When learning a language, let it be English or any other, most people think about grammar

and long lists of words. It is true of course that knowing and acquiring grammar rules is a
must if one wants to use a language accurately, and that a good vocabulary is one of the main
requirements to language proficiency. Researchers like Chomsky (1995) argue that language
learning is generally learning the lexicon of the target language. Also, opposed to the
grammar-based approaches of the past, and which are still prevalent in many Hungarian
schools, the Lexical Approach was born. Lewis (1993) created the foundations of this new
view on language learning, although as Kroly (2005:59) writes: it develops the basic
principles in the communicative approaches to language learning. According to Lewis, the
choice of words often determines what kind of grammar we need to use in our sentences, and
because of this the emphasis in language teaching should be shifted from grammar onto
teaching vocabulary and teaching how to use the vocabulary items we have learned. Also, as
words do not appear in isolation, teachers should concentrate on the importance of
collocations, not only on single words when teaching vocabulary.
But what are collocations? Generally speaking they are words that appear together, often next
to each other or at least very near each other. It is important to point out that they are not used
together only by random chance. As McCarthy (2009:22) points out collocation is about
what the most likely combinations of words are; it is about possibilities. From the
perspective of this paper, we mostly concentrate on collocations (word combinations), which
do not happen just by chance and also on those which may present difficulties to language
learners.
We know that (McCarthy 2009) there is much information to learn about words, and this is
also true for collocations. Students have to know a words spelling, its pronunciation, word
class, meaning, derivations, synonyms and know when and where, in which register to use the
given words. One of the main reason, why students have troubles with collocations is that in
the Hungarian TEFL practice teachers often use word lists which contain only a limited
amount of information about lexical items. Information about collocations and register is
virtually non-existent in most Hungarian EFL classrooms.
Most students naturally pick up a set of collocations from different sources (movies, music,
books, etc.), but without proper instruction it is no surprise that they have difficulties using
them. Some of the main mistakes students make when using collocations: overuse of a given
collocation, underuse, and also students resort to translating collocations from their native
language on a word-by-word basis. Also, it can be problematic in terms of fluency, when

students try to express their thoughts while lacking a desired collocation which would help
them be more accurate.
In order to help students acquire collocational knowledge successfully, there are a few points
in research to consider. Raising learner awareness is highlighted among these. According to
McCarthy (2009) we can do this directly and indirectly. The direct way is teaching explicitly
what collocations are, giving examples, etc. The indirect way is basically using tasks to teach
collocations and let the students figure out what was behind the tasks really, or the teacher can
explain afterwards. There is no better or worse way of doing this; these two approaches
should be used according to learner needs. This idea is prevalent in research. Many sources
say that students should become able to notice and identify collocations, and they should be
taught how to record collocational information in their vocabulary notebooks (McCarthy
2009). We have already determined that the way in which vocabulary notebooks are used in
most Hungarian EFL classes, that is by recording words and their L1 translation is not
effective enough. Lewis says If you want to forget something, put it in a list (1993:118).
McCarthy suggests that learning vocabulary may be more effective if we organized
vocabulary items in semantic groups, because this is how words are stored in our minds
anyway. Aside from all these, another methodological question arises when we think about
teaching collocations: what techniques and tasks to use? The importance of using effective
tasks is imperative in teaching. Fanaee (2014) writes about teaching collocations through taskbased instruction in an Iranian language school. Her quantitative research shows the
effectiveness of the instruction. In our paper we are also going to concentrate on tasks, which
we believe can be of great use when teaching collocations.
Tasks:
1) Find the Intruder (Vasiljevic 2008): This is a very simple, multiple-choice type task. The
teacher prepares a list of target words and mixes up the associate words with distracters. In
this task, students have to choose the correct answer, so the task emphasizes the recognition of
certain collocations.
Example: EFFORT make do increase resist
This type of task can be easily adjusted to learner levels, and it can concentrate on common
collocations and less frequent ones. The task can be easily incorporated in more complex
ones, like writing or reading tasks. According to Vasiljevic (2008), this task can be used as a
pre- or post-reading activity, to revise collocations which appear in the reading material. Also,
there is no native language translation provided, although in some cases it might be necessary

to ask the students to copy the collocations into their vocabulary notebooks. Because it directs
further attention to collocations, it can make reading tasks easier if it is used as a pre-reading
task, and if it is used a post-reading one it can help the students remember the collocations
better. The more the students encounter a given lexical item, the better he can retain
information about it.
For writing tasks, the teacher may collect sentence frames (e.g. On the other hand, The
problem is), institutionalized utterances (If I were you) and text frames (Firstly, Secondly,
etc) to give the students lexical chunks they can use to make their compositions more natural
and accurate.
2) Post-it Warmers (Warre 2014): I found this on the British Council's webpage, where
there is a 10 item long collection of activities used for teaching collocations. The general idea
is to break collocations into two parts, and give them to the students. Then, they have to get
up, mingle and find their matching partners to form collocations.
In Warre's version, he uses post-its and sticks them to the students' back. The students must
not look at their own words initially. They have to ask others politely to tell them what is on
their backs. Polite requests and questions should be pre-taught before the activity if necessary.
This way it is a great combined activity, which lets students interact with each other, revise
collocations and use useful chunks of language. Because of its absurdity, it is also highly
enjoyable. It makes the learning situation more memorable, because it provides a context to it.
After the students have found their pairs, they sit down and create sentences.
I think this activity is very useful to revise already known collocations. I would use it at the
beginning of a lesson to bring back the collocations which were learned beforehand. I would
prefer to use it after the lesson when the collocations were introduced. It is good practice to
bring back new items of vocabulary in various contexts on the long run, because repeated
exposure makes them easier to acquire.
I have successfully used a variation of this activity recently when teaching a beginner level
Russian class. I used index cards instead of post-its and students had to ask each other, using
pre-taught questions. They practiced already known vocabulary, which they have already
acquired passively and they were able to identify the verb-noun collocations. The most useful
part of the activity was that when they used the collocations in questions and sentences,
because they practiced the accusative forms of the nouns and the different forms the verb can
take. Also, I made the part when they had to write sentences more complex. They not only

had to use the collocation they were given, but they had to come up with more of them by
changing the nouns with which the verbs collocate with. For example:
listen to music => listen to rock music, listen to pop music, listen to the radio
3) Dictionary entry: This activity is of my own design. I used it during my teaching practice
as a pre-reading activity to teach unknown and difficult vocabulary before reading the text
itself. I wrote each piece of vocabulary on index cards and I provided example sentences
along with synonyms or English language explanations. I used real dictionary and thesaurus
entries, but in many cases I had to adapt the language to the learners' level (elementary).
I gave the index cards to pairs of students and I told them how to pronounce the words the
were given. At first they had a few minutes to find out the meaning of the collocations based
on the examples and the synonyms. I monitored their work and checked when they were
ready with the Hungarian language translation. I made sure that at this point the pairs did not
know each others' answers. After a pair had found out what their collocation means, they had
to come up with their own example sentences and English language explanations, based on
what I wrote. Their task was to explain the collocation to the other pairs in English, so that
they could also find out the meaning.
Although I had my doubts about the activity before teaching the lesson, the students enjoyed
it and it proved to be useful and with sufficient scaffolding appropriate to their level. Aside
from encountering the given collocations in numerous contexts, they were also shown what a
monolingual dictionary or thesaurus entry would look like. They also practiced giving English
language explanations and their listening skill, when they were listening to each other. The
activity proved to be a successful pre-reading task, and as I observed during the following
lessons, the students were able to retain knowledge of the collocations they were taught.

List of literature:
1) Chomsky, Noam (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA:MIT Press.
2) Fanaee, Fahimeh (2014). Teaching Collocations through Task-Based Instruction: The Case
of Iranian EFL Students. International Journal of Linguistics. Vol 6, No 1.
3) Kroly, Adrienn. (2005). The Importance of Raising Collocational Awareness in the
Vocabulary Development of Intermediate Level Learners of English. Eger Journal of English
Studies V 58-69.
4) Lewis, Michael (1993). The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and the Way Forward.
Hove: Language Teaching Publications.
5) McCarthy, Michael (2009). Vocabulary Matrix: Understanding, Learning, Teaching.
Cengage Learning.
6) Vasiljevic, Zorana. (2008). Developing Collocational Competence of Second Language
Learners. The East Asian Learner, Vol 4., No 1.
7) Warre, Tim R. (2014). Fun ways to teach English collocations. Bitish Council,
http://www.britishcouncil.org/blog/fun-ways-teach-english-collocations (23.04.2015.)