Preparation For University of Ibadan
Proficiency in English language test (COLLOCATION)
Fabunmi Adekola
Edited by: Dairo Samuel
COLLOCATION
collocation means the grouping or juxtaposition of things especially words or sounds. Words are said to
collocate when they are used regularly together in a language. Certain words must go together and if
one is used and the other omitted the sentence becomes wrong.
Collocation also means a natural combination of words; it refers to the way English words are closely
associated with each other. For example, pay and attention go together as do commit and crime, blond
goes with hair and heavy with rain.
A collocation is a combination of two or more words which frequently occur together. If someone says,
‘She’s got yellow hair’, they would probably be understood, but it is not what would ordinarily be said in
English. We’d say, ‘She's got blond hair’. In other words, yellow doesn’t collocate with hair in everyday
English, Yellow collocates with, say, flowers or paint.
To step up the heat cos UI collocation questions are a Lil bit badass.
This mean that UI collocation is embedded in REGISTER
There are up to a million collocation words in English language and it's quite unfortunate that there are
no laid down rules.
In O’Dell and Mc carthy 's words: It can be difficult for learners of English to know which words
collocate, as natural collocations are not always logical or guessable. There is, for example, no obvious
reason why we say making friends rather than getting friends or heavy rain, not strong rain.
In lieu of this, our best be will be to lay our hands on as many collocations as possible. Meanwhile let's
leave introduction and take a look at how UI set their collocation questions.
Now to my Examples:
Exercise 1: Match the two parts of these collocations.
Match the two parts of these collocations. Try to do it on your own without checking the answers.
adhere to of wisdom
arouse Different
blond Rain
come up with The stock market
flatly A seminar
fundamentally Paint
go on Your principles
heavy Someone's interest
lead Contradict
a lick Hair
play An economy drive
Words A suggestion
At the elementary level, examples of collocations are:
Prefer. To, Hardly had...than, No sooner had... when, Prone.. to, Not only.... but also, looking forward.
..to, Sympathize. ..with, Sympathetic. ...to, Surprised. ..at etc.
E.g.:
1. We are all surprised at (not by) our Ept results, all the group lectures really paid off.
2. Hardly had the journey started than ( not when) the car engine developed a fault.
Everybody's grown up (including Ali and Simbi) and nobody's got time for those shits anymore.
Modern day collocations looks something like this:
lifelong friends, platonic relationship, heal the rift, child prodigy, go through a midlife crisis, senior
moment, go into rehab, kiss and tell, heap praise on, bone idle, poison the atmosphere, nasty piece of
work, act as a referee, accumulate experience, financial acumen, boundless energy, stubborn streak, act
one's age.
E.g.
1. Africa should be developed by Africans but first, the mental rift created by the Europeans needs to be
closed healed.
2. Biodun is smoking heavily nowadays, he needs to go into start a rehab.
3. Deye is in another league in her profession, she had accumulated garnered, gathered, had, acquired a
wide range of experience over the years.
