Common English collocations and their usage What is collocation?

Common English collocations and their usage

What is collocation?

Collocation is a pair of or group of words that are often used together (word partner). These combinations sound natural to native speakers, but students of English have to make a special effort to learn them because they are often difficult to guess.

For example

• The adjective fast collocates with food, but not with a meal.

Natural English	Unnatural English
 the fast train fast food	 the quick train quick food
 a quick shower a quick meal	 a fast shower a fast meal

Mitchell (1956)

• defines collocation as an association of roots or potential lexical meanings rather than actual words.
• Robins (1964) defines collocations as “the habitual association of a word in a language with other particular words in sentences”

Why should we learn collocations?

1-

• Your language will be more natural and more easily understood. Smoking is strictly forbidden is more natural than smoking is strongly forbidden.

2-

• It is easier for our brains to remember and use language in chunks or blocks rather than as single words.

3-

• You will have alternative and richer ways of expressing yourself. Instead of saying it was very cold and very dark; we can say it was bitterly cold and pitch dark.

4-

• Improve your style in writing. We may not need or want to use these in informal conversations, but in writing they can give our text more variety and make it read better.