Teaching collocations

Learners sort words on cards into their collocational pairs (warm+ welcome, slim + chance, golden + opportunity, lucky + break etc). Or learners sort them into binominal pairs (pairs of words that follow a fixed sequence and often have idiomatic meaning such as hot and cold, to and fro, sick and tired etc). Follow up by asking learners to write sentences using these combinations.

Read out a list of words: learners in groups think of as many collocations or related expressions as they can. Set a time limit – the group with the most collocations wins a point. Good words fro this include parts of the body (face, head, back, foot, hand), colours (red, green, blue, black, etc) and opposites, such as weak/strong, narrow/wide, safe/dangerous, old/young, etc.

Vocabulary cannot be taught!

It can be presented, explained, included in all kinds of activities, and experienced in all manner of associations… but ultimately it is learned by the individual. As language teachers we must arouse interest in words and a certain excitement in personal development in this area… We can help our students by giving them ideas on how to learn, but each will finally learn a very personal selection of items, organised into relationships in an individual way. (Vilga Rivers)