From the previous video you have and understanding of what collocations are.
They are words that are frequently used together.
Non-native speakers find them frustrating and often make mistakes because there are no fixed rules about the form or meaning.
Maybe you are wondering why it's so easy to make mistakes.
Most of you are probably thinking, well I need to study more.
That may be true, but there's also another reason.
It is possible that many of you are thinking about how to say something in your first language.
So you directly translate it into English.
Let me give you an example.
My mother speaks Cantonese, and when she talks about her hobby of reading books, she says, I like to watch books.
In Cantonese, it's possible to use the same Chinese character of watch for
books, magazines, TV, movies, even scenery.
However, in English we would say read books and magazines, watch TV and movies, and look at the scenery.
Are you confused?
Yes, English is quite complicated.
I have gathered a list of collocation problems that other teachers have noticed in their non-native English students' speech or writing, quite a lot, right?
Well in order to review them in an organized way, I would like to invite you to my collocations house and give you a tour.
Each part of my tour will have some underlined incorrect collocations on small
note sheets, so follow closely.
Here at the front door, I see the first one.
It says, don't open the outside lights during the daytime.
Hm, I think she means don't turn on the outside lights.
We turn on and off lights, not open or close.
Open and close are for doors, windows, closets, drawers.
Next we walk into the kitchen.
Hm, some notes here.
Okay, let's take a look.
I am cooking coffee.
Do you want to take a coffee?
It has a heavy smell.
But don't drink too much coffee.
If you want to keep healthy, tea or water is better.
In this case, you cannot cook drinks.
You can make drinks, like make coffee or tea or even soup.
Also, we do not say take a coffee, we say have coffee or drink coffee.
I have coffee every morning.
When you describe a smell, it is not possible to say heavy.
Instead, use strong or weak, like the coffee has a strong smell.
Finally, I think keep healthy means continue to be healthy.
You can't use keep, you should say stay, stay healthy.
It is common to use stay with adjectives like stay happy or stay young.
Okay, the second note is on the sink.
You have to clean the dishes every night, hm.
Even though clean the dishes makes sense, native English speakers don't use that collocation.
They use wash the dishes or do the dishes.
There's a note on the medicine cabinet.
If you have a headache, eat the aspirin.
If you have a cough, drink the cough syrup.
Here, aspirin and cough syrup are both types of medicine.
In general, you do not say eat medicine or drink medicine.
The correct way is to say take medicine.
Take works for almost all situations.
Take aspirin, take cough syrup.
Moving to the bedroom, there's a note on the bed.
It says please take a rest.
Some people, especially in the USA, feel that this collocation is strange, because they would say take a break or get some rest.
There's another one on the desk.
Write your homework every day.
Then you can take a good grade.
Actually, write homework or even make homework are wrong.
We actually say do homework.
When we talk about grades, we use get, get a good grade or get a bad grade.
Let's take a look at the bathroom.
There's a note near the toothbrush.
It says wash your teeth every morning and night. Well, people don't actually wash their teeth.
They brush their teeth with a toothbrush.
If they go to the dentist, then the dentist cleans their teeth.
Okay, now it's time to look at the backyard.
A backyard is an outside area that belongs to the house.
Some backyards have gardens.
The note here says, the backyard is a good place to make a party or a barbecue.
If you grow up vegetables or fruit, you can serve them at the party.
Sometimes, the garden has spiders.
But don't be afraid from spiders, they are harmless.
First we don't make parties, we have them.
It's natural to say, let's have a party, or let's have a barbecue.
Also, you don't grow up vegetables or fruit, you just grow vegetables and fruits.
There is no up, or you can say plant vegetables or fruit.
Lastly spiders, I actually hate spiders, but I am not afraid from them.
I am afraid of them.
Be careful with prepositions.
The last place is the garage.
There is a washing machine and dryer here with a note.
It says save water by cleaning the laundry once a week.
Once again, clean sounds strange here.
Native speakers say do the laundry.
Laundry actually refers to both washing and drying the clothes.
Next, there's a very nice sports car in the garage with another message.
This car has an expensive cost, please take care of it and do not make an accident.
Also, if you lose the road, don't worry, the car has a GPS system.
There are three mistakes.
First, we don't say that something has expensive cost.
We just say the car is expensive.
Also, when we talk about accidents, we get into an accident or cause an accident.
Finally, we don't lose the road.
If we cannot find the way, we will say we get lost.
Phew, let's go back into the house.
It's almost time to go home, but here's one final message.
It's on the picture frame.
There are two people in the picture.
The note says, we hope you enjoyed our home.
I am Brett, and I am married with Celine.
Please come again!
There is only one mistake here.
You cannot say married with someone.
It is another preposition error.
It should be married to.
Let's also talk about divorce. Again, you do not say divorced with.
Actually you don't even need a preposition.
You can just say she divorced him.
Well, that was a very long tour with lots of notes.
Collocations are certainly confusing.
The list of collocations I have provided is not a complete list, but
it is very relevant to daily life topics.
If you would like to improve your collocations, here are some tips.
Number one, study more collocations and try to use the correct forms as much as you can.
Number two, read more.
There are a lot of collocations in newspapers, magazines, and books.
The more you read, the more you naturally learn and remember correct collocations.
Good luck and come back again, bye.
