- 1 - CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION I. 1 Rationale of the study Foreign language is a very necessary means of communication helping people all over the world can exchange the information and understand the cultures, then promoting the global commerce. Today, one of the most popular languages is English. The thing is English is spoken as the mother tongue and the official language in many nations such as England, America, Australia, Canada, Singapore, India…In addition, it is taught as second language in a lot of countries around the world including Vietnam. The number of English learners in Vietnam is remarkably increasing up to now. The fact is that every of them desire to use English as fluently and proficiently as their first language. However, language always is a complex aspect of education. Therefore, learning and teaching a foreign language will face a lot of obstacles. English learners will meet many difficulties on their way of studying. Many people will find it difficult to pronounce, to listen or to comprehend an utterance Others will be confused by the sense of a word, by the similarity in pronunciation and spelling of several words, etc. Basing on the experiences of students, teachers and personal knowledge, we found that almost learners find confused when using English vocabularies. Firstly, they cannot combine and organize words together to make sense or they combine wrongly this adjective to that noun, or this verb to that noun… For example, the word “blond” and “beige”, both of them denote the colour. However, English people do not say the “blond car” but they say “blond hair” and vice versa. Moreover, two words may be close in meaning but yet not collocate with the same items. For instance, “do” and “make” are the same in meaning but native speakers say “do homework” and “make a cake”. So it easily makes English learners fail when they combine words together. They do not know which word can correctly combine together with other word. - 2 - Secondly, to the higher English level people, they do not know in word combinations, which is a collocation – non-idiomatic phrase and which is an idiomatic phrase. For instance, in the two word combinations “half seas over” and “down to the sea”, which is a collocation and which is an idiom? That is the problem raised in using collocations and word combination in lexical relatives. The problems can be explained and investigated in semantic field. Moreover, the main characteristics of lexical collocations are that their meanings mostly reflect the meaning of their lexical constituents and that the sequences of lexical items frequently co-occur, even though most native speakers of English are not aware of collocations. To sum up, language are full of strong collocational pairs, therefore collocation deserve to be a central of the vocabulary study (Lexical Relation in vocabulary – Oxford Press). I.2. Aim of study Learning English is getting more and more popular. Improvement of English in our country is very essential to everyone, especially to English academic students. They really need guidance help them to avoid mistake in using English vocabulary and this thesis will play a part in supporting them. This research will help readers comprehend the verb collocation in English. It also helps to find out common mistakes in combining words together. It also proposes the reasons why people get confused with the collocation especially verb collocation. Moreover, it will give out some suggestions to avoid common confusion in using verb collocations especially the Verb – Adverb collocations. I.3. Scope of the study The using collocation is very different from language to language. And there are many kinds of collocation. In this case, we only study the verb collocation in English and the common verb collocation confusions which are - 3 - met by Vietnamese who are studying English as a foreign language. And we mainly discuss the Verb – Adverb collocation. The confusion met in English collocation issue is too much to cover. This thesis only focuses on the verbs which are common used in intermediate – level English learners. And then, thesis concludes a range of Verb – Adverb collocations. I.4. Design of the study Chapter I: Introduction Chapter II: Literature Review Chapter III: Method and procedures Chapter IV: Expected findings and Discussion Chapter V: Conclusion CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW - 4 - Collocation is a term appearing in the semantics. We should investigate the semantics and all of the relative definitions to comprehend the issue of collocation. Verb collocation is formed by a verb and another word. Whereas, in English, verb phrase and idiom also consist a verb and other elements, in order to avoid the mistake and to help readers not be confused by the similarity of these definitions we give out a brief and not less clear description of semantic, collocation, idiom and verb phrase. II.1. What is semantics? II.1.1. Definition of semantics Semantics can be simply defined as the study of meaning. This definition naturally leads to the question: what is meaning? Meaning is central to the study of communication, but the question of what meaning really is difficult to answer. Even linguists do not agree among themselves as to what meaning is. And what makes the matter even more complicated is that philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists all claim a deep interest in the study of meaning, although they differ in their focus of interest. The philosophers are interested in understanding the relations between linguistic expressions and what they refer to in the real world, and in evaluating the truth value of linguistic expressions. The psychologists focus their interest on understanding the workings of the human mind through language. This is why it is not surprising to find ten books all bearing the title "Semantics" but talking about different things. In our discussion, we will limit ourselves to the study of meaning from a linguistic point of view. We have meaning of a word, a sentence, an utterance, and a discouse. II.1.2. The role of semantics in language learning Semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of discourse (referred to as texts). The basic area of study is the meaning of signs, and the - 5 - study of relations between different linguistic units: homonymy, synonymy, antonym, polysemy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronym, metonymy, holonymy, exocentricity linguistic compounds. A key concern is how meaning attaches to larger chunks of text, possibly as a result of the composition from smaller units of meaning. Traditionally, semantics has included the study of connotative sense and denotative reference, truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles, discourse analysis, and the linkage of all of these to syntax. The role of semantics is very important in learning a language. Since the semantics study meaning of words, vocabulary. Although, in communication, we can hear a sound or can see a written word we still do not understand the meaning of the sound or written word, then the communication is in failure. Study the meaning of the word is really important in learning and teaching any language. That is the reason why studying semantics is very necessary. II.2. What is collocations? II.2.1. Definition Collocation comes from two Latin words, the word cum (“with”) and the word locus (“place”). Words which form collocations are repeatedly “place with” each other; that is to say, they often co-occur within a short distance of each other in speech and in written text. (David Singleton: 2000) The definitions of collocation appeared a lot in the book and internet. We should study to understand exactly what collocation is. Cited from the website Wikipedia, within the area of corpus linguistics, collocation is defined as a sequence of words or terms which co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. Nattinger (in Carter and McCarthy 1988:76) suggests that language is basically a “compositional” process in which many of its words co-occur together forming single units of meanings. He calls these as lexical phrases or - 6 - word combinations; and collocations are among other terms of lexical phrases. However, collocations themselves range from “lexico-grammatical unit” to “free combination”. The term “collocation” is actually only one among other terms for similar concept: word combination. Nattinge and De Carrico (1992:21) define collocations as “strings of words that seem to have certain ‘‘mutual expectancy’’, or a greater-than-chance likelihood that they will co-occur in any text.” In addition to that, the following is an explanation by Benson, Benson, and Ilson (1986 in Bahns, 1993:57): In English, as in other languages, there are many fixed, identifiable, non-idiomatic phrases and constructions. Such groups of words are called recurrent combinations, or collocations. Collocations fall into two major groups: grammatical collocations and lexical collocations. II.2.2. Types of lexical collocations Benson, Benson, and Ilson classify lexical collocations by structural types. According to these linguists, there are 6 types of collocations. Hausmann breaks down all lexical collocations into a ‘base’ and a ‘collocator’ (Benson, 1989:6). The base is the prominent element while the collocator depends on the base. According to Hausmann and Benson, the ‘base’ and ‘collocator’ relationship can be shown as follows: a. Adverb + Adjective (collocator – base) Collocation formed by an adverb and an adjective. In this case, adverb plays a role as a modifier for the adjective. Adverb will show the degree or status of the adjective. For example, seriously incomplete, closely acquainted, totally incorrect, extremely nervous b. Adjective + Noun (collocator - base) Adjective functions as a modifier. It gives more information about noun’s definition. Some Adjective – Noun collocations: black night, dark night, sleepless night, starry night, long night… - 7 - c. Noun + Noun Noun – noun collocation is mostly appears in the form of noun + preposition + noun. Then, the noun after preposition is “base” element. Some example given: A sum of money, a school of fish, a bunch of rose, a crew of teens, troop of soldiers… d. Noun + Verb (base – collocator) In this case, noun plays as a subject. For example, dog barks, volcanoes erupt, bell rings, sun shines… e. Verb + Noun (collocator – base) A noun (base) can co-occur with a number of verbs (collocator). For example: a base “examination” we can have a series of verb collocators: administer/conduct/ give an/take an/fail/pass + examination. f. Verb + Adverb (base - collocator) or Adverb + Verb Adverb will modify the verb and add more information about manner, situation. For example, (wind) blow strongly, deeply influence, regularly inform, simply inform,… II.2.3. Verb collocation In this paper, we only pay attention to the lexical collocation and deeply investigate the verb collocation because verbs and nouns in these two types of collocations are more mutually selective in context than other structural types. In other words, they are more contextually predictable Verb collocation is the combination of a verb with one or more other words of any part of speech which form multi-lexical units. For example, make mistake is a verb collocation, with a verb make and a noun mistake. - 8 - It is seen that collocation is also formed by at least a verb and a different element but it has non-literal meaning, partially like an idiom. A verb collocation (Noun + Verb, Verb + Noun, Verb + Adverb) has verb functioning as base or a collocator. In type of Noun + Verb and Verb + Noun, verb plays role as a ‘collocator’ however, in Verb + Adverb type, verb is a ‘base’. This type is supposed to be looser lexical collocation. II.3. Verb collocation in distinguish with other combinations of words like phrasal verb and idiom II.3.1. What is idiom? An idiom is a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words, which can make idioms hard for ESL (English as the Second Language) students and learners to understand (cited from the website http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idiom). (Cited from the website: schools.pasoschools.org/education/components) a phrase or expression that means something different from what the words actually say. An idiom is usually understandable to a particular group of people (e.g. using “over his head” for “doesn’t understand”). For example, "to roll out the red carpet" is to extravagantly welcome a guest; no red carpet is needed. “Lose your shirt” if someone loses their shirt, they lose all their money through a bad investment, gambling, etc. II.3.2. What is a phrasal verb? A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb, or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition, any of which are part - 9 - of the syntax of the sentence, and so are a complete semantic unit. Sentences, however, may contain direct and indirect objects in addition to the phrasal verb. Phrasal verbs are particularly frequent in the English language. A phrasal verb often has a meaning which is different from the original verb. (Cited from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb) For instance, we have phrasal verbs: make up, pass away (die), look up (find the meaning of a word in the dictionary), put on clothes, send something off (post something), set off (leave on a journey), give up (stop trying to do something). II.3.3.The difference between the other word combinations like phrasal verb, idiom and verb collocation However, idiom, phrasal verb and collocation are form by the combination of words, they have difference. Verb collocation has literal meaning and we can look up in the dictionary, e.g. “go to school”, “visit museum” we can look up meaning of each word: go, to, visit, museum then we would have the meaning of the phrase. It is unlike idiom, we cannot understand meaning of an idiom by looking up each word in dictionary. For example, sell down the river means betray someone’s trust but not sell something to somebody in the river. With phrasal verb, we can look them up in dictionary to get their meaning, and it is fixed. For example, set off: it is impossible to look up each word then combine their meaning together. In the dictionary, we can find ‘set off’ means leave on a journey. CHAPTER III. METHOD AND PROCEDURES III.1. Survey - 10 - In the research, we have conducted a survey which investigates the language competence of the 25 first - year students and 25 second – year students in English Faculty of Hanoi University of Education in mastering the knowledge of collocation. Most of them have learned English for 8 or 9 years. The survey asks students some questions about collocation knowledge and asks them to do a survey questionnaire related to the collocation. The 50 – question survey questionnaire has 2 parts: • Part A:10 questions which require students to realize collocation and idiom • Part B: 40 questions to check the verb collocation competence of students. Among those 40 questions:  Part I: 20 questions of Verb – Adverb collocation.  Part II: 20 questions of Verb – Noun, Noun – Verb collocation. The survey would firstly show us how students can distinguish a collocation and an idiom. Secondly, students can have a chance to check their verb collocation knowledge. And finally, the survey tries to find out the problem confusing our students. The result of the survey: Part A: Collocation and Idiom In the 50 investigated students, about 33 of the candidates (66%) cannot distinguish difference between the collocation and idiom? And the rest (34%) vaguely distinguish the difference between them, almost of them are senior. No one can show enough evidence for the difference between collocation and idiom. [...]... hurriedly plan some program or event without carefulness or plan in a short time c specially: plan in a special, or a strange way/order 2 put in order; make neat/attractive a carefully, neatly: make something in order, neat or attractive Her red hair was carefully arranged and her face made up b alphabetically, chronologically, symmetrically, systematically A number of things are put in order of alphabet,... written materials Nevertheless, Verb – Noun collocation are used many times than Verb- Adverb collocations in course books Verb – Collocations are formally taught in syllabus of secondary and high school but Verb – Adverb collocations are not So that students find Verb – Adverb collocation more difficult is obviously understood IV.3 Suggestions to avoid the confusion of some Verb – Adverb collocations. .. that both students of the first year and the second year can do part II much better than in Part I Part II checks students the competence of using Verb – Noun collocations while part I is about the Verb – Adv collocations Students averagely can combine correctly over 10 Verb – Adverb collocations and approximately 16 Noun – Verb and Verb – Noun collocations Generally, we can make a conclusion that... students find more difficulties with the Verb – Adverb collocations than that with Verb – Noun or Noun – Verb IV.2 Reasons leading to the confusion IV.2.1 Native language interference In Vietnamese, we also have collocation! For example, Vietnamese say: rua tay, rua mat, giat quan ao…but in native English speaker say: wash hand, wash clothes, but clean the face So the first reason leading Vietnamese learners.. . chooses really It is easily found that the wrong combination is caused by the interference of native language Other Verb – Adverb collocations of apologize a sincerely / profusely: show the nature of apology action with positive meaning He apologized profusely for the damage he had caused b humbly also expresses the nature of the apology action but it brings a negative meaning That is when you say apology... collocations like pick/provoke/start a quarrel, arrive at/reach/take (BrE) a decision, and assume/bear/shoulder/undertake the responsibility Collocation familiarity of English learners lags far behind their passive language knowledge One reason for this is that a large number of verb + noun’ collocations are “arbitrary and non-predictable” For example one can say: commit a crime and perpetrate a crime,... Locally and nationally have more detailed meaning than wildly Wildly has more general meaning.There are plans to advertise the job more widely 13 BEAT Answer Correct Incorrect 1st year students 7 18 2nd year students 11 14 - 36 This is a commonly used verb but it does not usually go with adverb So the wrong answer is in a high rate 64% Other Verb – Adverb collocations of beat 1 .in a game a comfortably,... saying that they mainly use their knowledge background and experience to finish the questionnaire In short, competence of using Verb- Adverb collocation and collocation in general is still not good among our students Students need to be exposed by more and more collocations IV.2.3 Frequency of Verb collocation appearance in written materials - 21 Verb collocations appeared a lot in every oral speech and. .. lot of students can not distinguish idiom and collocation as we can see in the table 1 in III.1 Although many think that big tree is a collocation, in fact it is an idiom to indicate a rich boss In contrast, stream of abuse is simply is a collocation unlike 28 students’ thought VI.1.3 Difficulty with Verb – Adverb collocations - 19 - For it is clearly illustrated in the table 1 and bar chart 2 in III.1... make sth attractive - 27 beautifully, elaborately, elegantly, gaily, intricately, lavishly, ornately, richly these words used to describe the state of decoration The room was lavishly decorated with tinsel and holly 2.with paint/wallpaper nicely, pleasantly, tastefully The bedrooms are tastefully decorated *ARRANGE 1 plan/organize sth a easily These things can be arranged with difficulty b.hastily, . through a bad investment, gambling, etc. II.3.2. What is a phrasal verb? A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb, or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition,. can have a series of verb collocators: administer/conduct/ give an/take an/fail/pass + examination. f. Verb + Adverb (base - collocator) or Adverb + Verb Adverb will modify the verb and add more. England, America, Australia, Canada, Singapore, India In addition, it is taught as second language in a lot of countries around the world including Vietnam. The number of English learners in Vietnam