1. Vocabulary connections
Multi-words items in English

2. A collocation consists in two or more words that often go together.

3. Structural patterning of lexis
COLLOCATION
Structural patterning of lexis
(Sinclair)
Two Principles
OPEN CHOICE PRINCIPLE
Is a way of seeing language text as the result of a very large number of complex choices.
IDIOM PRINCIPLE
Is that a language user has available to him or her a large number of semi-preconstructed phrases that constitute single choice.

4. A vocabulary item which consists of a sequence of two or more words
MULTI-WORD ITEM
A vocabulary item which consists of a sequence of two or more words
This sequence of words semantically and/or syntactically forms a meaningful and inseparable unit.

5. Three important criteria which help distinguish holistic multi-word item.
Institutionalisation
Fixedness
Non-compositionality
The degree to which a multi-word item cannot be interpreted on a word-by-word basis, but has a specialised unitary meaning.
The degree to which a multi-word item is conventionalised in the language.
The degree to which a multi-word item is frozen as a sequence of words.

6. Types of multi-word item
Prefabs
Fixed phrases
Idioms
Phrasal verbs
Compounds
The largest and most tangible group.
Combination of verbs and adverbial or prepositional particles.
They have holistic meanings which cannot be retrieved from the individual meanings of the component words.
Very general term to cover a number of multi-word items
Prefabricated routines or ready- made units.

7. Models of multi-word items
Semantic-based models
They attempt to differentiate between categories of multi-word items according to degrees of compositionality, and they aim to identify the irreductible semantic building-blocks of the lexicon.
Syntax-based models
Take grammatical well-formedness as their starting-point.

8. Variability in multi-word items
Some of the principal kinds of variation are represented in the following:

9. SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNING PERSPECTIVES
Multi-word items
Are typically presented as a problem in teaching and learning a foreing languages
Are language-specific and they have particular sociocultural connotations and associations.
Are generally considered ‘difficult’ .

10. Teaching multi-word items
The use of short dialogues.
Pedagogical techniques for the acquisition of multi-word items.
A pragmatic classification of multi-word items.
Classifying multi-word items according to subject areas.
Multi-word items should be carefully chosen on the basis of frequency, need, transparency, and syntactic and semantic simplicity