English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies ISSN 2640-9836 (Print) ISSN 2640-9844 (Online) Vol. 5, No. 4, 2023 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls 252 Original Paper Collocation Teaching in Second Language Rong Sun1 1 University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK Received: August 11, 2023 Accepted: October 03, 2023 Online Published: October 17, 2023 doi:10.22158/eltls.v5n4p252 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/eltls.v5n4p252 1. What is a Collocation? In vocabulary learning, collocation is very important and there are many definitions about it. From the definition of Oxford dictionary (2009), collocation is the fact of two or more words always been used together in a way that happens more frequently than by chance. In the work of Nesselhauf (2004), a collocation is the co-occurrence of words, and there is a distinction between co-occurrence that are frequent and those are not. Then, Sinclair (as cited in Nesselhauf, 2004) indicated collocation is the occurrence of two or more words within a distance which around four words to the left and the right of each other in a text. Finally, as Howard (1988) emphasized collocations are words often keep company with certain other words. The definitions above help us to get the general meaning about collocations, some specific examples enable us to get more information about them. In the work of Nesselhauf (2004), the word “house” is analyzed, in sentence when he opened the door, the dog barked. All the words in this sentences are called collocates and the word “dog” and “barked” can constitute a collocation, because when the word “barked” appears in a sentence, the word “dog” will be found near it. According to Howard (1988), let me ask people to find a noun which might follow false in the sentence “he had a false___”, the nouns may include eye, nose, passport and so on, this combination is not a fixed expression, this is called “collocations”. Furthermore, the classification of collocations also may facilitate us to know them. According to Nesselhauf (as cited in Siyanova & Schmitt, 2008), collocations can be divided into three classes, the first is free combinations, which means both the verb and the noun can be combined freely, such as want a car. The second type is collocations, that means the noun is unrestricted but the verb is restricted, for example, take a picture. The final one is idioms, such as run out of steam (the noun and verb are used in restricted sense. 2. The Importance of Collocations In terms of the importance of collocations, Deogratias and Kris (2014) suggested collocations is very important for overall language proficiency. According to Peacock (2012), the knowledge of www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 5, No. 4, 2023 253 Published by SCHOLINK INC. collocations will be an important aspect of language competence, and collocations are common in academic course and it is an essential organizing principle of language, so writers should know them as a whole. Then, some scholars think the learning of collocation will pose positive effect on the development of meaning. In the work of Peacock (2012), the meaning develops through words clusters but not across single word. Finally, as Hill (as cited in Nesselhauf, 2004)) emphasized collocation enables us to communicate and think more efficiently. The prefabricated units will process in brain better. 3. How to Teach Collocations? Because collocations are common in academic course, many scholars shows their opinion about teaching collocations. In the work of Nesselhauf (2004), at the beginning of teaching collocations, the teachers should make learners more aware of the phenomenon, which means learners ought to distinguish combinations, idioms and so on. Furthermore, Nesselhauf (2004) indicate there are four principles of collocation teaching. Firstly, some repetition must be involved in collocations learning, secondly, the teaching of collocations ought to be systematically, thirdly, the present study’s finding is contrasting of L1 collocations with L2 collocations, finally, different types of collocation should be treat in different ways. One traditional way is using dictionary and selecting collocations from the dictionary to teach. According to Nesselhauf, it is important for learners to use all kinds of dictionaries including collocation dictionaries, monolingual dictionaries and bilingual dictionaries to learn. In the appendix 1, the material is about using a dictionary to learn collocations, it asks students to find the other words which could use with nouns which already given in the question, after that, students are required to lists all the verbs which can go with the nouns. Obviously, this will give students chances to find almost collocations even all the collocations which are related to these nouns, so they can collect more data. Therefore, this material is useful. Compared with this material, there are some limitations about the material in appendix 2, in this task, students need read a text first. Then, they will finish the fill-in-the-blank exercises. In this task, students just encounter with limited numbers of collocations because there are limited collocations in the text. In the work of Nesselhauf (2004), in an elicitation tasks, for example, fill-in-the-blank task or judgment task, students can only investigate limited number of collocations. The three tasks in appendix 3 are focus on different types of collocations, as Nesselhauf (2004) emphasized the phraseological approach requires the elements of collocations should be in syntactic relations, for example, adjective+noun, adverb+verb, verb+noun, noun+noun. From this point of view, we know the phraseological approach as been adapted in these tasks. Task 3 in appendix 3 is related to verb-noun combinations, students are required to use the dictionary and check the verbs are often used before the nouns in the question. The advantage of this task is students will collect many collocations which related to the 10 nouns in the question, but students just practice their investigation of production www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 5, No. 4, 2023 254 Published by SCHOLINK INC. skills rather than comprehension skills., then, task 4 is focus on verb+noun+preposition, students are not required to use dictionary in this task, they need finish this all the question based on the knowledge about this kind of collocations, compared with the last task, this task enable students to practical their comprehension skills. At the end of appendix, there is a task which related to adjective+noun, question 2 in this task seems to be a corpus analysis. According to Nesselhauf (2004), a learner corpus approach enable students to discover new phenomena, and students can analysis all of collocations which present in the corpora. To sum up, the teaching materials in appendix 3 are useful and appropriate for intermediate students of EFL. References Deogratias, N., & Kris, V. (2014). “Teachability of collocations: The role of word frequency counts” Southern African Linguistic and Applied Language Studies, 32(3), 301-316. https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2014.997061 Howard, J. (1988). Words and Their Meaning. New York: Longman group UK limited. Nesselhauf, N. (2004). Collocations in a Learner Corpus. Amsterdam: John Benjamins publishing company. ttps://doi.org/10.1075/scl.14 Peacock, M. (2012). High-frequency collocations of nouns in research articles across eight disciplines. Iberica, 23(5), pp. 29-46. Siyanova, A., & Schmitt, N. (2008). L2 learner production and processing of collocation: A multi-study perspective. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 64(3), 429-458. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.64.3.429 Tsai, K. J. (2015). Profiling the collocation use in ELT textbooks and learner writing. Language Teaching Research, 19(6), 723-740. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168814559801 Appendix 1 English for academic study: Vocabulary pp. 34 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 5, No. 4, 2023 255 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Appendix 2 English for academic study: Vocabulary pp. 33 Appendix 3 Task 3 English for academic study: Vocabulary pp. 36 Task 4 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 5, No. 4, 2023 256 Published by SCHOLINK INC. English for academic study: Vocabulary pp. 36-37 Task 5 English for academic study: Vocabulary pp. 37