COLLOCATION

COLLOCATION

What is collocation?

Collocation refers to a group of two or more words that usually go together. A good way to think of collocation is to look at the word collocation. Co - meaning together - location - meaning place. Collocation are words that are located together. A good answer to "What is collocation?" is: Collocation is a group of two or more words that like to hang out together. Here are some examples of common collocations that you might know:

make tea - I made a cup of tea for lunch.
do homework - I did all of my homework yesterday.

so (Make and Do)  A Good Starting Place for Collocation

Why Do Words Collocate?

There is often no reason for a collocation. People just put certain words together more often than they put other words together. In fact, the use of collocations has become popular in English and language teaching because of corpus linguistics. Corpus linguistics study huge volumes of data of spoken and written English to come up with statistics on how often people use certain words and word combinations. Through this study, corpus linguistics has been able to define what are strong and weak collocations.

Strong Collocations 

 Strong Collocations refer to words that almost always go together. It's possible that people might understand you if you don't use a strong collocation. However, if you do not use a strong collocation it will sound funny to native speakers. Let's return to our example of 'make' and 'do'. If you say:

I did a cup of coffee.

native speakers will understand that you mean:

I made a cup of coffee.

Correct use of strong collocations shows an excellent command of the English language, and can certainly help impress native speakers of your ability to speak English well. Of course, if you are speaking to other non-native speakers the ability to use collocations correctly all the time becomes less important. That doesn't mean that correct collocation use is not important, it's just not AS important as something like correct tense. Image for a moment that you are speaking about a future meeting:

Our meeting was on Friday at four o'clock.
I've done an appointment at four o'clock for the meeting room on Friday.

In both of these sentences, there are mistakes. However, in the first sentence instead of using a future tense, the past tense is used. If you want your colleagues to come to the meeting, this mistake is very serious and will lead to no one coming to the meeting.

In the second sentence 'do an appointment' is a misuse of a strong collocation. However, the meaning is clear: You have scheduled a room at four o'clock. In this case, a mistake in collocations is not nearly as important as a mistake in tense usage.

Here are examples of strong collocations that you might not be familiar with:

high earnings (not big earnings)
long-range planning (not long-time planning)
urban guerrilla (not city guerrilla)

More information, lists and learning materials on Strong Collocations

Why learn collocations?

•  Learning collocations is important because you begin to learn words in larger groups or 'chunks' of language. Putting together these chunks of language leads to more fluent English.
•  Your language will be more natural and more easily understood.
• You will have alternative and richer ways of expressing yourself.
• It is easier for our brains to remember and use language in chunks or blocks rather than as single words.

how to learn collocations

• Be aware of collocations, and try to recognize them when you see or hear them.
• Treat collocations as single blocks of language. Think of them as individual blocks or chunks, and learn strongly support, not strongly + support.
• When you learn a new word, write down other words that collocate with it (remember rightly, remember distinctly, remember vaguely, remember vividly).
• Read as much as possible. Reading is an excellent way to learn vocabulary and collocations in context and naturally.
• Revise what you learn regularly. Practise using new collocations in context as soon as possible after learning them.
• Learn collocations in groups that work for you. You could learn them by topic (time, number, weather, money, family) or by a particular word (take action, take a chance, take an exam).
• You can find information on collocations in any good learner's dictionary. And you can also find specialized dictionaries of collocations

Types of collocation

There are several different types of collocation made from combinations of verb, noun, adjective etc. Some of the most common types are:

• adverb + adjective: completely satisfied (NOT downright satisfied)
• adjective + noun: excruciating pain (NOT excruciating joy)
• noun + noun: a surge of anger (NOT a rush of anger)
• noun + verb: lions roar (NOT lions shout)
• verb + noun: commit suicide (NOT undertake suicide)
• verb + expression with preposition: burst into tears (NOT blow up in tears)
• verb + adverb: wave frantically (NOT wave feverishl 

conclusion

A collocation is made up of two or more words that are commonly used together in English. Thnk of collocations as words that usually go together. There are different kinds of collocations in English. Strong collocations are word pairings that are expected to come together. Good collocation examples of this type of word pairing are combinations with 'make' and 'do'. You make a cup of tea, but do your homework. Collocations are very common in business settings when certain nouns are routinely combined with certain verbs or adjectives.

reference

http://esl.about.com/od/intermediate-collocations/f/What-Is-Collocation.htm

https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/collocations.htm

http://esl.about.com/od/intermediate-collocations/f/What-Is-Collocation.htm