Hi Pablo, I'll help you post your links here : I. An interesting language topic : http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/easy/colloc.htm
II. "Some few months ago I started to work on activities to boost my vocabulary. The first tip that I found is to work on phrases instead of individual words (in a context). Other tip that I found is to work around groups of words (words association), something like this: http://www.learnenglish.de/ImproveEnglish/notebookpage.htm I find 'collocations' very interesting. I mean, the idea is to get a good book about the subject and to study around 'family of words', perhaps "English Collocations in Use" of Cambridge? I mean, I think the better way to learn grammar, vocabulary, prepositions, etc. is in a context but this approach can be a good complement. " III. A dictionary of collocations (for dictionary lovers; don't miss the sample pages): http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/isbn/0-19-431243-7?cc=global A corpus to see how words are used: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/index.xml A tip: in this case is useful to use Firefox to highlight all the ocurrences of the searched word, like this: Step 1. Press Ctrl-F. Step 2. Write the searched word in the corresponding text box. Step 3. Clic on "Highlight All". Another one: http://www.collins.co.uk/corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx I like the most BNC (the first one) because it gives results at random. If you refresh the results page you can get more occurrences :) And here a quote of a 'conclusion': "Real communication comprises a lot of collocations or fixed phrases that are supposedly more than single words. In order for learners to improve fluency, they need to focus on these word combinations in addition to—and sometimes instead of—single words." You can read the complete conclusion and paper here: http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/2003/10/kato IV. Some examples of use of the previous link service: 1. To know what verbs can be used with the word 'opinion', use the option V obj N* Among the results who get: - deliver opinion (13) - express opinion (218) - express opinion on (8) - form opinion (83) - give opinion (126) - give opinion on (11), etcetera and at this point you simply click on any of the results to see the phrases that include the wanted words (to see them in a context) 2. To know what adjectives are acceptable for the word "mystery", use the option ADJ N* 3. To know what preposition can be used with the verb "arrive", use the option V* PREP. The results: - arrive at (3605) - arrive in (2577) - arrive before (106) - arrive on (789) - arrive after (149) - arrive via (16) and what about "arrive to"? It's wrong! It's a mistake to use 'arrive to', isn't it? Well, here the American English Corpus: http://www.americancorpus.org/ The important thing about this one and the BNC one, is that the corpus are recent, I mean, contemporary. Here the wikipedia links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_of_Contemporary_American_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Corpus Thanks, Pablo" --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "English Learner's Cafe" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/english_learners?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
