Today’s Writing lesson, IELTS Fighter and you learn more about Collocations to make your writing better and more attractive. The knowledge around collocations is quite a lot and the material needs to be learned a lot, so to apply it well, you need to learn carefully and learn and use as many colocations as possible.

1. Learn about Collocation

Before going into the main section, we need to understand about What is collocation? before.

This is the concept to call phrases that are combined from different words, with their own meanings according to the habits of native speakers. Collocations make speaking and writing more natural like a native speaker.

In other words, improve your knowledge of using English fluently like a native :))

Examples of collocations:

Imagine for a moment, you often see that we often call black animals such as ebony cats, squid dogs, not vice versa. Or far from home, not from home, not from home, far from home or away from home, but rarely called away from country.

With foreigners, too, they create collocations based not only on ordinary words but different. For example with blonde hair is not yellow hair but blond hair, fast car not quick car…

Collocation is made up of different words, which can be:

The following section will analyze and share more collocations for you to learn together.

2. Why is collocation important in Writing?

A lot of you have asked why to use Collocation in IELTS Writing While absolutely we can use normal words and here are 3 reasons to use collocations more.

REASON 1: BECAUSE COLLOCATION MAKES YOUR ARTICLE “BEAUTIFUL” MUCH MORE

No need to say much, I’ll try to get an example later, please see!

Having an adverse effect on someone/something:

– Normal expression: to have a bad effect on Sb/St

– Expressed according to collocation: to exert a negative impact on Sb/St

You see, if your expression is normal, your Writing will be nothing special because you are using very ordinary and useless words in IELTS.

However, if you express it according to Collocation, surely your writing will be much better, using collocation shows that you have a serious investment in vocabulary and structure, making your writing become ” class”, have more investment and sure, your band score will be much higher!

Some other examples for you to follow easily:

Who/what is beneficial:

– Normal expression: to be good for Sb/St

Expressed in collocation: to do wonders for Sb/St

Examples:

– Normal expression: a clear example

– Expressed in collocation: a prime example/ instance
What to prepare well for:

– Normal expression: to prepare well for St

– Expression according to collocation: to be well-prepared for St

REASON 2: BECAUSE COLLOCATION IS A PART OF THE TEST GRANDING Criteria

In the IELTS Writing test, the criterion of vocabulary (Vocabulary) is one of the VERY IMPORTANT criteria to decide if your writing is really good or not. Using a variety of vocabulary and structures will be a huge advantage for you.

In an article, if you only focus on using vocabulary, that is, you only use good words but don’t know how to use good words with them, your writing will not be complete. . For me, I divide vocabulary into 2 categories:

– Common lifting vocabulary

– Vocabulary by collocation

In which, ordinary upgraded vocabulary is vocabulary that is upgraded from basic words

For example, “evident” is an upgraded vocabulary of “clear”.

Collocation vocabulary is the upgraded vocabulary used with other words to form an accurate and good vocabulary phrase.

For example, “to have a negative effect on” and “to exert a negative impact on St” as above – “exert” and “impact” are good words but if you know how to combine them to form a collocation, better and more effective.

Remember, the judge marks IELTS exam The assessment will not only be based on the single vocabulary you use anymore, but will also be based on the combination of words you use. Please pay attention!

REASON 3: BECAUSE COLLOCATION IS ALSO CONSIDERED AS A Skeletal Frame in COMPLETE Sentence Structure

Looking back at the examples I took in Section 1, do you see that a collocation is almost a complete sentence? That’s right, having collocation in hand means you have 80% of the complete sentence you are about to write.

For example: “to come to an agreement”: this is the main and main part of the sentence, so what you need to do to complete this sentence is to add the subject and the object.

Many of you think that collocation is something very abstract and big, but it is not.

Collocation is how you MIX and EXACTLY USES words together, that’s why we use “to come to an agreement” rather than “to get to an agreement” or “to go to an agreement”.

3. How to learn collocations and study materials

Collocation learns as well as vocabulary and you need to know how to record and explore new collocations.

To learn collocations effectively, it is important to be persistent, remembering collocations as natural as vocabulary.

When studying, you need to have a dictionary dedicated to collocation first.

IELTS Fighter shares the Oxford collocation dictionary for you to practice. In this book there are rich sources of collocations, you learn and apply as well.

Link to download the book: Oxford collocation dictionary

In addition to books, you can learn through dictionary sources, they have in-depth examples for you to practice more.

Some pages you can refer to:

www.freecollocation.com/ – Oxford collocation learning site học

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ – Vocabulary learning page and when explaining words, there will be collocations attached, very convenient.

You can choose to access online learning or download the dictionary app.

-> This is a direct source of collocation learning, but in other Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking exercises, you can easily memorize more collocations for later application.

If in any of the lessons, you see collocations, you should highlight them again.

Write that phrase in your notebook, clearly stating the meaning, for example, so that when you find it again, you can easily recognize it.

It is best to divide the collocation by topic because it will be easier to remember the system.

Use regular collocation in your writing when practicing. If you remember a word, use it. But don’t overdo it. By the time you’ve written firmly, it’s more natural to use collocations.

Some good documents about collocation, you can refer to:

Besides, there is another set of documents that are quite good, you can click to learn more English Collocations in Use

IELTS Fighter also synthesizes some collocations by topic, you can download more to learn:

Summary of good collocations by topic

At this point, have you given yourself the orientation to learn collocation? If you have any questions, please comment below for IELTS Fighter to answer!