10/09/2019
Why are collocations useful?
Collocations are useful because they provide natural sounding ‘chunks’ of language for your speech and writing. It is much more common, for example, to say ‘commit a crime’ than ‘do a crime’ or to talk about ‘a damaging effect’ than ‘a bad effect’.
Whenever you are tempted to use a common word like ‘small’, ‘important’, or ‘say’ to modify another word, check the COBUILD Collocations panel. There may be a more suitable or interesting word to use - a niggling doubt, a pivotal moment, voice an opinion.
Collocations can also give you a range of vocabulary to talk about a particular subject. Imagine you are doing a piece of writing about a crisis. You could talk about what caused, provoked, or triggered the crisis or how someone handled, defused, or managed to avoid it. If it is getting worse, you could say that it is a worsening or deepening crisis, or if it has not yet happened, that it is a looming crisis. How bad is the crisis? Is it a major crisis, a full-blown crisis, or a global crisis? You might also want to mention the type of crisis. Is it a financial crisis, a political crisis, an economic crisis, or is someone having an existential crisis?
The possibilities are endless…
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