The Use of Corpus in Teaching English Collocations: a case study of Thai
secondary school students
Pailin Pinitkwamdee
This paper aims to introduce a new way of teaching English collocations to
Thai learners. It focuses on the use of delexicalized verbs of Thai secondary school
students. The verbs included in this study are “do, make, take and get”. The problems
caused by these four verbs can be observed both in the Pre-test given to the subjects
and in the teaching process. This paper also discusses the differences between the use
of delexicalized verbs and normal verbs which convey similar meanings. With print
out materials based on corpus data, various exercises and strategies have been used to
facilitate the learning of these verbs. After the teaching process, the average scores
analyzed from the Post- test given clearly show the effective results of applying
corpus data in language classroom. Lastly, apart from raising the awareness of both
the students and the teachers on the usage and an easier way to teach collocations
using authentic data, the researcher strongly supports the further use of corpus in
teaching English collocations to Thai learners, on the basis of the lexical approach.