Collocations
What are collocations?
Collocations are two or more words that often go together. These word combinations sound natural to native speakers in the target language you are learning.
Watch the video: English Collocations (2 1/2 minutes).
Review
Complete the following exercise on the video you just watched.
Why Learn Collocations?
As you learned in the video above, some words just go together. When you learn new vocabulary, it is a good idea to learn collocations. This will help you to expand your vocabulary and improve your fluency and accuracy.
Compare the two sentences below:
- Every morning, I take breakfast very fast and run to the bus.
- Every morning, I have a quick breakfast and run to catch the bus.
The second sentence has several English collocations:
to have breakfast
a quick breakfast
to catch the bus
Collocation Patterns
While there are no rules for collocations, there are collocation patterns. Some English collocation patterns are listed below.
Adjective + Noun
Noun + Noun
Verb + Noun / Noun + Verb
Verb + Adverb
Adverb + Adjective
Verb + Preposition
Practice
Complete the following exercise to practice identifying collocation patterns.
Collocations in the Dictionary
English language learner dictionaries often provide information about collocations. There are also dedicated collocation dictionaries.
Practice
Click on each online dictionary below to learn more and to practice finding collocations in online dictionaries.
Explore Further
Learn more about collocations with EAPFoundation.com’s video on 25 Common Collocations for Academic English.
Attributions
Media Attributions
- Collocations video by English with Cambridge is licensed under the Standard YouTube licence.
