THE TREATMENT OF VERBAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN) IN THE DICIONÁRIO OXFORD ESCOLAR PARA ESTUDANTES BRASILEIROS DE INGLÊS (2009)

Abstract

The term collocation designates cases of lexical-syntactic co-occurrence, i.e., words that usually “go together”. Collocations make speech and writing sound much more natural, but usually cause difficulties for learners of a foreign language, especially in text production. This is because languages ​​are asymmetrical to each other, and learners tend to translate these combinations literally. For these reasons, collocations are a key element in an active bilingual dictionary. So, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of treatment of verbal collocations (verb + noun) in the Dicionário Oxford Escolar para Estudantes Brasileiros de Inglês – DOE (2009), in the Portuguese-English direction, to resolve doubts about the production of these collocations. To do so, the search strategies of seven students for finding four collocations in that dictionary were observed. The findings of the study led to the conclusion that DOE (2009) is not adequate to remove doubts of Brazilian beginner learners of English about the production of verbal collocations.