Having a Conversation: An activity to practice advanced collocations
Questions from students lately are confirming the importance of collocations. To meet the need for more practice with collocations, I offer my Have a Conversation_handout. I have upper level students in mind for this activity. Please see the suggested variation.
Tags: collocations, collocations with do, collocations with have, collocations with make, collocations with take, English With Jennifer, Jennifer Lebedev, JenniferESL
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August 8, 2012 at 2:50 pm
Nice, Jennifer. I will try a modified version of this in a class soon. [and of course, will credit you / will try to remember to report back here on how it went. Thanks as always, Holly
August 8, 2012 at 3:23 pm
Thanks, Holly. If you have suggestions to improve the group activity or ideas for variations, let me know. I’ll be testing it out one-on-one.
Still sending students to LEWWP! Hope they are finding you.
Take care.
August 8, 2012 at 3:22 pm
What a great activity! I like the way you used images to help students build their stories. I also have an activity where I get students to create stories with verb-noun collocations with a noun as the key word (you can see it here: http://leoxicon.blogspot.co.il/2011/05/cycles-of-recycling_08.html) but I will definitely use your suggestion because it focuses on delexicalised verbs. The only thing is I wouldn’t reserve it for Advanced levels. I think the collocations you suggest are suitable for Intermediate students too.
Thank you for this activity!
August 8, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Great minds think alike.
I think stories/ narratives create a fun and memorable context for vocabulary.
I agree that the level of this activity is for anything but beginners and low intermediate students. Solid intermediate students could handle it, and for them I’d break the activity into at least two sessions. Throwing all the collocations at them at once wouldn’t help them retain any of it.
Happy teaching, Leo!