A very important
area of learning a language is the correct use of vocabulary in the right
contexts, specially the combinations that form fixed phrases, that is:
collocations. To a native of Spanish, some word combinations sound right but
for the native English folk they don´t. And literal translations don´t help
much!!! Take for example the Spanish phrase “tomar el pelo”. We know the
corresponding phrase is “pull someone ´s leg”, but if you want to translate it
word by word, the result is at least confusing if not really bluffing.
The point
is, vocabulary is a hard cookie, and we teachers need to inform ourselves
before we “teach” something misleading like “take vacations”. Happily, and
conveniently enough for us, the Internet has very good resources we could call “virtual
donkey killers” (just kidding, the phrase is an invention). Among them, we can
find dictionaries and thesaurus. However, the tool I have found extremely
useful to clear any doubts (like the one on “take vacations”) is the
Collocations Dictionary. Here you can enter a word and in return the dictionary
will give you the possible word combinations, or collocations.
Have a
field trip using the dictionary…and learning more.
