‘Collocations, and not individual words, are minimum units of meaning.’ Four small shifts: ban single words, explore more and explain less, avoid word-for-word L1 equivalence, and revisit ‘known’ words through new partners.
Four principles
- Ban single words. Board new words with their partners (do homework, heavy rain, investigate the murder (of)), minimum two words.
- Explain less, explore more. Examples and concordance lines over definitions, which prompts “What else can mild go with?”
- No word-for-word equivalence. Translate whole phrases, not words.
- Attend to “known” words. Familiar words combine into unfamiliar meanings (lose your cool, make ends meet).
Theory
“Teaching lexically” is Dellar & Walkley’s coinage. Distinguishes compositional from non-compositional collocations (make do). No research cited in the post.
Apply in my context (Claude)
- Easy rule for all Rahimov teachers (could be a checklist item): no single word on the board without a partner. It’s observable, cheap, and changes vocabulary notebooks immediately.
- Uzbek/Russian learners often translate word-for-word. Principle 3 targets the most common source of unnatural IELTS collocations (e.g. “make a photo” ← Russian сделать фото).
Connections
The Lexical Approach - grammaticalised lexis, read critically · Colligation and bottom-up grammar · Round-ups, gapped boardwork and reformulation