VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES FINAL ASSIGNMENT OF SEMANTICS COLLOCATIONS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS IN TEACHING ENGLISH Instructor Dr Ha Cam Tam Trainee Duong Thi Nhan Group K18 C Ha Noi, June 2010 1 Introduction Communicative competence in learning English has become the primary concerns and the requisite of learning English for decades One of many factors affecting this is lexica.
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES FINAL ASSIGNMENT OF SEMANTICS COLLOCATIONS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS IN TEACHING ENGLISH Instructor: Dr Ha Cam Tam Trainee: Duong Thi Nhan Group : K18-C Ha Noi, June 2010 Introduction Communicative competence in learning English has become the primary concerns and the requisite of learning English for decades One of many factors affecting this is lexical collocations which were referred to by several researchers such as Brown (1974), Nattinger (1980), Channel (1981),… They pointed out the benefits of learning collocations such as increasing learners’ language competence, being toward native-like fluency Teaching and learning English is not only a long and difficult period, but some collocational knowledge is also essential for EFL learners In fact,many learners often make a lot of mistakes during their language acquisition Previous studies indicated that EFL learners made collocational errors in their writing and speaking for lack of collocational competence in English For example, learners often use “make exercises” instead of “do exercises” because they mistake between “make” and “do” Thus, several researchers proposed that teachers should increase EFL learners’ collocational knowledge through raising EFL learners’ awareness of collocations Therefore, In order to know more about collocations and help learners avoid some errors during their learning periods, this article is aimed to review some knowledge relating to collocations, some difficulties of learning collocations as well as give out some implications for learning and teaching English Development 2.1 Definitions of collocations According to Longman Advanced American Dictionary, collocation is the way in which some words are often used together A collocation is a particular combination of words used in this way: "Commit a crime" is a typical collocation in English In order to define lexical collocations, Patesan (1997) showed that “lexical collocations are word associations where one word recurrently co-occurs with one or more other words as the only or one of few possible lexical choices.” As Sinclair (1991) pointed out, it is obvious that words not appear at random in texts, and people could not produce natural sentences simply by operating in the principle of grammar Rather, words seem to be selected in pairs or groups and language users are considered to have available to them “ a large number of semireconstructed phrases that constitute single choice.” (p.1191) Moreover, Halliday & Hasan (1976) showed that “collocation is the co-occurrence of two words, independent of grammatical types and likely to take place over sentence boundaries.” To sum up, collocations are the combinations of words which are fluent and natural English These combinations are natural to native speakers, but students of English have to make Duong Thi Nhan – K18C a special effort to learn them since simple guessing is not enough Therefore, collocations are always considered a very difficult problem for all learners of English 2.2 Types of collocations About the classification of collocations, Benson et all (1986b) divided into two major groups: lexical collocations and grammatical collocations Lexical collocations are further classified into seven types and the later with eight types Lexical collocations consist of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs such as acquire knowledge, bad temper, etc On the other hand, grammatical collocations are phrases containing a dominant word such as a noun, an adjective, or a verb, a preposition or grammatical structure like an infinitive or clause such as listen to music, specialize in, and so on Here are the tables for more illustrations of these two categories Table 1: Lexical Collocations categorized by Benson et al Type L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6 L7 Pattern V + N/P V+N Adj + N N+V N1 + of + N2 Adv + Adj V + Adv Example Compose music Reject an appeal Strong tea Bombs explode A pride of lions Deeply absorbed Argue heartedly Table 2: Grammatical Collocations categorized by Benson et al Type L1 L2 Pattern N + Prep N + to + Inf L3 N + that – clause L4 L5 L6 Prep + N Adj + Prep Adj + to + Inf L7 Adj + That – clause L8 V + Direct O + to + Indirect O = V + Indirect O + Direct O Example Blockade against An attempt to it He took an oath that he would his duty On somebody’s advice They were angry at him She is ready to go She was afraid that she would fail the exam She sent him the book = She sent the book to him Lewis (1998) proposes the following categories for collocations: Duong Thi Nhan – K18C Strong: A large number of collocations are strong or very strong For example, we most commonly talk of rancid butter, but that does not mean that other things cannot be rancid We often have ulterior motives or harbor grudges while being reduced to tears or even moved to tears Such strong collocations are not unique, but it is clear that any knowledge of the words trenchant, rancid, motive, grudge, or tears would be incomplete without some idea of their strong collocates The new corpus-based dictionaries often contain information about strong collocations, but they remain patchy in the quantity and quality of that information Weak: These are words which co-occur with a greater than random frequency Many things can be long or short, cheap or expensive, good or bad However, some things are more predictable, which could be called collocation; for example, white wine or red wine Medium strength: The main learning load for all language users is not at the strong or weak ends of the collocational spectrum, but in the middle - those many thousands of collocations which make up the greater part of what we say and write Most intermediate students will know the words hold and conversation, but may not know that you can hold a conversation They know the words make and mistake, but have not stored make a mistake in their mental lexicons as a single item These are words that go together with a greater frequency than weak collocations Some examples are: hold a meeting; carry out a study To sum up, collocations are various in their types as they can easily collocate with the other words such nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, or prepositions Therefore, the more collocations with the other words there are, there more difficult they are for all learners of English Some learners even not know the importance of collocations in their understanding Moreover, there are many types of collocations which always make learners distracted or mad about chunks of words 2.3 Importance of learning Collocations Many researchers have focused on the importance of collocation in language learning for a long time Brown (1974) suggested that learning collocations improves the learners’ oral proficiency, listening comprehension and reading speed In addition, she argues that we speak and write in chunks and learning collocations helps learners observe how native speakers in both spoken and written contexts use language chunks Duong Thi Nhan – K18C In fact, 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, which promotes fluency of learning English In addition, native English speakers will unconsciously predict what is going to be said based on their own use of these phrases This increases the efficiency with which they are able to listen or read Thus, if a speaker or writer uses uncommon phrasing patterns, a native English speaker may find him or her harder to understand Conversely, if a non-native speaker of English uses frequently used phrasing patterns, this may make it easier for native speakers to guess what the non-native speaker is saying and may help compensate for other language issues such as pronunciation Therefore, learning collocations will play an important role because they increase a non-native speaker’ efficiency as a listener or reader According to Kjellner (1987), he showed that “ In all kinds of texts collocations are essential, indispensable elements….with which our utterances are very largely made” (p.140) “Even very advance learners often make inappropriate or unacceptable collocations” (McCarthy, 1990: 13) These make two points relevant to the EFL learner “First, that collocations relations are an important part of the language to be mastered Second, that it is an area which ‘resiss’ tuition and, therefore, requires special systematic attention.” (Gabrielatos, 1990) Pawley and Syder (1983) pointed out that collocations play a significant role in language learning They lead to the improvement of language competence Therefore, Pawley and Syder argued that the more fixed expressions, including collocations, language learners use in useful basic chunks, the more they produce native- like language structures Ellis (2001) argued that direct instruction for collocations is important in language learning because they represent an important aspect of L2 vocabulary development On the other hand, Nattinger (1988) claimed that collocations can aid learners in committing these words to memory and defining the semantic area of a word and can permit learners to know and to predict what kinds of words would be found together Patesan (1997) showed in his study that there are main reasons for learning collocations as the following: + Give you the most natural way to say something; smoking is strictly forbidden is more natural than smoking is strongly forbidden Duong Thi Nhan – K18C + Give you alternative ways of saying something which may be more expressive or more precise: instead of repeating It was very cold and very dark, we can say: It was bitterly cold and pitch dark + Improve your writing style, for example instead of poverty causes crimes you can write poverty breeds crimes as they can make your text better It can be concluded that many researchers have paid attention to the importance of collocations from different perspectives consisting memorization, fluency, word knowledge, or teaching effectiveness All of these things are very important for language learners 2.4 Learners’ difficulties with learning collocations Tanju Deveci in “why and how to teach collocations” showed that learners often memorize isolated words and can not understand words in phrases He also pointed more that such surface level knowledge inhibits meaningful learning and creates collocation-related problems such as the following: i Learners may have intralingual problems For example, instead of many thanks, they might incorrectly use several thanks ii Learners may make negative transfer from their mother tongue For example, some Turkish learners tend to say become lovers instead of fall in love iii Learners may look for general rules for collocations that not work for all collocations For example, they might over-generalize rules of collocation, for example, the use of prepositions in phrasal verbs They could think that put off your coat is the opposite of put on your coat iv When students learn words through definitions or in isolation, their chances of using appropriate collocations or remembering the words decrease v Students may fail to make sense of an idiom To illustrate, the English idiom It is raining cats and dogs does not make sense to Turkish learners of English because this idiom does not exist in their culture To communicate the same idea, Turkish learners would say It is raining out of the glass, which does not make sense in English vi When students read texts, they may not recognize collocations as meaningful phrases, which would inhibit their understanding of the text Normally, learners have a lot of difficulties in writing and speaking with collocations They don’t know whether they are collocations or single words Even they misunderstand them in Duong Thi Nhan – K18C context and have a great effect on their understanding Moreover, they use their mother tongue while learning collocations After that, they make negative transfer from their mother tongue Furthermore, finding out some learners’ difficulties is very important and it will lead researchers to give out some implications for teaching collocations as the following part 2.5 Implications in teaching English collocations Having found collocations very important for language learning, many researchers planned some researches and gave out some ideas about the ways to teaching effective collocations Chia- Chuan Li (2005,p.82-84) gave out four solutions In order to solve some difficulties of collocations such as: Raising learners’ awareness of collocations Reinforcing learners’ concept of collocations Increasing learners’ collocational competence in L2 Avoiding literal translation First, the teachers should raise learners’ consciousness in collocations In other words, the teachers need encourage learners to notice the importance of collocations during the process of acquiring language Like Ellis (1997) claimed that acquisition of skills related to the correct use of collocations can be hastened “as a result of explicit instruction or consciousness-raising.” That is to say, when teaching a new word, teachers need to teach other words which collocate with a new word Furthermore, designing more exercises relating to collocations is also a good way to raise learners’ awareness of collocations Second, to reinforce learners’ concept of collocations, EFL teachers need to recommend dictionaries to their students which consist of common collocations and corpora such as Collins COBUILD English dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Dictionary… They are very practical and useful to learners because they not only help them aware of collocations but they also enable them to understand usage and put this understanding to productive use Third, learners often face with the problems of collocational competence Hill (2000) suggested that EFL teacher should make students more collocationally competent with words regardless of the difficulties Only spending more time exploring words and their collocates and recording them systematically, learners can be more skilled at producing acceptable collocations Duong Thi Nhan – K18C Forth, learners are often affected by their mother tongue and this lead them to wrong translation Therefore, teachers need guide them to translate chunk to chunk or collocations to collocations More importantly, Hill (2000) asserts that when teaching collocation, teachers need to pay close attention to pronunciation, intonation, stress, and grammar He lists topics to consider when teaching collocations: Make students aware of collocations Students need to know that learning collocations is crucial for learning English, and noticing collocations is an important stage in learning Teaching individual collocations We should present collocations as we would present individual words At higher levels, when students learn less common vocabulary items, they need to be made aware that some words are used in a very restricted number of collocations Students also need to know how to use new vocabulary items, which makes it necessary to know about their collocational field and contexts in which they are used Storing collocations Students need to have an organized vocabulary journal to record collocations They can organize their journals in different ways: grammatically, by common key word, by topic, etc They can also make use of tables or spider-grams, which work well with visual learners For example, students can record certain collocations under headings such as have/take/do or make According to Hill, when teaching collocations, we cannot ignore reading and listening skills, which help learners notice collocations Writing and speaking skills, on the other hand, give them the opportunity to practice collocations One can easily resort to teaching collocations in isolation as well However, this kind of teaching is no better than teaching single words in isolation Unless students are taught in context-based classes, collocations will not make sense to learners, and meaningful learning will probably not take place Conclusion The common belief that words should be learned in contexts emphasizes the importance of collocations in second language acquisition Therefore, it is true that the use of collocations is somewhat subjective and little empirical evidence of collocational frequencies in English is available (Cowie, 1981) For learners of English, collocations are essential when they want to speak or write naturally They play an important role in their communicative competence, fluency Duong Thi Nhan – K18C or word knowledge Moreover, when learning collocations, learners necessarily pay attention to chunks of words, but not single ones so that they can easily practise their language in any situations All in all, taking care of collocations in learning English is very important for learners Especially, Vietnamese learners often make a lot of mistakes about collocations such using wrong words, or literal translation, and so on These are some reasons why teachers of English need help learners overcome these difficulties by guiding them to look up collocations in necessary dictionaries, enforcing learners’ communicative competence, or lead them translate chunks to chunks or collocations to collocations With a little information about definitions, types and implications in teaching collocations, this article is a small support for teaching and learning English collocations in general and in Vietnam in particular REFERENCES Beson, M., Benson, E & Ilson, P (1986b) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English: A guide to word combinations Amsterdam: John Benjamin Duong Thi Nhan – K18C Chia- Chuan Li (2005) A study of collocational error types in EFL/ ESL college learners’ writing A Thesis in Applied Linguistics Ming Chuan University Deveci, T (2010) Why and how to teach collocations.s Ellis, N.C (2001) Memory for language In P Robinson (eds.) Cognition and second language instruction (pp 33-68) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Gabrielators, C (1994) Collocations: Pedagogical implications and their treatment in pedagogical materials Unpublished essay Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics University of Cambridge Hill, J (2000) Revising priorities: From grammatical failure to collocational success in teaching collocation Ed Michael Lewis, 47-70 Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications Halliday, M.A.K & Hason, R (1976) Cohesion in English London: Longman McCathy, M (1990) Vocabulary Oxford: Oxford University Press Lewis, N (1998) Implementing the lexical approach London: Language teaching publications 10 Pawley, A & Syder, F.H (1983) Two puzzles for linguistics theory New York: Longman 11 Pateson, M (1997) Collocations in English 12 Sinclair (1991) Corpus, Concordance, Collocation Oxford: Oxford University Press Duong Thi Nhan – K18C ... or collocations to collocations With a little information about definitions, types and implications in teaching collocations, this article is a small support for teaching and learning English collocations. .. know that learning collocations is crucial for learning English, and noticing collocations is an important stage in learning Teaching individual collocations We should present collocations as... give out some implications for teaching collocations as the following part 2.5 Implications in teaching English collocations Having found collocations very important for language learning, many researchers