Humor4u

One of my students showed her vocabulary (and grammar) notebook to her private tutor, who was surprised at the way new vocabulary was recorded in it. The student then conveyed the tutor's concerns to me, for example, that "pack in" doesn't have to go necessarily with the job (I'd taught the group "she's packed in her job"). She said, "it means 'finish' or 'give up'". I agreed. But where does it get you? If "pack in" can be substituted for "finish" or one of the other alleged synonyms (alleged because no two or more words are ever absolute synonyms - see  HERE ), can we say "I've packed in my homework"? It is true that "pack in" collocates with other nouns/noun phrases, but "job" is one of the most frequent collocates. I've consulted two dictionaries - I often look up a word in  different online dictionaries to glean its most typical use - and both  Oxford Advanced Le...

Eighteen containers in assorted shapes and sizes on display in the corner of the room. Fourteen EFL teachers organized in small groups according to their L1: English, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, French. Aim: categorise the objects; discussion in the group should be held in your L1 Purpose: to show that the same objects will fall into different categories depending on the language you use to categorise them.  For example, the English-speaking group divided the objects which you can see in the picture into 8 categories: bottle (4), container (5), tube (2), can (2), jar (1), case (1), jug (1), case (1), canister (1). A British English speaker further divided cans into a can (soft drink) and a tin (of tuna). Hebrew speakers came up with 7 categories, with the can/tin of tuna ending up in the same category as “English” containers (including tupperware) while Russian speakers grouped the notorious can/tin together with the jar under the same title “banka”. Idea: not mine. It was inspir...

"Perform surgery" or "carry out surgery"? Photo by Austin Samaritans  via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.O] What kind of collocations are most mistake-prone: strong (e.g. honk the horn,  s hrug shoulders ), medium-strong (e.g.  wage a war, fail a test ), medium-weak (e.g.  perform an experiment, reach a compromise ) or weak (e.g.  see a film, read the newspaper )? In the previous post in the series (see HERE ), I looked at some studies focusing on collocational errors across different levels of proficiency and what causes them. One of the studies I cited was by Nadja Nesselhauf (I think it was her doctoral thesis). The study is also interesting in that she tried to pinpoint which collocations are more problematic for learners. But first of all, What counts as a collocation?  Learners often have problems with collocations, but what kind of collocations cause more difficulty? On the one hand, there are idioms, such as foam at the mouth , which are technically collocation...

I have recently received an email from a colleague, an EFL teacher in Israel, about how her students find it difficult differentiating between near-synonyms. I repost here my reply alongside the original email with the author's kind permission. Hi Leo, I wonder whether you can help me. Do you know any place on the web where I can compare the meanings of near synonyms? I've used the concordance type sites which give me lots of collocations, but that isn't what I want. It doesn't help my pupils to give them 10 collocations for each word (e.g. regular, usual, routine ) some of which are identical. I need to be able to put my finger on a general rule(s) like, one is for people and the other is for abstract ideas (I know this example is irrelevant to those particular words) Thanks for any help you can provide. Renee Wahl Dear Renee, First of all, it's great to know that you use concordance software. I wouldn't give pupils 10 collocations for each word as it is a bit ...

Let's start with a warmer... Which of these tasks or exercises do you normally see in coursebooks? Look at the highlighted verbs in the text and match them with the following synonyms:   investigate, find, catch, escape Match the adjectives with their opposites, e.g.   tall / short Underline in the text all the expressions with OF Group the words according to categories, e.g. vehicles:   car, motorcycle ; musical instruments: g uitar, piano   etc Underline all the adverbs in the text. Now underline the verbs they go with. Rick says "the journey was long and tiring". What other adjectives can be used to describe journeys? Which is the odd word out?   gaze - smile - stare - look You probably answered 1, 2, 4 and 7 and to a lesser extent 3, 5 and 6  Now read on to find out why... Words in a language can be described in terms of two types of relationships: paradigmatic and syntagmatic. A paradigmatic r...