Satisfaction guaranteed

This week's column is by Language Editor Toby Skingsley.

Recently, I was thinking about what a friend once told me at university. We were doing a foreign-language course together, and she said: "Finding words that go well together is a little like matching pieces in a jigsaw puzzle."

I had to think about it for a moment, but I understood what she meant. Jigsaws are about combining small pieces to make a coherent whole, just like words and ideas in a language. My friend and I certainly weren't beginners. We had reached a stage where we could express ourselves very well in the language. But occasionally, we used combinations of words — for example, certain adjectives with certain nouns — that didn't sound quite right to our native-speaker teacher. It was as if we were combining jigsaw pieces that seemed like a good match, but didn't quite fit.

I was reminded of my friend's words while looking at this month's Spotlight language feature about word partnerships in English. Some words don't form a comfortable fit when we slot them together, while others are a natural match. We don't say that somebody is totally awake; the more natural word partnership is wide awake. It's certainly possible to get a cold, but the combination catch a cold sounds a lot better. And if I'm really pleased about something I've achieved, I don't feel big satisfaction, but rather great or immense satisfaction. The technical term for good word partnerships is collocation. If certain words collocate, they are often found together. If they don't, they are like incompatible pieces of a jigsaw. You could try to force them together, but you wouldn't see a pretty picture at the end of the puzzle.

Collocation is vital to improving the level of your English. These word partnerships come naturally to native speakers, so learning good collocation can make your English sound far more natural and allow you to express yourself more clearly. In the February issue of Spotlight, our language feature gives you tips about where to look for these important word combinations and how best to learn them.

So how did my friend and I do on the language course? Well, we worked hard on our word partnerships and our language improved a lot over time. We were in no way perfect, but we got better marks in the end. Which gave me a feeling of immense satisfaction.