Methodology challenge

Methodology challenge: Google fighting in the classroom

Author: Jamie Keddie

Type: article

Jamie Keddie wins the December 2006 Methodology Challenge with a novel approach to using the Internet to research differences in language usage.

In this article I will look at some original ways in which Internet search engines can be used to strengthen our language learners’ understanding of certain aspects of vocabulary, grammar and language in general.

The problem with choice | Google searches | Googlefight | Differences in meaning | Corpora and corpora linguistics | Potential problems and pitfalls | Another Google fight idea | Further investigation

Anchor Point:1 The problem with choice

Recently I used the following joke with a class of particularly inquisitive learners:

Two campers were hiking in the forest when all of a sudden a bear jumps out of a bush and starts chasing them. Both campers start running for their lives, when one of them stops and starts to put on his running shoes.
His partner says, "What are you doing? You can't outrun a bear!"
His friend replies, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you!"

Do you like the joke?  My students did but they seemed a bit confused about one aspect of the grammar: inconsistency in the verb to start:

 … starts chasing…   Verb followed by an -ing form
 … start running…   Verb followed by an -ing form
 … starts to put on…  Verb followed by an infinitive

The only thing I could do explain the situation was to point out that the verb in question is flexible. I told them that there are a few other verbs like this – to begin, to continue and to like, for example. But then a new question arose: which is more common – start to do something or start doing something?

In my experience as a teacher, this is a common type of learner question. I have come to the conclusion that language learners don’t always like choice. I remember when I had been learning Spanish for a few months; I met the following two structures:

Lo estoy haciendo = I am doing it
Estoy haciendolo = I am doing it

I wasn’t interested in learning both structures. That seemed like a waste of time to me. I wanted simplicity and that meant selecting one of the structures over the other, focusing on it and making it my own. Native language speakers surely have personal preferences for certain vocabulary and grammar. Why shouldn’t non-natives?

Anchor Point:2 Google searches

The 'Which is more common?' question is more complex than it might seem. Among the many factors that may or may not have to be taken into account when considering it are:

·         Individual tendencies to use one item of vocabulary/grammatical structure over another

·         Different dialects

·         Register (formal/informal, written/spoken, etc)

·         Genre (shopping list, song lyrics, mobile phone message, onestopenglish article, etc.)

·         Differences in meaning (this will be discussed later)

Despite the complexity, a Google search is a good, practical way of dealing with the question. Simply type in an item and take a note of the number of hits. In response to the bear joke, my students and I decided to compare the World Wide Web frequencies of the following word associations:

Number of Google hits started feeling 805,000 started to feel 1,040,000 started smoking 542,000 started to smoke 69,400 started thinking 1,140,000 started to think 987,000 started getting 1,270,000 started to get 1,200,000 started crying 1,090,000 started to cry 817,000 started raining 424,000 started to rain 496,000

If you have access to a computer, it will take approximately two minutes to make a chart for the results in Microsoft Excel.

Results like these should be taken with a pinch of salt (i.e. not be taken too seriously) and we will see why shortly. But despite this, they do provide students with tangible evidence about their new language and sometimes it is important to see things for yourself rather than take someone else’s (i.e. the teacher’s) word for it.

Anchor Point:3Google fight

www.googlefight.com

This site allows you to pair up words or phrases and let them contend against each other for Google hits (although not affiliated with Google, the Google fight site still makes use of the Google search engine to find its results).

Enter the rival items into the separate windows and click on “make a fight”. Following a fight between a pair of matchstick men, you are given a graph which shows you the number of results obtained for each item. The item that returns the greatest number of hits is the winner.

The site itself has a number of suggestions such as:

george w. bush FIGHT bin laden macdonalds FIGHT burger king pen FIGHT sword

Because of its visual aspect and fun nature, this site is usually popular with students. By the way, when you type multi-word items into Google and Google fight, make sure you add inverted commas (“  “).  They keep the words together.

Here are some more 'Which is more common?' questions that have arisen in my classes recently that were turned into Google search activities:

Google hits obtained “think about” 156,000,000 hits “think of” 169,000,000 hits “I haven’t any money” 10,100 hits “I don’t have any money” 195,000 hits “I haven’t got any money” 17,500 hits “I saw you play” 52,000 hits “I saw you playing” 14,300 hits “How long have you worked here? 10,500 hits “how long have you been working here? 606 hits

  

If a “Which is more common” question arises in your class, why not prepare an exercise that your students can carry out in class (if you have Internet access) or do as homework?. For example:

Type the following items into the Googlefight website or the Google search engine and take a note of the number of hits that you observe in each case:

No. of hits No. of hits "play the guitar" "play guitar" "plays the guitar" "plays guitar" "played the guitar" "played guitar" "playing the guitar" "playing guitar"

Anchor Point:4

Differences in meaning

I know what you may be thinking at this stage: that in many of the above pairs of language items there is a specific difference in meaning. To think about something is certainly not always the same as to think of something. You can probably distinguish in some way between like doing something and like to do something. And, given half the chance, most of us will probably be more than happy to go into a lengthy explanation of the difference between I saw you play basketball and I saw you playing basketball.

Native speakers of any language are able to perceive slight differences in meaning such as these through years and years of constant exposure to their language. But we have to be aware that such differences are often intangible and too subtle to explain to learners, especially with no given context.  Sometimes, the language explanations we offer our students are no more useful than a description of the colour blue to a person who has been blind from birth.

A Google fight may be of limited value to a learner. But, unlike teacher explanations, they are empirical and objective. They allow students to see things for themselves and form their own opinions. And once students have been shown how to carry them out, the teacher’s presence is not even necessary. This is good for promoting learner autonomy.

Using Google for language investigation is by no means an original idea. The Internet is what Michael Rundell has referred to as “the biggest corpus of all”.  But what is a corpus?

Anchor Point:5Corpora and corpora linguistics

A corpus, or text corpus, is a huge database of millions of words of written and spoken language that has been compiled for the purpose of linguistic research.

A general corpus such as the British National Corpus for example, will contain excerpts from newspapers, magazines, literature and the internet as well as transcribed conversations, radio presentations, advertisements, etc. The British National Corpus allows non-subscribers to carry out free “simple searches”. To do this go to sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html. Enter a word or item of your choice and click Solve it! The search will tell you the number of times your item was found in the corpus (database). This is followed by up to 50 random examples of the item in context (all taken from the corpus). Try this now.

To give you an example, I have just typed in the word “funny”, clicked Solve it!  and been informed that 4,315 solutions (hits) were found in the corpus. Among the 50 contextualized examples of the word that I have been given are:

… he choked, went a funny colour, ripped his collar open, waved his arms a bit, and dropped down dead.

The preview for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels shows con man Steven Martin suavely pushing a hapless granny into the sea, but the final film doesn’t: perhaps it was too funny to be included.

These results could be used in class to demonstrate, for example, that the word “funny” has two different meanings – funny peculiar and funny ha ha.

You may have noticed that modern dictionaries (and many grammar books) are 'corpus informed'.  This means that dictionary writers are no longer sitting around large tables and arriving at word definitions based on their own internal and personal ideas and understandings. Instead, they are looking externally to language usage itself. They use corpora (plural) to examine language in use.  This is the principle behind corpus linguistics.

Anchor Point:6Potential problems and pitfalls

I am a big fan of the use of corpora in language learning and many of my students have come to feel the same way. But for others, the use of corpora in the classroom can all seem a bit academic and the enthusiasm is not shared. I have found, however, that practically all students enjoy the Google fights that were described previously.

However, at this point, a word of warning is needed. Unlike a real corpus, the Internet was never designed for language investigation. Speaking of the web, Michael Rundell says:

… some text-types are very well represented, and others are hardly present at all.  Contemporary fiction, for instance, exists only in tiny amounts on the web, but any respectable general corpus would include a significant percentage of this important and influential text-type.

Here are some more potential pitfalls:

1) US English
The language of the Internet is heavily weighted towards American English:

colour  [UK spelling]  128 million hits 
color   [US spelling]  539 million hits

2) Written English
Consider the following Google fight:

 “I was arrested”  452,000 hits
 “I got arrested”  278,000 hits

This result may cause us to believe that “I was arrested” is a more common structure than “I got arrested”.  But get-passives are more common in spoken English than in written English. Spoken English is underrepresented on the web and so the above results may be misleading.

3) Multiple word meanings
Another trap that we can fall into can be demonstrated by the following search:

 sweater   20.9 million hits
 jumper   20 million hits
 jersey    242 million hits
 pullover   14.3 million hits

These results cannot reflect the true frequency of use on the Internet of these four items of clothing.  The search will not distinguish between jersey as a jumper and Jersey as a channel island or jumper as a jersey and jumper as an athlete. If we were using a real corpus, created and designed for language research, we could get around this problem quite simply. But on the internet, there is no way of being sure that our results are not influenced by all sorts of unforeseen factors. Results can also be affected by the strong presence on the web of names of products, films and songs, slogans and general computer jargon.

4) More unforeseen factors
One more pitfall that awaits us when we use search engines for language investigation can be exemplified by the following hit that was obtained when “think about” was entered into Google:

Today’s were average, 94 new cases I think.  About half of these come from suspected cases or those in quarantine, but that still leaves about…

Make sure your learners are aware of these potential traps and, as has already been said, take all results with a pinch of salt. The result of a Google fight is nothing more than a learner’s rule of thumb (a rule that exists to guide but is not necessarily 100% true).

Anchor Point:7Another Google fight idea

Every now and again, a student will bring to everyone’s attention an example of maverick English that he/she has come across in a film, magazine, advert, etc. Rather than discard this as 'incorrect' language, it can be a good idea to introduce the idea of standard and non-standard English.

A Google fight can be a very good way of demonstrating the difference in frequency of use. Here are some examples:

themselves      340 million hits
theirselves      237,000 hits

“i did it”      13.6 million hits
“i done it”      182,000 hits

“he gave me it”     10,900 hits
“he gave it me”     9,730 hits

“if I were”      12.3 million hits
“if I was”      6.2 million hits

“it doesn’t”      141 million hits
“it don’t”      1.4 million hits

“if it happened I would”    634 hits
“if it would happen I would”    205 hits

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Since the Internet is constantly changing, the results obtained for Google fights will also vary slightly from day to day.  The figures that I have given throughout this article are those that I obtained at the end of November, 2006.

Anchor Point:8Further investigation

Humanising Language Teaching (hltmag.co.uk) is a free online journal that is run by Pilgrims, a well-known UK language school. It comes out every two months and has a section called “Corpora Ideas”.

The Michael Rundell article from which I have quoted twice (“the Biggest Corpus of all”) can be seen in the May 2000 issue (year 2, issue 3).

Grammar and vocabulary: learning vocabulary - connecting form and meaning

Author: Simon Mumford

Level: starter/beginner, advanced, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate Type: reference material

A discussion on learning vocabulary and the difficulties of connecting form and meaning.

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Introduction

There is no doubt that learning vocabulary is a complex process, consisting of a number of different stages. While the process is still not fully understood, some models for learning have been put forward. One is suggested by Brown and Payne (Hatch and Brown 1995:383) which includes five stages:

1.     

1.    having sources for encountering new words

2.    getting a clear image of words, both visual and auditory

3.    learning the meaning of words

4.    making strong memory connections between form and meaning of words

5.    using words

Because the sources are often prescribed, that is teachers have to teach the words in the books they are given, and the final stage, being able to use the word is arguably a result of the preceding stages, I offer some activities for the second, third, and fourth stages; giving a clear image and auditory model of words, and making connections between the new words and meanings, that is, words students already know in L2, and L1 meanings should not be ruled out in early stages of learning.

Many of these activities are at the shallow end of vocabulary teaching techniques. While deep techniques such as ones which give students more information about use and collocation may be more effective in the long term, I believe that shallower activities, those that associate one word with one other word to create a word pair which are more or less synonymous, for example stimulating means interesting, have a place in teaching. This is especially true where students need quick revision, for example for weekly tests, and when they are learning for receptive rather than productive use, for example for multiple choice vocabulary questions. They are also suitable at an early stage in the learning process, where students are learning basic information about recently encountered words, such as the spelling and core meaning. Schmitt (2000:132) notes that many learners favour shallow activities and they are more favoured in some cultures, and suitable for lower level learners.

Ur (1991:67) states that it is better to spend time in short bursts, briefly teaching words, then revise over the following days and weeks, rather than spending a lot of time teaching words on one occasion. These activities, which can be used to revise, say 5-15 words in a slot of 15 minutes or so, may be employed in this kind of framework.

The activities are divided into three sections, the first looks especially at spelling, the second at variations of word cards, where word and meaning is written on the same piece of paper, and finally, there are activities where listen to new words and connect them with other words.

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Activities focusing on spelling

Intersections
Some words intersect with other words because their meanings overlap. As an example, the word refusal has a partially common meaning with words like deny, say no, reject, (throw) out. We could represent it visually as follows:

	d		o
r	e	f	u	s	a	l
e	n		t	a
j	y			y
e				n
c				o
t

This gives us an image of the new word and other words with similar meaning by showing them literally as intersections. Put some diagrams on the board, then clean off all the letters of the word that are not part of other words (see below). See if students can remember the word.

	d		o
r	e		u	s
e	n		t	a
j	y			y
e				n
c				o
t

Some other examples: essential intersects with important, vital, must have, and disastrous overlaps with terrible, awful, very bad.

Painting words
‘Paint’ the words you want your students to revise with an imaginary brush and paint on the wall. Go over the letters back and forward as if really painting so that students get the feel of the word. You could describe the shapes of the letters: ‘Now I’m painting a big curve, a half circle’ (as you paint C). ‘The next letter is a vertical line, up and down, with a loop to the right, now a little tail’ (as you paint R). Kinaesthetic students would enjoy painting the words themselves. One possibility would be to have actual pots, for example plastic cups containing the imaginary paint with the synonym stuck on a piece of paper on the outside, for example, paint the word accurate from the pot labelled correct.

Guess the word
Choose a word and write a number for each letter of the word plus an extra one at random on the board, so if your word is pretend, you will have numbers one to eight. Assign each letter from the word a number at random, but do not show the students. The extra number represents the synonym or meaning, in this case: ‘act in a different way to how you really are’. Put students in two teams and each turn they choose a number. Replace the chosen number with the letter it represents, then let them guess the word. The teams take it in turns to choose a number and guess, until one team wins. Of course, it will get easier as more letters are uncovered, and when the meaning is revealed.

Spell aloud
Spell out the words and meanings aloud, for example d-i-s-p-l-a-y = s-h-o-w while the students listen without seeing the words or hearing them said as words. After each word pair is spelt, ask students to say them aloud, and give help if necessary. Then write all words and meanings on the board at random and tell the students try to match them. By getting students to visualise the word first then say and hear them before seeing them written, we reverse the normal process learning, so getting students to think about words in a different way.

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Variations on word cards

Vocabulary tables
Take one piece of A4 paper for each word. Fold these in half lengthwise. Write the new word on one half and the meaning on the other; the words should be upside down to each other when the paper is open so that when the paper is folded, the words appear on opposite sides, with the tops of the letters near the fold. Show the words to the class and drill them if necessary.

Using a table at the front of the class, open the pieces of paper a little so they stand up, and so that one side of the papers can be seen from one end, and the other side can be seen from the other end. Ask a student to stand at either end of the table. One calls out a word that he can see, the other has to find the appropriate synonym from the words that he can see. If the second player is right, he chooses a word from his side, and so on. Increase the number of students involved by immediately replacing a student who gives a wrong answer, or having teams of two, three, four on either side of the table.

Half words
Write words in large letters with a marker on one side of pieces of A4 paper, horizontally, and meanings on the back. Now make two cuts in each, one from the top to the centre and another from the bottom to the centre. The ends of the cuts should not meet, but be about 2cms apart, that is slightly to left and right of centre, so that the paper can be twisted to show half of one word and half of the other at the same time. Holding one half in each hand, turn the paper to show the class:

1.     

o    The complete new word

o    The complete meaning

o    The first half of new word and second half of the meaning Ask students both words

o    The first half of meaning and second half of the new word Ask students both words

o    Half of new word only (fold the paper back on itself) Again ask students both words

o    Half of meaning only (fold the paper back on itself) Again ask students both words

Thus, you gradually reduce the amount of information, forcing the students to rely more on memory. Note: have a practice before the lesson as the way you write the words on the paper is important.

Round the class
Make as many word cards as there are students in the class and seat the students in circles of ten or so if possible. Each card should have a recently learnt word one side and the meaning on the back. Give one to each student and tell the class to pass the words around the circle. Stop when everyone has seen all of them. Now choose one student and ask him to stand up. He turns to the student next to him on his left, who asks him the word on his card. The standing student tries to remember the meaning and then moves on to the next student, where again he is asked a word, and so on round the circle. The student next to the first student follows him round the class, answering the same words, then the third student, and so on. When students have completed the circuit they sit down and become questioners. Continue until all the students have been round the circle. Student should put a tick on their card each time the word is answered correctly, so at the end it can be seen which words need more work.

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Activities involving listening

Words in a bottle
Take two empty bottles. First, ‘put’ the words you want to revise in a bottle, by saying the words into it and closing the lid. After three words (e.g. repair, visible, ruin) ask students if they can remember the words in the bottle. In the second bottle put in the meanings, in random order (in this case, can be seen, mend, destroy). Check the students can remember these. Now pretend to pour the contents of one bottle into the other, close it, shake it and say that when you open it the words will come out in their correct synonym pairs. In fact, the students should say the pairs when you take the lid off!


Reversal
Drill pairs of synonyms with the first sound in each swapped over, so job, work become wob, jerk, likewise marry, wed become warry, med; trust, rely on become trely on, rust and arrange, organise are orange, arrganise.

Ask students to repeat the words, but change the first sound of each word, to produce the correct word pair. Of course, students may be able to do this without recognising either word, but it is likely that they will search their store of vocabulary to retrieve familiar items.

Cheating vocabulary test
This is a vocabulary test with a difference. Four or five student ‘testers’ stand at the front of the class with a list of three or four words. Their job is to ask other students the meaning of these words. Students form queues in front of each tester, and the first in line is asked to give a meaning of a word from the list. If he gets it right he goes to one of the other queues, if not, he goes to the back of the same queue and tries again. The tester alternates between the different words on his list, so the same word is not asked to two students consecutively. When a student has visited all testers, he has finished. The cheating element comes in when students are queuing. They are allowed to ask students in adjacent queues about which words they are likely to be asked and their meanings, thus making it cooperative rather than competitive.

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Conclusion

We can, perhaps, best help our students learn vocabulary, that is help them remember new words, by giving them revision activities that are motivating. We can assist students to play with words, as individuals, groups and classes to increase interest. While no one would claim that after these activities students would have a complete knowledge of the words, they can form a valuable stage between first meeting and full knowledge of a vocabulary item, and a way of linking the form of a new word with its meaning.

Grammar and vocabulary: seven ways to help students enjoy grammar

Author: Paul Bress

Level: starter/beginner, advanced, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate Type: reference material

Seven suggestions of ways to help students enjoy grammar.

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Introduction

Students’ reactions to grammar-focused lessons seem to be typically one of three kinds. Some students find grammar very appealing, some find it intrinsically boring, and some find it useful but really hard work.

There might be a number of reasons for these reactions. For example, some students’ brain chemistry might be more (or less) pre-programmed for learning grammar. If this is the case, the teacher has limited power to promote the enjoyment of grammar. But it’s also possible that students have had a negative learning experience with grammar – they might be used to listening to long lectures about grammar (yes, even today) and doing long, esoteric exercises on one particular area of target language.

In order to make grammar more interesting for students, I’d recommend a more inductive approach, i.e. students should be allowed to work out the meaning and the rules of the grammar for themselves. I also think that the teachers’ ‘met language’ (i.e. the language used to talk about the target language) should be kept to an absolute minimum. Furthermore, it’s crucial to get learners to use the target language in an authentic way about their own lives. And, in addition to such communicative work, I think that students can be encouraged to do some analytical work, particularly where communicative outcomes are affected.

Let’s now study, in more detail, what I mean by the above. Below are the seven ways, together with sample teacher language for each part of the lesson.

The seven ways

1. Provide a context
In order to elicit the target language, get the students really interested in, for example, a character, a situation (this process will vary according to the profile of each class). Use language that is easy for the students to understand. Make the situation clear enough for the students to hazard a guess about the target language. And do make it clear that you want the students to come up with the target language! Finally, be sure to spend enough time on the ‘tease’ – don’t jump in too early with providing the target language yourself.

Sample teacher language:

I don’t earn very much money in my job. At the moment I’m renting a flat. I’d really like to buy a flat, but I don’t have enough money to do that. I know that I’m not going to buy my own flat, but I like to dream about it anyway…so, what could I say about buying a flat, anyone?

2. Help students to say the target language
Make a point of actually asking the students to say something (rather than just listen to you)! Make it clear what the target language is (it can be confused with instructional language). Give the students enough time to ‘get their tongues round’ the target language. And make sure that you get each individual student to say the target language – in a ‘comprehensible’ way.

Sample teacher language:

So can you all repeat this after me, please? ‘Have you had your hair cut?’…Good…Now say it as many times to yourself as you like…and then tell me when you’re happy…OK? Now, Tania, let me hear you say it, please.

3. Provide a written record
Make a point of putting up (on the board) the written record directly after initial oral work. Make sure that the students write the written record down (and in a particular section of their notebooks). Write legibly and big enough for all the students to see. Write as concisely as you can, and be sure to include both the target language itself, the stressed syllables (including the tonic one) and a mini ‘concept statement’.

Sample teacher language:

Ok, now, I’d like you to copy this down in your special ‘grammar’ sections of your notebooks…(the teacher then writes ‘The article was published last year = A journal published the article, but we don’t know, or don’t care, which journal it was.’)

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4. Personalize the target language
Always ask the students to apply the target language to their own lives.

Sample teacher language:

So it’s nearly the end of December now. It’s nearly the New Year. Does anyone her want to make changes to their life next year? Yes, Yuko…What are you going to do next year?

5. Help students to guess the grammar rules of the target language
encourage the students to manipulate the new grammar (e.g. by asking them how to construct more difficult sentences using questions, negatives, or question tags). If they are struggling to guess, provide them with assistance by referring to other (known) patterns.

Sample teacher language:

OK, so we’ve practised ‘I’d like…’, and we know it means ‘I want’…but can anyone ask me a question with ‘would like’? can anyone ask me if I’d like a cup of coffee?…No? Well, how do we ask a question with ‘will’…Good…’would’ works in the same way…

6. Help students to understand the communicative importance of grammar
Ask students to choose between two different communicative outcomes for one piece of language. This can be done by getting students to follow certain instructions in class. Treats can be used as a tangible reward for linking grammar to a communicative effect.

Sample teacher language:

Carlos, please take these chocolates…Ok, now go to Lucia and Mohamed…now give him a chocolate…no, give him a chocolate…Good!…Now go to Anna and Markus, and give her a chocolate…Good!…And now go to Patrizia and Yuko, and give them the last chocolate…well done, Carlos!…And now here's a chocolate for you, Carlos!

7. Help students to understand the importance of grammatical accuracy
Discuss with your students the importance of making a good impression with some formal correspondence, e.g. a job application. Encourage them to edit 'roughly-tuned’ texts.

Sample teacher language:

…so you know that, sometimes, it’s important to write very accurately (for example, like you said, if you’re applying for a job here in Britain)…I want you now to look at this text…You can understand what the writer means, but there are some mistakes which will leave a bad impression on the reader…see if you can find the mistakes.

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Conclusion

Is the above rocket science? No. But it’s surprising how well-intentioned teachers can make learning grammar a miserable experience for their students. After a poorly taught grammar-focus lesson, students will come away feeling blinded by science, cheated, and disempowered. After a well taught grammar-focus lesson, students will come away feeling not only both proud and confident, but they will also know that they have learned some new item of language that they can genuinely use for their own purposes.

Grammar and vocabulary: teaching students collocations

Author: Rachel Hunt

Level: starter/beginner, advanced, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate Type: reference material

A discussion and explanation of collocations and practical suggestions for teaching them.

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How can I help my students with collocations? Advanced students need to be aware of the importance of collocation.

I would argue that students at every level need to be aware of the importance of collocation, as I believe collocation can be used not only to help learners understand and manage lexis but also to communicate ideas more effectively.

For example, one of my learners recently asked the difference in meaning between glance and glimpse. After some discussion of contexts in which these words might be used, we produced the following :

	at a guy in a pub			the thief as he ran away
glance	at your partner’s answers		glimpse	the car as it drove past
	at the back cover of a book in a bookshop		(catch a glimpse of)	a woman’s shoulder as she’s getting changed on the beach
	at the board while you’re taking notes

It was immediately clear to me how helpful it was to use collocation to highlight the differences between the two verbs. I have also found collocation useful in explaining the difference between opposites:

light green / dark green but light suitcase / heavy suitcase.

What is collocation?

Collocations are combinations of words which are used together with greater than usual frequency :

latest gossip adjective + noun

package holiday noun + noun

have a great time verb + adjective + noun

discuss calmly verb + adverb

completely satisfied adverb + adjective

hand in an assignment verb + preposition + noun

There is a difference between the types of lexical collocation mentioned above and:

1.    Fixed expressions with adjective / verb + dependant preposition :

rely on

interested

late for

2.    Idioms/ossified collocations where substituting any of the words is impossible:

to get out of bed on the wrong side	idiom
to shrug your shoulders	collocation

3.    Words that co-occur frequently but are not collocations:

this means that …

as a result …

although he …

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Types of Collocation

1.    De-lexicalised Verbs
De-lexicalised verbs (get, have, make, do, put, take) are important when teaching collocation because although they may have a basic meaning (make = create/manufacture, have = own/possess), they are more commonly used in combinations with nouns or other words as a chunk of meaning:

make a mistake

do your homework

take an exam

In my experience, a lot of mistakes in collocations are made with de-lexicalised verbs, probably due to L1 interference (see below).

2.    Nouns
I feel that it is very useful to teach learners those collocations with a noun as a key word. This is because the majority of general nouns usually require further qualification:

good		package
well-paid		luxury
menial	job	expensive	holiday
boring		cheap
full-time		good

Nouns are also important because they are usually the words that carry the most meaning within a sentence.

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Strong/Weak and Frequent/Infrequent Collocations

There is also a difference between strong/weak and frequent/infrequent collocations. A collocation that is frequent (e.g. a warm day) is not necessarily strong, as either word in the partnership suggests a number of other collocates:

	sweater		bad
	blanket		wedding
(a) warm	smile	(a)	sunny	day
	hug		rainy
	breeze		glorious

In the same way, a particularly strong collocation may be used very infrequently (e.g. bat your eyelashes). The most useful combination for teaching purposes, then, seems to be a combination of strong (but not completely fixed) and frequent. A strong/infrequent collocation may be worth mentioning to draw the learners’ attention to its existence, but little, if any, class time would need to be spent on collocations at the weak/infrequent end of the spectrum.

Nation also makes the point that, in a classroom situation, frequent collocations only deserve attention if: “their frequency is equal to or higher than other high-frequency words.” This puts a greater pressure on the teacher when making the decision about whether to spend time on a particular collocation. I feel that if there are enough potential frequent collocations of one of the nodes, it is worth spending some class time on:

take a put (yourself) at run the

risk

With the second two verbs in this example, the unpredictability of the combination is also a factor. Most learners at intermediate level or above would be familiar with all three of the verbs, but few would realise that it is possible to collocate ‘run’ and ‘risk’. Moreover, this would be a difficult collocation for learners to work out just by knowing the meaning of the individual parts, so would therefore merit some class time.

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What problems do learners have with collocation, and how can we help?

1. Quantity/Arbitrariness
A major stumbling block to most learners is the fact that there are so many possible collocations and that the choice of which word to collocate with, say, a noun is completely arbitrary. This leads to the question: “Well, why is it have a coffee not drink a coffee?” and the inevitable reply (hated by teachers and students alike): “It just is.”

If students are encouraged to record collocations as they occur, they have a permanent record of which combinations are possible. Class time can be given for learners to revise and practise the collocations they have learnt (see below for suggestions) or to add new ones.

There are various ways for learners to record new collocations in their vocabulary notebooks. I have found that the most effective is to use a box format such as:

(verb)	(adjective)
(verb)	(adjective)	noun
(verb)	(adjective)

For lower level learners it might be helpful to organise their collocation boxes by topic (in the same order as their coursebooks) – jobs, family, food etc. Intermediate learners may prefer to organise by keyword – work, holiday etc – and advanced students by grammatical structure – verb + noun, noun + adjective etc. Organisation is really a matter for individual learners, though, as it should be done according to personal preference to minimise the learning burden. Learners can leave some entries in the boxes blank to be completed at a later date with other collocates that they have noticed independently.

2. L1 Transfer
Many learners expect that because they collocate something a particular way in L1, it will translate directly (and correctly) into English. A quick survey of my current learners produced the following verb + noun collocations:

English	L1 Equivalent	Literal Translation
take the car	Arabayla gittim (Turkish) Jet autem (Czech)	Car went Go by car
have a coffee	Prendere un café (Italian) Minum kopi (Bahasa Indonesian)	Take a coffee Drink a coffee
do your homework	Napsat úkol (Czech)	Write your homework
pay attention to	Stai attento (Italian) Memberikan perhatian (Bahasa Indonesian) Faire attention à (French)	Be attentive Give attention to Do attention to
go on holiday	Hu-ga jung ip-nida (Korean) Mach Urlaub (German) Partir en vacances (French)	Holiday doing Do holiday Leave on holiday

Bahns argues that because of this untranslatability teachers should focus on collocations which can not be translated directly, pointing out contrasts to students instead of similarities.

If learners fail to use a correct collocation, even if their utterance is grammatically and contextually correct, their English will still sound unnatural and ‘foreign’, to the extent that their addressee may not understand them at all. Compare the following (from a selection of my learners’ written work):

He survived *very *strongly (from a Japanese student)

We *own a shopping centre (from a Swiss student)

I *took a good decision (from an Italian student)

He knows what he’s *speaking about (from a German student)

I can’t see any *problem why (from a Czech student)

If we substitute the asterisked words for miraculously, have, made, talking and reason, these utterances become more natural and nativelike.

Collocation grids can be useful in helping learners to understand which words are possible collocates and which aren’t, by simply ticking the correct combination. These grids can be made from the students’ own written (or spoken) work as a correction exercise as well as more general ones in textbooks:

	a person	a bank	money	a car	a shop	a wallet
rob
steal

Such grids are also very useful for showing the difference in meaning or use between two or three words that appear almost the same. The grid may then be used to contrast with L1 possibilities for collocation.

3. Meaning and Noticing
Especially when dealing with text, many learners (especially those at lower levels) tend to focus on individual words that they don’t know, rather than on the collocation. This is because the usual way of noticing and recording vocabulary is to write the word (out of context and without its collocates) in a vocabulary notebook with its L1 translation. Alternatively, more advanced learners will say, “I know that word” and move on without checking for any collocates in the text. Both of these problems arise from poor learner-training: learners need to have collocations pointed out to them before they can be expected to notice them for themselves.

When working with text, it takes very little time to point collocations out to learners – or, alternatively, with higher levels or classes experienced in noticing to ask them to find collocations for themselves. In this opening paragraph , six collocations can be identified (my underlining):

When Clifford met Annie, they found one thing in common. They both love lists. So together they have written the ultimate list, a list of rules for their marriage. This prenuptial agreement itemizes every detail of their lives together, from shopping to sex. Timothy Laurence met them in Florida in the apartment they share.

Newspaper articles, opening paragraphs of books and videos of TV soap operas or sports commentaries also lend themselves to this kind of noticing activity. The advantages of using such authentic material are obvious – the language is used in a natural way and in context. However, we should be careful to choose which collocations we focus on in terms of frequency , level and suitability for our particular group of learners.

Phonology (Chunking and Linking)

A direct result of this inability to recognise collocation is that many learners (especially at lower levels) sound very stilted when speaking. There are three main reasons for this:

1. they pronounce every word with equal stress
2. they fail to notice how the sentence could be chunked
3. they don’t link the chunks together

Without a knowledge of collocation, learners are unable to chunk, link and stress longer sentences correctly, making them sound unnatural.

Even with advanced classes, choral drilling is the best way to give students extra time to work on this aspect of collocation. A demonstration on the board of where the linking and stress occurs (plus any schwas) can help students who learn more visually.

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Activities to help students with collocation  

Once the collocations have been pointed out, several activities can be produced to help the students become familiar with them.

Recycling activities:

·         Matching activities in which the collocations are divided and written on separate cards:
These can be used as the initial part of a test-teach-test approach to see what the learners already know, or to revise collocations from a previous lesson. This form of recycling is a good way to help learners remember the collocations .

·         Board races where the teacher calls out one half of the collocation and the students work in teams to write the other half on the board. This activity can be extended by asking students to suggest other possible collocates.

·         Cloze activities such as a gapped transcription of a listening text, or sentences in which half the collocation has been deleted.

Communicative activities:

I have used surveys, reports and stories with different levels of learners to practise previously-learnt collocations in context more communicatively.

With collocations organised by topic, learners can conduct a survey among their classmates and follow it up with a written or oral report. In the topic of household chores, for examples, learners survey the following:

In your house, who:

does the dishes?
makes the beds?
takes the rubbish out? (etc)

With collocations organised by key-word , learners can be given a set of cards with the collocations written on them which they have to put into some kind of chronological order. They can then use the cards to write a story :

got worse	got angry	got caught	got drunk	got shot	got in trouble
got divorced	got sick	got fat	got pregnant	got into debt	got killed

The Bank of English

The online Bank of English from Collins COBUILD and The University of Birmingham has a search engine where collocations can be looked up and checked (in order of frequency of use) . The search can be refined and limited by the use of parameters such as:

make + NOUN

I have found this very useful, especially when dealing with de-lexicalised verbs, with higher level and FCE classes, by taking the class into the computer room, having them look through their written work for mis-collocations, searching the database and then using the results to record the correct collocation (with other additions if appropriate) into their vocabulary notebooks. This is both an autonomous and personalised way of correcting written work.

 Prepared by SRS.