The Language Teacher
October 2003

Learning Collocations to Develop Fluency: A Consciousness-Raising Activity for Beginner-Level Students

Fuyuko Kato

Nagoya University of Foreign Studies



Pera-pera, or native-like fluency for communicating in English is a common desire of English learners in Japan. An intrinsic learning motive is often translated as: "Pera-pera eigo-ga hanaseruyouni naritai," or "I want to communicate in English fluently." Their hope is a motivating power for starting and continuing to study English.

Among various linguistic elements that contribute to fluency, such as native-like pronunciation and intonation, or being able to speak in sentences rather than only in separate words, this paper addresses vocabulary development. There is an undeniable fact, which one of my students keenly realized during her study in England: Having a wealth of vocabulary is one of the essentials of communication. Above all, the learning of English collocations is given special focus here.

Validity of Collocation Learning

In this paper, the definition of collocations follows Nation's (2001), which is that they are a grouping of words accepted as a phrase or clause. According to Nation, the knowledge of collocations is a requirement to develop fluency. Additionally, there seem to be more fixed or prefabricated phrases than single words in the English language (Lewis, 1996). Native speakers seem to store or access words by means of word-association and structural patterns as well as according to sound and spelling. Aitchison (1994) talks of two predominant types of word-links people make when they respond to a stimulus word: (a) co-ordinates, as in salt and pepper (same level of detail), left and right (opposites), and hot and cold (commonest members in a larger group); and (b) collocates, as in hard work, hard luck, and hard facts, where one word restricts meaning or where certain words frequently combine with others. It seems to be natural, therefore, that the learning of collocations or fixed phrases should be more encouraged in order to develop fluency.

Difficulties with Collocation Learning

While native speakers have a good intuitive knowledge of typical collocations based on years of experience with masses of data, the acquisition of collocations is not an easy task for second language learners. The language-specific aspect could be problematic for them since it denotes particular sociocultural connotations and associations. McCarthy (1990) claims that the semantic fields of the learner's mother tongue and those of their second or foreign language are inherently different. Semantic fields affect the choice of words that people associate with other words (Aitchison 1994). Therefore, the lexical fields that project semantic fields may vary between languages, or between cultures.

Additionally, collocational mismatches are also a problem. Some words can take substitutes but others cannot, regardless of syntax. For example, depending on the lexical context, not every synonym of a particular word can take the place of that word. Friendly and amicable would be considered synonyms, but only amicable divorce is collocationally acceptable; friendly divorce seems contradictory. Other examples include the fact that soft, mild, and gentle are synonymous and can all collocate with voice, breeze, rebuke, or soap, but each word also has exclusive collocations such as soft water, soft ground, mild beer, mild steel, and gentle soap (Carter, 1987).

As an example of the influence of Japanese in learning collocations, interesting and omoshiroi were once compared in my beginner-level class to introduce the difference in semantic fields of the two languages. The students observed that the word interesting was used to describe their likes or dislikes about topics ranging from entertainment to studying a foreign language; they seemed to think that interesting and omoshiroi were interchangeable. The word interesting is defined in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary as "attracting your attention because it is special, exciting or unusual" (Hornby & Wehmeier, 2000, p. 678). Omoshiroi, on the other hand, is the most common expression when giving comments about likes, and has a wider meaning (Tsukaikata-no Wakaru Ruigo Reikai Jiten, 1994). It includes the meaning of tanoshii (pleasant), which is synonymous with both ureshii (happy) and yorokobashii (joyful). It is used, for example, in omoshiroi ronbun (an interesting paper), omoshiroi manga (a funny cartoon), or omoshiroi youni hon-ga ureta (the book was selling well). Therefore, omoshiroi can be translated into interesting, funny, happy, and enjoyable, while interesting doesn't seem to be interchangeable with funny, happy, or enjoyable.

In dealing with such problems as the above, McCarthy (1990) suggests a lexical approach to see how words are related to one another, by looking at, for example, collocations. Students should consider what lexical items or responses are triggered by the stimulating word, and find typical collocations and untypical collocations. By looking closely at how the words are used or not used, students can realize that lexical items that go well with omoshiroi and interesting are not the same and thus these two words are not literally interchangeable. Although both words share some of the same implications, they do not have exactly the same semantic concepts, word-associations, or collocational behavior.

An Overview of a CR Language-Focus Activity

The language-focus activity in this paper had students go through the consciousness-raising (CR) process of "Observation-Hypothesis-Experiment." The result shows that students—even beginner-level students—were able to learn collocations or fixed phrases, and treat grammatical items in a lexical way.

Concept of CR for Vocabulary Learning

The concept of CR comes from the assumption that a comprehensive description of language is impossible since language is so vast, varied, and always changing or developing. Teachers, therefore, can provide learners with CR activities so that they will be encouraged to think about samples of language and draw their own conclusions about how language works (Willis & Willis, 1996). Additionally, CR activities are useful because: (a) vocabulary learning is a long-term process; (b) a teacher cannot give a comprehensive description of vocabulary during a limited period of time; (c) students cannot learn continuously from the same teacher for a long period of time; (d) different teachers have different approaches to vocabulary teaching; and (e) CR helps students learn how to acquire vocabulary independently.

Process of Observation-Hypothesis-Experiment

To make a CR activity more effective, the process of "Observation-Hypothesis-Experiment" is proposed by Lewis (1996). In the Observation phase, students observe the target language to increase their awareness of the component elements. Next, they assimilate language forms in use and draw their own conclusions. In the Hypothesis phase, they begin to form a hypothesis about the system or rule behind the pattern. In the Experiment phase, they test their hypothesis with authoritative input, and start to construct their own language system. These three phases need not occur in a linear sequence.

Direct Learning

With beginner-level students, direct learning and teaching is recommended, because their vocabulary knowledge is not sufficient and they often fail to guess the meaning from context. Nation (2001) claims that collocations should also be given deliberate attention with students. Sokmen (1997) also recommends explicit vocabulary teaching that encourages independent learner strategies and uses a variety of techniques, including focusing on collocations and lexical phrases.

Data from CR Language-Focus Activities

Consciousness-eaising methods were used in language-focus activities in two classes at a language school. No special material aimed specifically at vocabulary learning was used, but standard textbooks were utilized for the activity.

Data 1: Language-focus activity aiming at learning lexical pattern with grammatical restriction
Class: Beginner-level adult students
Class size: 20 students
Textbook: East West Basics (Graves & Rice, 1994)
Background: The students were studying Unit 6. East West Basics introduces prepositional phrases describing places such as at the bank or at work in the language-focus activity at the very beginning of the course (Unit 2). They reappear in Unit 6 with a focus on past activities using the be-verb.
Target: To raise the students' consciousness of treating the prepositional phrases with the be-verb as lexical phrases
Procedure: The students were asked to go through the Observation-Hypothesis process for the target phrases by comparing the text in the two units (2 & 6).
(1) Observation phase: The teacher asked them to: (a) look at the dialogue in Unit 6; find prepositional phrases of location with the preposition at and write them down; (b) look for any similarities and display their findings on the board. They found, "Were you at Sue's party yesterday?"—"I was at a tennis match"; and "Where were you yesterday?"—"At a rock concert."
(2) Hypothesis phase: The teacher asked them to try to see any pattern in the findings. They recognized that the prepositional at phrase always followed the be-verb.
(3) Observation phase: The teacher asked them to go back to Unit 2 and repeat the same process in (1a) and (1b). They found "Is Amy there?"—"No, I'm sorry . . . She's at the bank."
(4) Hypothesis phase: The teacher asked them to try to find any similarities or patterns between the two Observation phases (1) and (3). They drew a conclusion about situations in which the be-verb could be used.

Data 2: Language-focus activity aiming at learning various fixed phrases
Class: Intermediate-level adult students
Class size: Small size of 3 students
Textbook: Atlas 3 (Nunan, 1995)
Background: This language-focus activity was given to the students after finishing the "pre-task activity," the "listening to the tape," and the "task-based activity" sections in the textbook.
Target: To help the students recognize various fixed phrases used in a certain context
Procedure: The students were given the tapescript of a dialogue from the text and asked to go through the Observation-Hypothesis-Experiment process for the target phrases.

Tapescript extract from Atlas 3

Tracy: Worldwise Travel, Corporate Division. Tracy speaking. How may I help you? Dan: Oh, good morning, Tracy. This is Dan Bryson. I have to go out to Asia again next month, and I'd like some information on flights.
Dan: No, it's my wedding anniversary. Tracy: All right, Mr. Bryson, I'll look at the options we have and call you back.
Tracy: Hi! This is Tracy from Worldwise Travel. I have that information you wanted. Dan: Great.
Tracy: . . . so you'd miss the first day of your meeting. Both airlines have an early flight from Taipei to Singapore on Wednesday, but Asia Airways goes via Bangkok, so, you'd miss the first part of the trade fair.

(1) Observation phase: This phase allowed the students to get some idea for what they would be doing later. The teacher asked them to (a) underline any word-associations, phrases, or formulaic chunks; and (b) display findings. Among their findings, good morning was picked out as an example and put on the board in the following two ways:

good __________ / __________ morning

(2) Hypothesis (trial) phase: The students filled in the blanks with any word that would spring to mind. They suggested:

good __________ / __________ morning
morning / good
afternoon / every
evening / happy
night / Sunday
bye /

(3) Hypothesis phase: This phase was a task stage. From the findings in (1b), wedding anniversary was chosen this time. The teacher asked them to: (a) think of words that frequently go with each individual word; and (b) draw some conclusions from the answers. They proposed a hypothesis for word-match that wedding would also go well with other words relevant to a wedding context, but anniversary would restrict the word before it to an ordinal number or to the word wedding.

wedding __________ / __________ anniversary
anniversary / wedding
party / 10th
dress /
ceremony /

(4) Observation phase: Different words from the dialogue—information and miss—were picked for another task. The teacher asked them to find phrases or sentences that included those words in the tapescript.

information
I'd like some / information / on flights.
I have that / information / you wanted.
miss
so you'd / miss / the first day of your meeting.
so you'd / miss / the first part of the trade fair.

(5) Hypothesis phase: They became aware of such patterns as (a) information takes determiners such as some and that; (b) information is used with the verb phrase of would like and the verb have; and (c) miss is followed by the definite article, an ordinal number, day/part, and the preposition of.

(6) Experiment phase: A copy from the BBC English Dictionary (1992) that includes the target words wedding, anniversary, information, and miss was handed to the students. The students examined whether their hypotheses were correct and learned what connotation each word conveys and what words it frequently takes to make a phrase.

Interpretation of Noticed Points and Findings

Unless the combination of the be-verb and the prepositional phrases had been intentionally and explicitly treated as a lexical phrase, the students might not have been aware of it. To my understanding, the be-verb has traditionally been treated in grammar books as an independent grammatical item. The be-verb has rarely been dealt with as an interrelated domain of meaning with other lexical items. Further, the be-verb is often focused on in rather limited contexts such as self-introduction or asking people's names, jobs, phone numbers, etc., but is seldom given special attention in contexts such as asking about past activities, as in Unit 6 of East West Basics. Even for words that have been conventionally dealt with as grammatical items, a lexical approach is also effective. The close relationship between grammar and lexis in the way a word is used in English should be emphasized.

In such contexts as those created in the East West Basics dialogue, the combination of the be-verb and the prepositional phrases is supposed to be difficult, especially for beginner-level learners, because translation usually mediates between English and Japanese or vice versa. On the input side, the meaning is often understood through three steps, in the order of (a) text is input in English; (b) it is translated into Japanese; and (c) supposedly the mental image of the text that is described in Japanese is constructed. On the output side, the process is supposed to be (a) a mental image is described in Japanese; (b) the words are translated into English; and (c) the message is output in English. If they were in a particular context as in the East West Basics dialogue, they would possibly say, "Where did you go yesterday (kinou dokoni itta)?" rather than "Where were you yesterday (kinou dokoni ita)?" The answer would likely be "I went to a rock concert (rokku-konsaato-ni itta)" in preference to "I was at a rock concert (rokku-konsaato-ni ita)." Answering "I was at home" would not be at all difficult, as we say uchi-ni ita. Therefore, if the mental image is first described in Japanese, the English translation will be influenced by itta for went and ita for the be-verb past tense. The context of the way one language is used affects the way another language is used. If it is reasonable and unavoidable for beginner-level students to use translation to mediate between the two languages, an alternative way for them to become aware of the usage of the be-verb will be through a lexical approach and direct teaching.

As for Data 2, an encouraging result emerged. The students actually discovered the pattern by themselves, facilitated imaging, and recognized lexical patterns (see steps 3 and 5) through the Observation-Hypothesis process. The Experiment phase helped them correct and clarify their hypotheses and deepen their understanding about the target lexical patterns. Students' comments were also encouraging. They found the approach focusing on word-association and patterns new and helpful since, for most of them, the only way to learn vocabulary was by memorization usually through repetition using a vocabulary book.

Finally, because the activity in Data 1 was altered during the class to allow for introducing the be-verb from a lexical point of view, an Experiment phase activity had not been prepared for it. It should be also mentioned that, to avoid confusion, the term collocation was not used during the activity. Instead, the words aishou (partners which have the right chemistry), kimari-monku (fixed phrase), or pataan (pattern) were used instead.

Conclusion

Real communication comprises a lot of collocations or fixed phrases that are supposedly more than single words. In order for learners to improve fluency, they need to focus on these word combinations in addition to—and sometimes instead of—single words. There are of course difficulties for foreign language learners, especially beginner-level students, in learning collocations. However, because of their dependence on translation and collocational behaviors such as culture-specific collocability, students can become aware of and learn them with the approach suggested in this paper. As real learning is not a short-term process, a consciousness-raising activity implementing the Observation-Hypothesis-Experiment process will encourage students to make more commitment to learning English and becoming independent learners.

References

Fuyuko Kato is a part-time teacher at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies and Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences. She also teaches company and adult classes. Her special interest is consciousness-raising in vocabulary building and meaningful usage of grammar and intonation.


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