Collocations in Context

Abstract

Collocations, i.e. lexical word combinations that co-occur more frequently than chance, are central to Business English pedagogy. In a university economics context (B2–C1), mastery of field-specific collocations supports authentic professional communication and reflects corpus-informed course materials. Explicit collocation work builds collocational competence by sensitizing learners to acceptable word partnerships, reducing L1-influenced mis-collocations, and strengthening mental lexicons through chunk learning. A reading-and-glossing homework task illustrates how noticing collocations in context can boost receptive knowledge, encourage dictionary use, and promote learner autonomy.