Collocations- Studying them and looking them up

Language learners like us know that studying the translation of foreign words is not enough. As long as one does not know how to use those words, they are merely in one’s passive vocabulary. Therefore one has to study the words that go with the newly acquired term, namely the collocations. Being so important for every language learner, I’d like to devote an entry to looking up and studying collocations.

Looking up collocations:
Looking up collocations sounds easy, since we all have our monolingual dictionaries at home, which normally give a lot useful collocations to each word. If you have the LDOCE CD-ROM it’s even easier, since in the right top corner there’s the so-called phrase bank, where you can see phrases containing the word or, at the bottom of the phrase bank, you can see single words that go with the term. They are arranged in lexical categories, namely adjectives, adverbs, nouns, verbs and prepositions. If you want to see examples or an explanation for a collocation you just click on the word and the according part on the main screen will be highlighted.

Then, of course, you could use a collocation workbook, like “English Collocations in Use”. This book enables you not only to look up single words in the index, but also words that relate to a semantic field (weather, eating and drinking, work, taste and smell etc.) The beauty of this system is that when you write about, let’s say, the topic crime, the book gives you many words and collocations to the whole topic and not merely to one word.

And last but not least, you could buy a collocations dictionary, like the “Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English”. Though it does not cover all the words a normal dictionary covers, it certainly gives more collocations than the LDOCE or the workbook. The words are also organized in lexical categories:

• adj
• adv.
• verb + word
• word + verb
• prep.
• phrases
• nouns + word
• word + noun

For some structures there are example sentences or notes. However, the words are not explained, that is, the learner is expected to know the words.

How to study collocations?
Both the LDOCE and the Collocations Dictionary are helpful if you have to learn new words and want to study the words that go with them. Furthermore, the Collocations Dictionary has special “study pages” with exercises. However, if you just want to learn ANY useful collocations and not collocations for particular words, I’d recommend the workbook. There are many interesting chapters, each consisting of two pages. The left page always explains the words (sometimes using pictures) and the right consists of several exercises, so you really won’t forget them.

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Here is an example for looking up words:

Let's look up a word from the reduced glossary, since we have to learn those words, anyway. What about "adjacent"?

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LDOCE:

1. Dictionary phrases:
   adjacent to
2. Words used with: adjacent

• PREPOSITION:
  to
• NOUNS:
  area,
  building,
  cell,
  field,
  needle,
  room
• ADVERB:
  immediately

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OXFORD COLLOCATIONS:

adjacent adj.

• VERBS be, be situated, lie, stand The vineyards of Verzy lie adjacent to those of Verzenay.
• ADJ. directly, immediately There is a row of houses immediately adjacent to the factory.
• PREP. to The miller's house stands adjacent to the mill.
  

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ENGLISH COLLOCATIONS IN USE:

There's no entry for adjacent.

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Obviously all of those learning items can be helpful. You just have to know when to use which of those books (or the CD-ROM version of the LDOCE).

So, have fun studying!