Collocation 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.
You need to learn collocations because they will help you to speak and write English in a more natural and accurate way. People will probably understand what you mean if you talk about making a crime or say there was very hard rain this morning, but your language will sound unnatural and might be perhaps confusing. Did you mean that there was a lot of rain or perhaps that there was a hailstorm?
Learning collocations will also help you to increase your range of English vocabulary. For example, you’ll find it easier to avoid words like very or nice or beautiful or get by choosing a word that fits the context better and has a more precise meaning. This is particularly useful if you are taking a written exam in English and want to make a good impression on the examiners.
English Collocations in Use Intermediate
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The collocations presented in English Collocations in Use Intermediate were mainly selected from those identified as significant by the Cambridge International Corpus of written and spoken English (now known as the Cambridge English Corpus) and also the CANCODE corpus of spoken English, developed at the University of Nottingham in association with Cambridge University Press. The Cambridge English Corpus is a vast database of real English taken from a range of sources, such as books, newspapers, advertising, letters and emails, websites, conversations and speeches, radio and television.
The book has 60 two-page units. The left-hand page presents the collocations that are focused on in the unit. You will usually find examples of collocations in typical contexts with, where appropriate, any special notes about their meaning and their usage. The right-hand page checks that you have understood the information on the left-hand page by giving you a series of exercises that practice the material just presented.
The units are organized into different sections. First, we start with important information about collocations in general. Then there are sections looking at grammatical and other special aspects of collocations. The rest of the book deals with collocations that relate to particular topics such as Weather or Business, concepts such as Time or Change, and functions such as Agreeing and disagreeing, or Liking and disliking.
The book has a key to all the exercises and an index that lists all the collocations we deal with and indicates the units where they can be found.
English Collocations in Use Advanced
Note: For copyright reasons, you can’t download IELTS books directly on our website, but in this file. Please like and recommend our 9IELTS Fanpage to motivate us to keep up the good work.
The collocations presented in English Collocations in Use Advanced were mainly selected from those identified as significant by the CANCODE corpus of spoken English, developed at the University of Nottingham in association with Cambridge University Press, and the Cambridge International Corpus of written and spoken English (now known as the Cambridge English Corpus). We also made extensive use of the Cambridge Learner Corpus, a corpus of student language which showed us what kind of collocation errors learners tend to make.
The book has 60 two-page units. The left-hand page presents the collocations that are focused on in the unit. You will usually find examples of collocations in typical contexts with, where appropriate, any special notes about their meaning and their usage. The right-hand page checks that you have understood the information on the left-hand page by giving you a series of exercises that practice the material just presented.
The units are organized into different sections. First, we start with important information relating to learning about collocations in general. Then there is a section focusing on different types of collocation. The rest of the book deals with collocations that relate to particular topics such as Student life or Film and book reviews, concepts such as Sound or Difficulty, and functions such as Cause and effect or Comparing and contrasting.
The book has a key to all the exercises and an index that lists all the collocations we deal with and indicates the units where they can be found.