Lexical Collocations as a Building Block in Teaching ESP

Gorana Duplančić Rogošić

University of Split, Faculty of Economics, Split, Croatia
gduplanc@efst.hr

Abstract. The awareness of the importance of lexical collocations for vocabulary learning has
increased over the last two decades. It is no longer enough to acquire the meaning of the word, but
also its collocational span. Researches have shown that collocations usually represent a problem for
non-native speakers because of the interference from their mother tongue. Therefore, emphasis needs
to be put on developing collocational competence.
The aim of this paper is to investigate the level of collocational competence of non-native users of
Business English. First-year students at the University of Split, Faculty of Economics were given a
gap fill exercise to assess their collocational competence. The purpose of the study is to clarify the
aspects of lexical collocations that require a special approach in teaching business language.

Keywords: collocations, collocational competence, business English, students

1. Introduction
In the field of foreign language teaching awareness of the importance of collocations as a part
of learning vocabulary has been growing. There are several obstacles in teaching collocations.
One of the obstacles is the number of collocations making the choice of which collocation to
include in the teaching process difficult. Another, no less important one, is the lack of clear
and unambiguous definition of a collocation.
1.1. The notion of collocations
The notion of collocation was first introduced in the 1950s by Firth who said that we “shall
know a word by the company it keeps“ and that “meaning by collocation is an abstraction at
the syntagmatic level . . . The collocation of a word or a 'piece' is not to be regarded as mere
juxtaposition, it is an order of mutual expectancy.” (Firth, 1957, p.196) Since then, a number
of authors have emphasized different aspects of collocations as being important. Ivir argues
that collocation refers to co+location, from the Latin com together and locare put, place, i.e.
place together, that is to concurrences or to combining words into syntagmatic sequence (Ivir,
1992-1993). Sinclair added that collocation is the more-frequent-than-average co-occurrence
of two lexical items within five words of text (Sinclair et al, 2004). Cowie argued that by
collocation is meant the co-occurrence of two or more lexical items as realizations of
structural elements within a given syntactic pattern (Cowie, 1978). Hausmann refers to
collocations as binary word-combinations, consisting of words with limited combinatorial
capacity, that are semi-finished products of language, affine combinations of striking
habitualness. Benson states that by collocation is meant a group of words that occurs
repeatedly, i.e. recurs in a language, (Bischof, 2004) and that it is a loosely fixed combination
taking up a position between idioms, on the one hand, and free combinations, on the other
(Benson et al, 1986).
Author's definition of a collocation would be that it is a combination of at least two words that
form a semantic unit, and that at the syntagmatic level appear more frequently than if it was a
mere coincidence. A part of the meaning of each word is derived from the meaning that it has

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in collocation with other words, which means that the meaning of a word, i.e. ‘a node’ in
collocations, is revealed by its neighbours i.e. ‘collocates’ in a given context. Collocation is a
regular feature of language that adds to the meaning of words.
1.2. Classifications of collocations
Collocations can be classified into several subtypes following varied criteria. Sinclair divides
collocations into significant and casual collocations depending on the frequency of
occurrence of the collocation and into upward and downward collocations, the former being
the ones in which collocates appear more frequently than the node, while the latter are the
ones in which collocates appear less frequently than the node. Cowie (1978) uses the semantic
criteria to talk about restricted and open collocations, the latter further divided into
established and potential. Kjellmer (1991) says that the basic types of collocations are right
and left predictive. Finally, Benson (Benson et al, 1986) categorizes collocations in English
into two classes using the semantic and functional criteria and talks about grammatical
collocations and lexical collocations. Grammatical collocations, often referred to as
colligations, consist of a combination of a lexical word and a grammatical word, the latter
being the dominant part that defines words that can collocate with the head word, i.e. the
grammatical word. Benson et al. (1986) list a total of twenty-six grammatical collocations,
eight of which are basic, and seven lexical ones. Lexical collocations are classified by
structural types into the following lexical collocations:
Lexical Collocations as adapted from Benson et al. (2009, pp. xxxi-xxxiv) are as follows:
L1= a verb (usually transitive; denoting creation and/or activation) + a
noun/pronoun/prepositional phrase
L2 = a verb (meaning eradication and/or nullification) + a noun
L3 = an adjective + a noun
L4 = a noun and verb (the verb names an action characteristic of the person or thing
designated by the noun)
L5 = indicate the unit that is associated with a (often noun1 of noun2)
L6 = an adverb and an adjective
L7 = a verb and an adverb
To simplify, lexical collocations consist of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. They usually
do not contain clauses, infinitives or prepositions. In other words, the most important lexical
collocations are adjective+noun, noun+verb, verb+noun, adverb+adjective and verb + adverb.
Research has shown that mistakes in collocations are among the most frequent mistakes made
by non-native speakers. James quoted McCretton and Rider and gave their hierarchical order
of mistakes (1998, p.229)

MOST SEVERE: LEAST SEVERE:

Lexis > spelling > negation > word order > prepositions > verb forms > concord

Figure 1 Hierarchy of mistakes according to McCretton and Rider. Adapted from James (1998, p. 229)
According to McCretton and Rider, lexical mistakes are the most serious ones. A speaker can
be understood if he uses the wrong tense. However, a wrong word may cause
misunderstanding. As collocations are a part of lexis, it is important to teach collocations.
This paper presents the results of a small-scale research, so all types of collocation could not
be a part of it. This paper therefore analyses only lexical collocations that consist of a noun
which is the node and verbs as collocates.

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3. Data
In order to analyse collocational knowledge of students, a corpus was first built. The corpus
was based on the glossary of the Market Leader, Pre-Intermediate, 3rd edition, Course book.
This is the book which is language-wise appropriate for level B1-B2 of the European
Framework for Languages and the book used by students in class.
First, a list of 133 nouns was made covering all nouns that are listed in the glossary. The list
was then reduced to 59 nouns taught in Business English 1. Finally, the representation of
selected nouns was analysed in two bilingual and two monolingual dictionaries. The two
bilingual dictionaries English-Croatian Dictionary of Business and Economics and English-
Croatian dictionary were used to research whether bilingual dictionaries offer help in
translating collocations from business English. Out of the total 59 nouns, only 7 nouns or 12
% had an example of a verb+noun collocation in the English-Croatian dictionary, providing
both the English collocation and Croatian translation. None of the 59 nouns had a noun+verb
collocation in the English-Croatian Dictionary of Business and Economics and, as follows,
there were no translation equivalents. To conclude, collocations are not included in the
bilingual Business English dictionary, and only sporadically in the decoding bilingual
English-Croatian dictionary, although, as has been previously stressed, most mistakes non-
native speakers make are vocabulary-related.
The selected monolingual dictionaries were Oxford Business English Dictionary for learners
of English (referred to as OBED) and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English for
Advanced Learners (LDOCE) 5th edition. Only British English dictionaries were chosen as
they are learner-oriented dictionaries written primarily for non-native speakers, as it is also
suggested by their titles, as opposed to American English dictionaries written mainly for
native speakers (Duplančić Rogošić, 2007, p. 38). As the target audience of these dictionaries
is different, so is the data included in it. In short, American dictionaries were not chosen
because they tend to provide fewer collocations as compared to the British ones (Duplančić
Rogošić, 2007). The results of the analysis showed that all 59 nouns were present in the two
monolingual dictionaries. Monolingual learners’ dictionaries include a large number of lexical
collocations, but integrate them within the dictionary entry in different ways. Some words
have a separate collocation box within the dictionary entry and often provide an explanation
of the collocation, e.g. balance the budget =make sure only the money available is spent in
LDOCE. A great number of collocations are included in the form of examples of use under
different senses of a particular verb (e.g. The dealer takes a 20% commission on the sales he
makes.) in LDOCE or are a part of the dictionary entry, e.g. to launch an advertising
campaign in OBED. Out of the 59 nouns, the collocations were present to a different extent
across the four dictionaries as can be seen from figure 2. More than half of the words, i.e.
53% or 31 nouns were present in both the OBED and LDOCE. A total of 15 words or 25%
were present in only OBED. Collocation for only 5 words, or 9% could be found in three
dictionaries (LDOCE, OBED and Bujas). Four words or 7% of words did not offer any verb-
noun or noun-verb collocations. Finally, two words or 3% were available in only LDOCE
(growth and turnover) and OBED and Bujas (demand and target)

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 Collocations in selected dictionaries
OBED and BUJAS NONE
3% 7%
LDOCE
3%
OBED, LDOCE and
BUJAS
9%
OBED and LDOCE
53%

OBED
25%

Figure2: The representation of selected collocations in dictionaries

It can be concluded that monolingual learners’ dictionaries include a large number of lexical
collocations, while existing bilingual dictionaries of English and Croatian do not pay special
attention to lexical collocations. It should not be said categorically that no collocations are
included in bilingual dictionaries. However, given the difference between the languages and
problems native speakers of Croatian have at producing collocations, more collocations
should be included in the decoding dictionaries. All the more so as average users turn to
bilingual dictionaries more often than they do to monolingual ones.
The native speakers of Croatian, who are not language specialists and that the author has been
teaching for years, have provided valuable information on how they actually use dictionaries.
Only rarely have they said they use or have used a monolingual dictionary of English. They
mainly intuitively turn to bilingual English-Croatian dictionaries as they use it to understand
lexical units from the English text they do not understand. The main reason they look up
words in dictionaries is only to ease their understanding of a text in a foreign language and
not to find more information about the usage of words they already know. Most of them own
a bilingual dictionary or dictionaries with English as either the destination or the source
language, but only a few of them a monolingual English-English one. Why that is the case is a
matter for a future research.

4. Procedure
Students have two 45-minute Business English lessons per week and on average 10-15
minutes a week are dedicated to teaching collocations. Students are mainly taught
collocations that have a noun as the node and verbs or adjectives as collocates. A total of 22
taught nouns were chosen as the basis of analysis. These nouns are the basic Business English
vocabulary the students should know as it was taught to them during the first semester. The
selected nouns were then put into one main and two additional tasks that were part of the
questionnaire.
The questionnaire was administered to a total of 68 first-year students of the undergraduate
professional study programme of Small Enterprise Management at The Faculty of Economics,
University of Split. There were 45 female or 66.2%, out of which 35 full-time and 9 part-time
students, and 21 male or 30.2%, out of which 12 full-time and 9 part-time students. Two
students (2.9%) did not answer these questions. Most of the students were nineteen and had
been learning English for 8-10 years before college.

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5. Analysis
Follows the analysis of the three tasks given to students.
5.1 Gap-fill task
The main task was the gap-fill task with a total of 12 sentences. The students had to choose
one of the three verbs for each of the nouns. The majority of students knew that a meeting is
held (96%), a discount is given (88%), objectives are set (84%), a company is set up (61%),
profit is made (54%), and that employees perform (52%) well. On the other hand, less than
half, i.e. 48% of students knew that a job is held, that an order is placed (32%) or that an
income is earned (28%). Finally, only 19% of students knew that inflation runs at a certain
percentage. Although students did reasonably well, it should be stressed nonetheless that they
had a fairly easy task as their correct answer could be a matter of a lucky guess.
5.2 Translation tasks
In order to see how well the students could produce a collocation in English and translate an
English one into Croatian, they were given two translation tasks. They first had to translate
five sentences from English to Croatian and then five from Croatian to English. Collocations
were underlined and students were asked to pay special attention to those verb+noun
combinations when translating. All the mistakes students made in choosing the appropriate
tense or person, spelling mistakes and other mistakes not related to collocations are not
analysed here. They however point out possible directions for future research.
5.2.1. English to Croatian translation task
There were five English collocations that needed to be translated into Croatian: take out an
advertisement (objaviti reklamu), run the company (upravljati tvrtkom), attend a conference
(sudjelovati na konferenciji), make an investment (ulagati) and a vacancy arises (pojavilo se
slobodno radno mjesto). All collocations were given in a sentence so as to provide a context
for the collocation.
A total of 5 students translated correctly the collocation take out an advertisement. Other
suggested verbs that should go with the node advertisement were zauzeti (23 students),
zakupiti (3), 8 (izdati), 4 (uzeti), 3 (izraditi), 2 (ispuniti), 5 (iskoristiti), 3 (preuzeti), and
(odvojiti *na reklame). Six students did not provide any answer. Some did not know what
collocation to use with the noun advertisement, so they chose the verb to advertise and
provided translation using the verb, i.e. Organizatori koncerta su se reklamirali na cijeloj
stranici u New York Timesu. Some used a noun from the same field to say that Organizatori
koncerta su napravili promidžbu preko cijele stranice u New York Timesu or Organizatori
koncerta su rezervirali cijelu stranicu za marketing.
The collocation run the company was translated as voditi tvrtku four times. More frequently,
the verb voditi was replaced with the noun meaning the person who does it, i.e. voditelj (e.g.
Jeff je od tajnika napredovao u voditelja firme), meaning action, i.e. vođenje (e.g. U 10
godina, Jeff je od posla u mailroomu došao do vođenja tvrtke) or vodstvo (e.g. U 10 godina,
Jeff je prešao iz sobe za primitak mailova u vodstvo tvrtke). In addition, students used the
words šef (e.g. Jeff je od raznosača pošte došao do posla šefa tvrtke), poslovođa (e.g. Jeff je
napredovao od e-mail adresara do glavnog poslovođe) and direktor (e.g. Jeff je iz uredskog
posla napredovao u direktora tvrtke) and suitable collocations to translate the same sentence.
A total of 12 students did not answer the qeustion.
Seven students correctly translated the collocation attend a conference. Prisustvovati
konferenciji was suggested by 27 students, eight pohađati, pristupiti 4 students, dolaziti, biti,
pozvati, sastati 1, odlaziti and nazočiti 2, doći 5, imati 1. Seven students did not provide an
answer.

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The collocation make an investment was translated correctly by 24 students. It is a rather good
result considering it is translated into Croatian as a single verb, and not a collocation, which is
the reason it was included in the task. Another 16 students translated the collocation as a loan
translation and wrote either napraviti or raditi ulaganje instead of ulagati / uložiti. Eleven
students did not write the correct collocation with the correctly translated noun ulaganje /
investiranje and wrote *Poštanski servis je ostvario veliko ulaganje and *Pošta je imala
veliku investiciju and the like.
The last collocation proved to be the biggest problem to students as 44 students did not know
the meaning of the word vacancy. Only four knew the word and were able to translate the
sentence correctly. The others understood the verb arise and tried to provide, unsuccessfully,
a noun in Croatian that could go with it.
5.2.2. Croatian to English translation task
The Croatian - English pairs in task 3 were: otkazati narudžbu (cancel an order), raditi
prekovremeno (work overtime), smanjiti broj zaposlenika (reduce workforce), dobiti bonus
(get a bonus), dobiti proviziju (earn a commission). The collocations were chosen in the small
English corpus built for this research and then translated into Croatian.
Thirty-four students knew that the noun order collocates with the verb to cancel. However,
they were not sure whether to cancel the order, cancel your order, cancel an order or cancel
order. Ten students did not answer the question. Thirty-nine students knew that raditi
prekovremeno is translated as work overtime. However, only ten chose the correct tense.
Another 10 misspelled the word and wrote: *overtimes, *over time, *owertime, *over-time.
Nine students were wrong and 9 did not provide a translation at all. When translating the
collocation smanjiti broj zaposlenika, students did not use the noun workforce, but mainly the
phrase number of employees which collocates with the verb to reduce. A total of 21 students
translated it as reduce the number of employees. Other suggestions were *lowering the
employment rate / the number of employees, *decreasing/ cutting down/downsizing the
number of employees. A total of 12 students did not answer the question and 11 of them used
different verbs which were wrong for the context.
The easiest task for students was the collocation get a bonus as fifty-four students or 79%
knew this collocation. Eleven did not translate the sentence. The last collocation earn a
commission showed that 13 students knew the answer. Thirty students did not know the
answer, and 24 translated commission, in Croatian provizija as provision.

6. Results and discussion

The analysis of students’ output showed that students were able to guess the correct
collocation when several choices were offered to them. A possible reason could be that some
collocate+node combinations sounded more familiar.
It was more difficult for them to produce a correct collocation both in the foreign language
but also in their mother tongue. In L2 they had to know the noun which was the node and then
think of the right collocate. In L1 they had problems finding the right collocate partly because
of L2 interference and partly because they are not used to doing translation tasks which
require them to activate the knowledge of their mother tongue. Therefore, students could not
always remember the right collocation in their mother tongue and could not always collocate
the right verb with the noun. The noun conference is a good example as it is attended but not
*taken (pohađati, as in take a course in or pristupiti as in take an exam) as was translated into
Croatian. There is a strong interference from L2 to L1 as proved by translation of the
collocation make an investment into raditi or napraviti ulaganje, or *get commission instead

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of earn commission. These are word for word translations into Croatian which sound
unnatural in English.
There was an example of L1 to L2 interference when a false pair was used. Instead of earning
a commission students suggested that it was correct to say *earning a provision as
commission is translated into Croatian as provizija. Transfer of L2 collocations into L1
language, and vice versa can lead to interlingual errors. The unsuspecting learners can be led
to assume that the noun collocates in the same way in both languages. When learners assume
there is absolute one-to-one equivalence in L1 and L2 they will produce wrong collocations.
The collocations that were analysed in this paper are only those that have a noun as the node
and a verb as the collocate. In order to do a more extensive research, other collocates and
other nodes should be included as well. Hill recommends, when teaching collocation, to
choose collocations that follow particular grammatical patterns such as adjective+noun, noun
+ noun, verb+ adjective + noun, verb+adverb, adverb+adjective and verb+preposition+noun
(Hill, 2000, pp. 51).
In the future, other types of collocations should be researched as well. The gap-fill and the
translation exercises could be combined with well-targeted concordance exercises to see
whether students would do better. Emphasize should be placed also on teaching collocations
that are different in the two languages.

7. Conclusion
It can be concluded that collocations often pose a problem to non-native speakers of language.
A learner’s knowledge of (at least common) collocations is a part of the communicative
competence of native speakers that the non-native ones try to acquire. It is the knowledge of
what is possible and appropriate in a particular context and what is actually used by native
speakers. Therefore, the effective language performance by non-native speakers depends on
their knowledge of common collocations. Native speakers do not acquire their knowledge of
collocations overnight but it requires long-term exposure to the language to develop
competency of what is acceptable in the language and what not. Collocation competence is
therefore part of the intuition of a native speaker. The collocations that were taught to students
in Business English class were mostly familiar to students. They were successful at guessing
the right collocate in Task one.
The translation tasks identified several problems students encounter when having to produce a
collocation. There is a strong interference from L2 when translating into L1. English and
Croatian are two quite different languages and students should be taught to beware of
transferring elements of L2 into L1, or vice versa. They should be encouraged to look up
words in dictionaries. Bilingual dictionaries should include more collocations, especially
those different in the two languages. Although a good bilingual dictionary can help students,
they should also be encouraged to look up words in monolingual dictionaries as well. They
should also be taught that when looking up words in dictionaries, they also look up words
these words usually go with.
Significant emphasis should be put on teaching collocations which are different in L2.
Students should learn new words not only as isolated units, but as lexical combinations.
In addition, L1-L2 and L2-L1 translation tasks should be used as they would not only help
students learn new collocations in English or activate their existing knowledge of collocations
in a foreign language, but would also help them revise the collocational potential of their
mother tongue.
Finally, it should be stated once again that the knowledge of collocations is of complex nature
and there is so much of it to acquire which presents a challenge for learners and teachers
likewise. Hill recommends teaching collocations that have noun, verb or adjective as a node

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and the medium-strength ones as they make the largest part of what is said and written (Hill,
2000, p. 63-64). This considerably reduces the number of collocations that have to be taught,
and learned. This is probably the path to follow.
APPENDIX: QUESTIONNAIRE
Poštovani,
Molim Vas da prije ispunjavanja upitnika pročitate kratka uputstva. Pitanja koja će Vam biti
postavljena vezana su za pitanje kolokacija u jeziku. Za ispunjavanje upitnika bit će Vam
potrebno do 30 minuta. Vaše sudjelovanje u anketi je dobrovoljno i Vaši odgovori nemaju
nikakve posljedice za Vašu ocjenu ili ostvarivanje potpisa.
Odgovori na pitanja su anonimni i povjerljivi.
Hvala Vam na Vašem vremenu!
OPĆA PITANJA.

ZAOKRUŽITI JEDAN ODGOVOR.

1. Spol M Ž
2. Dob 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 više od 26
3. Status studenta Redoviti Izvanredni
4. Broj godina
učenja engleskog manje od 4 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 više
prije studija od 12
ZADACI.

Zaokruži jedan odgovor koji smatraš točnim.

1. The more you save, the more interest you'll___________________.
a) earn b) make c) do
2. We're ___________________ a meeting next week to discuss the matter.
a) discussing b) doing c) having
3. Inflation is now___________________ over 16%.
a) jumping at b) running at c) representing
4. The company was ___________________ just after the war.
a) organized b) put up c) set up
5. Managers should___________________ specific performance objectives for their teams.
a) place b) set c) put
6. They usually ___________________ you a discount if you buy multiple copies.
a) give b) get c) assign
7. The company is looking for employees who can ___________________ comfortably in a
highly diverse work environment.
a) carry on b) practice c) perform
8. We need to___________________ finance for further research.
a) get b) raise c) collect
9. The property company___________________ a huge profit on the deal.
a) had b) achieved c) made

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10. Financial assets have the advantage of ___________________ income.
a) making b) earning c) getting
11. He had never been able to___________________ a job.
a) maintain b) stop c) hold down
12. I would like to ___________________ an order for ten copies of this book.
a) place b) put c) command

Prevedi na hrvatski. Posebnu pažnju obrati na podcrtane riječi.

1. The organizers of the concert had taken out a full page advertisement in The
New York Times.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
2. In ten years, Jeff went from working in the mailroom to running the company.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
3. Representatives from over 100 countries attended the International Conference
in Geneva.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
4. The Postal Service has made a large investment in new technology.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
5. A vacancy has arisen in our sales department
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Prevedi na engleski. Posebnu pažnju obrati na podcrtane riječi.
1. Ako se predomisliš, uvijek možeš otkazati narudžbu.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
2. Rade prekovremeno kako bi završili posao.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
3. Tvrtka smanjuje broj zaposlenika.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
4. Svaki zaposlenik će dobiti godišnji bonus.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
5. Prodavatelj obično dobije 20% provizije na svaki prodani automobil.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

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