Chapter 1 the study of collocations

1.1  The Importance of Collocations in L2 Learning 
 
 
The importance of collocations for the development of L2 vocabulary 
and communicative competence has been underscored by a number of linguists 
and language teachers who recommend the teaching and learning of 
collocations in the L2 classroom. 
 
Collocation has been considered as a separate level of vocabulary 
acquisition.  Bolinger (1968) and (1976) argues that we learn and memorise 
words in chunks and that most of our "manipulative grasp of words is by way 
of collocations" (Bolinger 1976:8).  The learning of language in segments of 
collocation size, especially in children, is proved by the fact that "the collocate is 
 
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what the young child produces if you ask him a definition", e.g. a 'hole' is 'a 
hole in the ground' (Cazden 1972:129, cited in Bolinger 1976:11).  Bolinger 
describes language learning as a continuum starting at the morpheme level 
with word formation rules, moving to the word level and activating phrase 
formation rules.  The last stage before storage into memory is the level where 
words enter into collocations.  When learning a language people may or may 
not store a morpheme as such, but they do store phrases.  For example, the 
phrase 'indelible ink' will be stored as a phrase, but few people will analyse the 
word 'indelible' as having the morpheme 'in-' as a prefix (Bolinger 1968:106). 
 
Among the early advocates for the importance of collocations in L2 
learning and their inclusion in L2 teaching is Brown (1974), who suggests that 
an increase of the students' knowledge of collocation will result in an 
improvement of their oral and listening comprehension and their reading 
speed.  In an effort to make the advanced students achieve a better feel of what 
is acceptable and what is appropriate, Brown outlines a number of exercises.   
 
 The combination of lexical items as a source of difficulty in vocabulary 
acquisition has been noted by researchers like Korosadowicz-Struzynska (1980), 
who claims that the learner's mastery of these troublesome combinations, rather 
than her/his knowledge of single words, should be an indication of her/his 
progress  (Korosadowicz-Struzynska 1980:111).  Korosadowicz-Struzynska 
reports that students face intralingual and interlingual problems in the use of 
collocations, and even advanced students who have considerable fluency of 
expression in a foreign language make collocational errors.  The teaching and 
 
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learning of collocations for production reasons is regarded as essential by 
Korosadowicz-Struzynska, who also describes certain steps that should be 
followed in order to promote the teaching of collocations from the initial stages 
of foreign language learning.  These include selection of the most essential 
words on the basis of usefulness and frequency of occurrence, selection of the 
most frequent collocations of these words, presentation of these collocations in 
the most typical contexts, and contrasting any of the selected collocations with 
the equivalent native-language collocations that could cause interference 
problems for the learners. 
 
The significant role that conventionalised language forms (idioms, 
routine formulas and other forms such as collocations) play in the development 
of foreign language learners' communicative competence is stressed by Yorio 
(1980).  One of the functions of conventionalised forms is that they "make 
communication more orderly because they are regulatory in nature” (Yorio 
1980:438).  Realising that random selection on purely subjective grounds from 
diverse conventionalised language forms is totally inadequate for the purposes 
of foreign language teaching, Yorio describes a set of criteria for the selection of 
specific forms to be taught: need, usefulness, productivity, currency, frequency, 
and ease (Yorio 1980:439). 
 
It has been claimed that prefabricated language chunks and routinized 
formulas play an important role in acquiring and using language (Nattinger & 
DeCarrico 1992:1; Nattinger 1980). Nattinger and DeCarrico have argued that a 
common characteristic in acquiring a language is the progression from routine 
 
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to pattern to creative language use (Nattinger & DeCarrico 1992:116).  
Therefore, it is suggested that the learning of prefabricated language patterns 
should be promoted in the classroom. 
 
The "apparent rulelessness" of collocations as one factor that interferes 
with foreign language vocabulary learning has been noted by Laufer (1988).  
Laufer reports that collocations constitute an essential aspect in the learners' 
knowledge of vocabulary, and she acknowledges that problems can arise in the 
learners' use of word combinations.  She also suggests that collocations could 
be found to provide help in many levels of vocabulary development and the 
development of self-learning strategies such as guessing (Laufer 1988:16). 
 
Realising the foreign language learner's difficulties in learning 
vocabulary, Cowie (1978), (1981) stresses the importance of the compilation of 
English dictionaries "in which collocation and examples play a separate but 
complementary role" (Cowie 1978:131).  Cowie points out that "meaning is not 
the only determinant of the extent and semantic variety of collocating 
words....The constraint may be situational" (Cowie 1978:134).  For example, in 
the collocation 'a tea/dinner service of 50 pieces' there is a restriction as to 
which meals can combine with 'service' (tea, dinner, breakfast, ?luncheon) and 
their combination is based on cultural factors, i.e. which of these meals it is 
customary to serve, and whether it is conventional to have separate sets of 
dishes and plates for each (Cowie 1978:134).  As a result, special treatment of 
the cultural factor of collocability in a learner's dictionary is proposed.  He also 
suggests the inclusion of 'free word-combinations' that could still cause 
 
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problems for the foreign language learners, as well as the inclusion of 
grammatical rules that will indicate the correct grammatical treatment of the 
included collocations (Cowie 1981:226,232). 
 
The teaching of collocations in the classroom could help students 
overcome problems of vocabulary, style and usage (Leed & Nakhimovsky 
1979).  Leed and Nakhimovsky suggest the utilisation of lexical functions, as 
these are described by Mel'cuk and Zholkovsky (1988) (see Table 1), for the 
construction of foreign language teaching materials, vocabulary exercises and 
learners' dictionaries.  Leed and Nakhimovsky argue that vocabulary exercises 
should be based on the findings of a well-structured lexical analysis, in the 
same way that pronunciation exercises are based on phonology (Leed & 
Nakhimovsky 1979:111).  The theory of lexical functions can provide the basis 
for the generation of pedagogical exercises that are more consistent, diversified, 
and elaborate, less arbitrary, and ultimately more effective.  Such an approach 
would help foreign language learners with problems of vocabulary, style and 
usage, and give teachers a method to produce and carry out lexical exercises in 
the classroom, as well as concentrate on the teaching of restricted collocations 
such as 'heavy drinker', 'heavy smoker', 'deep trouble', etc., (Leed & 
Nakhimovsky 1979:109).