Collocations
By Teacher Daniela Gómez
What are collocations?
▪ Collocations are the word ▪ Here are some collocation examples.
combinations that we use together ▪ -make business
in English. -make plan
-pay attention
▪ Word partnership or words that are -pay a visit
commonly used together in English -have a break
called collocations. -have fun
-pretty well
▪ word + word = collocation -quite enough
-all alone
-right now
Collocations in English
▪ For example, you can say “take a nap” but you can’t say “do a nap” or “make a nap”. A
quick shower is a meaningful collocation in English, and we can’t use “a fast shower”
instead of that.
▪ When you don’t use collocations properly and make mistakes, people will still
understand you, but you won’t sound fluent or natural at all.
Exercise 1
▪ Complete the following text by using collocations.
▪ I met my ex-husband in 1995; we ____ in love at first sight. We ___ a fantastic relationship for three happy
years. Then, on our third anniversary, he proposed and we ___ married six months later. At first, everything
was perfect; we both ___ the housework together; I ___ the washing-up and ____ the beds and he ___ the
cooking and the _______. He always ____ a mess when he ___ the cooking, but I didn’t mind because the
dinners were always delicious.
▪ Everything changed after a few years when he ___ a new job in Manchester; we ____ the decision to move
there, so he wouldn’t have to ____ the train to work every day. He started working later and ______ less
attention to me. He stopped _____ the housework, so I had to __ everything. He ____ a lot of ______ but then
he would _____ them. He was very stressed, and he started to ___ bald, he ___ very depressed about this and
started ______ drunk after work. I was ______ very worried about him. He would always come home drunk
and ____ a mess. Then, one day, while I was cleaning his clothes, something ______ my attention. It was a
lipstick stain on his shirt. I ___ very angry; he was _____ a secret from me! That night when he ____ home, I
confronted him and he _____ the news to me: he had been ______ an affair. It _____ my heart. I kicked him
out of the house and we ___ divorced two weeks later.
Exercise 2
▪ Watch the following video from the show Mr. Bean.
▪ As you watch it, describe Mr. Bean’s actions, by using collocations.
▪ Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEJ8V_Cnx6I
Reading with collocations
▪ Identify all the collocations in the following paragraph. Then, check out their meanings in
English.
Computers are generally associated with the latter half of the 20th century, but the story of
computing devices goes much farther back. In the 1830s Charles Babbage was a man who
specialized in mechanical engineering, and he has been credited with the invention of the first
computing device, the Analytical Engine.
This was a machine that acted like a giant mechanical calculator. The huge device consisted of
thousands of individual hand-made parts which made it very hard to build and this is one of the
reasons why it was never finished. Another reason was that Babbage depended on the
government to invest in the project, but political issues forced the government to stop funding.
Babbage’s failure to complete the analytical engine can be attributed to difficulties not only of
politics and financing, but also to his desire to develop a more sophisticated machine than
anyone else in the world was able to do.
