Re: Help with collocations, please

>

>>Anyway.  One of the early things we teach is collocation with 'make' and
>>'do' - 'do the shopping', 'make the beds' 'do the wa****ng up'.  Is 'make
>>the bed' a cliche?  Or shall we all start doing the beds, instead?
>>
>Thanks for that very interesting clarification. From my own experience of
>learning foreign languages, I'd say that learning set phrases and
trotting
>them out in appropriate situations is a good way of making native
speakers
>believe your competence in their language is greater than it really is.
The
>only problem is, you can then find yourself in deeper linguistic waters
than
>you'd bargained for, when your interlocutor stops making allowances for
your
>learner status and launches into high speed fully idiomatic mode -- but
that
>bracing experience does motivate further learning.
>

I've had exactly the same experience, especially in Greek, where I've got
an
impressive range of restaurant phrases - 'can we see the kitchen?',
'what's
good tonight' and so forth.  Like you say Fred, this sometimes makes
native
speakers overestimate your competence in their language...

DC

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