Teaching Collocation

After the discussion of the reading, we finally came to vocabulary study today.   Now I don't avoid speaking Chinese.  Instead, I will say the Chinese chunk and ask students to find the English equivalent in the example sentence.  For example, the students see the following example sentence for the new word "resist" in their textbook:

The robber was hurt while resisting arrest.

I'll ask the students, "How do we say 拒捕 in English?"  They will find the chunk and said, "resist arrest."  In this way, they speak English.   I found teaching collocatiion fun.  In fact, we seldom speak word for word, but chunk by chunk.

Of course, after they say "resist arrest," I won't stop there.  Sometimes, I'll practice using the chunk with them by asking questions, like "Do you think it's wise for a robber to resist arrest when confronting the police?"   Sometimes, I'll ask them to make sentences orally, using the chunk they just learn, for example, "It concerns me that..."