18-03-2024
Trending Tags

How the Fun Ways to Learn Collocations Can Help a Learner in an EFL Classroom

Indulging in a comprehensive course helps the learners to go through a number of new lessons, which caters to their development. For imparting the right knowledge to the students, the teacher needs to implement quite a few methodologies. The appropriate usage of collocations is one such strategy. In the following lines, we will have a look at how the educator can utilise the collocations in the right way to help the learners gain a better perspective at the course curriculum in an EFL classroom. But first, let’s have a look at the types of collocations used in an EFL classroom.

The collocations can be briefly divided into four types and each of them are briefly described in the following lines.

  1. De-Lexicalized verbs

New language learners often struggle with “de-lexicalized” verbs, which happen due to interference of first language while speaking, reading or writing. In this case, the learners tend to derive the meanings of certain words directly from the first language. The educator needs to ensure that this usage of the colloquial does not change the meaning of the sentence or put through a different meaning altogether.

  1. Nouns

These are collocations which are developed to help the learners formulate new words. The noun is used as a keyword in case of the colloquial because the majority of the general nouns usually require further qualification. They can be used to help the learners easily understand the usage of the collocation in a better manner.

  1. Strong, Frequent and Weak, Infrequent collocations

There are certain collocations that are categorised to be strong and frequent or weak and infrequent according to their usage by the educator in making the learners aware about the appropriate usage of the collocations. However, it is always better to find a combination of strong and frequent collocations, which bring in lesser negative connotations for the learners and the educator as well and does not require much time for discussion.

  1. Idioms and Phrasal Verbs

These are the collocations that are most commonly used in the learning procedure in an EFL classroom. The usage of idioms and phrasal verbs help the students to build their language base stronger and also makes the learning process enjoyable for the teacher as well as students.

Now we look athow the appropriate usage of allocations can be beneficial for the learners and in turn can help the educator in delivering the course content in an EFL classroom. Teaching collocations could make sessions lengthy and boring. Here are a few fun ways to teach collocations in an EFL classroom that the educator tends to adapt.

  1. Filling the Gap

This is an activity where the teacher uses a text. He/she creates certain gaps in the text by deleting a part of the collocation and makes the students read the whole text. The learners then try to figure out what is the missing word in order to complete the collocation. This activity helps the teacher to make the students understand the appropriate usage of collocation through the construction of new collocations.

  1. Odd one out

In this case, the teacher writes a set of words on the board. Each of these words must co-relate to the other except one. The students have to decide the correct words with co-relation between each other and strike the odd word off. This activity develops the sense of sentence construction in the students.

  1. Playing dominoes

Playing dominoes or pelmanismis another important activity for understanding the appropriate usage of collocations in an EFL classroom. In this case, the teacher creates sets of words with half of the collocation on each of the sets. The students then need to match up the sets of words in order to complete the unfinished collocation.

  1. Creating cards

Creating Bingo cards and grids with collocations are also a classroom activity popular among the EFL educators. The teacher reads out a verb and the students are supposed to cross off a noun if it collocates with the verb. The first learner who is able to cross off an entire column wins.

  1. Dictogloss

This is an exercise used by a number of language educators in order to revise a language point taught in an EFL classroom. He/she reads out a short story to the learners who need to just listen to that and not write down anything. The story is read out once again and this time the students are allowed to write down certain keywords. Now the students write down the story using the keywords and complete them with the collocations.

All the aforementioned usage of collocations are popular means of teaching the appropriate allocations to the learners in an EFL classroom.The proper understanding of collocations develops the sense of word and sentence constructions for the learners indulging in an EFL course. So it is important for the EFL educators to have a good grip over collocations and deliver it to the learners in order to develop them into better professionals for the future.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous post 5 ways to teach in a diverse classroom and its impact on a future educator
Next post Basic steps of special education that are essential for the future educators