The importance of collocations

In terms of use, acquisition, and ultimate progress in language learning and translation, collocation is much more important. One-tenth of our time in a vocabulary presentation should be spent on defining a meaning, and the remainder should be spent on collocation and usage.

Second language learners often rely on their native language in trying to communicate or translate. They assume that there always exists a one-to-one correspondence between L1 and L2 lexical items. This strategy may be of some help to the learner at the beginning levels of language learning, but it is also a major cause of errors because even equivalent lexical items do not always convey the same sense in two languages for various reasons, including cultural differences which are reflected in the vocabulary of every language. This false assumption causes the learners to make collocational errors.