As a non-native speaker of a language, we don’t always have the ability to use common expressions or pair words with ease and grace. This is because when we are a student of a language we try to apply the laws we have learned to deduce the way we should say something. If you are a non-native English speaker, then you might choose to say “do an effort” rather than “make an effort” because logically the first one seems like the correct answer. But, any native English speaker knows that we don’t “do effort”; we make it. These are collocations and as an English language learner, you need to “make an effort” to learn the correct usage of words and phrases such as this.
That’s where English Collocations in Use comes in handy. The book will teach you how to say things the way a native speaker would. You’ll learn that “smoking is strictly forbidden” is a common expression while “smoking is strongly forbidden” just sounds weird to the native ear. As a non-native speaker, you may say things that sound a bit strange to a native English speaker. They might not be wrong, but they’re just not all that right, either. But this book helps you to eradicate these things from your speech and give you a more native command of English.
"As a non-native speaker, you may say things that sound a bit strange to a native English speaker. They might not be wrong, but they’re just not all that right, either.But this book helps you to eradicate these things from your speech and give you a more native command of English."
The book will also teach you how and when to say things informal settings and informal settings. This is extremely important if you want to enhance your personal or professional life in an English speaking country. The book also teaches you when to use words like “have” and when to use “get”. For example, “Mike had an accident before he got his sister”. Essentially, this book helps you to iron out the language kinks that hold you back from being more fluent in English. The book covers a lot of seemingly small topics, but they are all important if you really want to perfect your English.
If you are a teacher, this is a great book to assign to students who have reached a certain threshold or plateau. Whenever we study anything, we usually peak out and it becomes a lot more difficult to rise to the next level. English Collocations in Use can help your intermediate and advanced students fix those subtle mistakes in order to make him/her a much better English speaker. These are the kind of things that a student really needs to study so that they will no longer continue to make the same mistake without being aware of doing it.
This book works great for class work or homework assignments. Since the book isn’t an official classroom book, there are no class or group activities, so as a teacher you will still have to provide some activities to build up on the content studied. However, the book is structured in a very useful way which will help you to plan ongoing lessons incorporating the study of English collocations.
