VOCABULARY : WORDS COLLOCATION

Hello guys!!. Now in this page I am going to share you about English collocation or word collocation in English. So, have you ever heard about collocation before ?. I think some of you have already known about it. As we know in English, native people use words in combination or in a chunk which is composed of two words that stick together. Sometimes for us English learners, we try to make sentence by combining words which makes them unnatural in English. By learning collocation, you can improve both writing and speaking because your sentence will sound more natural. Learning collocation will also improve your IELTS band scores for writing and speaking, because it is also one of the scoring parameter for lexical resources, besides acedemic vocabularies. To figure out what is the collocation in practical term, let's see the following sentences

Sentence 1
John got a punishment because he did a mistake 

Sentence 2
John got a punishment because he made a mistake

My question is, which one of those two sentences sounds more natural ? The second sentence sounds more natural as it uses word "made" followed by mistake. This is the real example of collocation what I mean. Native speakers do not say do a mistake instead of make a mistake. Another example of word collocation

Sentence 3
It is a general rule of thumb that poverty breeds crime

Sentence 4
It is a general rule of thumb that poverty causes crime

Those two sentences have the same meaning, but if we can see from the sentences, the third sentence uses breeds instead of causes like in the fourth sentence. Native speakers use breeds for poverty and crime. So, in this case, the right answer is sentence 3, It is a general rule of thumb that poverty breeds crime.

The other examples of words collocations are portrayed in the following sentences

Sentence 5
This car has a powerful engine (correct collocation)

Sentence 6
This car has a strong engine (wrong collocation)

Sentence 7
Yesterday, there was a hard rain in Scotland which caused many trees felt in the ground (correct collocation)

Sentence 8
Yesterday, there was a big rain in Scotland which caused many trees felt in the ground (wrong collocation)

To find out more examples of words collocations, especially in every context likes law, environment, sciences, writing, and feeling, you can read excellent book of collocation in English Collocation in Use.

Collocations of Success and Failure

1. Impressive accomplishment
2. Phenomenal success
3. Highly effective
4. Dramatic improvement
5. Unprecedented success
6. Crowning achievement
7. Modest success
8. Room for improvement
9. Make a good progress
10. Fail miserably
11. Completely failed
12. Mediocre performance
13. Remarkable achievements
14. Spectacular failure
15. A recipe for disaster
16. Doomed to failure
17. As a last resort

Resource
Mc Carthy, M., O'Dell, F., English Collocation in Use. Cambridge University Press.

IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 : Diagram Process

Hello guys, It's been a long time I have not posted anything in this blog. But now, I am going to share you IELTS writing task 1 diagram process. In brief, IELTS writing task 1 asks you to make a report based on provided data by summarizing it and picking some important information, so that it is really like describing data to make people understand about what the data is about. In this task, you need to be able to write it within 20 minutes, it feels a bit short time during the test. I got this task from my friend, Ms Oktifani.



Sample Answer :

The diagram portrays manufacturing process of wood pellets, which are usually used for generating heat at home. The process generally consists of three main steps involving conversion of sawdust, processing with steam, and removing unbind sawdust from the pellets.  

The first step of wood pellets production is the conversion of sawdust, which are taken from sawmill factory, into fibers with homogeneous size. This process is undertaken by hammering sawdust. Subsequently, the fibers are steamed to make them wet by using hot steam. Following the steaming process, hot wet fibers are forced to pass through a hole in the pellet machine to generate pellet. The pellets are then subjected to a cooling step for removing heat. Cooled pellets contain several unbind sawdust that are removed by vacuuming method. Finally, pellets are packaged into 18 kg size into a forty pound bags, which are ready to be sold to customer for burning in furnace and stoves.