Collocation Search

Today in Class 214, we did group discussion again. This time, I had the students find the collocations in the example sentences of the vocabulary in Lesson 4, for example, "make a close examination of," "hold on tight to," "be diagosed with," etc.

The class was divided into 7 groups, each assigned 5 words or phrases. During the group discussion, the leader read each example sentence, the interpreter translated it into Chinese immediately, the group members found the collocations, the secretary jotted down the collocations, and finally the reporter gave a report on what the group had found. During the presentation, anyone in the class, including me, could ask the reporter questions.

I gave the students 8 minutes to do the group discussion, and 3~5 minutes for each group to teach the class. I didn't mind if the students used Chinese. In fact, it was quite helpful when they sometimes translated the collocations into Chinese. For example, in the sentence

"Now that Karen has found a job, she should be able to support herself,"

the phrase "support herself" should be translated into "養活自己" or "自給自足" instead of "支持自己." This being mentioned, later students won't be bewildered by what English words to use in their writing to express the idea of "養活自己."

After the groups' report, I provided more information about some words and wrapped up the collocation search trip.