English collocations

Do you want to enlarge your vocabulary? How can you do it? The answer is simple! You need to work with collocations. But what does “collocation” mean?

A lot of people think that learning vocabulary is just learning more new words. That’s not enough! We also must know some expressions combined with a word. English words have friends and you need to know who they are. We call this friendship "collocation". Remember that it’s a very important part of learning vocabulary.

Besides collocation is how words go together with other words, it tells us which words can come before or after other words.

Let’s have a look at some examples of collocations and try to remember them. For instance, everyone uses the word “house” but not all know the expressions with it.

verb + house

build a house

share a house

demolish a house

renovate a house

break into a house

move house

common expressions

live in a house

stay at someone’s house

pass someone’s house

lock yourself out of the house

In every house we have stairs. Could you name the collocations that go with it?

verb + stairs

use ⁄ take the stairs

climb the stairs

run up ⁄ down the stairs

fall down the stairs

common expressions

carry something up ⁄ down the stairs

a flight of stairs

the top ⁄ bottom of the stairs

The house consists of different rooms. And it’s important to learn the collocations of the word “room”!

verb + room

share a room

tidy your room

let out rooms

common expressions

a bright room

a comfortable room

a tidy ⁄ an untidy room

a single ⁄ twin ⁄ double room

the spare room

the next room

the room is crowded

the room is locked

a waiting room (at the station or hospital)

You know a lot of collocations, you speak fluently! Your speaking skills depend on having a large store of words and expressions which you don't need to think about or construct every time you speak English.