Why Collocations Matter and How to Teach Them Effectively

06.02.2026

10 minutes

Vocabulary
Tips & Strategies
Methodology

Collocation refers to how words go together or form fixed relationships.

Cambridge Dictionary

For example, we can “make, fulfill or express a wish”. However, we cannot do it or plan. Sometimes, there is one possible collocation: scenic view, not a scenic picture.

It depends on its type, actually.

Some collocations are strong and have one possible link between the two words, they are rather fixed or restricted. The other, weak collocations, are those which can collocate with many other words.

That’s how the idea can be conveyed to ESL learners.

The rest of the work is to learn those collocations by heart because this is the only way to know for sure. The more you learn, the more naturally you feel how to choose the right collocation. It seems that you do not know, just guess.

However, that is the gut feeling, muscle memory, and some stuff like that. Once you have learned, the brain chooses a right answer subconsciously.

But before gaining anything, anyway, the students have to learn.

What for?

Then the next question is posed. What for? Collocations matter, and this is why.

They make speech more natural

The first rule of teaching vocabulary is doing that by phrases, not single words. What is the likelihood that the students will learn the words: “free, go, school” faster than the phrases “have free time, go to school”.

BTW, learning is the first step. They have to understand how to use it.

If these are A1-A2 levels, this is highly important as the students do not operate with such good knowledge. It is difficult to define parts of speech for them, analyse words and phrases.

They have to immediately see that and put it into practice. They don’t waste time second-guessing, making their own collocations, huh?

Knowing exact collocations makes anyone’s speech more natural.

For instance:

big rain → heavy rain
do a mistake → make a mistake
hard coffee → strong coffee

Learning in such chunks makes the students fluent from scratch, no matter what level they have. It is all a question of fluency.

They improve accuracy

Some words and combinations do not sound natural or might be completely wrong. The students have to avoid it so as not to make a bad first impression by misapplying something.

For example:

make homework → do homework
do a decision → make a decision
strong base → solid base

Knowing collocations prevents these common mistakes.

They enlighten the process

When the learners use ready-made chunks like “take responsibility”, “pay attention to”, they don’t need to build sentences word by word.

This speeds up speaking and writing.

Sure, one is not talking about learning sentences or paragraphs by heart. This is a wrong tactic. However, ready-made chunks are a lifesaver here.

They build up confidence

Learning the phrase “a heavy rain” and using that while it’s raining outside will make the students more confident.

They express themselves to the full and are sure of saying this. The best feeling ever.

Or asking their colleague “to set/fix another date” for a meeting will enlighten the process of expressing themselves. They will prolong a deadline, ask about it correctly and will feel confident again.

That is the point of learning collocations.

So, there are many reasons why to learn words together. It is so beneficial for the students mentally. Being reassured that you are right is feeling of calmness, ability to express yourself and speak up.

As a perk, it simplifies the learning process so much.

The learners are ready to use the ready-made chunks in writing and speaking, catch them in listening and reading. Perfect.

How to Teach them Effectively

The efficiency was proved. Time to “teach teachers how to teach”. What a tautology and a lifelong learning, huh-huh.

Here are the ways to learn the collocations with the ESL learners.

Encourage chunk learning

What if we separate the phrase “take care of”? There is a verb “to take” with its literal meaning, a noun “care” and a particle “of”. Difficult to guess.

English words might have hundreds of meanings.

Impossible to foresee which one is needed. That is why it is better to teach the students to learn phrases like “take care of” as units, not separate words. It makes sense then.

Teach in context

Let’s take a look at the verb “make”. Of course, there is a main meaning and dozens of others.

How to learn all of them? - The context, right.

It is much simpler to memorise the collocation “to make a bed”, and understand its meaning off-guard. “I make my bed every morning after waking up.”
“To make a decision” is a better way to learn how to decide. “I made a decision to live separately.”
“to make a choice” is a phrase to replace “to choose”. “Make your choice for me to know your likes and dislikes.”

Sometimes, the phrase itself isn’t enough.

The teacher had better present them inside sentences, short stories, dialogues, or reading texts instead of giving single-word lists.

Group by topics

The students will remember better when the collocations are connected to one theme. There are groups like:

Travel collocations

book a ticket
catch a bus/train
go sightseeing
pack a suitcase
stay at a hotel

Work collocations

have a meeting
take a break
meet a deadline
work overtime
make a report

Daily routine collocations

brush your teeth
make the bed
have breakfast
go to work/school
take a shower

Food collocations

have a meal
prepare dinner
grab a snack
drink water/juice
order food

The students can connect, so to speak. Once, it will pop up in their minds when it’s needed.

Teach both form and meaning

Both form and meaning are important for understanding. The teacher can give CCQs to make sure everything’s clear.

For example:

Which verb goes with a noun? (have a meal, brush your teeth)
Which verb goes with gerund? (go sightseeing, go shopping)
Is this collocation fixed or flexible? (to meet a deadline, not reach it - fixed, have breakfast, eat breakfast - flexible)
What is the stress pattern? (HEAVY rain, stress on HEAVY)

This activity helps to get to know more about forms and meanings and memorise phrases better at the same time.

Pay their attention

Making the students engaged is a way out. Always ask them CCQs to keep them vigilant and attentive, make them explain, spell, repeat, etc.

To engage visual memory, the teacher can ask the students to highlight collocations each time. It can be underlining, highlighting with a colour, making it bold or italics.

This will catch extra attention, and they will learn to see the collocations everywhere.

A wide range of practice

There are many exercises of different types and for different purposes: controlled practice, semi-controlled practice, freer practice. All of them are needed on special stages of learning vocabulary.

Let’s dive deeper in and look at the examples.

Matching (verb + noun)

The task is to match the words to make a meaningful collocation:

make / do / take
a decision / progress / responsibility

Gap-fill

The task is to fill in the gaps with key collocations that were learn.

“I need to ______ a break.”
“Let’s ______ attention to this.”

To make is an extra task, the teacher can omit vocabulary bank. Or it could be a levelled task where some students have vocabulary bank, others — don’t depending on their level of English.

In the end, everyone has the same answers, but the task itself was slightly different.

Collocation hunt

The task is to find a certain number of collocations in a short reading text. And, using previous techniques, to highlight them.

Collocation notebooks

The task is to create personal lists grouped by topic or by alphabetical order. It will help to refresh the memory and learn the collocations better.

Sentence builders

The task is to make their own sentences. In such a way, the students can show how well they understand meaning, form and the context for some phrases.

Translation tasks

No need for translation at the lessons, but it could be as a separate task. It will build up new skills for students and teach them analyse sentence structure.

take a risk — ризикувати
keep a promise — дотримуватися обіцянки

Speaking

By far the best idea to see if the students know is to make them speak. It is a final point in their collocation learning.

The teacher can make them work in pairs, then ask participants to tell each other’s answers.

The topics could be:

“Describe your morning routine using at least 5 collocations.”
“Say about your shopping last time using at least 5 collocations.”
“Talk about your future trip planning at least 5 collocations.”

Correct gently

Do not correct on the spot. Firstly, it can simply break the student in, and they will lose their train of thought. It is better to wait till they finish speaking up, and then it’s time to correct them.

For sure, if these are gross mistakes:

“honest” is pronounced as /ˈhɒnɪst /
“to know” is pronounced as /knəʊ /
“hotel” is pronounced as /’həʊtel /

The teacher can correct immediately to avoid mispronunciation. Especially if this word is frequently used among the students.

Correcting is possible if this is related to the current topic that the students are learning.

For instance, if they have just learned comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and still say like:

far the best, not by far the best
more easier, not easier
gooder and bedder, not worse and better

The teacher can correct them immediately after the students expressing themselves. It is extra practice, and a reminder for them.

Nonetheless, every student can establish their own rules. Getting to know a new group or an individual student, the teacher can find out whether they would like to be corrected in front of others or not.

It is usually not a problem with individual students as there is no one to be afraid of.

However, there might be a tension in a group. Someone might feel insecure. So, that’s a private matter to discuss and get to know it.

As the practice shows, it’s ok for everyone and nothing to blush about.

What is more, there are various ways to do it in an interactive form. That’s what you will see in the next point.

Let the students be a teacher

What if you let the students be a teacher? In what way?

The teacher can gather some common mistakes while listening to the students and make a pause in the middle of the lesson. After one or two tasks are done in groups/breakout rooms.

Throughout this allocated time, the teacher can note down some mistakes and ask students why it was given to them. It will rack their brains, huhuh.

BTW, it’s ok to mix some phrases with and without mistakes to make students think:

to do homework
to do a decision
to go to shop
to do a choice
to pay attention
it depends from

The teacher can concentrate not only on mistakes, but topical vocabulary that the students have used.

Thanks to such a mix, the learners can be praised for using a cool collocations, too.

This task will be much more interesting and uplifting for them. It won’t feel like work over your mistakes. It is kind of one more entertaining activity what they work on and look for mistakes as a teacher.

Practice makes a habit

Repetition equals retention. The teacher can include the collocations again in different lessons, texts, speaking tasks, and writing.

As a rule, they can establish adding them to warm-ups of every next lesson.

Revising the same vocabulary can be much better than taking a new one. Our brain tends to forget 80% of information without revising it.

No doubt, the students have to work on their own.

However, the teacher needs to eliminate all possible excuses and situations making revisions at the lessons as well.

It will be so precious. And remember, quality over quantity.

Final Tips for Teachers

Use authentic materials

Implement ads, short videos, stories, reels, TikToks to show a real life situations and context. New era of life requires new approaches, too. If the students spot a certain collocation in their favourite film or will hear that from a lovely blogger, they will be much eager to learn more.

It is kind of evidence for them. They will trust this process and knuckle down even more.

Encourage students to guess meaning

Literal meanings almost do not work. But in some cases, “to bring over” which exactly means “to bring” is an exception. The students can give it a try using associations, their hunch.

Once they do it, they will start to develop some logic step by step or just remember it better. It is already well worth it.

It’s okay not to know

Nothing bad if the teacher can be mistaken with a collocation, correction or a new unknown phrase. There is no bar with finish in learning English. It’s okay if the students can tell something new and teach you. Win-win.

Accept it as easy, as somebody’s mistake. Everyone is learning. It is blessing to have the possibility to learn from each other and give a lending hand.

The collocations are a must in every foreign language.

They enrich it showing speaker’s decent level of knowledge. At the same time, it is quite entertaining to learn them and put into practice.