Vocabulary Collocations and English Vocabulary Teaching词汇搭配与英语词汇教学.doc

vocabulary collocations and english vocabulary teachingcontents1. introduction .12.the theoretical basis for collocations.13. the types and importance of english collocations.13.1 the compositions of vocabulary collocations13.2 types of vocabulary collocations.24. the main problems that the chinese students face in vocabulary collocations.24.1 collocations of chinese-english style.24.2 semantic repetition.34.3 regardlessness of commendatory or derogatory meanings34.4 parts of speech confusion.34.5 over-generalization.45. vocabulary teaching methods.45.1 problems that should be noticed in vocabulary teaching.45.1.1 emphasizing different kinds of collocational relationships4 5.1.2 applying methods of comparisons to vocabulary teaching4 5.1.3 incoporating language context with vocabulary teaching.5 5.1.4 applying language database to vocabulary teaching.65.1.5 applying knowledge of semantics to vocabulary teaching.65.1.6 catogorize the vocabulary collocations.75.2 enhancing the students awareness of the learning of collocations.75.2.1 requiring the students to find out the collocations in the text.75.2.2 doing exercises by choosing collocations from the text.75.2.3 looking up collocations in the dictionary.75.2.4 understanding the development and changes of collocations from etymological point of view.75.2.5 matching exercises of english-chinese phrases.85.2.6 reteling the text.86. conclusion.9acknowledgements10bibliography.11abstract: english vocabulary has a strong ability of collocations , therefore, by making full use of english vocabulary collocations, one can expand vocabulary and master the correct usages of the words. however, chinese english learners have got many problems while using them. as collocation is one of the most important and difficult aspects to grasp vocabulary, thus in english teaching, the teacher should have a deep analysis of the factors influencing the students learning english and help them master english vocabulary collocations faster and more efficiently. the paper discusses the main problems of vocabulary collocations and proposes how the teachers guide and help students master the vocabulary with the correct methods thus to improve the quality of vocabulary teaching.key words: vocabulary vocabulary collocations teaching词汇搭配与英语词汇教学摘要：英语词汇具有很强的搭配能力,利用英语词汇搭配,可以扩大词汇量,掌握单词的正确用法。但是,中国英语学习者在词汇搭配使用过程中,却存在很多问题。由于搭配是外语学习者词汇发展的重要内容和难点之一，在英语教学中，教师要深入分析影响学生学习词汇搭配的因素，帮助英语学习者更迅捷，更高效地掌握英语词汇搭配。本文分析了词汇搭配中存在的主要问题,并提出教师在教授词汇时,如何引导和帮助学生正确地掌握词汇搭配的方法,提高词汇教学质量。关键词: 词汇 词汇搭配 词汇教学vocabulary collocations and english vocabulary teaching1. introductioncollocation is an important part of the comprehensive ability of a language. on most occasions of social life, with the right combinations of words, appropriate and proper language expressions, people express the main ideas and fully reflect the objective world, thus to reach the goal of successful delivery. however, although some english learners have a large number of vocabulary, yet they can not appropriately express the full meaning that they want to express. in speaking and writing, it is a common thing that they often misuse the words. therefore, collocations remain still one of the most intractable problems in second language acquisition. the paper first analyses and summarizes the main problems that exist in collocations, finds out the root of these problems and proposes some teaching methods to reduce the misuse of collocations, thereby enhancing the quality of teaching vocabulary.2. the theoretical basis for collocations although the concept of collocation has been widely used, the academic definition varies. zhu yongsheng proposes that collocation is related not only with words, but also with syntax. the most important and most noteworthy phenomena of collocations are semantic links between different words and different components. joos believes a word of all possible collocations, for the linguists, actually is the meaning of the word.firth holds that in order to understand a word, we should first look at the relationship with other words. meaning exits in the language, and it depends on the word. handan thinks that collocation is the customary used-together of one word with another. lewis defines collocation as a language phenomenon that is easy to observe, as its constituent elements appear simultaneously in the natural discourse, and the flexibility is greater than the randomness. khellmer has the view that many words in our brain are in the form of collocation, which is a relationship between a word and a word or between a phrase and a phrase。therefore, the meaning of collocation is closely related, interdependent and has mutual constraints and determines semantics of each other. collocation is a significant way of constituting the meaning of a word.3. the types and importance of english collocations collocation means combinational words or phrases which is used to express full meaning and has a fixed structure. vocabulary collocations express the relationships between different words. therefore, such idioms as “take a break”and “go on the ride” are all considered as collocations.3.1 the compositions of vocabulary collocations the vocabulary collocations can be classfied as different types. a collocation can be composed of two words or even more.(1)adjective+nounheavy traffic(2)noun+nouna diary book(3)verb+adjective+nounspeak a foreign language(4)verb+adverbapologize sincerely(5)adverb+verbhalf understand(6)adverb+adjectivebadly dressed(7)verb+preposition+nountremble with fearsome collocations may be quite long, for example, s”eriously affect the political situation inthe us” is composed of “preposition+verb+adjective+noun+preposition+noun”.3.2 types of vocabulary collocations lewis classified vocabulary collocations into the following types:(1) strong: the combinations of many collocations are very strict or fixed, for example,“a white lie”.(2) weak: some things can be long or short, can be cheap or expensive and also can be good or bad, but some things can be predicted previously, for example,“white coffee“ and “black coffee”.so they are called collocations.(3) medium strength: it is between the two above. for example, “hold a meeting” and “carry out a project”.4. the main problems that the chinese students face in vocabulary collocationsthe ability of vocabulary collocations is related to the efficiency of second language acquisition. however, english and chinese belong to different languages, and the word combinations are also often different, so problems of collocations usually occur for the chinese english language learners. specific problems can be summarized as the following categories:4.1 collocations of chinese-english stylemany scholars believe that the general english learners can not escape themselves from the influence of their mother language thinking. it is a common phenomenon for them to organize english sentences with the grammar of their mother tongue. even a learner who have learned or used a foreign language for many years has the same problem. and the more difficult of the foreign language task, the more dependent on the mother tongue.6.affected by chinese language, many second language learners often adopt chinese mode of thinking to equivalently translate some of the chinese words into english. for example, in the eyes of the chinese people, monkeys are highly intelligent animals, so when the chinese say someone is smart, they can use 像猴子一样精.accordingly, some students just translate it into:” he is as wise as a monkey.” but this does not correspond with the expression of anglo-americans. the correct expression should be: “he is as wise as an owl.”4.2 semantic repetitionin chinese, people often repeat the part they want to emphasize to enhance the mood. for example,再三重复”, “返回”,“我的名字叫”,but they dont work in english. some students ignore this phenomenon, resulting in repetition of meaning, for example repeat again and again, return back, my name is called , and “we ran to the playground, only to find it covered with white snow.” in british and american english, the concept of snow itself has contained a white meaning, and the collocation of white and snow is an obvious wrong repetition, so it does not meet the anglo-americans way of expression.4.3 regardlessness of commendatory or derogatory meaningssome words in english are often used with other words that express positive meanings, for example “brilliantly, remarkably, wonderfully”,etc. while such words as “dangerously, deadly desperately, seriously” are often used with negative words. for example,” they have all utterly recommended the boy, but the mayor denied his opportunity.” in this sentence, utterly recommend is a wrong collocation.4.4 parts of speech confusionin english vocabulary collocations, parts of speech confusion often occurs for the chinese learners, for the reason that there are many words that have the same parts of speech and similar spelling forms, for example, respectable, respective and respectful; surprising and surprised; reliant and reliable. and also there are many words that have different parts of speech but have similar spelling forms, for example, affect and effect; intent and intend. in addition, some verbs in english can be used as both transitive verbs, followed by object, and as intransitive verbs can not be followed by object. under the circumstances, they also have different meanings accordingly. for example,” wonder”, when used as a intransitive verb, it means “想知道”，but when used as a transitive verb, it means “诧异”.the verb “defer”, when used as a intransitive verb, it means “推迟”，but when used as a transitive verb, it means “依从”.parts of speech confusion is also reflected on the misuse of the singular or plural forms of nouns. mistakes can be seen everywhere because of not being able to distinguish countable nouns, uncountable nouns and collective nouns, for example, a furniture ,a group of birds. etc. 4.5 over-generalizationfor example:1)his father was charged of theft and put into prison.2)they need plenty of drink, not plenty of food. the students have a good impression on the phrase be accused of” because during the process of teaching, the teacher has intended to emphasize it, and also“ accuse” and“ charge” have the same meaning, so the students falsely think that the collocation between be charged and of is established. british and american people will use plenty of food and drink ,and it can also “be plenty of food but never can it be plenty of drink .it is feasible from the semantics, and the grammar is also correct. however, plenty of does not extend its range to drink.5. vocabulary teaching methodsvocabulary acquisition has always been penetrating into the whole process of english teaching. mastering the collocational relationships of a variety of words takes a crucial role in improving the pragmatic level of the students. as to the problems that exit in the vocabulary collocations, some teaching methods are proposed according to my own teaching experience.5.1 problems that should be noticed in vocabulary teaching5.1.1 emphasizing different kinds of collocational relationshipsone of the reasons why the students frequently make mistakes in vocabulary collocations is that rich vocabulary network is not established in their mental lexicon, resulting in the fact that when they are extracting the required words, they still need processing and compounding them or even equivalently translate them. therefore, they often give people a far-fetched feeling and their words can not convey the real meaning. therefore, in vocabulary teaching, the teacher should not only require the students to master rich vocabulary and to be familiar with each word, but also to grasp the collocational relationships between different words. as wu xueshuang said, as to vocabulary teaching, focus should be on helping students with scientific memorization and flexible use of vocabulary.7many english words are connected with each other via the medium of center words. for example, collocations with nouns as their center words, mainly related to adjectives and nouns or verbs. for example, using “affair” as the center word, we can get the collocations of extension.(1) adjective + noun: current / household / internal / domestic / foreign / international / financial / private affairs;(2) verb + noun: to arrange ones affairs, to conduct state affairs, to cover up/handle/investigate / manage / straighten out an affair, to discuss the affair of,etc. while consolidating the usages of the center word “affair”, the teacher can still expand the usages of the adjectives and verbs that modify “affair”. in this way, the vocabulary has been expanded. in the teaching vocabulary collocations, the teacher can guide the students to solve new problems with the old knowledge that they have already learned. for example,” provide with” can also be explained by “offer to”. meanwhile, do pay special attention to the usages of collocations. it is a lot better to remember words in collocations than in isolation. for example, using “make” as the center word, we can think of such collocations as “make away with/for/into/of/off/out/up”,etc. on the contrary, “阻止、妨碍做”,we can also think of the following translations, for example” prevent/keep/stop/prohibit/deter/hinder/preclude.from.”,ect. moreover, in english, there are a lot of “a+b”与“b+a” type phrases, for example, for good/good for; hand in/in hand, ect. we can remember them one by one. in this way, we can not only expand our vocabulary, but also can identify the usages, thus achieve the purpose of killing two birds with one stone. in vocabulary teaching, the teacher should put special emphasis on the collocations of nouns, verbs and adjectives, because the collocational ability of these words are greatly strong.5.1.2 applying methods of comparisons to vocabulary teachingin english learning process, the students are often harassed by the side effect of their mother tongue, namely, language transfer. positive transfer is conducive to english learning, while negative transfer hinders english learning. in english ,a large number of words can be translated equivalently into chinese, whose teaching is not needed. but when met with the english words that can not be translated equivalently, it is the teachers task to select them to teach specifically, so as to reduce the mistakes brought by the influence of chinese. for example, such mistakes as学习知识learn knowledge;提出问题raise a request;公费医疗the public medical care are interferences caused by mother tongue, thus the teacher should adopt the methods of comparisons to teach vocabularyalso, the teacher should compare the cultural connotations of both english and chinese words. although some words have the same or similar meanings or concepts, but their connotations are rather different. for example, in chinese,“dragon” is the symbol of good fortune, power, while in english, it is a symbol of evil. reasons for this phenomenon have a lot to do with the cultural background. so when we learn a language, we should pay special attention to the connotational meanings between english and chinese.5.1.3 incoporating language context with vocabulary teachinglanguage is a large system, in which the vocabulary are not isolated but have mutual contact and constraints. the meanings of words depend on the relationships or collocations of each other. therefore, to understand and use vocabulary correctly, attention should be paid to the word combinations and the corresponding context. in english, there are some words which have ambivalent meanings(i.e, ambivalent words),namely, words that have both positive and negative meanings. for example,”“ learn” not only means “学习”,but also means“教导，教训”;“nice” not only means”好的，迷人的”,but also means“坏的，令人不愉快的”;“nice” not only means “忽视（略）”,but also means “监督，管理”;the english sentence “he is my despair” also have two entirely different meanings .they are “他坏得让我一筹莫展”and “他好得让我望尘莫及”.we can only understand the meanings through the collocations of the specific context, especially some unusual ones5.1.4 applying language database to vocabulary teachingin recent years, language database have had a major impact on vocabulary teaching, which not only helps teachers to select the teaching contents, arrange the teaching order and find out the teaching focus, but also helps teachers avoid choosing outdated expressions. for example, the collocation “rain cats and dogs” has not yet been used in modern english(at least in british english).rundel found that in the bnc ten million words of spoken language database, this collocation even never appeared once. also in the ninety million written language database, this collocation only appeared once. but this collocation is collected by almost all dictionaries and most english teachers have known this collocation before, so they have to face a problem of choosing the teaching contents. on account of the language database, the teacher will know what words and collocations they should let the students master, thus devote more time to the teaching.5.1.5 applying knowledge of semantics to vocabulary teachingpolysemy is an important feature of english vocabulary. for example, when the students read the sentence “next morning i found a foot of snow on the ground”, they will naturally think that “a foot of” means “一脚深的雪”.however, the phrase actually means “一英尺的雪”.obviously, they have misunderstood the meaning of the sentence. again, in the sentence “jenny enjoys figure skating very well, and she dreams to be a professional athlete”, many students may misunderstand “figure skating” as “身体滑冰”,but what it really means is “花样滑冰”.the word “figure” here means “（溜冰等的）花式，舞步”.the teacher can design tongue twisters or riddles to help the students to grasp such kinds of collocations. for example, in the sentence “can you can a can as a canner can a can”, five “cans” appear, but they have different meanings.（1.can能,2.can装罐3.can罐头, 4.canner装罐头的工人,5.can装罐头6.can罐头）.the whole sentence means “你能象罐头厂/罐头工装罐头那样装一个罐头吗?”the teacher can use this way to help the st