All About Collocations

Collocations are combinations of two or more words that are used together frequently. For example, in business you might regularly come across theses combinations of words:

Make a profit/make a loss
Close a deal/close a meeting

It’s very important to develop an understanding of words that regularly occur together when learning English because there are many irregularities in the language. For example, you can play football and chess, but you can’t play karate. Also, you can make your bed, but you can’t make the cleaning. Concerning articles, if you play the guitar, then you play an instrument.

Using tools such as textbooks, blogs and dictionaries can teach us the meaning of the word, but not how to correctly structure a sentence around it. For this reason, it is better to learn complete phrases rather than lists of single-word vocabulary. If you prefer to pick up vocabulary by reading, then make a note of the complete sentence, not just the vocabulary word, because the context can also affect the meaning. This allows you to learn the words that are commonly used with the vocabulary word, thereby increasing your chances of using it correctly and being well understood.

A very effective way to improve the structure of your sentence when speaking and writing is to study the most frequently used collocations in the English language. Here are some examples:

Want + to + verb - “Robert wanted to eat something before the meeting”
Want + a + noun - “Karen wants a car for her birthday”
Need + to + verb - “I need to speak with Dr Stowe”
Need + a + noun – “I need a drink”
Need + some + uncountable noun – “that man needs some medicine”

There are many different structures for collocations in English and the best way to address the issue is by personalizing your list of relevant phrases based the things that you like or need to talk about. Here are just a few of the most common collocation structures to get you started:

adverb + adjective - “completely satisfied”, “extremely disappointed”
adjective + noun - “regular exercise”
noun + preposition + noun - “a bottle of water”, "Game of Thrones"
noun + verb - (passive voice sentence always require this structure)
verb + noun - “pay attention”, “take the initiative”
certain verb + gerund - “Elizabeth dislikes travelling by plane”

At Speakeasy, you can tailor your classes to specifically target any area you want, or let your teacher bring your weaknesses to your attention. Your teacher, a native-speaker, will work with you to achieve your goals and stay motivated. Learn from the comfort of your own home, take lessons from your office at lunch time or even while travelling abroad. As long as you have a Skype account and internet access, you can attend classes and study in an environment most convenient for you.

Visit our website for more information on our one-to-one courses www.speakeasy121.com. Explore our video tutorial course on Udemy to learn more about the most commonly used idioms in English-speaking countries, as well as tips for business English.