Hi. My name's Rebecca from www.engvid.com. Now, everyone knows that to improve your English,
you need to expand your vocabulary. Right? True. But in today's lesson, I'm going to
show you the key to not just expanding your vocabulary, but expanding... But really transforming
your vocabulary. And, how is that? That's by learning something called "collocations".
What are collocations? Collocations are word combinations, or two or more words that are
used together very frequently. So, rather than just learning one word, if you learn
the expression, you learn how that word is used, what verb goes with which noun, etcetera,
then your vocabulary will sound much more advanced, much more natural, and much more
fluent. This is very important if you want to impress people when you're speaking, and
extremely important if you want to get high marks in any English proficiency exam, such
as the TOEFL or the IELTS.
Now, there are all kinds of collocations in English about everything that you can imagine,
and that's what makes the difference, sometimes, between whether someone really knows the language
or not. It's not just a matter... It's not only a matter of knowing the word, but knowing
how to use the combination of words, the collocation. All right?
So, in today's lesson, we're going to look at six kind of advanced collocations that
have to do with cause and effect. Now, you can always say that something made something
else happen, and that's English, too, and it's perfectly fine to say that. But if you
want to say things in a more sophisticated way, in a more intelligent or educated way,
then you'll want to use the expressions which I'm going to teach you.
All right? So, let's have a look.
So what I've done, I've written some words in red and some in black. So, all of the words
in red here at the top basically mean "caused". Okay? And everything on this side means the
effect. All right? So these words are words we can use... These are synonyms for "caused"
or "made something happen" and this is the effect of it. So, let's look at some examples
in sentences.
"The govt's policy produced the results..." Okay? So, you can't say: "made the results"
or: "did the results", but you can say: "produced the results". All right? So, the collocation
is "to produce results" or: "to produce the results". So: "The govt's policy produced
the results that we expected." Or: "The govt's policy didn't produce the results that we
expected." All right? So, that's the collocation there. That's the expression that you can learn.
Let's look at another example. "The election provoked an outcry..." Now, again, "provoked"
has something to do with caused. So, "to provoke" means to cause in a rather aggressive manner.
Okay? So, to provoke. Provoke what? An outcry. Now, what is it..? What is an outcry? An outcry
means public anger. All right? So, it's talking about something happened and it caused, in
a very kind of an aggressive way, a response, an angry response from the public. So, it
provoked an outcry. All right?
You could say: "The election results provoked an outcry from the people."
Next: "The blizzard wreaked havoc on the highway." All right? Now, what's a blizzard? A blizzard
is a very heavy snowstorm, for example. So: "The blizzard wreaked havoc..." "Wreaked"
we said all these words mean "caused", it's another word for "caused". And "havoc", what
is "havoc"? "Havoc" means damage, destruction, confusion. Okay? So, the blizzard, the very
heavy snowstorm caused a lot of damage and destruction on the highway. So, it wreaked
havoc. Now, of course, if you say that, you can always say: "The blizzard caused a lot
of damage." Or: "The blizzard caused a lot of destruction." And that's fine. That's correct
English, too, but this better English.
All right. Next. "The strike spelled disaster for the economy." for example. Right? So,
again, "to spell" in this case doesn't mean like spelling. Okay? It has a different meaning
here. Here, "to spell disaster" means to cause disaster. And what's "disaster"? Means something
very, very, very bad; a very bad event, a very bad happening, very serious issues and
problems. A disaster. So, the strike caused disaster or spelled disaster. Okay? On the...
For the economy.
Next one: "The Prime Minister"-I just wrote "PM"-"The Prime Minister's behaviour prompted
speculation about his honesty. The Prime Minister's behaviour prompted", or caused, or led to,
"speculation", which is suspicion or doubt. Okay? The Prime Minister's behaviour led to
doubt, prompted speculation about his honesty. Okay? Again, lots of good vocabulary here,
and even better collocations. Right? The entire expression. So, this way, if you learn the
whole expression, you will be able to write much more fluently and speak much more fluently.
Next one: "The boss's favoritism bred resentment among the employees." So, what is that? First
of all: what is favoritism? A favoritism is when somebody favors, or treats one person
better than another person. So, a boss here is treating one employee or a few employees
more nice... Nicely than other people. Okay? Sometimes bosses do that, sometimes teachers
do that, sometimes parents do that. They shouldn't do that, but it happens. And when that happens,
what happens to the other people? They're not very happy. Are they? No. So, they become...
They feel a lot of resentment. They become resentful. And resentment is basically bitterness
or anger. So... And the verb here is "to breed resentment", "to cause resentment". Okay?
So: "The boss's favoritism bred"-in the past-"bred resentment among the employees."
So, you have a lot of serious collocations and expressions to learn, here. But just imagine,
if you actually start... If you learn them and you actually start using them in your
writing, of course you're going to get better marks. There's no question about it. And you're
going to sound like a very educated person. And if you're in university or in any kind
of academic environment, this kind of English is what's required. It's also fairly standard
at those levels. Okay?
Let's go over them again. You can pronounce them after me. "To produce results",
"to provoke an outcry", "to wreak havoc",
"to spell disaster", "to prompt speculation", and the last one:
"to breed resentment". Okay? Now I just said them as they are. Here, they were all written
in the past tense.
So, this is a really important subject, collocations. If you want to do some practice, which I recommend,
because you want to master... You have a lot to master, here. You have to master the verbs,
you have to master the nouns here. Okay? A lot of practice is very helpful. Go to our
website: www.engvid.com. And if you want to keep improving your English,
subscribe to my channel. There's always lots of ideas that will help you improve and transform your English.
Bye for now.