SangKienKinhNghiem.org Tổng Hợp Hơn 1000 Sáng Kiến Kinh Nghiệm Chuẩn SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI Đơn vị TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG TRẤN BIÊN Mã số: SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM DẠY TỪ VỰNG THÔNG QUA SỰ KẾT HỢP GIỮA CÁC TỪ Người thực hiện: VŨ NGUYỄN MINH NGỌC Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu: Quản lý giáo dục  Phương pháp dạy học môn: Anh văn  Phương pháp giáo dục  Lĩnh vực khác:  Có đính kèm:  Mô hình  Phần mềm  Phim ảnh Năm học: 2011 - 2012  Hiện vật khác SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC I THÔNG TIN CHUNG VỀ CÁ NHÂN Họ tên: VŨ NGUYỄN MINH NGỌC Ngày tháng năm sinh: 29- 12-1975 Nam, nữ: Nữ Địa chỉ: 506 A2 Chung Cư Nguyễn Văn Trỗi - Quang Vinh – Biên Hòa Điện thoại: 061.3826698 Fax: (CQ)/ (NR); ĐTDĐ: E-mail: vuminhngoc175@gmail.com Chức vụ: Giáo viên Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT Trấn Biên II TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO - Học vị (hoặc trình độ chuyên môn, nghiệp vụ) cao nhất: cử nhân Anh văn - Năm nhận bằng: 1998 - Chuyên ngành đào tạo: Sư phạm khoa Anh văn III.KINH NGHIỆM KHOA HỌC - Lĩnh vực chuyên môn có kinh nghiệm: môn Tiếng Anh - Số năm có kinh nghiệm: 12 - Các sáng kiến kinh nghiệm có năm gần đây: Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations INTRODUCTION Nowadays English has become important and necessary to study A lot of Vietnamese people use it as a tool to communicate at work, on business and in many fields Many new methods have been applied to teach English Although it is a compulsory subject most of the students don’t study well One of the main causes is their incomplete awareness of the purpose of learning English.Many teachers have been teaching words in isolation with synonyms, antonyms or word family and give Vietnamese equivalents without providing students with any other contexts Vocabulary is essential element in conveying information is taught and learned cursorily In order to master a language we have to understand and speak it fluently, but we don’t know how to use new words Therefore, motivating students to learn English is necessary I think there are a lot of wayso vocabulary as Teaching vocabulary is one of the ways to help them learn better However, there are a lot of ways to teach vocabulary such as: root; prefix and suffix; synonyms and antonyms; phrasal verbs; collocation; pictures, flashcards, objects etc In my opinion, teaching vocabulary collocation is one of the important ways to help stusents to study well because the students tend to learn vocabulary with word by word and understand the meaning of each word They don’t know that it is impossible to read a text as a whole in this way As a result, they often have trouble in reading For this reason, I would like introduce teaching vocabulary collocation to my students Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations CONTENT What is collocation? Collocations are combinations of words which are used together If we want to use a word naturally, we need to learn the other words that often go with it This can be different from language to language For example, in English we say: I missed the bus.(= I didn’t catch the bus) ( NOT I lost the bus) He had to go to hospital; it’s a serious injury (= a bad injury) ( NOT a grave injury) There are a few ways collocations are used in Verb + Noun The meaning of many of these examples may be clear, but did you know these verbs and nouns go together? Are they the same or different in your language? start a car (= turn on the engine) a family (= think about having a first child) tell a story a joke (= a funny story) miss a person (= be happy because a particular person is not there) a lesson (= not go to a lesson) get on a bus (opp get off a bus) waste time / money (= use it badly) Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations Adjective + Noun a soft drink (= non-alcoholic drink) voice ( opp a loud voice) wine (opp sweet wine) dry weather (opp wet weather) rain (= raining a lot) heavy traffic (= a lot of cars on the road) smoker (= a person who smokes a lot) a great success (= very successful) time ( = an enjoyable time) hard work (= difficult physically or mentally) a hard question ( = difficult to answer) Examples: The conference hard work but every said it was a great success Threre was heavy traffic in the city center because of the wet weather We had a great time in Brazil – the beaches are fantastic Adverb + Adjective The underlined adverbs in 1-3 mean “very”, the adverbs in 4-5 mean “fully/ completely” In each case, we often use these adverbs with the adjectives that follow them Notice also the phrases in bold I’m terribly sorry to bother you (= to disturb you), but is Steven there? She is well aware of the problem (= she knows all about the problem) It is vitally important to make a note of common collocations in your notebook Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations He’s fast asleep (= in a deep sleep) She was wide awake (= fully awake) a minute ago Noun + Noun package holiday Verb + Adjective + Noun have a great time Verb + Adverb discuss calmly Verb + Preposition + Noun hand in an assignment How can I help my students with collocations? I argue that students at every level need to be aware of the importance of collocation I believe that collocation can be used not only to help learners understand and manage lexis but also to communicate ideas more effectively For example, there is the difference in meaning between “glance” and “glimpse” After some contexts in which these words might be used, we produced the following : glance She glanced at her watch Glimpse I only had time to glance at the newspapers He had glimlsed her through the window as he passed I glimpsed a car as it drove past Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations It was clear to me how helpful it was to use collocation to highlight the differences between the two verbs I have also found collocation useful in explaining the difference between opposites: light green / dark green light suitcase / heavy suitcase You can give you alternative ways of saying something, which may be more colourful or more precise For example, instead of repeating it was very cold and very dark, we can say it was bitterly cold and pitch dark.Collocations can improve your style in writing: instead of saying poverty causes crime, you can say poverty breeds crime; instead of saying big meal you can say a substantial meal H.Long and C.Richards (2001) mentioned that another advantage of learning collocations is to help the learners express themselves more fluently than learning individual words When learners memorize vocabulary as chunks instead of isolated words, they can produce language faster and more fluently because they don’t need to think about the individual words but they can produce the chunks as an item For example, learners will speak “ Please close the window”; “ Can I have the bill, please?”; “ Pleased to meet you.” faster and more fluently when learn the whole chunk than learning the individual words as close, window, please Lewis (2000) states that knowing a word includes knowing its collocations It means that, in any collocations, one word will “call up” another word in the mind of the native speakers In other words, the learners can predict the other word when they hear one word with the various degrees of success That helps the learners understand more deeply what the native speakers spoke and be more understood by the native speakers Types of Collocation De-lexicalised Verbs De-lexicalised verbs (get, have, make, do, put, take) are important when teaching collocation although they may have a basic meaning (make = create/manufacture, have = own/possess), they are more commonly used in combinations with nouns or other words as a chunk of meaning: Examples: make a mistake your homework Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations take an exam In my experience, a lot of mistakes in collocations are made with de-lexicalised verbs, probably due to leanrer language interference Nouns I think that it is very useful to teach learners these collocations with a noun as a key word because the majority of general nouns usually require further qualification: Examples: Good / well-paid / menial / boring / full-time job Package / luxury / expensive / cheap / good Nouns are also important because they are usually the words that carry the most meaning within a sentence Strong/ Weak and Frequent/ Infrequent Collocations There is also a difference between strong/weak and frequent/infrequent collocations A collocation that is frequent (e.g a warm day) is not necessarily strong, as either word in the partnership suggests a number of other collocates: sweater Bad blanket wedding (a) smile warm (a) Sunny hug Rainy breeze glorious day In the same way, a particularly strong collocation may be used very infrequently (e.g bat your eyelashes) The most useful combination for teaching purposes, then, seems to be a combination of strong (but not completely fixed) and frequent A strong/infrequent collocation may be worth mentioning to draw the learners’ attention to its existence, but little, if any, class time would need to be spent on collocations at the weak/infrequent end of the spectrum Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations Nation also makes the point that, in a classroom situation, frequent collocations only deserve attention if: “their frequency is equal to or higher than other high-frequency words.” This puts a greater pressure on the teacher when making the decision about whether to spend time on a particular collocation I feel that if there are enough potential frequent collocations of one of the nodes, it is worth spending some class time on: take a put (yourself) at run the Risk With the second two verbs in this example, the unpredictability of the combination is also a factor Most learners at intermediate level or above would be familiar with all three of the verbs, but few would realise that it is possible to collocate ‘run’ and ‘risk’ Moreover, this would be a difficult collocation for learners to work out just by knowing the meaning of the individual parts, so would therefore merit some class time What problems learners have with collocation, and how can we help? 1.Quantity/Arbitrariness A major stumbling block to most learners is the fact that there are so many possible collocations and that the choice of which word to collocate with, say, a noun is completely arbitrary This leads to the question: “Well, why is it have a coffee not drink a coffee?” and the inevitable reply (hated by teachers and students alike): “It just is.” If students are encouraged to record collocations as they occur, they have a permanent record of which combinations are possible Class time can be given for learners to revise and practise the collocations they have learnt (see below for suggestions) or to add new ones There are various ways for learners to record new collocations in their vocabulary notebooks I have found that the most effective is to use a box format such as: (verb) (adjective) (verb) (adjective) (verb) (adjective) noun For lower level learners it might be helpful to organise their collocation boxes by topic (in the same order as their coursebooks) – jobs, family, food etc Intermediate learners may prefer to organise by keyword – work, holiday etc – and advanced students by grammatical structure – verb + noun; noun + adjective etc Organisation is Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations really a matter for individual learners, though, as it should be done according to personal preference to minimise the learning burden Learners can leave some entries in the boxes blank to be completed at a later date with other collocations that they have noticed independently 2.Learner Language Transfer Many learners expect that because they collocate something a particular way in L1, it will translate directly (and correctly) into English A quick survey of my current learners produced the following verb + noun collocations: English take the car have a coffee L1 Equivalent Đón xe (Vietnamese) Literal Translation Car went Uống cafe (Vietnamese) Go by car Take a coffee Drink a coffee your homework Làm tập (Vietnamese) Write your homework pay attention to Chú ý (Vietnamese) Be attentive Give attention to go on holiday Đi nghỉ hè (Vietnamese) Do attention to Holiday doing Do holiday Leave on holiday I think that because of this untranslatable teachers should focus on collocations which can not be translated directly, pointing out contrasts to students instead of similarities If learners fail to use a correct collocation, even if their utterance is grammatically and contextually correct, their English will still sound unnatural and ‘foreign’, to the Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations extent that their addressee may not understand them at all Compare the following (from a selection of my learners’ written work): He survived very strongly We own a shopping centre I took a good decision He knows what he’s speaking about I can’t see any problem why If we substitute the asterisked words for miraculously, have, made, talking and reason, these utterances become more natural and nativelike Collocation grids can be useful in helping learners to understand which words are possible collocates and which aren’t, by simply ticking the correct combination These grids can be made from the students’ own written (or spoken) work as a correction exercise as well as more general ones in textbooks: a person a bank money a car a shop a wallet rob steal Such grids are also very useful for showing the difference in meaning or use between two or three words that appear almost the same The grid may then be used to contrast with the learner language possibilities for collocation 3.Meaning and Noticing Especially when dealing with text, many learners (especially those at lower levels) tend to focus on individual words that they don’t know, rather than on the collocation This is because the usual way of noticing and recording vocabulary is to write the word (out of context and without its collocates) in a vocabulary notebook with it’s the learner language translation Alternatively, more advanced learners will say, “I know that word” and move on without checking for any collocates in the text Both of these problems arise from poor learner-training: learners need to have collocations pointed out to them before they can be expected to notice them for themselves When working with text, it takes very little time to point collocations out to learners – or, alternatively, with higher levels or classes experienced in noticing to ask them to find collocations for themselves In this opening paragraph , six collocations can be identified (my underlining): 10 Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations When Clifford met Annie, they found one thing in common They both love lists So together they have written the ultimate list, a list of rules for their marriage Teprenuptial agreement itemizes every detail of their lives together, from shopping to sex Timothy Laurence met them in Florida in the apartment they share Newspaper articles, opening paragraphs of books and videos of TV soap operas or sports commentaries also lend themselves to this kind of noticing activity The advantages of using such authentic material are obvious – the language is used in a natural way and in context However, we should be careful to choose which collocations we focus on in terms of frequency , level and suitability for our particular group of learners Phonology (Chunking and Linking) A direct result of this inability to recognise collocation is that many learners (especially at lower levels) sound very stilted when speaking There are three main reasons for this: 1.They pronounce every word with equal stress 2.They fail to notice how the sentence could be chunked They don’t link the chunks together Without a knowledge of collocation, learners are unable to chunk, link and stress longer sentences correctly, making them sound unnatural Even with advanced classes, choral drilling is the best way to give students extra time to work on this aspect of collocation A demonstration on the board of where the linking and stress occurs (plus any schwas) can help students who learn more visually Activities to help students with collocation Once the collocations have been pointed out, several activities can be produced to help the studennt become familiar with them Recycling activities: • Matching activities in which the collocations are divided and written on separate cards: These can be used as the initial part of a test-teach-test approach to see what the learners already know, or to revise collocations from a previous lesson This form of recycling is a good way to help learners remember the collocations 11 Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc • • Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations Board races where the teacher calls out one half of the collocation and the students work in teams to write the other half on the board This activity can be extended by asking students to suggest other possible collocates Cloze activities such as a gapped transcription of a listening text, or sentences in which half the collocation has been deleted Communicative activities: I have used surveys, reports and stories with different levels of learners to practise previously-learnt collocations in context more communicatively With collocations organised by topic, learners can conduct a survey among their classmates and follow it up with a written or oral report In the topic of household chores, for examples, learners survey the following: in your house, who: does the dishes? makes the beds? takes the rubbish out? (etc) With collocations organised by key-word , learners can be given a set of cards with the collocations written on them which they have to put into some kind of chronological order They can then use the cards to write a story : got worse got angry got caught got drunk got divorced got sick got fat got shot got pregnant got into debt got in trouble got killed I introduce you some collocations in English 10 (textbook) from Unit to Unit 16 1.Verb + Noun Unit 1: take a rest, have breakfast/ lunch, go home, watch TV, finish work, … Unit 2: study subjects, go to school, ride a bike, make talks, go dancing, pay attention, read a book, … Unit 3: earn a degree, take a degree,take possition, take turn, save money, award prize, … Unit 4: make an effort, raise arms, attend class, take photographs, … 12 Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations Unit 5: pay bills, read newspapers/ magazines, receive letters, … Unit 6: make a trip, get permission, take photographs, make a tour, … Unit 7: provide information/ entertainment, get information, leave home,… Unit 8: produce crops, watch TV, shopping, build a hotel, … Unit 9: use devices/ fertilizers, provide information, harm the environment, offer solutions, … Unit 10: play a part, cause flood/ erosion, save the earth, have better food,… Unit 11: get a fine, catch a train, … Unit 12: express ideas/ thoughts/ feelings, save money, … Unit 13: watch TV, go dancing, see a play, …… Unit 14: gain a victory, win the trophy/ the title, pass the exam, … Unit 16: have illusions, make comparisions,… Verb +Preposition + Noun Unit 2: have a good time, … Unit 6: go on an excursion, … Unit 8: make of straw and mud, listen to the news/ radio, … Unit 9: divide into five different parts, fall into three major groups,… Unit 12: listen to the radio, go to the cinema, listen to music,… Unit 13: make in America, … 3.Adjective + Noun Unit 1: quick breakfast, long day, … Unit 2: crowded streets, international languages, hard work, … Unit 3: mature student, general education, scientific training, private tutor, … Unit 4: poor family, proper schooling, … Unit 5: lightning speed, foreign language, … 13 Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations Unit 6: great event, hard work, … Unit 8: bumper crop, modern technology, … Unit 9: modern technology, marine life, plastic bags, … Unit 10: endangered species, natural environment, constant supply , … Unit 11: national parks, tropical zone, … Unit 12: integral part, important events, … Unit 13: early days, … Unit 14: governing body, final match, … Unit 15: global finance, … Unit 16: national pride, important meeting, … 4.Noun + Noun Unit 1: morning tea, … Unit 3: birthday party, phone number, …… Unit 4: teaching job, … Unit 6: rock formation, … Unit 7: TV programmes, TV series, information technology, ,… Unit 9: water temperature, cigarette butts, … Unit 10: heart disease, forest fire, …… Unit 13: film maker, … Unit 14: world championship, host nation, … Unit 15: apartment building, art galleries/ museums,… Unit 16: meeting hall, visiting hours, … Findings and discussion about the results of the Pre-test and Post-test To check the effectiveness and benefits of teaching and learning collocations, the writer designed a pre-test and a post-test for students The students were given the test in the first week and the last week of the research The purpose of pre-test and post-test is to check the students’ word usage accuracy 14 Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations Pre-test and Post-test Filling the blanks with the mosst appropriate word to complete the collocations When she’s cold, she really loves to drink …………… tea a.hard b.strong c.heavy d.tough Why don’t we go ………………… the movies tonight? a.into b.to c.around d.on He is interested in ……………… a kite every afternoon a.playing b.flying c.taking d.having I would ………… recommend that you learn a foreign language a.strongly b.firmly c.hardly d.absolutely …………… rain has caused flooding in many areas a.Strong b.Heavy c.Long d.Big Jason has to ……………… a choice between his career ang his family a.do b.make c.take d.get Peter …………….an accidentlast night but he’s OK now a.took b.had c.got d.stuck in Mr Smith is observing a big ……………… of fish on the radar screen a.school b.flock c.swarm 15 d.pack Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations I am ………… aware that there are serious problems a.fully b.very c.highly d.completely c.having preparing 10.I hate ……………… the ironing a.making b.doing Discussion the results from pre-test and post-test of the students Pre-test of students Class Total Upper Average Lower 10A10 44 24 15 10D4 42 22 12 Post-test of students Class Total Upper Average Lower 10A10 44 11 23 10 10D4 42 14 20 The results of the Pre-test and Post-test of students First of all, the table brings about a negative impression on the results of the Pre-test However, significant improvement can be seen through the results of the Post-test This result indicates that after being aware of and learning collocations, a lot of students can use vocabulary properly It also helps confirm the writer’s hypothesis about the benefits of teaching and learning collocations 16 Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations Conclusion Vocabulary always plays an important role in learning English Therefore, the purpose of teaching vocabulary through collocations is to give the students to use as much words as possible in the text as well as in communication It helps learners use vocabulary more accurately and naturally.I hope that this research will provide the learners with English an effective way of learning vocabulary through collocations I would like to say that I am very grateful for their comments and criticism 17 Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations REFERENCES H.Long, M& C.Richards,J (2001).Learning vocabulary in Another Language Cambridge: Cambridge University Press McCarthy,M& O’Dell, F(1997).Vocabulary in Use Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Oxford Collocations: dictionary for students of English (2002) Oxford:Oxford University Press Cambridge Advanced learner’s dictionary Third Eddition Lewis, M (2000) Teaching collocation: Further development in the lexical approach Oxford: Oxford University Press McCarthy, M & O’Dell, F (2008) English Collocations in Use, Advanced: How Words Work Together for Fluent and Natural English Cambridge University Press McCarten, J (2007) Teaching vocabulary Cambridge: Cambridge University Press English 10 Textbook 18 Vu Nguyen Minh Ngoc Teaching Vocabulary through Collocations 19 SỞ GD&ĐT ĐỒNG NAI Đơn vị CỘNG HOÀ XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập - Tự - Hạnh phúc , ngày tháng năm PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT, ĐÁNH GIÁ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM Năm học: ––––––––––––––––– Tên sáng kiến kinh nghiệm: Họ tên tác giả: ………Đơn vị (Tổ): Lĩnh vực: Quản lý giáo dục  Phương pháp dạy học môn:  Phương pháp giáo dục  Lĩnh vực khác:  Tính - Có giải pháp hoàn toàn  - Có giải pháp cải tiến, đổi từ giải pháp có  Hiệu - Hoàn toàn triển khai áp dụng toàn ngành có hiệu cao  - Có tính cải tiến đổi từ giải pháp có triển khai áp dụng toàn ngành có hiệu cao  - Hoàn toàn triển khai áp dụng đơn vị có hiệu cao  - Có tính cải tiến đổi từ giải pháp có triển khai áp dụng đơn vị có hiệu  Khả áp dụng - Cung cấp luận khoa học cho việc hoạch định đường lối, sách: Tốt  Khá  Đạt  - Đưa giải pháp khuyến nghị có khả ứng dụng thực tiễn, dễ thực dễ vào sống: Tốt  Khá  Đạt  - Đã áp dụng thực tế đạt hiệu có khả áp dụng đạt hiệu phạm vi rộng: Tốt  Khá  Đạt  XÁC NHẬN CỦA TỔ CHUYÊN MÔN (Ký tên ghi rõ họ tên) THỦ TRƯỞNG ĐƠN VỊ (Ký tên, ghi rõ họ tên đóng dấu)