UNIT 2: FINDING, RECORDING AND LEARNING COLLOCATIONS
A. Finding collocations
There are two main ways in which you can find collocations:
- You can train yourself to notice them whenever you read or listen to anything in English. Look at the collocations that are worth learning from this short text in English:
After giving Mark a lift to the airport, Cathy made her way home. What an exciting life he led! At times Cathy felt desperately jealous of him. She spent her time doing little more than taking care of him and the children. Now her sister was getting divorced and would doubtless be making demands on her too. Cathy had promised to give her sister a call as soon as she got home but she decided to run herself a bath first. She had a sharp pain in her side and hoped that a hot bath might ease the pain.
THẦY ANH'S TIP:
Hãy tập thói quen ghi chú bất cứ kết hợp từ hay nào mà bạn gặp trong bất kỳ tài liệu tiếng Anh nào bạn đọc.
- You can find them in any good learner's dictionary.
For example, if you look up the word sharp you will find some of these collocations:
- a sharp pain
- a sharp bend/turn
- a sharp contrast/difference/distinction
- a sharp rise/increase/drop
THẦY ANH'S TIP:
Khi bạn tra tìm một từ mới, hãy tập thói quen ghi chú nó trong một số cách kết hợp từ khác nhau.
B. Recording collocations
The best way to record a collocation is in a phrase or a sentence showing how it is used. Highlight the collocation by underlining it or by using a highlighting pen.
For example:
- I don't have access to that kind of secret information.
- Or: Jim gave me a very useful piece of advice.
C. Learning collocations
Learning collocations is not so different from learning any vocabulary item. The key things are to:
- Regularly revise what you want to learn.
- Practise using what you want to learn in contexts that are meaningful for you personally.
- Learn collocations in groups to help you fix them in your memory. You might group together collocations relating to the same topic. Or you might group collocations based on the same word, for example:
- I must find a way to help him.
- Can you find your way back to my house?
- I learnt the hard way that Jack can't be trusted.
- Please tell me if I'm getting in your way.
- You must give way to traffic from the left.
- I've tried every possible way to get him to change his mind.