Teaching Collocations

1.The importance of vocabulary acquisition has always been recognized, although, at times, vocabulary was treated as separate from grammar and skills. However, the communicative and natural approach emphasized the importance of vocabulary development, which resulted in more interest in vocabulary teaching. It is accepted that choosing our words carefully in certain situations is more important than choosing grammatical structures (Harmer 1991).

We cannot use structures correctly if we do not have enough vocabulary knowledge. Many techniques and approaches, such as word families and key words, have been employed in teaching vocabulary. Michael Lewis's Lexical Approach presents great interest to language teachers, it argues that language consists of chunks that produce coherent texts when they are combined. In teaching vocabulary, Lewis puts heavy emphasis on collocations. Collocation- is a noticeable arrangement or conjoining of linguistic elements (such as words), Webster”s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.

2.Types of collocations and their importance. Collocation describes the relationship between words that often appear together. They include structural patterns that resemble traditional grammar and combinations of words that simply go together. Therefore, idioms like take a break, and word combinations like get on a bus are considered collocations.

Collocations fall into different categories. For example, a collocation can consist of two or more words and contain the following elements:

1. adjective + noun a huge profit

2. noun + noun a pocket calculator

3. verb + adjective + noun learn a foreign language

4. verb + adverb live dangerously

5. adverb + verb half understand

6. adverb + adjective completely soaked

7. verb + preposition + noun speak through an interpreter

Some collocations are longer; for example, adverb + verb + adjective +noun + preposition + noun as in seriously affect the political situation in (Northern Ireland), described by Lewis as a semi-fixed expression.

Lewis (1998) proposes the following categories for collocations:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3- Medium strength: These are words that go together with a greater frequency than weak collocations. Some examples are :hold a meeting; carry out a study.

The context in which a collocation is used is important. Certain collocations or expressions are appropriate for certain contexts. Factors such as a difference in status or a social distance between the speaker and the hearer can affect the choice of collocational phrases. For example, we would not greet our boss by saying "How “s it going?"; however, it is all right to greet a friend that way. This example suggests that knowledge of connotation and formality is important in deciding which collocation to use.

Collocations are important to language learners. When learners use collocations, they will be better understood. Native speakers unconsciously predict what is going to be said based on the use of phrases. If a non-native speaker uses frequently-used patterns (collocations), it will be easier for native speakers to guess what the non-native speaker is saying and may help compensate for other language issues, such as pronunciation. When learners write and speak, if they use collocations central to their topic, their readers are more likely to understand their message.

3.Learners' difficulties with collocations

Many cultures, including the Kazakh culture, encourage rote learning, where students memorise lists of words in isolation. Learners are able to write equivalents of single words; when students see the words in phrases, they can not understand them.

Such surface level knowledge inhibits meaningful learning and creates collocation-related problems such as the following:

1. Learners may have intralingual problems. For example, instead of many thanks, they might incorrectly use several thanks.

2. Learners may make negative transfer from their mother tongue. For example, some learners tend to say become lovers instead of fall in love.

3. Learners may look for general rules for collocations that do 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.

4. When students learn words through definitions or in isolation, their chances of using appropriate collocations or remembering the words decrease.

5. Students may fail to make sense of an idiom. To illustrate, the English idiom Itis raining cats and dogs does not make sense to learners of English because this idiom does not exist in their culture. To communicate the same idea, the learners would say It is raining out of the bucket which does not make sense in English.

6. When students read texts, they may not recognize collocations as meaningful phrases, which would inhibit their understanding of the text.

4. Teaching collocations

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

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.

5.Activities to raise students' awareness of collocations

1. Ask learners to underline chunks they can find in a text. It is helpful to give them different kinds of chunks to look for. For lower levels, it is better to restrict students to noun +noun, adjective + noun, or verb + noun collocations because more complex chunks would confuse them.

2. Small extracts from the concordances published by Cobuild can be used to explore the possible environments of a word. However, ready-made concordances would be more suitable for higher levels because they do not include enough context for lower level learners to understand the meaning without help. Ready-made concordances may also include too many unknown words for lower-level students. Teachers who want to use concordances with lower levels should write their own, bearing in mind their students' level of grammar and lexis.

3. After they have read a text, learners can be given a set of incomplete phrases taken from the text and asked to complete them by scanning the text again. This can be done at any level. Imagine that your intermediate students have read a text on time management.

Some possible incomplete phrases from the text could be: on time; in time; on the dot; at times; from time to time. These phrases focus on a preposition + noun collocation.

4. After they have seen certain collocations in a text, learners can be asked to find pairs of collocations arranged randomly. If the students have read a text on traffic, a possible matching activity could be:

1. traffic a. jam

2. rush b.hour

5. To encourage student autonomy, have students do dictionary work to find certain collocations. Dictionaries of collocations on the market such as the LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations and The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations can be of great help in drawing students' attention to collocations.

6. Give students phrases in their native language and equivalent phrases in English, and ask students to match the phrases. This activity will help students see that collocational ideas are not always formed in the same way in English. More idiomatic collocations could be used with higher-level learners.

VII. Activities to practice collocations

1. Learners of different levels can be given gapped texts to fill in with the correct collocation. The text could be topic based. For instance, if the topic is advertising, in an upper-intermediate class, a possible text, focused on verbs, could be:

As a tool of marketing, advertising generally ( slows )down the flow of present customers away from the product and ( speeds )up the flow of customers toward the advertised product. But the overall purpose of advertising is to influence the level of product sales, and as a result, to increase profits for the manufacturer.

2. Learners can be given a text or some sentences that include collocational errors and asked to correct them using collocation dictionaries. For example:

While I am away, can you have [keep] an eye on my children?

I cannot do [make] up my mind. Should I buy this one or the one you suggest?

3. Intermediate and higher-level students can try to find synonyms which can collocate with certain words. For example, students can be asked to find the synonym for wrong, which is false; it collocates with a false tooth, or false eyelashes.

4. Students can be given several word combinations that collocate with certain verbs, but include a combination that does not belong. Students must identify which words do not collocate with the verb, as in the following example:

miss: a chance, the point, the school, the train, an opportunity, the boat

5. Students from different levels can create gap-fill or matching exercises for each other.

6. Intermediate and higher-level learners can summarize a text orally one day and again a few days later to keep learned words and expressions active. Dictagloss* text creation would also work..

7. A brainstorming activity can be done to let students revise collocations with some particular verb.

Teaching grammar

I. Grammar teaching is not much knowledge transmission as it’s skill development. Larsen Freeman (1997,2001) speaks of teaching “grammaring”, rather than grammar. Grammar is a skill to be mastered rather than a set of rules to be memorized.

The Learning process

It is important for teachers to understand their students’ learning process. Three insights are germane to our topic:

1. Learning is a gradual process involving the mapping of the form, meaning and use; structures do not spring forward into learners’ interlanguage fully developed and error free ;

2. Teachers will find backsliding occurring often while introducing new forms .

3. Second language learners rely on the knowledge and experience they have. It they are beginners, they will rely on their Language 1 as a source of hypothesis about how the Language 2 works. The teachers should build upon what the students already know.

Three Dimensional grammar frame work must concern us:

1.Structure or form, 2.Semantics or meaning 3.Pragmatic conditions governing the use.

The Teaching Process

Teaching Grammar means enabling students to use the language linguistically accurately, meaningfully and appropriately. Traditional grammar teaching has employed a structural syllabus and lessons composed of three phases: presentation, practice, production, often referred to as “the PPP” approach. These days, most teachers embrace a more communicatively oriented approach, starting with communicative activity such as task-based or content -based material (functional approach)

II.Teaching strategies:

1. recasting or reformulating e.g.

Student: This is Ann book

Teacher: Oh, that is Ann’s book.

2. highlighting the text in some fashion :e.g. boldfacing articles in the text.

3. input flooding :choosing texts, in which a particular structure is frequent.

4. a consciousness- raising task- students induce a grammatical generalization from the data they have been given.

5.The garden path strategy- to give them partial information without giving the full picture.

6. input processing – learners are pushed to use the structure meaningfully.

III General principles that guide the Teaching of Grammar in ESL Classrooms

1. Grammar teaching should be planned and systematic.

2. Grammar teaching should be “roughly tuned”, offering learners at slightly different stages a range of opportunities to add to their grammar understanding.

3. Grammar teaching may involve classroom code switching and mother tongue use.

4. Grammar teaching should be “little and often” with much redundancy and revisiting of issues.

5. Text – based, problem – solving grammar activities may be needed to develop learners’ active knowledge about grammar.

6. Active corrective feedback and elicitation will promote learner’s active control of grammar.

7. Grammar teaching needs to be supported and embedded in meaning - oriented activities and tasks, which give immediate opportunity for practice and use.

IV Presenting and practising structures.

When we present a structure it is important to:

1. show what the structure means and how it’s used by giving examples.

2. show clearly how the structure is formed, so that the students can use it, they make sentences of their own.

3. the simplest way to present a structure is to show it using things, pictures.

Another way of showing meaning is to think of a situation.

The following types of exercises may be suggested:

1.recognition exercises –e.g. listen to the sentences and raise your hand when you hear the new grammar item; read the sentences and choose the correct verb form.

2.drill exercise: repetition – let’s play football; substitution – you want to go home – let’s go home; single word prompt – zoo- let’s go to the zoo; picture prompt – pen -let’s write; make- up sentences of their own.

3.Creative exercises: making statements on the pictures; asking questions; speaking about the situation; speaking on a suggested topic; making dialogues; dramatizing the text; translating.

The advantages of grammar games:

-the teacher can find out what the students know without being the focus of their attention;

-serious work can be done within the context of a game, most pupils do not associate the activity with the grammar item.

-everybody is working at once e.g. Guessing mimes – the pupils must show with mimicry and gestures what is written on the card – ex.“you’re crossing a busy road”;” you are eating a hot sandwich” for practicing the Present Continous Tense..

Teaching reading

1. Reading is one of the practical aims of teaching language at schools. Reading is of great educational importance, because pupils get information they need from books and newspapers. Reading develops pupil’s intelligence, memory, imagination. Reading isn’t only the aim but also a means of learning a foreign language. When reading a text, pupils review sounds, letters, and vocabulary, memorize the spelling and meaning of the words, review grammar. Reading in English is very difficult, because 26 letters represent 46 phonemes.

When learning English pupils should assimilate the following rules of reading:

-How to read vowels in open and closed syllables and before letter “r”

-how to read consonants: c, s, n, g, -letter combinations, digraphs, tion, sion, sh, wh, gh, th, ng.

To make the process of reading easier, new words and sentence patterns should be learned orally, so when pupils start reading they are familiar with the new words, and their meaning.

II. Four ways of reading: skimming, scanning, extensive, intensive reading.

Skimming – when pupils quickly run their eyes through the text to get the gist, to know how it is organized or to get the idea of the tone or the information of the writer. Example of exercises: underline the sentences or the words that better stress the idea of the sentence or paragraph or decide which title is the best, supply the missing sentences so as to get a coherent text.

Scanning – quickly going through a text to find a particular piece of information: a name, a date. Example: you look through TV program, newspaper, dictionary.

Extensive reading: This is a fluency activity, mainly involving global understanding, usually reading for one’s own pleasure

Intensive reading –This is reading the text to extract specific information. This is more an accuracy activity, involving reading for detail. It is done under the guidance of a teacher. The aim is a deeper understanding of a text.

III. There are 2 forms of reading:a) reading aloud b) silent reading.

Teaching Reading Aloud: we distinguish two periods in teaching reading: pretext period and text period. In the pretext period pupils study the rules of reading letters and letter combinations they get some knowledge about stress, intonation, transcription. The teacher should observe the rule: give the chance to pupils to read the text first. In the text period the teacher uses: 1) diagnostic reading: pupils read and the teacher can see their weak points in reading; 2) instructive reading: the pupils follow the pattern read by the teacher or the speaker on the tape; 3) control reading – pupils read the text trying to follow the pattern as close as possible.

Teaching Silent Reading:Silent Reading should be encouraged in most cases though the teacher may sometimes read a text aloud. It is useful to give the class help how to approach a new text: 1.consider a text as whole, its title, pay attention to the pictures if any, make guesses about what the text is about. 2. skim through the text to see if your guesses were right, and then ask yourself questions concerning the content. 3. read the text again slowly and carefully trying to understand as much as you can.In Silent Reading the teacher focuses on comprehension, not on pronunciation.

Reading techniques:

1. Making inferences – students are encouraged to make a guess at the meaning of the words they do not know, rather than look them up in the dictionary.

2. Understanding relations within a sentence – it is important to train the students to look for core of the sentence (subject + predicate). In order to do those students can be asked to divide a passage into sense-groups and underline the important elements of the sentence.

3. Prediction – it is the ability of guessing what is to come next, making use of logical, grammatical, cultural clues.

4. Global approach to the text-students should start with general understanding and move towards detailed understanding.

IV. Pre-reading activities: the teacher uses pre-reading activities to make the process of reading easier. A good presentation stimulates interest and gives reason for reading.

-Presenting new words

-Introducing the text-it is important to introduce the theme of the text, it can be done in English or language. The teacher may have a short discussion on the topic.

-Guiding questions: they should deal with the most important points of a text and not focus on minor details. They should be easy and not too long.

-Using key-words ( sentences) – the teacher selects a small number of words from the text. In groups students brainstorm possible problems and try to predict what the story might be about.

-Questionnaires - the teacher gives his pupils a list of questions to determine their attitude to the issues raised in the text.

-Biographical montage – the teacher mounts on the blackboard photos, object, place-names, students decide and chose the objects that are relevant to the author’s life. The class speculates about the meaning of the stems.

-Using the title and the cover design. 8. Using visual prompts (photos pictures).

While-reading activities.Examples of them are:true/false questions; multiple choice questions, matching questions to answers; filling in a chart ;putting items in order (words, phrases, sentences, pictures); filling in blanks (clozeactivity/gap fill) ;answering questions; categorizing (e.g. Advantages / Disadvantages); note-taking under headings ; re-ordering jumbled text;Jigsaw reading—cut the text into several parts. Give each part to each S and have them read the text silently. Next have them summarize the section. Ss put the text in the correct order.

Post-reading activities. Their aim is checking reading comprehension.

Examples of post-reading activities:read and draw; answer multiple choice questions;true or false statements;expand the statement; complete the sentence ; find the errors; sentence building (I/drive / can /the bus); open questions (why?) ; classifying; matching ( characters and attributive characteristics; giving another title; thinking of another ending; retelling.

Teaching writing

1. Teaching writing includes penmanship( how to write letters), spelling and composition. Writing of the English letters doesn’t present much trouble because there are a lot of similar letters in both languages. The most difficult thing is spelling. The modern English spelling originates as early as the 15th century and hasn’t been changed since then. The discrepancy that exists in the English Language between pronunciation and spelling may be explained by the fact that there are more sounds in the language than there are letters to stand for them. Thus ,there are 23 vowel sounds in English and 6 letters to convey them. Pupils should be taught some rules governing accurate spelling:

· Adding s to the words , ending in letter y

· Adding ed to the verbs, ending in y

· Adding ing after mute e

· Doubling of the consonants

· Writing of the main suffixes and prefixes

In learning to write a composition pupils should be taught to find the right words, grammar forms and structures, to structure an essay, to formulate strong thesis statement and strong topical sentence of each paragraph of the body.

II. Teaching writing is based on such methodological principles as conscious approach, visualization and activity of pupils.

In teaching a new letter the teacher should bear in mind the following: write the letter on the board ; say the name of the letter; give the sound of the letter, draw the letter in the air, pupils repeat after the teacher, copy the letter in the notebook.

Teaching spelling

For better assimilation of the spelling of the words it is necessary that various associations should be established.

- associations by similarity in spelling : eg. a bought, thought, brought;

- associations by contrast in spelling : eg. pen-pan; men- man; ship-sheep, too-to.

Much attention should be given to the words whose spelling doesn’t follow the rules: eg.“clerk”

Exercises for teaching spelling:

· copying-rewriting ( in order to make copying more interesting the teacher includes some tasks, for example –copy the names of professions, fill in the gap, fill in the necessary letters.

· writing dictations. Types of dictations are: a) visual dictation- the teacher writes a word or a sentence on the board, the pupils read it and memorize its spelling , then it is rubbed out and the pupils write it from memory; b) dictation drill- the teacher dictates a sentence, a word with difficult spelling is written on the board or is spellt by one of the pupils, then the pupils write a sentence.; c) self- dictation-pupils are given a text or a rhyme to learn by heart, then they write it in their notebooks from their memory.

III.Teaching composition

In teaching composition the following exercises may be suggested:

-writing reproductions of a story heard or read, some difficult words can be written on the blackboard;

-writing a description of the picture, object or a situation;

- writing a descriptive paragraph about a text or a number of texts on a certain subject( describe the place where the action takes place, write what new information you have found in the text;

-writing an annotation of the text in 5-7 sentences

-writing topical sentences, pick out the sentence which states the main idea, writing major and minor details;

-writing a composition

Before teaching writing a composition the teacher must teach pupils writing a paragraph, because a paragraph is the basic unit of a composition.

The process of writing a composition emphasizes the following stages:

Choosing a topic; planning; making an outline; composing an introduction, body and conclusion. Introduction should state the purpose of the composition and arise the reader’s interest, can give background information. The body consists of paragraphs that develop the main points and contains most of the information. The first sentence of the paragraph is usually called the topic sentence, it states the main idea of the paragraph. The other sentences in the paragraph should develop the topic sentence making its generalized meaning clear and definite. A topic is developed by giving major and minor details, by giving examples, by telling personal experience. A paragraph in which all sentences stick to the idea, expressed in the topic sentence is said to have unity. The sentences in the paragraph should flow smoothly and naturally, having clear and logical relation to each other. Transition devices can help to make the organization of the composition clear. (so, first, in the second place, meanwhile, however, afterwards, finally, at last and others).The conclusion may contain 2-3sentences. It has two main functions: to provide restatement of the main points and to provide a graceful ending for your composition.

IV. As for correcting students’works the teacher should employ self correction, peer correction according to certain criteria, which were developed by the pupils themselves under the guidance of the teacher.When the teacher corrects written mistakes he can just underline the wrong letter or a form. In this way he will make his pupils find the mistake and correct it themselves. Pupils should be trained to correct mistakes. The following techniques can be recommended: pupils read through their written work before they hand it in, the teacher just points to the mistakes or underline them, the pupils correct them themselves, the pupils exchange notebooks with their classmates and find mistakes . The teacher can write comments or notes, concerning the content, style, choice of words and so on.

Teaching Listening