Naturality through (optimal)‎ collocationality

Abstract EN

In order for any foreign learner of English to gain mastery over English , they need to be well aware of the environment within which the vocabulary operates.

This means, however, that any vocabulary cannot work in isolation ; rather it needs to work within the frameworks of syntax and semantics.

Moreover, we have to familiarize ourselves with the syntactic structures as well as the semantic environment in which the English word performs its function properly .

Any failure to strictly pursue the collocational patterns of a certain word would definitely result in awkwardness and in the long run misunderstanding.

This is as such due to the fact that native speakers of English only communicate naturally when the word is used within the natural environment to which it belongs both syntactically and semantically.

The more natural the foreign speaker of English may be, the better they are understood by native speakers.

In addition, they sound fluent speakers as fluency is the major outcome of naturality.

This, however, can be fulfilled if one comes to know and fully grasps the construction a vocabulary operates within , i.e the part of speech it belongs to as well as the collocates that co-occur with it.

In other words, any shift of the part of speech of an English word undoubtedly necessitates some novel collocates to co–occur and act in harmony with that word in the new part of speech.