Kommen Kollokationen in Mode? Kollokationskonzepte und ihre mögliche Umsetzung in der Didaktik

Abstract

Collocation is defined differently in the various linguistic disciplines and no generally acceptable definition exists. One reason for that is the variety of approaches and another is the complexity of the phenomenon. It follows from the semantic concept of collocation for language learning that the acquisition of vocabulary means the learning of words in isolation and the properties which determine their compatibility with other words. This is an inefficient way and often involves interference errors. In the interpretation of corpus linguistics the learning of words occurring together is encouraged. The student is able to find the collocator matching the basis in a corpus. Searching a corpus, however, has both advantages (learning collocations by examples) and disadvantages (disregarding less frequent collocations). The paper argues that collocations should be conceived as phrasal units and taught using a three-phase model. The target is to achieve psycholinguistic fixedness in the mental lexica of students through effective exercises.