Building your vocabulary: one collocation at a time

You can build your vocabulary by using more collocations. Collocations? I hear you ask. Now, what are they?

Collocations are words that naturally appear together. Like old friends from school days, they are comfortable in each other’s company. They enjoy spending time together.

By using collocations, your language becomes richer.

Let’s look at some collocations for make.

Collocations with ‘make’

You wake up at 6:00 o’clock in the morning and immediately make your bed. You turn on the radio and make breakfast. Careful! The milk is boiling. Don’t make a mess.

You receive a text from your best friend from college. Can you make it for the reunion next month? Oh no. You’ve just made a plan with the family.

How many collocations with make so far? Four. Or maybe five. Can you make a guess?

It’s your first day as vice-president and you want to make a good impression. There’s an important meeting happening downtown. You’ve made the arrangements to get there well in time.

At the meeting, you’re client makes some good points. You make some notes. You think to yourself: why isn’t our sales team making more of an effort?

You then make a suggestion. You say, ‘Why don’t we share the research data with you? We normally don’t share it with our clients. But, in your case, we could make an exception.’

Your manager looks at you with stars in his eyes. As you both walk down the stairs, he whispers, ‘We are going to make so much money!’

After lunch, there is a sharp pain in your mouth. Ouch! You can’t ignore the pain anymore. You need to make an appointment right now. Time to visit the dentist.

It’s 10:00 o’clock at night. You are at home. Your family is fast asleep. You look out the window and see the inky black sky. You make believe there is a shooting star streaking above the dark clouds. You make a wish.

Phew! All those collocations make my head spin.

Collocations with ‘risk’

Now, let’s look at business English. How many collocations are there with the word ‘risk’? There are more than you can imagine: Considerable risk. Low risk. Negligible risk. Increased risk. Reduced risk.

And then there is: take a risk; pose a risk; accept a risk; manage a risk; minimize a risk; assess risk; measure risk; and balance risk.

Wait… there’s more: credit risk; political risk; environmental risk; safety risk; and security risk.

How many of these collocations of risk have you used? What can you use in future?

At the risk of overloading you with collocations, let’s briefly look at a word I’m sure you use: budget.

Collocations with ‘budget’

Some collocations with budget are:

prepare a budget

plan a budget

approve a budget

propose a budget

balance the budget

exceed the budget

stick to the budget

Now, we need to budget our time. So, I’ll stop here.

Takeaway

Before you click away, remember this–collocations help us to express ourselves with precision and flexibility. And they widen our range of vocabulary.

Select a collocation that you haven’t used before from the lists above. Use it by the end of tomorrow. By doing so, you will have expanded your vocabulary without much effort.

Does that make sense?

Find out how a dictionary is a treasure trove of collocations.

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