Treatment and Teaching of Collocations

Learning vocabulary is the most important prerequisite for learning any foreign language because one cannot communicate precisely without words. But unfortunately many students are still asked to learn word lists with explanations in English or even equivalents in their native language. This method of learning is faulty not only because each word is usually associated with its mother-tongue equivalent, but also because each word is linguistically and situationally isolated. Words are not learnable as isolates, but in chunks which fall into categories like collocations, idioms (e.g.: kick the bucket), phrasal verbs (e.g.: give in) or proverbs (e.g.: like father like son).... etc.). In this research, emphasis is laid on the treatment and the relevant techniques for teaching colocation by investigating the notion of collocation and providing a brief conceptual framework that deals with the issue in a practical and interesting way. The paper may have some useful implications for specialists in technical translation in the sense that it helps them to translate language as chunks rather than single words. Conclusions and recommendations concerning the notion of collocation and the appropriate method of its treatment have a place at the end of this research.