This research stresses the role of collocations and how they prove effective as far as introducing new vocabulary is concerned. In fact, English abounds with collocations. Is there any cogent reason behind using ‘last year’ and not ‘last hour’ though both adverbs refer to time? And why do English native speakers say that they go somewhere ‘by bus’ or ‘by train’ but ‘on foot’? The answer is that certain words co-occur with each other, whereas others do not. Knowing a word is not limited to its literal meaning, but rather it is required to know its association with other words (Farrokh 2012). Collocations, whether fixed like idioms or flexible, are the outcome of many years of language practice. (Prodromou 2004). The researcher believes that collocations help native speakers to fluently express themselves since they use ready-made ‘chunks’ of English. In contrast, EFL learners who lack this proficiency may make non-native errors when producing collocations. They may say, for example, ‘arrive to a place’ instead of saying ‘arrive in or at a place’. In order to enhance their competence and fluency, EFL learners need to be fully aware of the importance of the ability to understand and produce collocations. Therefore, the participants included in this research were divided into two groups: experimental (EXPgr) and control (CONgr). The EXPgr learners were familiarised with the concept of collocations by taking twenty-five lessons over a five-week period. Both groups took a pre-test and their scores were close. After a period of five weeks where the EXPgr learners were exposed to collocations and received huge chunks of words that go together, were able to widen the gap between them and the CONgr learners. It was clear that using collocations as a way of introducing new vocabulary in a classroom was more fruitful the traditional vocabulary teaching.

Keyword: collocations