Wednesday, 27 May 2009

Collocations: odd one out

AnswersJustificar
I'm sure all of you must have your answers written down on little pieces of paper. So these are the verbs that do not collocate or the words that don't go together.
make ADVICE
do AN ANSWER
put off A BUSINESS
do A COMPLAINT
Did you get them right?
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7 comments:

  1. Luciana27/5/09 2:38 pm

    Got 1 wrong... and went to check it out. Wind up a business according to my ever helpful dic: "put everything in order before dissoving it" (hope I didn`t spoil anybody's fun ;-)

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  2. Felipe27/5/09 5:18 pm

    Same here... missed the "wind up a business", which doesn't seem all that natural to me, so I don't think it's that bad a mistake. In my mind, "put off a business" meant something like ending/terminating/closing a business (not like "So we have a deal?" but more like "I'm gonna close you down (put off your business) because you own me way too much")
    But then again, even thought I have never paid attention to this term, this may be one of those things that you learn and start hearing/reading everywhere! Then you think "Huh, who would've guessed it was that common".
    This is just to show how this language can always show a new thing to everyone...

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  3. Chris Dupont28/5/09 3:22 pm

    @Luciana & Felipe

    "Wind up a business" does reflect CPE level. No wonder it's tricky.
    A lot of learners of English simply loathe phrasal verbs. Do you guys? I don't.

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  4. Nelson28/5/09 9:17 pm

    3/4 =/
    The "wind up" bit was quite tricky.
    What's next ? A word formation challenge ? =)

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  5. Felipe31/5/09 3:00 pm

    @Chris

    I wouldn't say that I loathe phrasal verbs... I actually enjoy "guessing" their meanings without a dictionary. Like I said before (at least I think I did though), I try guessing by the apparent "meaning" of it. But sometimes the definition is something that seems totally weird!
    One thing that I always wonder is their origin... that would be helpful specially when memorizing them.

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  6. Chris Dupont2/6/09 12:30 pm

    @Felipe

    Guessing the meanings of phrasal verbs (from context, of course) is a pretty good strategy. Very useful when you're doing an advanced exam.
    By the way, examiners seem to be particularly fond of testing phrasal verbs.

    How about phrasal verbs with multiple meanings?

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  7. Felipe2/6/09 10:49 pm

    @Chris:

    Multiple meanings huh... maybe your next post's theme could be that!

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