Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata

Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level

students

Akhmad Renggana Madya

Candidate name Kramadibrata

Assignment title Teaching collocations with delexicalised

verbs to lower level students

Date of submission 16 October 2014

Wordcount 2302

Centre number 37755

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

Contents
Introduction (200 words) ..........................................................3
2. Analysis (602 words) ...........................................................4
2.1. 2.1 Collocations and Delexicalised verbs ...........................4
2.2 Form and fixedness ..........................................................5
2.2.1 Delexicalised verb + noun: ..........................................5
2.2.2 Delexicalised verb + adjective: ....................................5
2.2.3 Delexicalised verb + adjective + noun: .........................5
2.3 Pronunciation ..................................................................6
3. Issues (599 words) .............................................................7
3.1 Recognising multi-word units for fluency .............................7
3.2 L1 interference ................................................................7
3.3 Limited time frame and need for repetition ..........................7
3.4 Issues with register ..........................................................8
3.5 The arbitrary nature of collocations ....................................9
4. 4 Suggestions for teaching (896 words) ............................... 10
1. Explicit teaching of collocation .......................................... 10
2. 4.2 Raising awareness and using translations ..................... 12
3. Repetition and using vocabulary in various contexts ............ 13
4. 4.4 Vocabulary notebooks ................................................ 14
5 Bibliography ........................................................................ 17
6 Appendices ......................................................................... 20
6.1 Collocations with delexicalised verbs................................. 20
6.2 Text as a linguistic object ................................................ 21
6.3 English vocabulary in use ................................................ 23
6.4 Vocabulary book ............................................................ 25

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

Introduction (200 words)

One thing that used to surprise me a lot when I was marking
students’ writing is how often they would make basic mistakes,
even at a higher level. What was interesting to me is that the bulk
of these had perfect grammar. E.g. “I have to make homework
tonight.”, or “the lake was very freezing.”

When asked why the above sentences are incorrect, most

teachers would rely on their intuition and just say “it’s just wrong.”
Michael Lewis (1997) said that a lot of grammatical and lexical rules
are quite arbitrary, and I find that collocations, especially for
delexicalised verbs are a good example of that.

Teaching this is important because research shows that

learners’ speech and writing suffer due to a lack of collocational
competence (Lewis ed, 2000) which results in grammatically sound
sentences that are awkward or just wrong. Willis (2003) also points
out that according to research, grammar and lexis is more
intertwined than was previously thought; grammar might be the
starting point of making sentences, but words determine the final
shape.

My research will be limited to collocations with verbs,

especially those with delexicalised verbs, that can be used with pre-
intermediate students.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

2. Analysis (602 words)

2.1. 2.1 Collocations and Delexicalised

verbs
According to Thornbury (2006), words that collocate are those
that often co-occur. Their relationship can be grammatical, such as
when verbs take prepositions to make prepositional verbs like do
up; or lexical, in which two content words go together, like strong
coffee.

In practice, this means that for some words, there is a limited

selection of words that can follow or come before it (Parrot, 2006).
Each lexical chunk has collocations, but some collocational
relationships are stronger than others, e.g. hair can collocate with
curly, brown, long, spiky and others whereas the word blond only
collocates with hair.

Some collocations have literal meanings, such as cats meow,

and others don’t. ‘Heavy smoker’ does not mean someone who
smokes and is fat, neither does ‘make the bed’ mean build a
bedframe.

However, their meanings can be expressed through the

constituent words’ lexical functions (Arnold 1995). Take ‘heavy
smoker’, even though ‘heavy’ isn’t used literally (of great weight),
the functional relationship of it to ‘smoker’ is intensification.

‘Take a seat’ doesn’t mean to literally transport a chair. Here

the verb carries little meaning, and the expression in which it occurs
has an idiomatic quality (Lewis, 1997). These so-called delexicalised
verbs - do, get, give, make, put, set, take (Parrot 2006) - have
many collocations and can be collocated with nouns and adjectives
and can also have infinitives or prepositions following it.

As the meanings of the collocation rests not on the verb but

on the subsequent noun or adjective, it is often the case that ELLs

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

(English Language Learners) find it difficult to select the correct

verb to use even though, as mentioned above, there might be some
functional relationship.

2.2 Form and fixedness

Here are some examples of the forms a delexicalised verb can
take in a collocation.

2.2.1 Delexicalised verb + noun:

Frankly, my dear, I don’t (give a damn)
Oh dear, I forgot to (take photos) at the beach!

2.2.2 Delexicalised verb + adjective:

We’re here to (do good).
My dream is to (get rich) when I grow up

2.2.3 Delexicalised verb + adjective + noun:

I think I deserve to (take a nice, long bath)
I (did a one-month course) in ELT.

The expressions in which delexicalised verbs are collocated

have a varying level of ‘fixed-ness’. For some, we can’t alter the
plurality of the noun and for others, we can’t add adjectives or
adverbs.

Take a breather: This expression is fixed and can’t be modified.

Do someone a favour: This expression requires an object after

the verb and can take an adjective before the noun, e.g. big favour.

Make a mistake: This expression can become plural, i.e. some

mistakes.

Even though these verbs are ‘delexicalised’, ‘they do express

something of their original meaning. For example, ;the expressions
with do often have a sense of action and the expressions with give
often have a sense of contributing something.’ (Parrot, 2006: 145).

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

2.3 Pronunciation
As there are so many, it is difficult to analyse collocations for
pronunciation features such as connected speech or intonation, as it
depends on the words being used. But there are similarities in the
stress.

Stress is defined as syllables in speech that have a ‘change in

pitch or the level of the speaker’s voice, and the vowel in that
syllable is lengthened (Kelly, 2000)’.

In the examples in the previous section, collocations are in

parentheses, and stressed syllables are in bold.

As most of the words in a collocation are content words, they

are stressed equally (Hart, 2011).

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

3. Issues (599 words)

3.1 Recognising multi-word units for

fluency
“It’s just a figment of your imagination” is quite a complicated
grammatical construct, consisting of Pronoun + to be + adverb +
indefinite article + preposition + posessive pronoun + noun, but in
native speakers minds, they are all part of the same unit.

One of the reasons language learners find it difficult to keep

up with spoken language is that they don’t recognise multi-word
units, and process language on a word-by-word basis (ed Lewis,
2000).

3.2 L1 interference
English language learners have approximate equivalents for
collocations in their L1, and this might cause an issue . Wray (2002)
gives examples such as ‘in English you run a business, but in
German you lead it … in English you smoke a cigarette, in Hindi you
drink it...’

Similar to Dowling (2004), my students also, due to their L1,

prefer to use verbs like ‘Indonesia is progressing’, as opposed to
the more natural ‘Indonesia is making progress’

3.3 Limited time frame and need for

repetition

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

Native speakers have years to acquire vocabulary, but ELLs

don't. Schmitt (2000) estimates that English Language Learners
need 2,000 words for daily conversations, 5,000 words to
understand authentic texts, and around 10,000 for academic texts.
It seems impossible to teach students that many words in that short
a time unless students are exposed to language outside of class.

One popular way of doing that is by encouraging students’

extensive reading and guessing meanings of words through contact
with authentic texts. However, that has proven to be quite
inefficient as ELLs need to know 95% (optimally 98%) of the words
in the text to correctly guess meaning from context (Nation, 2001).
So it seems that the best thing to do is to explicitly teach students.

That causes another issue, which is how are we supposed to

do that when teacher trainers often recommend that we don’t teach
more than 10 pieces of lexis in one sitting? Especially since
repetition is such a key part of language learning. Cook, quoted in
Hall and Verplaetse (2000), claimed:

Repetition and learning by heart... are two of the most

pleasurable, valuable, and efficient of language learning
activities, and … (achieves) valuable goals for the
language learner: being involved in the authentic and
communicative use of language. (p117)

3.4 Issues with register

I have often seen teachers discourage students from using
collocations in formal settings or letters and it seems that students
take this to heart. According to Parrot (2006:146) ‘some multiword
verbs and verbal expressions have one-word ‘equivalents’”. One
particular activity I’ve seen used repeatedly is converting a friendly
email to a business email using ‘equivalents’ like get in touch:
contact, give in: concede.

As such learners are under the impression that collocations

are only to be used in colloquial speech, but this is not always the
case.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

3.5 The arbitrary nature of collocations

The majority of words are particular about it’s collocates but it
seems to be quite arbitrary (Lewis, 1997) and is fossilised in the
lexicon by custom (Parrot, 2006). E.g. you can have a high
mountain, but a high boy means something else altogether.

Students often ask me for a collocation rule, and I generally

have to say there is none because more often than not, there isn’t
one.

Chi et al. (1994) showed that students tend to use delexicalised

verbs interchangeably. As they carry little to no meanings by
themselves, it is often argued that students won’t be able to know
the correct verb unless explicitly taught by teachers as a lexical
chunk.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

4. 4 Suggestions for teaching

(896 words)

1. Explicit teaching of collocation

Lewis (1997) stresses the importance of not equating

vocabulary with words as most of our “mental lexicon is stored as
pre-fabricated multiword ‘chunks’(pg.20).” It seems obvious that we
should be teaching collocations similarly to how we teach words, as
single units (not to be separated), connected to other words in
sentences. Even though it is possible for learners to acquire lexis
incidentally from text, it is much more effective to teach lexis
explicitly (Webb, 2007 & Folse, 2012).

This following gap fill can be used after a presentation to

check if students can recall previously taught vocabulary.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

Image 1. Activity A (self-made)

Note that both the verb and noun are blanked, so students
will first have to match them together in the columns. The first
activity necessitates recognition of the form, the second activity,
the meaning.

This is important to do, as Danilevičienė & Vaznonienė (2012)

observed, the arbitrary nature of collocational pairs might make it
near-impossible for learners to achieve a native like fluency. This
will also help students recognise collocations like they do single
words.

It would be a good idea to drill the collocations above with

students. Whole class choral drill might be a good idea, but
substitution or prompt drills might be useful as well. E.g. once
students are comfortable with the correct pronunciation of the verbs
and nouns, the teacher can just prompt students with the nouns,
and students must respond with the verb+noun collocation.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

2. 4.2 Raising awareness and using

translations

Figure 2. Activity B

Activity B (figure 2) can be used as a linguistic object that

students use to notice verb-noun collocations. As most of the nouns
are pretty basic, pre-intermediate students will be able to guess
quite easily the meanings of the verbs through context.

Fan (2008) and Lewis (2000) advocates raising students

awareness of collocation in class, one way of doing so is to ask
students to compare how collocation is used in their own language
as well as how important it is in general (Willis, 2003).

Another, albeit rather unfashionable, thing to do is

translation. Laufer and Girsai (2008) have shown that translation
and contrastive analysis can significantly improve students’ ability
to recognise both single words and collocations.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

This means the above task can be extended with students

noting down the translations on their worksheets or in their
vocabulary books (more on this in 4.4), and for teachers to then
discuss with them how important using the correct collocate is to
sound natural. This can be done by citing examples in students’ L1,
for example the ones in Wray (2002).

3. Repetition and using vocabulary in

various contexts

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

Figure 3. Activity B. REDMAN, S. (2003). English vocabulary in

use: Pre-intermediate & intermediate. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. pg43.

Webb (2007) has shown that each encounter with an

unknown word can boost the probability of retention in terms of
meaning, orthographic form, grammatical function, syntax, or
association. The activities shown above can be used to recycle
previously learnt vocabulary in different ways.

The first activity is a simple matching activity where students

have to recall the correct form. The second activity tests students’
comprehension of meaning. The final one tests recall of form and
meaning, along with students’ ability to put the lexis in context.
These activities incorporate previously learnt lexis in a variety of
tasks and contexts.

That said, Webb (2008) also found out that quality of context
might be more important to understanding than number of
encounters. It should be pointed out that when creating tasks for
repetition, teachers should take care to use it in a variety of
appropriate contexts, both formal and informal. E.g. when teaching
pre-intermediate students the collocation take the bus, we can use
it 1) while making small talk at a bus stop, discuss how you get
around, 2) while in a business meeting, discuss transportation for a
company event.

It is difficult to see how we can do this in within the

limitations of class time, but research by Prince (1996) shows that
vocabulary lists seem to be more effective for retention, especially
at the lower level. Folse (2012) advocates teaching 20 - 30 words in
a meeting, although with the cavet that no two lexis are 'similar
phonologically, orthographically, or semantically, as learners may
confuse words that sound or look alike (e.g. chicken and kitchen)
(pg. 364)'

4. 4.4 Vocabulary notebooks

Studies show that vocabulary notebooks improve learner’s

vocabulary (Folse, 2012). When teaching the word ‘look’ it would be

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

pertinent to teach ‘look like + NP’ or ‘look + emotion’ as if it were

as important as the single word item ‘look’ (Fan, 2008).

Schmitt and Schmitt (1995) suggest that the ‘notebook’ be a

loose-leaf binder, or a collection of cards kept in a box. The reason
for this is to enable students to move words around as necessary.
Like Laufer and Girsai (2008), they also suggest using translation; if
students are able to contrast the English collocation to their L1,
they would be better able to retain that there is a difference.

Figure 4. example of a vocabulary notebook card from Schmitt

and Schmitt (1995:138).

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

That said, teachers must still be involved in choosing what

lexis goes into the notebooks as students tend give all unknown
words equal importance, and aren’t able to identify high frequency
words (McCrostie, 2007).

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

5 Bibliography

ARNOLD, D.J. (1995) Multiword units: Idioms and collocations.

Available from:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/external/clmt/mtbook/html/node
55.html

CHI, A. M. L., WONG, K. P. Y., & WONG, M. C. P. (1994).

Collocational problems amongst ESL learners: a corpus-based
study. Available from:
http://repository.ust.hk/dspace/handle/1783.1/1088 [accessed
15th October 2014]

Danilevičienė, L. & Vaznonienė, R. (2012) DIFFERENT APPROACHES

TO THE CONCEPT OF COLLOCATION IN ENGLISH: WHY LEARN
COLLOCATIONS? UGDYMAS - KŪNO KULTŪRA - SPORTAS Nr. 4
(87); 2012; 20–26; SOCIALINIAI MOKSLAI. Available from:
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/84452760/different-
approaches-concept-collocation-english-why-learn-collocations
[Accessed 7th October 2014]

DOWLING, S. (2004) Delexicalised verbs. Available:

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/delexicalised-verbs
[Accessed 15th October 2014]

FAN, M. (2009) An exploratory study of collocational use by ESL

students - A task based approach. System 37 (2009) 110 -123.
Available at www.sciencedirect.com [accessed 9th october 2014]

FOLSE, K. (2011) Applying L2 lexical research findings in ESL

teaching. TESOL Quarterly 45.2 : 362-369.

FOWLE, C. (2002). Vocabulary notebooks: Implementation and

outcomes. ELT Journal, 56(4), 380-388.

HALL, J.K. & VERPLAETSE, L.S. eds (2000) Second and Foreign
Language Learning Through Classroom Interaction. New York:
Routledge.
http://faculty.educ.ubc.ca/pduff/personal_website/Publications/Duff
_2000_Repetition_in_FL_Classroom_Interaction.PDF

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

HART, P. (2011). Learn about sentence stress in the English

language.Available: http://canadianimmigrant.ca/work-and-
education/learn-about-sentence-stress-in-the-english-language.
[accessed 12 october 2014]

Hulstijn J. H., & Marchena, E. (1989). Avoidance. Studies in Second

Language Acquisition, 11, pp 241-255.
doi:10.1017/S0272263100008123.

KELLY, G. (2000) How to teach Pronunciation. Harlow: Longman

Pearson.

LAUFER, B. & GIRSAI, N. (2008) Form-focused Instruction in

Second Language Vocabulary Learning: A Case for Contrastive
Analysis and Translation. Applied Linguistics (2008) 29 (4):694-
716.doi: 10.1093/applin/amn018. Available from:
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/4/694.abstract
[accessed 13th October 2014]

LEWIS, M. (1997) Implementing the lexical approach: putting

theory into practice. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.

LEWIS, M. ed (2000) Teaching Collocation: further developments in

the lexical approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.

MCCROSTIE, J. (2007). Examining learner vocabulary notebooks.

ELT journal,61(3), 246-255.

Nation, I.S.P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language.

New York,: Cambridge University Press.

PARROT, M. (2006) Grammar for English Language Teachers, 2nd

Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PRINCE. P. (1996) Second Language Vocabulary Learning: The role

of context versus translations as a function of proficiency. The
modern Language Journal, 80 iv. Available from:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/329727?seq=1 [Accessed on 13th
October 2014]

REDMAN, S. (2003). English vocabulary in use: Pre-intermediate &

intermediate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

SCHMITT, N. (2000). Vocabulary in language teaching. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

SCHMITT, N., & SCHMITT, D. (1995). Vocabulary notebooks:

Theoretical underpinnings and practical suggestions. ELT journal,
49(2), 133-143.

SWAN, M. & SMITH, B. (2001) Learner English: A teacher’s guide to

interference and other problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

THORNBURY, S. (2006) An A-Z of ELT: A Dictionary of Terms and

Concepts Used in English Language Teaching. Oxford, UK.:
Macmillan Education..
WEBB, S. (2007). The effects of repetition on vocabulary
knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 28/1:46-65. Available from:
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/1/46.abstract [accessed
13th October 2014]

Webb, S (2008) The effects of context on incidental vocabulary

learning. Reading in a Foreign Language, Volume 20, no 2. pp 232 -
245. Available from:
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~readfl/rfl/October2008/webb/webb.pdf
[accessed 13th October 2014]
WILLIS, D. (2003) Rules, Patterns and Words: Grammar and Lexis
in English Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

WRAY, A. (2002) Formulaic Language and the Lexicon. Cambridge:

CAmbridge University Press.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

6 Appendices
6.1 Collocations with delexicalised verbs
Made by: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata

Match the words in the columns and then put them in the correct sentence.

make shopping

make mistakes

do great time

do course

do trip

have friends

have exams

take party

take nothing

1. I’m a quiet person and I don’t _____________ _____________ very easily.

2. I always _____________ the _____________ at the ASDA.
3. I’m really sorry, I know I _____________ a _____________ , can you forgive
me?
4. Sunday is a day when I just stay at home and _____________
_____________
5. I just bought the tickets! I’m going to _____________ a _____________ to
Jamaica.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

6. We went to the Harry Potter world last week, we _____________ a

_____________ .
7. My mother thinks that I shoud _____________ a _____________ in
Economics.
8. Hey, it’s Mark’s birthday and he’s going to _____________ a
_____________ on Saturday
9. Come on, you don’t _____________ _____________ until January. You
don’t need to study, let’s party!

6.2 Text as a linguistic object

Made by: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata

Look at the pictures and think of:

- what is their job?
- what is
their
personality?

Hi, my name is Sally. I’m doing a course in Sports Management at

University. I’m really anxious because I’ve got to take 4 exams next month and I’m
not good at exams, I often make mistakes! But it’s a great course, and I’ve made a
lot of friends. We’re going to have a farewell party for my friend Jenny up in the
castle.

Hi, I’m Jake. I’m 32 and I’ve just taken a trip to Bali. I had a great time there
and I can’t wait till I can go back again! I went bungee jumping and jet skiing, but
there were also three days where i just stayed at the beach and did nothing! Now
I’m back and can’t believe that I have to do something as boring as doing the
shopping.

Now think of a:

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

course you have _______ exam you have _______ mistake you have _______

friend you’ve _________ trip you’ve _________ party you have _______

trip you’ve _______ great time you’ve _______ time you _______ nothihng

last time you _______the

shopping

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

6.3 English vocabulary in use

REDMAN, S. (2003). English vocabulary in use: Pre-intermediate &

intermediate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pg42.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

REDMAN, S. (2003). English vocabulary in use: Pre-intermediate &

intermediate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pg43.

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Name: Akhmad Renggana Madya Kramadibrata
Assignment Title: Teaching collocations with delexicalised verbs to lower level
students

6.4 Vocabulary book

Figure 4. example of a vocabulary notebook card from Schmitt

and Schmitt (1995:138).

25