EFL Learners: Problems and Solutions with Verb + Noun Collocations

This essay delves into the crucial aspect of verb + noun collocations in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning, examining the concept, nature, and challenges EFL learners encounter. It begins by defining collocations according to Lewis and Firth, exploring fixed and flexible collocations, and focusing on delexical verbs within the verb + noun category. The essay then identifies common problems, such as interference from learners' native languages, syntactic differences, and the lack of collocation awareness, which lead to errors in language production. The second part of the essay provides practical teaching solutions to overcome these issues, including the use of audio clips, collocation lists, and dictionaries, as well as encouraging learners to focus on chunk words. The essay emphasizes the importance of mastering collocations for accurate and fluent language use, concluding that effective teaching strategies are key to helping EFL learners achieve proficiency in this area.

Running head: TEACHING VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONS TO EFL LEARNERS
Teaching Verb + Noun Collocations to Efl Learners
The Name of the Student:
The Name of the University:
Author Note:

1TEACHING VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONS TO EFL LEARNERS
Introduction
When it comes to English vocabulary, collocation is a significant element in it.
Collocation is a group of two or more words that forms naturally to make sense. Collocations
are arbitrary; they do not maintain any pattern or follow every grammatical law. This essay
will discuss the concept of collocation, the problems the EFL learners have to struggle with
regarding collocation to learn the language, and solutions that a teacher must adopt to resolve
those problems.
Part I: Analysis
A. Definition of Collocation
Lewis defined collocation in his Teaching Collocation, 2000 (Conzett, 2000:132), as,
sets of words that in a particular order repeatedly occur together to form a meaning.
Replacing a word from any set with its synonym could make unacceptable phrases or phrases
that have different meaning, for example, if make coffee is changed to do coffee then the latter
is unacceptable in the English vocabulary. Although Lewis’s view on collocation is widely
discussed, it was J R Firth, who coined the term. According to Firth, 1957, collocation of
words does not refer to the contextual meaning of the words, instead, he says the meaning by
collocation is an abstraction at the syntagmatic level and is not directly concerned with the
conceptual o idea approach to the meaning of words (Barrtsch & Evert, 2014:48). Like the
often co-occurring words dark night. Although Lewis and Firth discusses different aspects of
collocation, the true meaning of the term lies in the combination of both definitions.
B. Nature of Collocations
Collocations are groups of words that naturally occurs together to build a meaningful
sentence. On this context, collocation shows two different natures. The fixed nature of

2TEACHING VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONS TO EFL LEARNERS
collocation refers to the collocation that has a particular combination of words. Like the
combination utter disaster, this combination has the most tendency of occurring than any
other combination as only a few words can possibly replace the word disaster. Fixed
collocations occur when it becomes difficult to change a word in the combination with an
alternative. In a few cases of collocation, there can be only one possible combination of
words. Shrug shoulders is such a collocation as the verb shrug only pairs with the noun
shoulders. On the other hand, the flexible nature of collocation involves words that can team
up with other words. Like, in the phrase play football a number of other sporting activities
can be used instead of football, such as, play hockey, play basketball. In flexible collocation,
words are freer to allow a range of words to occur with a single word. These types of
collocations can also be referred as the weak collocations.
C. Delexical Verbs
The verb + noun category refers to the combinations of verbs and nouns that naturally
occur together. The phrase compose music is a perfect example to demonstrate how verb and
noun combine to create collocation. The verb + noun collocations can be further categorised
into two types – delexical verb + noun collocations, and lexical verb + noun collocations.
Delexical verbs are those that are vocabulary less content, which is why they can also be
termed as light verbs. This means, delexical verbs have the ability to pair up flexibly with
various nouns to form different meanings. There are only a few numbers of delexical verbs,
such as make, put, give, take, go, get and have. The verb get can combine with nouns such as
home, haircut, job and form different phrases like get home, get a haircut and get a job,
which have different meanings. Although few in numbers, delexical verbs tends to occur
most frequently and they are the most common verbs in vocabulary. In the of delexical verb +
noun formations the meaning of the phrases change through the changes of the nouns as the
verbs are general but the nouns have specific meaning. With a few exceptions, for example

3TEACHING VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONS TO EFL LEARNERS
give birth, it is possible to replace these delexical structures with analogous single word verb
like give advice can be replaced with advise.
Part II: Problems and Teaching Solutions
Problem A
The EFL learners frequently make mistakes in English collocations as their native
language delexical verbs are not the same as English ones. This happens because different
languages use different verbs with the same object to create the same meaning, and in the
effort of trying to find the correct collocation, the learners end up translating the phrase from
their native languages. As an example, the Italians say make a coffee when the correct phrase
in English is have a coffee.
The first step I will take is to help the learners focusing on chunk words. They will be
provided with audio clips that have samples of regular conversations in English (Mohammadi
& Enayati, 2018:181), and then they will be asked to fill up sentences by taking phrases from
what they have heard. In this way the learners focus will shift from the grammar to the
practical use of the language. As, this problem occurs mainly because teachers usually follow
a systematic process to teach a foreign language, this hearing and learning exercise will make
the learners have a better understanding of the use of verbs.
Another habitual mistake that learners do while learning a foreign language is to use
synonyms in a fixed collocation (Gulec & Gulec, 2015:440). Like the EFL learners,
mistakenly use eat breakfast when it should be have breakfast. The lack of knowledge to
comprehend the proper application of verbs is why these mistakes happen. The way words
combine in collocation is unpredictable; it does not follow any rules.
In order to make a successful way to solve this problem, I will provide the learners
lists of most common collocations that are used daily, and then ask them to write paragraphs

4TEACHING VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONS TO EFL LEARNERS
and have conversations with other learners using the examples from the lists. Although it is
impossible to memorise all the collocations, the most common ones that are used in everyday
life can be learned by remembering and practising. One learns a language to utilize it in an
accurate way, and a stronger vocabulary means more accuracy in the usage (McCarthy,
1990:125). Thus, learning by application can become a useful way to master the use of
collocation.
Problem B
Syntax is the systematic array of words that helps in constructing sentences that are
well structured. This syntax varies between languages. In Spanish, the noun comes before the
adjective as opposing to the English syntax where the adjective comes before the noun. The
EFL learners make the mistake of not changing their native language syntaxes while
translating it to English.
Problem C
In some situations, the learners construct sentences with correct words that also
convey proper meanings, but those sentences lack collocations. As the students, in order to
make a correct sentence, focus on selecting words one by one, they mistake to understand
that the words are making collocation or not. In order to solve this problem, I must introduce
collocations while teaching sentence-making skills and encourage them to use more
collocations in their writings. Simple and short passages and poems will be provided as
reading materials. Learning collocations from the beginning will help the students to write
with collocations naturally. The reading materials will help them recognize the uses of known
collocations and identify new collocations (Boonyasaquan, 2009:102). This method of
learning is practical as it makes the students habituated with the collocations.

5TEACHING VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONS TO EFL LEARNERS
Problem D
There are learners who tend to make elaborate sentences to express their thoughts
instead of using the collocations because they are not aware of them. Sentences such as
people have the ability to say what they need can easily be shortened as people have the
freedom of speech by using collocation. I will encourage the students to look up words in
collocation dictionaries like the Oxford Collocations dictionary for Students of English and
learn new collocations along with their meanings. The next step will be to give the students
elaborate phrases and ask them to write the collocations for those. The dictionary will enrich
their vocabulary and the classroom practice will make them aware of the collocations for
those elaborative phrases (Lackman, 2011:21). This learning process can prove to be a
convenient way of learning collocations.
Problem E
A very familiar mistake done by students who are learning English as a foreign
language is to combine two words that are close in meaning, and by doing this the meaning of
the phrase gets doubled up. As examples, students tend to write phrases like urban cities and
quiet silent place where words have almost similar meanings.
In order to solve this problem, at first I will teach them the various constructions of
collocations. Then, I will advise them to direct their focus on the chunk words rather than on
each word separately (Mohammadi & Enayati, 2018:182). In this way, they will learn the
proper way to make collocations and increase their stock of collocations. This method has the
potential not only to increase the learners’ vocabulary but also to clarify the structure of
collocations to them.

6TEACHING VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONS TO EFL LEARNERS
Conclusion
Accuracy and fluency in a language depends on mastering collocations. It is easier for
the native English speaking people to use collocations as those come to them naturally.
Whereas the people who are learning collocations as a foreign language, it is quite difficult to
apprehend the concept of collocations and be comfortable writing them. The EFL learners
make a few common mistakes while trying to learn and apply collocations. It is the
responsibilities of the teachers to make the students aware of proper use of collocations. To
conclude, it can be said that by the encouragements and directions of the teachers will make
the learners master the art of collocations.

7TEACHING VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONS TO EFL LEARNERS
Reference List
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Boonyasaquan, S. (2009). The lexical approach: An emphasis on collocations.
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Conzett, J. (2000). Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach. M.
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Gulec, N., & Gulec, B. A. (2015). Lexical Collocations (Verb+ Noun) Across Written
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440.
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McCarthy, M. (1990). Vocabulary. Oxford University Press. learning
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