Teaching new words using collocations has been acknowledged as an effective way in vocabulary classes

2.5 Involving Collocations in vocabulary classes
McIntosh et al. define collocation as „the way words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing‟ (2009:v). However, there are various ways to define it and it seems that linguists and teachers have not yet agreed upon a common description. In line with Fontenelle, „there does not seem to be any clear-cut, non-controversial definition of the term “collocation”‟ (1998:191).Although Lewis agreed that collocations have powerful teaching implications, students still need help in identifying and finding an appropriate collocation. This means teaching vocabulary by using collocations should be helped by the teacher.
Sometimes students would have difficulties in finding a most appropriate collocation by themselves because the rules concerning collocations are not generalizable. As a pedagogical value of collocations, Lewis (1993) advanced that words are normally learned in strong typical patterns. Therefore, it is more useful to learn a word together with another, so if needed, it can be broken into parts. Hence, it is always better to learn the words in collocations. As an advantage, learners, when necessary, can use these separately. However, if the words were not learned in collocations, students would not know what collocates with what. One the other hand, if words are taught in collocations, it is easier for learners to keep them in their minds.
Lewis had some assumptions, which are significant in terms of the salience of collocations. The mental lexicon is larger than we previously thought. The prefabricated chunks stored in our mental lexicons ready for use are often larger than previously recognized.
From what he says, we can conclude that, our mental lexicon is able to hold more chunks of words than we have thought which suggests teaching of these chunks must be a part of vocabulary instruction.
Woolard (2000) argues that collocations are becoming an important category of lexical patterning in language courses in recent years. He applied this technique in his classes and found that the nature of collocations fits into the notion of independent learning. He argues that teachers may enable students to improve their knowledge of collocations independently. For instance, if they have a clear notion of collocations, this may lead them to learn a new vocabulary item together with its collocations every time they learn a new word. If it becomes a habit, students would raise their awareness of collocations and learn collocates independently.
If available, computers can be also utilized for COBUILD (Collins Birmingham University International Language Database). It is based on keyword- in-context concordance data word lists, which means there is a key word used in sentences in a list and this list is composed of sentences taken from newspapers, books, radio, transcripts, of speech and other written texts.
When the key word is typed in, the list provides examples of usage of that word in different sentences taken from these different sources. In this way, it can be helpful for students if they are looking for a right collocation. More importantly, teacher’s role can be an organizer rather than an authority or expert. This provides opportunities for learners to become autonomous in learning vocabulary, especially collocations. (Johns, 1993).
It should be noted that teachers are not supposed to teach all of the collocations because there are a great number of them. They can focus on the most frequently used ones because most of the time it is not easy to decide which collocations to teach. Another point to consider is that, students sometimes use wrong collocates which means they use them in a wrong way partly because of the direct translations from their mother tongue. The teachers can keep a record of those misuses and consider them when teaching.
Vocabulary learning both within and outside the domain of reading is an important part of English foreign language classes. Most student centered approaches beyond rote memorization should be adapted for the purpose of improving retention and usage (Nation, 2005). Teaching vocabulary through classical techniques is thought to be too mechanical for the classroom learning. Acat (2008) states that mechanical vocabulary learning, just memorizing new vocabulary word by word without interaction with existing knowledge, does little to enrich students’ vocabulary. Also teaching vocabulary through classical techniques such as synonyms, antonyms, and hyponyms can cause confusion and take more time and effort than expected (Erten & Tekin, 2008). Genç (2004) states that in order to arouse interest and awareness in students about vocabulary development and make the vocabulary learning process more meaningful, teachers should try out different vocabulary teaching techniques.
„It is not true that our students necessarily learn what we teach them‟ (Morgan Lewis 2000:11). Morgan Lewis is categorical in his claim that teaching does not cause learning, which is also asserted by Larsen-Freeman (1997). According to him, while teaching is linear and step-by-step, learning is non-linear and cyclical (Morgan Lewis 2000:12). In consequence, students might only learn a taught item many weeks, months, or even years later, after he or she has encountered it a great number of times. Therefore, teachers should provide opportunities in which students can repeatedly meet the target vocabulary. One way of doing this, as suggested by Morgan Lewis and endorsed by Nesselhauf (2005:259), is that instead of prioritizing teaching new and rare words, teachers should concentrate on expanding knowledge of what is only „half-known‟ by teaching students new collocates of a known-word. As he affirms, „time spent on half-known language is more likely to encourage input to become intake than time spent on completely new input‟ (Morgan Lewis 2000:24).
Hill (2000) also promotes the idea of teaching a word with its most common collocates, explaining that most intermediate students know for example the words hold and conversation, but that they may not know the collocation hold a conversation (Hill 2000:64). He argues that „the main thrust of vocabulary work in most classes should be to make students more collocationally competent with the words with which they are already partly familiar‟ (Hill 2000:67). What would then be this „familiar language‟ and its collocations? Hill et al. (2000) recommend teaching the collocates of nouns that do not have very specific meaning and which are often accompanied by an adjective. These are also the nouns that present the longest entries in a collocation dictionary.
They choose the word situation from this list and exemplify how collocations can be used in a classroom activity presenting the following: an embarrassing situation, a bewildering situation, a tricky situation, a unique situation, an extraordinary situation, and a tense situation. Then they ask students to think of an example from their own life in which these collocations would apply. This idea is in accordance with Morgan Lewis‟s argument that a collocation „can evoke a complex situation very precisely‟, as in the cases of routine check-up, disperse the crowd, and widely available, affirming that when we teach these items apart they lose their power to communicate (2000:15).

In a study of phraseology in learners‟ academic writing, Howarth (1998:181) has found that students consider de-lexicalized verbs like get, put, take, do, and make problematic and that they avoid word combinations with these verbs because of their uncertainty as to the appropriate collocates. This indicates that de-lexicalized verbs are another category that should be drawn attention to in class. If this type of collocations is critical for university students it is safe to assume that it is no less of a problem for upper secondary school learners.

In face of the various challenges in language teaching and learning, many claim that teachers should be more concerned about providing learners with strategies (see section 2.3 above) than using all classroom time on language items. This concurs with L06, which defines as one of the competence aims that students should „exploit and assess various situations, work methods and strategies for learning English‟ (2006b).