COLLOCATION- it doesn’t re-define or re-order what is taught , it simply expends and enriches it. Some T reserve the term for those co-occurrences of the words which they think the ss will not expect to find together. These are also the combinations the T would not expect their ss to produce int their free production of lg. It’s useful to restrict the use of the term to relations between nouns, verbs, adj, adv only because
- it provides every clear definition of coll to ss. They can easily see the type of pattern that is in the focus or attention and that is a new and different kind of focus on lg.
– it avoid overlap with traditional voca exer such as dependent prepositions eg- “depend on”
RAISING AWARNESS OF COLLOCATIONS
- the obvious way of finding out which words our ss do not expect to find together is through the mis-coll they take in their production of lg
- it’s a good idea to keep a record of the mis-coll as you correct our ss’ essays so that you can bring them into the classroom to improve and extend voca teaching
- an effective platform of raising awareness is focus on the ss’ mis-col. Firstly, restrict the examples to “noin+verb”, “adj+noun” mis-coll- they are believed to be the typical examples of miscoll.- eg. Do research/ not MAKE research
This “make/do” pattern has been recognized and given attention in traditional ESL courses and It provides a useful starting point for introducing the notion of coll to ss.
- we need to make ss aware that there Is no reason why it should be “make a decision” not DO- this is simply the way we say that in E
- it’s important to recognize that the gram transformations exercises we use in gram teaching can encourage mis-coll- eg. Sth is extremely disappointing- it’s common but ‘extreme” does not collocate with disappointment (big/bitter)
- by focusing ss’ attention on miss-coll we make them aware that learning vocal is not just leaning new words- but familiar words in new...