Very often students know the meaning of a word but don’t know how
to use it correctly. This is often because they don’t know what words go
with what other words, i.e. collocations. For example, students are
familiar with the word party but may not know the verbs have or give
that go with it and, as a result, say *make a party. This activity helps
students expand their collocational knowledge of the nouns they already
know, but it can be adapted for other parts of speech.
Level: Elementary and above
Aim: deepen student’s knowledge of partially known vocabulary items; develop collocational links between words
Material: a lot of postcard-sized cards (or cut A4 size card into four)
Preparation
Choose
10 nouns your students are familiar with or have recently learnt.
Abstract nouns work better for this activity. Using
www.just-the-word.com look up the most common collocations with these
nouns. Enter the desired noun in the search field. Most common verb
collocates can be found in the V obj *n* section (Verb + noun as
object). For example, these are the verb collocates of the noun '
exam':
Scroll
down the page and you will find most common adjective collocates in the
ADJ *n* section (Adjective + noun). Nouns acting as adjectives, i.e.
nouns that precede and modify other nouns, can also be included in the
activity. For example, election before campaign or entrance before exam
(see below). These can be found in the N *n* section.
You
will also need to prepare a lot of postcard-sized cards (or cut A4 size
card into four) for students to record collocations on.
Procedure
Display or write on the board 10 nouns you have chosen:
| Sample list for B2/C1 students | Sample list for A2/B1 students |
| advice | time |
| vision | money |
| sight | exam |
| campaign | example |
| purpose | life |
| goal | decision |
| result | opinion |
| election | business |
| permission | party (as celebration) |
| responsibility | party (as group) |
Add a couple of “distracters” to keep the activity challenging till the end. For example,
| survey | success |
| condition | problem |
For
large classes, divide the students into pairs or groups of three.
Distribute the cards so that each pair / group has 11-12 cards. Tell
students to draw a vertical line in the middle of one side, as shown
here:
Then
dictate a few verbs and adjectives that collocate with the nouns you
have displayed / written on the board. As you dictate, the students in
pairs / groups should write the verbs in the left column and the
adjectives in the right column on a card. Nouns acting as adjectives
should be also written in the right column.
To make it easier for
students, dictate first the verbs and then the adjectives / nouns. To
make it more challenging, dictate them in a mixed order so that students
have to decide which column they go into:
Sample list for A2/B1 level
1. get / give / take / follow / useful / practical / professional (advice)
2. start / launch / run / election / advertising / successful (campaign)
3. hold / lose / win / general / free / presidential (election)
4. lose / have / share / new / good / clear (vision)
5. lose / enjoy / catch / pretty / familiar / (at) first (sight)
6. get / give / ask for / obtain / special / parental / written (permission)
7. set / meet / reach / achieve / important / main / unrealistic (goal)
8. have / serve / defeat / main / practical / specific / sense of (purpose)
9. get / see / achieve / produce / similar / direct / final (result)
10. take / share / accept / personal / social / parental / individual (responsibility)
Sample list for B2/C1 level
1. take / pass / fail / entrance / written / oral / final (exam)
2. have / throw / meet at / invite to / dinner / birthday (party)
3. set up / lead / join / ruling / political / conservative / opposition (party)
4. make / take / reach / difficult / important / own (adj.) / final (decision)
5. set up / run / do / small / own (adj.) / family / show (n.) (business)
6. spend / save / waste / good / great / hard / long (time)
7. spend / save / waste / earn / big / pocket / extra (money)
8. spend / save / live / change / new / own (adj.) / private / everyday (life)
9. ask for / give / express / strong / different / personal (opinion)
10. set / give / follow / good / perfect / classic / typical (example)
You
will see that I’ve added oral exam although it did not appear in the
list on Just-the-Word as I felt this would be useful for my students.
Even if they are very frequent, feel free to omit the collocates which
you think will not be useful for your students or appropriate for their
age and level.
When dictating make sure you start with very common
words (e.g. have, get, take) as these tend to collocate with a lot of
nouns and move on to less common, more specific words (e.g. fail,
launch) as these tend to form stronger word partnerships. For example,
for the noun permission start with get or give because these can go with
at least two other nouns on the list.
When students guess the key
word (noun) they should turn the card over, write the noun in the
centre of the card (it works better using a marker or felt-tip pen), and
hold the card up. The result should be something like this:
|
|
back
|
V
|
Adj
|
take
pass
fail
|
entrance
written
oral
final
|
other useful chunks and/or examples can be added here
|
|
They
are not allowed to shout out the word as their incorrect guess may
throw other students off track. If a student does shout out, ask him or
her to provide further collocates instead of you.
Continue
dictating until all or most students are holding up the card with the
noun written in the middle. To make it competitive, you can award points
to the students who held up their cards first (with the correct noun
written).
You may want to leave some space at the bottom where
students can write other useful expressions or their own examples. Make
sure all the correctly completed cards are kept as these can be used for
follow-up recycling activities.
Follow up:
Suggestion 1
In
the following lesson, you can put your students in groups of 4-5, get
one pile of collocation cards face down (the collocation side up).
Students look at the collocations and guess the key word on the front of
the card. The one who guesses correctly keeps the card. The winner is
the student with most cards.
Suggestion 2
This follows on
the previous activity but this time students working in groups have
their deck of cards facing upwards. They pick a card and try to recall
as many collocations for the noun written on the card. They can turn
over the card to check. They continue until all the cards have been used
up.
You can also ask students to make similar cards at home for
other nouns using www.just-the-word.com, then bring them to class and
share them with their peers.
Suggestion 3
As their decks of
cards grow, students can sort the cards into three piles: words they
know and can use (and can recall all the collocations of), words they
know but cannot use and the ones they are still not sure about. They can
then discard the first pile and focus on reviewing the other two. This
can be done in class as a group activity or individually at home.
Such
sorting based on the learning states of each word encourages students
to spend more time reviewing the items which are not fully mastered. It
also helps students reflect on their vocabulary learning and fosters
learner independence.
