which are common used in intermediate – level english learners. and then, thesis concludes a range of verb – adverb collocations

Basing on the experiences of students, teachers and personal knowledge, we found that almost learners find confused when using English vocabularies.Firstly, they cannot combine and organ

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

I 1 Rationale of the study

Foreign language is a very necessary means of communication helpingpeople all over the world can exchange the information and understand thecultures, then promoting the global commerce Today, one of the most popularlanguages is English The thing is English is spoken as the mother tongue and theofficial language in many nations such as England, America, Australia, Canada,Singapore, India…In addition, it is taught as second language in a lot of countriesaround the world including Vietnam The number of English learners in Vietnam

is remarkably increasing up to now The fact is that every of them desire to useEnglish as fluently and proficiently as their first language However, languagealways is a complex aspect of education Therefore, learning and teaching aforeign language will face a lot of obstacles English learners will meet manydifficulties on their way of studying Many people will find it difficult topronounce, to listen or to comprehend an utterance Others will be confused bythe sense of a word, by the similarity in pronunciation and spelling of severalwords, etc

Basing on the experiences of students, teachers and personal knowledge,

we found that almost learners find confused when using English vocabularies.Firstly, they cannot combine and organize words together to make sense or theycombine wrongly this adjective to that noun, or this verb to that noun… Forexample, the word “blond” and “beige”, both of them denote the colour.However, English people do not say the “blond car” but they say “blond hair”and vice versa Moreover, two words may be close in meaning but yet notcollocate with the same items For instance, “do” and “make” are the same in

meaning but native speakers say “do homework” and “make a cake” So it

easily makes English learners fail when they combine words together They donot know which word can correctly combine together with other word

Secondly, to the higher English level people, they do not know in wordcombinations, which is a collocation – non-idiomatic phrase and which is an

idiomatic phrase For instance, in the two word combinations “half seas over” and “down to the sea”, which is a collocation and which is an idiom? That is the

problem raised in using collocations and word combination in lexical relatives.The problems can be explained and investigated in semantic field

Moreover, the main characteristics of lexical collocations are that theirmeanings mostly reflect the meaning of their lexical constituents and that thesequences of lexical items frequently co-occur, even though most native speakers

of English are not aware of collocations

To sum up, language are full of strong collocational pairs, thereforecollocation deserve to be a central of the vocabulary study (Lexical Relation invocabulary – Oxford Press)

I.2 Aim of study

Learning English is getting more and more popular Improvement ofEnglish in our country is very essential to everyone, especially to Englishacademic students They really need guidance help them to avoid mistake inusing English vocabulary and this thesis will play a part in supporting them

This research will help readers comprehend the verb collocation inEnglish It also helps to find out common mistakes in combining words together

It also proposes the reasons why people get confused with the collocationespecially verb collocation Moreover, it will give out some suggestions to avoidcommon confusion in using verb collocations especially the Verb – Adverbcollocations

I.3 Scope of the study

The using collocation is very different from language to language Andthere are many kinds of collocation In this case, we only study the verbcollocation in English and the common verb collocation confusions which are

met by Vietnamese who are studying English as a foreign language And wemainly discuss the Verb – Adverb collocation

The confusion met in English collocation issue is too much to cover Thisthesis only focuses on the verbs which are common used in intermediate – levelEnglish learners And then, thesis concludes a range of Verb – Adverbcollocations

I.4 Design of the study

Chapter I: Introduction

Chapter II: Literature Review

Chapter III: Method and procedures

Chapter IV: Expected findings and Discussion

Chapter V: Conclusion

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

Collocation is a term appearing in the semantics We should investigatethe semantics and

all of the relative definitions to comprehend the issue of collocation Verbcollocation is formed by a verb and another word Whereas, in English, verbphrase and idiom also consist a verb and other elements, in order to avoid themistake and to help readers not be confused by the similarity of these definitions

we give out a brief and not less clear description of semantic, collocation, idiomand verb phrase

II.1 What is semantics?

II.1.1 Definition of semantics

Semantics can be simply defined as the study of meaning This definitionnaturally leads to the question: what is meaning? Meaning is central to the study

of communication, but the question of what meaning really is difficult to answer.Even linguists do not agree among themselves as to what meaning is And whatmakes the matter even more complicated is that philosophers, psychologists, andsociologists all claim a deep interest in the study of meaning, although they differ

in their focus of interest The philosophers are interested in understanding therelations between linguistic expressions and what they refer to in the real world,and in evaluating the truth value of linguistic expressions The psychologistsfocus their interest on understanding the workings of the human mind throughlanguage This is why it is not surprising to find ten books all bearing the title

"Semantics" but talking about different things In our discussion, we will limitourselves to the study of meaning from a linguistic point of view We havemeaning of a word, a sentence, an utterance, and a discouse

II.1.2 The role of semantics in language learning

Semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, asinherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of discourse

(referred to as texts) The basic area of study is the meaning of signs, and the

study of relations between different linguistic units: homonymy, synonymy,antonym, polysemy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronym, metonymy, holonymy,exocentricity linguistic compounds A key concern is how meaning attaches tolarger chunks of text, possibly as a result of the composition from smaller units

of meaning Traditionally, semantics has included the study of connotative sense and denotative reference, truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles,

discourse analysis, and the linkage of all of these to syntax

The role of semantics is very important in learning a language Since thesemantics study meaning of words, vocabulary Although, in communication, wecan hear a sound or can see a written word we still do not understand themeaning of the sound or written word, then the communication is in failure.Study the meaning of the word is really important in learning and teaching anylanguage That is the reason why studying semantics is very necessary

II.2 What is collocations?

II.2.1 Definition

Collocation comes from two Latin words, the word cum (“with”) and theword locus (“place”) Words which form collocations are repeatedly “place with”each other; that is to say, they often co-occur within a short distance of each other

in speech and in written text (David Singleton: 2000)

The definitions of collocation appeared a lot in the book and internet Weshould study to understand exactly what collocation is

Cited from the website Wikipedia, within the area of corpus linguistics,collocation is defined as a sequence of words or terms which co-occur more oftenthan would be expected by chance

Nattinger (in Carter and McCarthy 1988:76) suggests that language isbasically a “compositional” process in which many of its words co-occurtogether forming single units of meanings He calls these as lexical phrases or

word combinations; and collocations are among other terms of lexical phrases.However, collocations themselves range from “lexico-grammatical unit” to “freecombination” The term “collocation” is actually only one among other terms forsimilar concept: word combination Nattinge and De Carrico (1992:21) definecollocations as “strings of words that seem to have certain ‘‘mutual expectancy’’,

or a greater-than-chance likelihood that they will co-occur in any text.” Inaddition to that, the following is an explanation by Benson, Benson, and Ilson(1986 in Bahns, 1993:57): In English, as in other languages, there are manyfixed, identifiable, non-idiomatic phrases and constructions Such groups ofwords are called recurrent combinations, or collocations Collocations fall into

two major groups: grammatical collocations and lexical collocations

II.2.2 Types of lexical collocations

Benson, Benson, and Ilson classify lexical collocations by structural types.According to these linguists, there are 6 types of collocations Hausmann breaksdown all lexical collocations into a ‘base’ and a ‘collocator’ (Benson, 1989:6).The base is the prominent element while the collocator depends on the base.According to Hausmann and Benson, the ‘base’ and ‘collocator’ relationship can

be shown as follows:

a Adverb + Adjective (collocator – base)

Collocation formed by an adverb and an adjective In this case, adverb plays arole as a modifier for the adjective Adverb will show the degree or status of the

adjective For example, seriously incomplete, closely acquainted, totally incorrect, extremely nervous

b Adjective + Noun (collocator - base)

Adjective functions as a modifier It gives more information about noun’s

definition Some Adjective – Noun collocations: black night, dark night,

sleepless night, starry night, long night…

d Noun + Verb (base – collocator)

In this case, noun plays as a subject For example, dog barks, volcanoes erupt, bell rings, sun shines…

e Verb + Noun (collocator – base)

A noun (base) can co-occur with a number of verbs (collocator) For example: a

base “examination” we can have a series of verb collocators: administer/conduct/ give an/take an/fail/pass + examination.

f Verb + Adverb (base - collocator) or Adverb + Verb

Adverb will modify the verb and add more information about manner, situation

For example, (wind) blow strongly, deeply influence, regularly inform, simply inform,…

II.2.3 Verb collocation

In this paper, we only pay attention to the lexical collocation and deeplyinvestigate the verb collocation because verbs and nouns in these two types ofcollocations are more mutually selective in context than other structural types Inother words, they are more contextually predictable

Verb collocation is the combination of a verb with one or more other

words of any part of speech which form multi-lexical units For example, make

mistake is a verb collocation, with a verb make and a noun mistake

It is seen that collocation is also formed by at least a verb and a differentelement but it has non-literal meaning, partially like an idiom A verb collocation(Noun + Verb, Verb + Noun, Verb + Adverb) has verb functioning as base or acollocator In type of Noun + Verb and Verb + Noun, verb plays role as a

‘collocator’ however, in Verb + Adverb type, verb is a ‘base’ This type issupposed to be looser lexical collocation

II.3 Verb collocation in distinguish with other combinations of words like phrasal verb and idiom

II.3.1 What is idiom?

An idiom is a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is

different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words, which can makeidioms hard for ESL (English as the Second Language) students and learners to

http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idiom)

(Cited from the website: schools.pasoschools.org/education/components) aphrase or expression that means something different from what the wordsactually say An idiom is usually understandable to a particular group of people

(e.g using “over his head” for “doesn’t understand”)

For example, "to roll out the red carpet" is to extravagantly welcome a guest; no red carpet is needed “Lose your shirt” if someone loses their shirt, they

lose all their money through a bad investment, gambling, etc

II.3.2 What is a phrasal verb?

A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and

an adverb, or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition, any of which are part

of the syntax of the sentence, and so are a complete semantic unit Sentences,however, may contain direct and indirect objects in addition to the phrasal verb.Phrasal verbs are particularly frequent in the English language A phrasal verboften has a meaning which is different from the original verb

(Cited from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb)

For instance, we have phrasal verbs: make up, pass away (die), look up (find the meaning of a word in the dictionary), put on clothes, send something off (post something), set off (leave on a journey), give up (stop trying to do something).

II.3.3.The difference between the other word combinations like phrasal verb, idiom and verb collocation

However, idiom, phrasal verb and collocation are form by the combination

of words, they have difference Verb collocation has literal meaning and we can

look up in the dictionary, e.g “go to school”, “visit museum” we can look up meaning of each word: go, to, visit, museum then we would have the meaning of

the phrase It is unlike idiom, we cannot understand meaning of an idiom by

looking up each word in dictionary For example, sell down the river means betray someone’s trust but not sell something to somebody in the river With

phrasal verb, we can look them up in dictionary to get their meaning, and it is

fixed For example, set off: it is impossible to look up each word then combine their meaning together In the dictionary, we can find ‘set off’ means leave on a journey.

CHAPTER III METHOD AND PROCEDURES III.1 Survey

In the research, we have conducted a survey which investigates thelanguage competence of the 25 first - year students and 25 second – year students

in English Faculty of Hanoi University of Education in mastering the knowledge

of collocation Most of them have learned English for 8 or 9 years The surveyasks students some questions about collocation knowledge and asks them to do asurvey questionnaire related to the collocation

The 50 – question survey questionnaire has 2 parts:

 Part A:10 questions which require students to realize collocation andidiom

 Part B: 40 questions to check the verb collocation competence of students.Among those 40 questions:

 Part I: 20 questions of Verb – Adverb collocation

 Part II: 20 questions of Verb – Noun, Noun – Verbcollocation

The survey would firstly show us how students can distinguish a collocation and

an idiom Secondly, students can have a chance to check their verb collocationknowledge And finally, the survey tries to find out the problem confusing ourstudents

The result of the survey:

Part A: Collocation and Idiom

In the 50 investigated students, about 33 of the candidates (66%) cannotdistinguish difference between the collocation and idiom? And the rest (34%)vaguely distinguish the difference between them, almost of them are senior Noone can show enough evidence for the difference between collocation and idiom

The table below shows the result of question: can you point out the differencebetween idiom and verb collocation

Students Yes Yes but not sure No

(Table 1)

Part B: Verb collocation

The result of the survey shows that no one can answer total 40 questions of Part

B in survey questionnaire 14 students (28%) correctly answer from 1 – 20questions 27 students (54%) correctly answer 20-30 questions 9 students (18%)correctly answer 30 – 40 questions We can see the result shown in the pie chartbelow:

1-20 questions 20-30 questions 30-40 questions

* However, there is difference of result between two kinds of interviewedstudents, first year and second year students

To the first year students, they almost do not know the theoretical meaning of

collocation but they understand the way to do the task In these 25 freshmen,

only 16 students can correctly answer from 20 to 30 questions (64%); 8 studentshave 10 to 20 correct answers (32%); and 1 students have fewer than 10 correctanswers (4%)

Pie chart 1

To the 25 second year students, the numbers have changed 5 students have from

1 to 20 correct answers (20%), 11 students have from 20 – 30 correct answers(44%), and 9 students answer exactly from 30 to 36 students (36%) No one cananswer correctly all of 40 sentences

We also have a bar chart for both results of the first and the second year students

10-20 C.A

20-30 C.A

30-40 C.A

1st year student 2nd year student

As we can see, the first year students answer fewer correct answers than thesecond year students The reason is that second – year students have moreexperience and they have more chance to meet collocation in materials,magazine…

With more details, we have the table of result of the first year students and thesecond year students and their answers when they do part 1 and part 2 of thesurvey questionnaire The table below will show the detailed result of number ofstudents who have correct answers for each question

Abbreviation: SS: interviewed students have correct answer; Ss1: the first yearstudents; Ss2: the second year students;

Bar chart 1

From the figures of the table 1, we have following result:

- Part I: students of first year have averagely 9.02/20 correct answers; students ofthe second year have averagely 13.16 correct answers

- Part II: first year students have averagely 11.5/20 correct answers; second yearstudents have averagely 17.3 correct answers

Result will be illustrated by the chart below Then we can compare the resulteasier

- decision basing on their feeling and guess: 8 students choose the optionrandomly, accounting for 16%

- decision basing mainly on experience and background knowledge andlittle feeling and guess: this choice made up 28% (with 14 students)

- decision basing mainly on feeling and guess and little experience andbackground knowledge: this is the choice of majority 46% (23 students)

Bar chart 2

experience &

background knowledge feeling & guess

exp & B.K > feeling & guess

exp & B.K < feeling & guess

Pie chart 2

Note:

- exp& B.K > feeling & guess: students choose option basing on their

experience and background knowledge rather than basing on feeling andguess

- exp& B.K > feeling & guess : students choose option basing on their

feeling and guess rather than basing on their experience and backgroundknowledge

III.2 Discussion with instructor and friends

During the time the thesis has been made, our supervisor and my friendshave helped a lot to perfect this paper They have given valuable contributionsand precious advice to me Especially, my supervisor has carefully and patientlyinstructed me to complete my thesis

III.3 Experience from personal background knowledge

I myself sometimes find it difficult to pick up one word in a series ofsynonyms to complete a sentence I realize that meet the problem caused bycollocation So we can easily approach the issues of confusion in English

collocation The issue is pretty serious when we make an academic speech orwriting Therefore, studying the collocation is very necessary

III.4 References from book and internet

The sources of material from internet is really helpful to make this thesis

is a complete paper The e-book downloaded from internet played a certain role

in the data of the graduation thesis

CHAPTER IV EXPECTED FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

IV.1 Common confusions in using verb collocation

IV.1.1 Wrong combination

From the survey, the rate of examined students answering the questioncompletely is not high We can see that students commonly confused when they

have to choose 2 or more words together For example, they have combine give with someone a favour, however, the correct answer is do someone a favour (in sentence 12) In the sentence 2, Janet inhaled … when she saw him There are 11

students answer correctly 10 % choose weakly, 43% choose patiently, 22% choose deeply, 25% choose intensely Then, with this sentence, there is only 22%

have correct answer In the sentence 15, 25/50 students combined correctly

censored with heavily 23/25 students choose deeply.

On average, the percentage of wrong combination is about 53% Theresult also shows that students can choose the correct answer with the familiar

verbs like do and make All of them choose making a sound in sentence 23.

IV.1.2 Confusion of collocation with idiom

It is really necessary to have a clear distinction between idiom and verbcollocation The issue is that in some cases an idiom and a collocation formed by

a verb - noun, however, the way to comprehend idiom and collocation is

completely different The combination “like a lot” is a collocation, but “like a hawk” that mean if you watch something or someone like a hawk, you observe very closely and carefully

There are a lot of students can not distinguish idiom and collocation as we

can see in the table 1 in III.1 Although many think that big tree is a collocation,

in fact it is an idiom to indicate a rich boss In contrast, stream of abuse is simply

is a collocation unlike 28 students’ thought

VI.1.3 Difficulty with Verb – Adverb collocations

For it is clearly illustrated in the table 1 and bar chart 2 in III.1 that both

students of the first year and the second year can do part II much better than inPart I Part II checks students the competence of using Verb – Noun collocationswhile part I is about the Verb – Adv collocations Students averagely cancombine correctly over 10 Verb – Adverb collocations and approximately 16Noun – Verb and Verb – Noun collocations Generally, we can make aconclusion that students find more difficulties with the Verb – Adverbcollocations than that with Verb – Noun or Noun – Verb

IV.2 Reasons leading to the confusion

IV.2.1 Native language interference

In Vietnamese, we also have collocation! For example, Vietnamese say:rua tay, rua mat, giat quan ao…but in native English speaker say: wash hand,wash clothes, but clean the face So the first reason leading Vietnamese learners

to the confusion that is the translation from the local language to the targetlanguage And the collocation in each country is very different so mistake inusing collocation is not avoidable About ắ investigated students say that whenmeet the trouble with the collocation they tend to transfer from their nativelanguage to target language That means they use their mother tongue knowledge

background to apply to do the task In the sentence 17 Her family seems to…

afford to pay the expensive furniture There are 10 students choose difficultly.

Perhaps, they translate the sentence and options into Vietnamese then decidingthe answer The similar situation happens in sentence 5 when students combine

apologize with faithfully.

IV.2.2 Lack of collocation competence

Firstly, lack of collocational competence is noticeable when non-nativespeakers of English need productive language knowledge Students either useonly the limited number of lexical collocations they know or under the influence

of their first language “create” unnatural and farfetched collocations Most

intermediate and advanced students know such common collocations as have a quarrel, make a decision, and take the responsibility, but few know the similar collocations like pick/provoke/start a quarrel, arrive at/reach/take (BrE) a decision, and assume/bear/shoulder/undertake the responsibility Collocation

familiarity of English learners lags far behind their passive language knowledge.One reason for this is that a large number of ‘verb + noun’ collocations are

“arbitrary and non-predictable” For example one can say: commit a crime and perpetrate a crime, commit a fraud and perpetrate a fraud However, one can only say commit suicide, not perpetrate suicide; commit a sin, not perpetrate a sin One can say hold a funeral, but not hold a burial Likewise, make an estimate is frequently used, but not make estimation (Benson, 1986a:258-59).

Secondly, we can easily see in the bar chart and the table 2 in III.1, the

rate of second year students who have more correct answers is bigger than that ofthe first year students In process of survey, senior students would have morecorrect decisions So it is clear that with more time of studying English, studentscan have a better knowledge background of collocation because they practicedmuch more To Verb – Adverb collocation, there are a lot of adverbs which aresynonym but they sometimes can not collocate with one verb For example, in

sentence 12, The government has ….announced that the economy would be

stimulated Two adverbs officially and legitimately are synonyms in some extend, however, in this case we use officially.

Thirdly, pie chart 2 in III.1 also shows that almost students (46%) decide

their options basing on both of their feeling and their experience and knowledgebackground There are only 10% of students saying that they mainly use theirknowledge background and experience to finish the questionnaire

In short, competence of using Verb- Adverb collocation and collocation ingeneral is still not good among our students Students need to be exposed bymore and more collocations

IV.2.3 Frequency of Verb collocation appearance in written materials

Verb collocations appeared a lot in every oral speech and writtenmaterials Nevertheless, Verb – Noun collocation are used many times thanVerb- Adverb collocations in course books Verb – Collocations are formallytaught in syllabus of secondary and high school but Verb – Adverb collocationsare not So that students find Verb – Adverb collocation more difficult isobviously understood

IV.3 Suggestions to avoid the confusion of some Verb – Adverb collocations

From the rationale and findings in Chapter IV, thesis will give out some

suggestions of verb collocation so that learners can remember and can combinewords together Then they can have better English to communicate and studyfurther the language

Here, we will introduce a limited number of verbs which appeared in thesurvey together with their adverb collocators Moreover, we also provide somecommon used Verbs and their Adverb collocators To give readers the mostconvenience, the verbs will be arranged in the order of the survey Moreover, weintroduce their synonyms (in some extend) together with their collocators Thatwill help to avoid confusion that some students sometimes use adverb collocators

a word they know to collocate with another word when those 2 words aresynonym The suggestion will only perform the Verb – Adverb collocation.Especially, that helps learners much in creating more attractive and morepersuasive writing

Note:

- Bold and underlined word is verb

- Bold word is adverb

- Italic word is example

- Bold, italic is the synonym (or antonym) with its adverb collocators

The thing is the number of second year students having correct combination

doubles that of first year students Both of them almost choose the strongly and deeply However, correct answer is heavily

Heavily: the verb censor can locate with heavily to express a strong feeling of

someone

* CUT

1 with a knife/scissors, etc

a thick Make sure you cut the bread nice and thick./ thinly/ cleanly Cut the

stem cleanly, just beneath a leaf joint Used to describe state of cutting something

b easily Sandstone cuts easily

crossways, lengthways Cut the courgette in half lengthways.

2 reduce something

considerably, drastically, significantly His career was cut short by injury

2 INHALE

From table 2, it is clear that there are some students have correct combination,

11/ 50 students (22%) The number of correct answer is not high because inhale

is not familiar with many students

Other Verb – Adverb collocations of inhale

a deeply or sharply Janet inhaled sharply when she saw him

b slowly

* BREATHE

1.air/breath

a fast, quickly, rapidly when someone breathe so many times in a minutes we

use these adverbs to describe He rapidly breathed when he finished male

100-meter long

b slowly /deeply / shallowly :

c hard, heavily : lost much power after doing something people breath hard or

heavily They were both breathing hard from the steep climb

d gently / easily, steadily She was beginning to breathe more easily.

e normally, properly: breathe in a normal way like everyone else I can't

breathe properly?I'm gasping for air!

f raggedly He was breathing raggedly, mouth open

2 say quietly

huskily, softly used to describe sound is soft and slight as a breath ‘I love you, ’

she breathed softly

3 INJURE

Sentence 3 This incident could …injure the company's reputation.

Option 1st year students 2nd year students

In this sentence, correct answer seriously seems to be easier to students 68% of

1st year students and 84% of 2nd year students answer correctly

Other Verb – Adverb collocations of injure

1 harm yourself/sb physically

a badly, seriously, severely, slightly | accidentally insurance to cover you in

case one of your employees accidentally injures someone

b deliberately = on purpose

2 damage sb's reputation, pride, etc

seriously, severely This incident could seriously injure the company's

reputation.

*HARM

a seriously Misusing drugs in pregnancy can seriously harm your baby

b deliberately intend to harm someone not accidentally Mike deliberately harm

his friend’s dog.

c physically/spiritually harm someone’s body or sensation or spirit He always

harms her spiritually that makes her crazy.

* DAMAGE

a badly, seriously, severely To describe a serious damage we use these adverbs

The building was badly damaged by fire

b slightly there is a damage but a small and not serious

c irreparably, permanently She may have damaged her health irreparably

* HURT

1 cause pain/injury

a badly, seriously the state of the hurt someone has to suffer She fell and her ankle hurt her leg quite badly No one was seriously hurt in the accident >< slightly hurt but not too seriously My brother fell down on the ground but he

slightly hurt.

2 be/feel painful

badly, a lot, really My ankle still hurts quite badly Does it hurt a lot? Ouch! It really hurts.>< slightly

3 upset some body

badly, deeply, really, terribly hurt others in a strong way Her remarks hurt him

deeply They never told me why and that really hurt.

4 INFLATE

Sentence 4 The balloon was … inflated with hydrogen

Answer 1st year students 2nd year students

There is 34% students have correct choice This verb is also consideredunfamiliar to our students

Fully/ partially are the adverbs which can collocate with inflate

5 APOLOGIZE

To sentence 5 They apologized him humbly but he still denied them.

Answer 1st year students 2nd year students

caused by the interference of native language

Other Verb – Adverb collocations of apologize

a sincerely / profusely: show the nature of apology action with positive

meaning He apologized profusely for the damage he had caused

b humbly also expresses the nature of the apology action but it brings a negative

meaning That is when you say apology to someone but in fact, you do not think

you have mistake and have to apologize I do apologize most humbly.

c.publicly: state of apology broadly and wildly, with the aim of letting everyone

know that apology Milk Company publicly apologized all of the customers.

6 DECORATE

62% (31 students) has correct answer

Other Verb – Adverb collocations of decorate:

1.make sth attractive