What is Collocation?

Collocation is the tendency of certain words or phrases to occur together or in proximity to each other in a particular text or in speech.

Proximity may be close (as in the phrase 'close proximity'; 'close' is a strong collocate of 'proximity') or more distant as in the case of words which occur at the beginning of a text which are repeated later, often at the very end. These chains of repeated, similar or related words contribute the the cohesion of a text (see the lexical chains page).

The type of proximity we are concerned with here is the the first type, close proximity. This also has a cohesive effect because because of our expectations about which words go together. Native speakers have strong expectations about which words 'go together' in their language. If as a language learner you violate these expectations your speech or text will seem odd. Text is more than just words and grammar; you need an understanding of collocation in order to choose suitable words.

You can easily access lists of collocations online and you can find common collocates for words in the Academic Word by consulting the collocation dictionary. However, there are are a few things you should be aware of if you use these lists.

Collocates for common words

Very common words often collocate well with many words and do not have many very strong collocates that you need to be aware of. It's better to concentrate your efforts on word lists like the academic word list or vocabulary for your specialist area.

Collocates for words with multiple meanings

Collocate lists do not always take account of the fact that many words have more than one meaning (they are polysemous). For example 'consistency' means a) behaving always in the same way, or b) the physical quality of a liquid. The collocates given in a simple undifferentiated list would not necessarily apply to both of these meanings (click to start and reset the animation):

Collocation and Colligation

Whereas collocation describes strong associations between lexical words, colligation describes strong associations between a word and a particular grammatical structure. Some examples are:

• Verb + particle: take apart, take back, take down, take on, take up;
• Verb + that complement clause: know that ..., see that ..., show ..., examples;
• Verb + to-clause: ask to ..., claim to ..., forget to ..., remember to ..., examples;
• Noun + preposition: access to, analogy to, analogy with, analogy between, aspects of, appreciation of, appreciation for;
• Adjective + preposition: adjacent to, attributable to, equivalent to, integrated into, integrated with .

Results from different corpora

A collocate list is generated from a corpus so a list of collocates from one corpus may differ slightly from that of another. For example a corpus from written texts may generate different list from a corpus composed of transcribed speech. A corpus from fiction will give different results from one of academic or non-fiction texts.

Why should you learn about collocation?

Learning vocabulary is more than just learning the meanings of words. If you are learning English as a second language maybe you keep a notebook of translations of words from your own language. But words which have a a similar meaning in two languages may not be used in exactly the same way or with exactly the same collocates. Indeed similar words in English may not have the same collocates even though they have very similar meanings. For example. Lets take the two words 'idea' and 'concept'. The following are common collocates of both:

• new idea/concept
• original idea/concept
• basic idea/concept
• central idea/concept
• key idea/concept

However the following are common collocates for idea but are much less commonly used for concept:

• good idea | good concept
• bad idea | bad concept
• excellent idea | excellent concept
• rough idea | rough concept
• bright idea | bright concept

And the following are common collocates for concept but much less commonly used for idea:

• legal concept | legal idea
• difficult concept | difficult idea
• important concept | important idea
• elusive concept | elusive idea
• fundamental concept | fundamental idea

Using words which are grammatically acceptable but not common collocates means that you may be competent speaker or writer of English but not a fluent one. If you are aiming for a band 7 in an IELTS exam you need show "an awareness of style and collocation" (IETLS band descriptors).

Students studying at this level (IELTS 6/7; CEFR B2/C1) sometimes struggle to make progress and this can be because of this lack of awareness of style and collocation.

How can you learn about collocation?

Learning a lot of vocabulary is a long and difficult task in itself. So learning a list of collocations for each word you come across would be an unreasonable challenge. Nevertheless, if you do keep a vocabulary learning notebook you should include one or two common collocates alongside your definitions or translations. In fact, viewing a list of common collocates of a word can often give you a better understanding of a word than a definition or a translation.

When you write you should consult a collocation dictionary to find out if your word combinations are normal, especially if you tend to use a lot of simple words repeatedly. You can also play the collocation game which will help you understand collocations of many "academic" words. The best way to improve your awareness of common collocations is to read as much as possible and to take note of collocations you hadn't come across before.

You can find collocates online at these addresses: Online Collocation Dictionary, Just-the-Word, Netspeak, iWeb Corpus.