045 Business collocations for talking about success

Strong vs Weak Collocations

A collocation is a word or phrase that naturally goes together in English. Generally, there is no rules for collocations, meaning you just need to learn them. As you get better at English things will just “sound” right and you will know what the correct collocation is to use. This comes with having lots of exposure to English, whether by talking to natives or reading. Remember, as I have mentioned many times on this podcast. Reading is one of the best ways to improve your understanding of expressions and expand on your range of vocabulary.

Let’s take a look at strong collocations. Basically, strong collocations are words that always go together, this means that you can’t modify the verb that goes with a noun, for example. If we want to better understand what I mean by strong collocations, then we need to see some common ones.

Here you have some common collocation with a verb and noun structure. I have also provided the common mistake Spanish speakers make when using them.

OK, so you can see that these collocations are strong. Only the verb that is used with the noun will work in this scenario. Furthermore, when used incorrectly they will sound very wrong to a native person. So, perfecting your collocations can go a long way to making you sound more fluent and native.

In the next part I will be taking a look at weaker collocations. So, you may be asking yourself, what is a weak collocation. Put simply, it is an expression that can have some variation of the verb and still have the same meaning. To better understand what I mean, let’s take a look at the following examples:

As you can see, some expressions can be modified but still have the same meaning.

Now that we understand the difference between strong and weak collocations, let’s move on to the next part of the episode and look at some business collocations for talking about success.

Inspirational business collocations for success

Firstly, we are going to look at some inspirational collocation you can use in your next meeting or presentation to inspire your audience to achieve their goals. You can also use them to talk to your co-workers into working harder and motivate them into giving their all.

Using reverse psychology for motivation

The above collocations are positive and inspirational. However, what if we want to use some scare tactics to motivate our team towards success. Here we can use some “reverse psychology” to motivate your audience or just suggest attitudes they should avoid in order to succeed, here are some other collocations for you to use.

Right, there you have a great list of more than 20 business collocations for talking about success, in two contexts.

In the last part of the episode we are going to look at a few of these sentences in context.

Sample sentences in use

As usual here I will give you the situation, the collocation and the sample sentence in use.

Well, there you have a couple of example sentences in context. Remember, there are many more that we can use. As always, collocations are best applied within the right context and that is why we have provided you with the translation.

Before we finish up today, this is just a quick reminder of how you can study them. Be sure to head over to the AOBE website, sign up for a free month of membership. Then you can download the transcript for all of these collocations, as well as practice with some quizzes. I have also included the pronunciation of some difficult words to help you out. I encourage you to learn 3 or 4 of these collocations per week. Once you have them internalised you can come back and grab some more. Make a conscious effort to include them in your next meeting or presentation.

Final thoughts

Well, I would just like to thank you all for joining me. I really hope this episode has provided you with lots of value and that you have learnt something new and are ready to put some of these tips into practice.

Before I go I would just like to remind you all to send me in your questions, as well as take a look at the AOBE membership site, it is super cheap at only 50 dollars a year. Remember you get access to all the good stuff, quizzes, vocabulary, transcripts, pronunciation and some free live training sessions thrown in with me. You also get your first month free so you can check it out before you commit.

Well, that is all from me, I can’t wait to have you all back next week. Until then take care and have a great week.