tend to sound unnatural in terms of register and meaning.

Solution

Lewis (2000) claims that “make and do” collocations provide a useful starting point
for introducing the idea of collocations to intermediate learners. Delexical verbs
should not be taught in isolation but as fixed expressions, whose relation is arbitrary,
in their typical context, so, as stated by McCarthy (1990:241), learners can “feel for
their meaning, register, collocations and their syntactic environment”. For instance,
learners could be given a delexical verb they have been exposed to in the text and be

Raise awareness of delexicalised verbs and their collocates to intermediate level students 5
asked in groups to find as many collocates as they can, then brainstorm a story as to
understand the variations in meaning and their use in context, and that it is not
effective to process them as single words. Also, with collocations organized by topic
(e.g. household chores, organizing a party), learners can conduct a quiz in groups
followed by a written or oral report. Another helpful activity would be to provide
learners with a text and ask them to work in groups or pairs in order to recognize
words that co-occur or a cloze activity where half of the collocation is deleted in a
text and learners are asked to guess the missing word, confirm by listening the
recording and discuss the results. These activities along with other similar ones
should not be part of a lesson plan that aims in learners only practicing collocations
they have learnt but they should have a communicative mode that will allow
learners to critically consider the function of collocations as fixed expression that
semantically differs according to context.

3.4 Quantity of collocations

There is a great number of delexical collocations that our intermediate students
might need to learn or they might meet during the learning process that it is
impossible to cover all of them in class. It can be problematic for the leaners who are
not able to memorize such a great number of lexical chunks and for the teacher in
terms of choosing the appropriate ones for the level and background of the students.

Solution

It seems to be important to raise awareness to students of a particular pattern of

delexical collocations in order to be able to transfer this knowledge when processing
L2 in written or oral form. To become competent in collocational knowledge requires
time that cannot be offered in class. Leaners should be guided on how to identify,
organize and keep records of the delexical collocations they are being exposed to, in
order to become independent leaners. Hill (1999:6) refers to students as “collectors
of lexis”. Therefore, learners could be trained to use concordance as Woorland
(2000) has pointed out the beneficial role of concordance in the learning of
collocations. This tool can help the learners to recognize collocations in various
contexts and consequently become aware of how native speakers use them.
However, one single collocation in concordance may carry various meaning in
various contexts and this could be confusing for the learners. An alternative for
autonomous learning, in case there is limited time for training to use concordance,
would be keeping vocabulary journals with mind maps or words trees so learners can
revisit and re-activate.

3.5 Difficulty recalling collocations

The relation of the parts in a collocation is not always logical or easily guessed by the
learners, therefore, according to O’Dell & MacCarthy (2008, p.6) it is difficult for
them to remember which words collocate. What characterizes fluent speakers is that

Raise awareness of delexicalised verbs and their collocates to intermediate level students 6
they do not spend time remembering and collocations are easy to recall. However,
this is not always true for EFL learners.

Solution

Learners should be exposed to a variety of a collocation through noticing and

practicing in a variety of contexts in order to help them retain and recall the
collocation they learn. Hill (2000) argues that learners can remember what they
learn by organizing a lexical netbook. Recycling activities are also appropriate for
remembering collocations, for example, board racing games in which students are
given a verb and are asked to write as many collocates as they remember. Nation
(2001) claims that the most effective way of memorizing collocations is as chunks
and by following the learning strategies for acquiring individual words. Thus,
vocabulary practice in class and autonomous learning can assist acquisition of
collocations. This practice and learning should, of course, be part of a typical context
for these collocations.

3.6 Pronunciation
L2 intermediate learners who are not able to recognize collocations often sound
unnatural as their pronunciation is affected when using them, as learners pronounce
words with equal stress and they do not link chunks together and collocations sound
odd and as single words ([Link], 2015). Hill (2000) emphasizes
that when teaching collocations, teachers should pay attention to pronunciation,
intonation and stress as well as grammar.

Solution

Choral drilling is an effective way in order to give time to students to process the fact
that collocations function as one and they should be given examples of how the
linking occurs and how the words in a collocation are stressed. A demonstration on
the board could help for classes of mixed ability leaners, as learners’ comprehension
is assisted when there are visuals. Also productive practice in class can promote
fluency and improve learners’ pronunciation as they can receive feedback instantly.

References

Raise awareness of delexicalised verbs and their collocates to intermediate level students 7
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