Do you know, collocations help English learners improve their fluency..

What is Collocation?

Collocation refers to words that generally go together. Even though it possible to use other word combinations, understanding collocations help English learners improve their fluency.
What is collocation?
Collocation refers to a group of two or more words that usually go together. A good way to think of collocation is to look at the word collocation. Co - meaning together - location - meaning place. Collocation are words that are located together. A good answer to "What is collocation?" is: Collocation is a group of two or more words that like to hang out together. Here are some examples of common collocations that you might know:
make tea - I made a cup of tea for lunch.
do homework - I did all of my homework yesterday.
Make and Do - A Good Starting Place for Collocation
I begin with make and do because they provide perfect examples of why collocation is so important. Generally, make refers to things that are created and do refers to tasks.

However, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule - especially with the verb 'make'.

I made the bed. - Did I construct a bed? NO!
She made an exception. - An exception is allowance to breaking a rule, not a thing.

Make and Do are perfect examples of verbs that go together with specific nouns. A verb + noun combination that always go together are considered collocations.

More information and examples on make and do collocations

Why Do Words Collocate?

There is often no reason for a collocation. People just put certain words together more often than they put other words together. In fact, the use of collocations has become popular in English and language teaching because of corpus linguistics. Corpus linguistics study huge volumes of data of spoken and written English to come up with statistics on how often people use certain words and word combinations. Through this study, corpus linguistics has been able to define what strong and weak collocations are.

Strong Collocations

Strong collocations refer to words that almost always go together. It's possible that people might understand you if you don't use a strong collocation. However, if you do not use a strong collocation it will sound funny to native speakers. Let's return to our example of 'make' and 'do'. If you say:

I did a cup of coffee.

native speakers will understand that you mean:

I made a cup of coffee.

Correct use of strong collocations shows an excellent command of the English language, and can certainly help impress native speakers of your ability to speak English well. Of course, if you are speaking to other non-native speakers the ability to use collocations correctly all the time becomes less important. That doesn't mean that correct collocation use is not important, it's just not AS important as something like correct tense. Image for a moment that you are speaking about a future meeting:

Our meeting was on Friday at four o'clock.
I've done an appointment at four o'clock for the meeting room on Friday.

In both of these sentences, there are mistakes. However, in the first sentence instead of using a future tense, the past tense is used. If you want your colleagues to come to the meeting, this mistake is very serious and will lead to no one coming to the meeting.

In the second sentence 'do an appointment' is a misuse of a strong collocation. However, the meaning is clear: You have scheduled a room at four o'clock. In this case, a mistake in collocations is not nearly as important as a mistake in tense usage.

Here are examples of strong collocations that you might not be familiar with:

high earnings (not big earnings)
long-range planning (not long-time planning)
urban guerrilla (not city guerrilla)

Here are a number of common collocations in English:
make the bed -> I need to make the bed everyday.
do the homework -> My son does his homework after dinner.
take a risk -> Some people don't take enough risks in life.
give someone advice -> The teacher gave us some advice on taking tests.
Here are some business collocations.

These collocations are used for specific situations in business.

open an account -> Would you like to open an account at our bank?
forgive a debt -> Do you think the bank would forgive a debt?
land a deal -> We landed a deal worth $3 million.
receive a discount -> If you buy three computers you'll receive a discount.
You can find more collocation examples and exercises to practice collocations by using the categories below.

Verb Collocations

These sheets provide a matching game with some of the most common verb + noun collocations used in everyday situations. Here are some examples of the types of verb collocations you will learn:
to feel free
to come prepared
to save time
to find a replacement
to make progress
to do the washing up
etc.

Business Collocations

These collocation sheets provide common collocations used in business and work settings. There are a number of forms including adjectives, nouns and other verbs that combine with these key words. Each sheet includes a number of collocation examples to illustrate usage. Here are some of the collocation examples you will find on these pages:
to key in a PIN
to deposit a check
hard-earned money
protection money
counterfeit money
etc.

Common Expressions

Collocations are often used as short expressions to describe how someone feels about a situation. In this case, collocations can be used in the adjective form, or also as emphatic expressions using an intensifier and a verb. Here are a few examples using some of these collocation examples:
We'd like to positively encourage you to buy this stock.
I deeply regret the loss of your loved one.
Tom's in an utter fury over the misunderstanding with his wife.
He went to a great length to explain the situation.

And so on…

Why are Collocations Important?

There is an entire world of collocations to explore. Learning collocations is important because you begin to learn words in larger groups or 'chunks' of language. Putting together these chunks of language leads to more fluent English.

So, Happy studying Folks!!!