Finding and working on collocations in texts

Finding collocations You can expand your collocation vocabulary by training yourself to notice collocations whenever you read. Note the collocations in these three examples of texts from different sources – a newspaper feature, a film review and a website for London tourists.

1 (formal) as long as he achieves successful results

2 major life event behind him

3 hard to fix or place

Remember you will also hear collocations in conversations, lectures, songs and films. Try to get into the habit of recording any interesting collocations that you notice. Recording collocations When working on collocations in a text, use your dictionary to find more relating to one or both parts of the original collocation. You can record strong collocations in collocation forks:

and weak ones in collocation bubbles (because there are so many more of them):

-English Collocations in Use Advanced