THE ESSENCE OF COLLOCATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH WRITING

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST GRADUATE DEPARTMENT THE ESSENCE OF COLLOCATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH WRITING SUBJECT SEMANTICS (Final Assignment) Name Dương Thị Tâm Class K18 English C Lecturer Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm Deadline of submission 28th June 2010 HANOI–JUNE 2010 The Essence of Collocations and its Implications for Teaching English Writing Table of content Page PART 1 INTRODUCTION 2 1 1 Rationale.

POST GRADUATE DEPARTMENT

THE ESSENCE OF COLLOCATION AND ITS

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH WRITING

SUBJECT: SEMANTICS (Final Assignment)

Name: Dương Thị Tâm Class: K18-English C Lecturer: Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm Deadline of submission: 28 th June 2010

HANOI–JUNE 2010

The Essence of Collocations and its Implications

for Teaching English Writing

Table of content

Page

1.1 Rationale of the study 2 1.2 Scope of the study 2

1.3 Method of the study 2

1.4 Research questions 2

2.1 Definitions of collocations 3

2.2 Classification of collocations 3 2.3 General characteristics of collocations 5

2.4 Relationship between collocations and writing 6

PART 3: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale of the study

Collocational deficiency is a common phenomenon in learner English Language learners often fail to choose the correct combination of two or more words due to their unawareness of collocational properties They are apt to adopt lexical simplification strategies such as using a synonymous or mother tongue influenced expressions It is noticeable that most learners are not very good at applying collocation in writing because they do not have full understanding of collocation and its importance Therefore, it is essential that we should have an insight into the characteristics of collocations in order to use and apply it accurately and properly in writing

I would like to conduct a review to focus on the nature of collocations and its implications for teaching English writing in the classroom

1.2 Scope of the study

This is a small study to concentrate on the nature of collocations and some suggestions to teach writing in classroom

1.3 Method of the study

The study is carried out based on the following steps:

Seek, collect and

select materials

Analyze documents

Synthesize documents

Generate conclusion/implication

s

1.4 Research questions

I intend to conduct this study with two research questions bearing in minds:

1) What are collocations?

2) What are the suggestions of collocations could be proposed for English writing teaching?

PART 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Definition of collocations

In fact, there seems to be no consensus as to the exact definition of collocations which widely varied from one linguist to another depending on one’s orientation and the paradigm he subscribed to Nevertheless, one factor to these definitions is the explicit statement of the relationship between one lexeme and another and how they combine to form a collocation

The term was first used by Firth (1951) To him, ‘collocation is the company

the words keep together’

Leech gives out a more comprehensive definition of collocation He presents

that collocative meaning consists of the association of a word acquire on account of

the meaning of words which tend to occur in its environment

According to Benson, ‘In English as in other language there are may fixed,

identifiable, non-idiomatic phrases and constructions Such groups of words are called recurrent combinations, fixed combinations or collocations’ He illustrates

the examples of murder and its collocations: Commit, investigate, describe and

witness It is immediately recognized that the verb ‘to commit’ is more closely

associated with murder than the three other verbs To commit a murder is far more

fixed collocation than those with the other three verbs

Jackson states that ‘collocation refers to the combination of words that have

a certain mutual expectancy The combination is not a fixed expression but there is

a greater chance than the likelihood that the words will co-occur.’

In brief, as long as we are aware of what collocations are, we will be likely

to have better attention to how to use them properly in writing

2.2 Classification of collocations (based on the grammatical patterns)

 Adj + N

e.g bright/ harsh/ intense/ strong light

gentle/ relaxing/ soothing massage draft/ founding/ environmental charter deep/ gaping/ huge chasm

 Quantifier + N

e.g a beam/ ray of light

a chunk/ slice/ lump of cheese

a bar/ slab of chocolate

 V+ N

e.g cast/ emit/ give/ provide/ shed light

join in/ sing chorus smoke/ draw on/ pull on cigarettes

 N+V

e.g light gleams/ glows/shines

banner flutters/ waves/ flies

 N+ N

e.g a light source

bankruptcy order/ proceedings

 Pre + N

e.g by the light of the moon

in a/ the bar into the/ between/ with agreement

 N + Pre

e.g the light from the window

battle against/ for/ between

 V + Adv

e.g choose carefully

beam broadly/ positively/ happily beg practically/ humbly/ silently

 V + V

e.g be free to choose

 V + Pre

e.g choose between two things

beg for/ from blame for/ on

 V + Adj

e.g make/ keep/ declare something safe

be/ seem/ consider sth blasphemous be/ seem/ sound breezy

 Adv + Adj

e.g perfectly/ not entirely/ environmentally safe

absolutely/ totally/ utterly brilliant slightly/ rather/ uniformly brown

 Adj + Pre

e.g Safe from attack

brown from/ over/ across your

* Notes: N: noun; V: verb; Adj: Adjective; Adv: Adverb; Pre: Preposition;

2.3 General characteristics of collocations

Collocations can be described in a number of ways One way of thinking

about them is in terms of "fixedness" - in other words, the degree to which you can

vary the basic pattern and still have a collocation We can only define the fixedness

or unfixedness of collocations in terms of a continuum - all we can say is that some are more fixed than others but we can't make a neat dividing line between "fixed" and "unfixed"

A very fixed collocation is one in which the pattern has very few expected

variations So, for example, the phrase "kick the bucket" is an idiom, a relatively fixed collocation meaning "to die" While we could substitute nouns and verbs in this sentence and get other meaningful sentences (e.g "kick the door", "lift the bucket"), the word combinations in these other sentences are no longer cohesive patterns in the way that "kick the bucket" is Like "kick the bucket", most collocations which are very fixed form a particular expected meaning rather than a structure

Less fixed collocations are often more structural - common patterns that help

structure a sentence but don't carry as much specific meaning by themselves For example a less fixed collocation might be something like:

It's not important to be able to classify collocations according to their exact degree of fixedness However, it probably is helpful to know that some collocations are more fixed than others: if you recognize a collocation as very fixed, you can learn it as one item; if you recognize it as less fixed, you understand that there's a pattern there that you can use to build a collection of useful related phrases

In conclusion, it is also helpful to pay attention to how collocations relate to

the context around them In some cases, especially with structures and longer phrases, the use of a collocation depends very heavily on the situation in which it's used So for example, you probably shouldn't greet the president of the company you work for by saying, "What's up?" On the other hand, other collocations, like

"get in a car" you can use almost anywhere

2.4 Relationship between collocations and writing

Collocations have only begun to receive substantial attention In the field of

teaching writing, the need for more research on collocations is clear More importantly, the correlation between the use of lexical collocations and learners’ of English writing fluency is far from completely understood However, we might see that a student equipped with good understanding of collocation and form the habit

of applying collocation into their writing will have stronger language competence

PART 3: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR ENGLISH

WRITING TEACHING

Needless to say, by mastering the rule of collocation and its close relationship with writing, teachers should follow some main points to raise the students’ awareness to write up a better and more persuasive writing

Firstly, acquisition of skills related to the correct use of collocations can be

hastened “as a result of explicit instruction or consciousness-raising” (Ellis, 1997).

Therefore, the most useful role for the teacher is to engage in consciousness-raising

in encouraging learners to notice the correct use of collocations In other words, consciousness of learners regarding the importance of collocations should be raised during the process of acquiring the skills to use collocations

Secondly, what non-English teachers need most in their classes is

appropriate workbooks that contain a selection of collocations geared to the specific difficulties of learners with a particular mother tongue background Such teaching materials should allow the teachers to actually teach collocations, thus shortening the long and laborious process of acquiring collocational competence through years

of studying, reading, and observing the language

Thirdly, two factors regarding the characteristics of collocations should be

given more attention One factor is the congruity and incongruity between the L1 and the L2 If teachers analyzed the incongruity between the languages, the teaching and acquisition of collocations would likely be conducted more effectively The other factor is a restriction in the scope That is, even though explaining the combinations of collocations is very difficult, many conventional collocations must

be remembered in their original state

Fourthly, the teaching of collocations should be considered equally

important as the teaching and understanding of verbs The acquisition of L2 verbs is

a most perplexing problem because the meaning of L2 verbs does not necessarily have an equivalent connotation as those in L1 according to their semantic context

Finally, we should not learn collocations by intensive reading only;

extensive reading should also be given priority Learners should be involved in extensive reading of works of literature written in English, thereby exposing them to

a massive amount of vocabulary and new collocations priority Learners should be involved in extensive reading of works of literature written in English, thereby exposing them to a massive amount of vocabulary and new collocations

PART 4: CONCLUSION

Our brain tends to store language in chunks, rather than individual words Thus, when we speak or write, it is more efficient for us to remember and use phrases as chunks rather than constructing them one word at a time This increased efficiency promotes fluency

The two main research questions have been answered to some extents We

see that when it comes to writing, students are expected to show their strong language competence and one way to judge is by looking at their appropriate

application of collocations Therefore, teachers should always highlight the key

features as well as the importance of collocation and put them in into practice to build students’ the capacity of using collocation in writing

REFERENCES

1 Benson, M., Bense, E and Lisons, R The B.B.I Combinatory of English,

Amterdams, Benjamin, 1986

2 Ellis, N C 1997 Vocabulary acquisition: Word structure, collocation,

word-class, and meaning In: N Schmitt & M McCarthy, (Eds.),

Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press

3 Jackson, Howard, Words and their meanings, p.99, London, Longman, 1988

4 J.R Firth, “Modes of meaning” in “Papers in Linguistics”, London, Oxford

University Press, 1951

5 Leech, Geoffrrey, Semantics, London, Penguin, 1974

6 Moira R , Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English, Oxford

University Press, 2007