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    Yesterday I bought an Oxford Collocations Dictionary 《牛津英语搭配词典双解版》. This dictionary was published by Beijing Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and was priced at 85 yuan a copy. As an English learner and dictionary user, I think this collocations dictionary is of great use to help ESL leaners make their English more natural-sounding when they speak and write English. The following paragraphs I have quoted from the Preface to the Dictionary could give you a rough idea of what the dictionary is about.

      What is collocation?

      Collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing. For example, in English you say strong wind but heavy rain. It would not be normal to say *heavy wind or * strong rain. And what all four of these words would be recognized by a leaner at pre-intermediate or even elementary level, it takes a greater degree of competence with the language to combine them correctly in productive use.To a native-speaker these combination are highly predictable; to a learner they are anything but.

      Combininations of words in a language can be ranged on a cline from the totally free - see a man/car/book - to the totally fixed and idomatic - not see the wood for the trees. This idiom is not only fixed in form, it also has nothing whatever to do with wood or trees. Between these two extremes, there is a whole range of nouns that take the verb see in a way that is neither totally predictable nor totally opague as to meaning. These run from the fairly 'weak' collocation see a film (which elementary students learn as a 'chunk' without pausing to reflect that this is not quite the literal meaning of see) through the 'medium strength' see a doctor to the 'stronger' collocations of see danger/reason/the point.  All these combinations,  apart from those at the very extremes of the cline, can be called collocation. And it is combinations such as these - particularly in the 'medium-strength' area - that are vital to communicative competence in Enlish.

      Why is collocation important?

      Collocation runs through the whole of the English language. No piece of natural spoken or written English is totally free of collocation. For the student, choosing the right collocation will make his speech and writing sound much more natural, more native-speaker-like, even when basic intelligibility does not seem to be at issue. A student who talks about *strong rain may make himself understood, but possibly not without provoking a smile or a correction, which may or may not matter. He will certainly be marked down for it in an exam.

      But, perhaps even more importantly than this, language that is collocationally rich is also more precise. This is because most single words in the English language - especially the more common words - embrace a whole range of meanings, some quite distinct, and some that shade into each other by degrees. The precise meaning in any context is determined by that context: by the words that surround and combine with the core word - by collocation.  A student  who  chooses the best collocation will express himself much more clearly and be able to convey not just a general meaning, but something quite precise. Compare, for example, the following two sentences:

      This is a good book and contains a lot of interesting details.  

      This is a fascinating book and contains a wealth of historical detail.

      Both sentences are perfectly 'correct' in terms of grammar and vocabulary, but which communicates more (both about the book under discussion and the person discussing it)?

      Why use a collocation dictionary?

      A normal dictionary, whether monolingual or bilingual, splits up meaning into individual words; it has a lot of power in dissecting the meaning of a text. Its power is more limited when it comes to constructing texts. Good learner's dictionaries give as much help as they can with usage, with grammar patterns clearly explained, register labels and example sentences showing words in context. Modern dictionaries are increasingly giving attention to collocation. But they are still hampered by trying to provide a whole range of information about any word besides its collocations. A grammar provides an analysis of the general patterns that exist in a language. But its productive power is limited by the degree to which it generalizes in order to come up with 'grammatical rules'. A collocational dictionary doesn't have to generalize to the same extent: it covers the entire language (or a large part of it!) on a word by word, collocation by collocation basis. It manages this by not attempting to account for every possible utterance, only for what is most typical.

      By focusing on the specific rather than the general, a collocations dictionay is also able to 'pre-digest' a lot of the grammar involved, presenting collocates in their most typical form in context, even if this is not the usual dictionary citation form. For example at the entry for baby, you will find the collocation be teething, reflecting the fact that this verb is always used in the progressive tenses.

      Use the collocations dictionary systematically and you become much more aware of the extent to which English makes use of the passive, an aspect of grammar that even advanced students may be reluctant to put to full productive use.

      By covering the language systematically from A-Z, a collocations dictionary allows students to build up their own collocational competence on a 'need-to-know' basis, starting from the words they already know - or know in part. Occasional, or even regular, collocations exercises in coursebooks cannot fulfil this role, although they do a useful job of raising the profile of collocations as an essential feature of the language, and teach some useful collocations in the process.

      I hope, due to my recommendation, your use of this collocations dictionary will make your speech and writing sound much more natural and more native-speaker-like. If that is the case, I would be more than pleased.