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Teaching Collocations Effectively

The document discusses 10 different tasks for teaching collocations to students. It explains that collocations are important for students to learn but are often used incorrectly without instruction. The tasks provide ways to raise students' awareness of collocations, organize them into semantic groups, and practice using them through activities involving finding intruders, matching collocation halves, using a thesaurus, reconstructing texts, and listening exercises. The goal is to help improve students' fluency and accuracy with collocations.

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Gábor Szekeres
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548 views15 pages

Teaching Collocations Effectively

The document discusses 10 different tasks for teaching collocations to students. It explains that collocations are important for students to learn but are often used incorrectly without instruction. The tasks provide ways to raise students' awareness of collocations, organize them into semantic groups, and practice using them through activities involving finding intruders, matching collocation halves, using a thesaurus, reconstructing texts, and listening exercises. The goal is to help improve students' fluency and accuracy with collocations.

Uploaded by

Gábor Szekeres
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Teaching Collocations

by: Gbor Hovnyi and Gbor Szekeres

Why is it important?
Words do not appear in isolation.
Without instruction students tend to use
them incorrectly.
Typical mistakes: overuse, underuse.
Proper knowledge of collocations improves
fluency and accuracy.

How to teach them


Raising awareness.
Organization in semantic groups.
Selecting tasks which concentrate on
collocations.
Variation in tasks.

Task 1: Find the intruder


example: EFFORT make do increase resist
simple multiple-choice type task
Ideally used together with reading or writing
tasks.

Post-it Warmers
Collocations are split into two halves and
then given to students.
Mingling activity.
Useful to revise known collocations.
Ideal to liven up a group.

Dictionary entry
Used for introducing new vocabulary.
Students get to know target language
dictionary entries.
Students practice giving target language
explanations.

Task 4: Synonym organiser


Blueprints when to use which synonym
Giving a text with synonyms to the students
What is the difference in meaning between glance and glimpse?

Giving three incomplete sentences to each


synonymous word which they have to fill out
(most frequent)

Task 5: Do/Make distinction


Repetition to listening tasks
Rephrasing exercise
example:
Do the dishes clean the dishes or plates
Make a scene / ruckus to create fuss or
drama

Task 6: Collocations Scavenger Hunt


Make a chart listing the common types of
collocations
You can also include a column on the chart for
point values of each collocation one point for
each collocation found (or giving more points
for more difficult collocations)
example: N + N, V + N, Adj + N, Adv + Adj
collocations

Task 7: Creating collocations using a


Thesaurus
Supply the students with a list of collocations
Try to select one that would produce the most
variations
Each pair/group should choose a different
collocation
Give them a thesaurus

Task 7: Creating collocations using a


Thesaurus
example:
Main Entry:

message

Part of Speech:

noun

Definition:

communication, often written

Synonyms:

bulletin, cannonball, communiqu, directive,


dispatch, dope, earful, epistle, information,
intelligence, intimation, letter, memo,
memorandum, missive, news, note, notice, paper,
report, tidings, wire, word

Task 8: Collocate search


Give the students a list of keywords found in
the text and ask them to find the words that go
with them
Once all the collocations have been found, you
could ask the students to classify them
according to type (e.g., Verb + Noun, Adj. +
Noun, etc.)

Task 9: Reconstructing the text


All you need are one or two relatively short
texts
1 text work individually to select the ten most
important collocations in the text
- compare lists of collocations with a partner
and if there are differences
- reconstruct the text in writing with their
partner

Task 10: Listening for collocations


Take any recording that you have a tape script
for (coursebooks)
Divide the tape script up so that you will have a
piece of the tape script for each group in the
class
Make a photocopy of the tape script and cut it
up and give each group one section

Task 10: Listening for collocations


Underline a certain number of collocations
Check
Write form and meaning clues for their
collocations and list them in order that they
appear in the tape script
example: the collocation was take the
subway, the form and meaning clue might be:
V + N: use an underground train

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