Hi ssa,

There's something about English that most language programmes completely skip over, and it's probably the reason why even advanced learners sometimes sound... well, almost right but not quite natural.

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What you're probably missing is collocations, the natural word partnerships native speakers use without even thinking.

Try it yourself. Do you know which word combinations a proficient English speaker would more naturally say?

Here are the correct answers so you can go ahead and start using these in your conversations: 1) at the crack of dawn, 2) impulse purchase

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Now, this bit might blow your mind: there's no grammatical reason why those "wrong" versions don't work. They make perfect logical sense! But native speakers wouldn't put them together.

Why? Because we learn certain word partnerships naturally from hearing them thousands of times. We absorb them without realising it.

But you're learning English as an adult, so you're building sentences logically, often translating directly from your first language.

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So you might naturally say "I'll write an exam", when in English we'd more naturally say "I'll take an exam" or "I'll do an exam". It makes perfect sense. It's just not what we say.

This is why collocations are absolutely crucial for advanced learners. They're the difference between sounding technically correct and sounding completely natural.

The problem is that most English courses teach vocabulary items as separate things. They'll teach you the word "impulse" and they'll teach you the word "purchase", but they won't teach you that these two words have a special relationship in English.

Those are the hidden patterns I'm talking about. The partnerships and combinations that just "sound right" to native ears.

And once you start noticing collocations everywhere, your English transforms. Seriously.

More on this tomorrow!

Best wishes,

Lucy Bella Simkins

P.S. Want to practise speaking English without pressure and get instant feedback? Try Langua, the world's most advanced AI for language learning. Save 20% on Pro Plans with the code LUCY20.

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