Collocation's what you need!

If you wanna speak the best you gotta learn the rest. Collocation's what you need.

While the title it may not be grammatically correct it is a fun throwback to my childhood watching the world's finest breaking all kinds of records from the sublime to the ridiculous.  If you were a record breakers fan they have a quick walk down memory lane with the link below.

Record Breakers Theme

Ok, so back to the matter at hand. Collocations. As we all know are what you need to sound more natural when speaking any language, not just English. What is languange if it isn't just a group of words that somehow sound right together.

I must confess it was again my considerably better half that has again drawn my attention to this most interesting of topics and her material that I use in class and that you're going to have the chance to get your hands on today if you just click -----------> for the collocations powerpoint. (courtasy of the delightful Gema Galan)

I'm not going to go to great lengths to describe this lesson for you. Simply go through the powerpoint and elicit as many examples as you can for each of the examples there.

At the end of the powerpoint and refelctions I tnd to give my students this -----> handout (not my own material, borred from Elspeth Pollock) and get them to close their eyes and choose three or 4 collocations at random. I then set about allowing them to select roles, a situation and a topic in which they have to have a conversation and shoe horn in their randomly selected collocations, while making it sound as natural as possible. They're encouraged to add any others they've come accross that day.

So here's how it went the other day with a wonderful group of software engineers.

Me: "Ok, so Juanman you're in a........"
Juanma: "errrrr theatre"
Me: "Great, so Alvaro, you're talking about......."
Alvaro: "who committed the murder."
Me: "Wonderful, now Kiko you're a...."
Kiko: "A hot shot lawyer."

and so on.


Give it a shot. The class should take around an hour or so. It can easily be extended to last an hour an a half and students can thus be given plenty of time to use their newly acquired language.

Thanks for sticking with me.

H

What have you got, Taylor?

The other day whilst cruising along the motorway on the way home from seeing the in-laws I was doing what I do best, vaguely irritating my remarkably tolerant wife. Every time there was some kind of statement, question or... well basically anything, I was responding to the lyrics of the song. The song in particular was Blank Space, by Taylor. It's not the first time I've done it and I'm certain it won't be the last. It then dawned on my wife, who is also an English teacher, that this horrifically irritating habit could be turned into a fun classroom game.

I started by doing the same song in class:

What could you show me Taylor?
I could show you incredible things.

Like what exactly?
Magic, madness, heaven, sin

Fair Enough, Well what happened next and what did you think about it?
Saw you there and I thought
Oh my God, look at that face
You look like my next mistake

How long is it going to be?
So it's gonna be forever

and so on

This went on a wee while. I then set my students the task of choosing a verse of whichever song they liked to prepare and come back into class and have a conversation with their favourite pop stars. 

They did stunningly well. Even my weakest students were forming questions perfectly and it even seemed like they were producing some kind of natural language.

It was just one of the many sensational, inspirational ideas given to me by my significantly better half.

Have a go.

@ELFluencyfella