Colligations: A Bottom-Up Approach to Teaching Grammar

Abstract

Traditionally, English and English language teaching have dichotomized language into grammar and vocabulary. It is believed that sentences are produced by putting the vocabulary acquired into grammatical structures. This view works for creativity, but it does not take into account fluency and the knowledge of how words are really used. This session will explain how vocabulary is central to achieving native-speaker fluency as well as knowledge of how we store words we know in the context in which they are read or heard. Ideas in this session are based on Michael Hoey’s colligation theory. Finally, we will discuss what the implications of this theory are for language learning.