80 Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together
Give readers choices to finish a sentence:
I’m going to a pop...
a) concert; b) recital; c) performance
The most common collocations are in the form of:
✓ Subject and verb: The music blared, the engine roared.
✓ Verb and object: Brush your teeth, scrub the floor.
✓ Adverb and past participle: Ideally situated, highly strung.
✓ Adjective and noun: Black tea, heavy make-up.
Teaching certain words together
When you teach a particular word, you need to give students all the tools
they need to actually use it. With that in mind, take note of:
✓ Words that can’t be used without other words: Some words are so
uncommon that they become almost meaningless without their collo-
cates. Take for example ‘beady’. Is anything else ‘beady’ except eyes?
✓ Expressions set in stone: Even though it may be true literally you can’t
say ‘black and green’ to mean bruised. It’s definitely ‘black and blue’.
✓ Compound nouns: These are nouns made up of two words together. So you
can teach similar compounds as one vocabulary group. For example, you
can teach coffee table, dining table and kitchen table in the same lesson.
✓ Clichés: Some expressions are tired but common phrases such as ‘no
stone will be left unturned’. It’s worth teaching clichés as one chunk.
✓ English verbs that don’t translate: Some verbs in English have particu-
lar collocations which students find tricky because when translated they
don’t seem to follow a pattern. Foremost are:
- Do: a deal, harm, the shopping, business
- Get: the sack, home, lost, ready
- Make: the bed, a mistake, trouble, amends
- Take: a look, the lead, advantage, a bite
All right mate! Teaching posh words and slang
Because people face such a wide range of situations in life, it makes sense
to teach a wide range of language to meet them. So there’s good reason to
