To help students identify correct collocations, provide them with a series of verbs that form collocations with a specific noun. Giving them the verbs, ask the students to identify the noun. For example, Training Express suggests providing them with clues such as "You can crash it, shut it down, play on it or reboot it." Have the students guess the answer, a computer, either from an answer bank or from memory. For students requiring English skills for work, give examples such as a meeting, hinting: "You can miss it or give it or attend or take notes at it." Repeat the activity regularly. By the end of the year, see if students can create their own questions for the activity, to ask their peers.
Once your students have practiced a list of common collocations, write each of the collocations on small note cards. Place the cards in a hat or a basket and let one student draw a card at a time. The student then must act out the collocation, creatively, without making any sounds. The rest of the class has to guess the collocation, without referring to the list. To make the activity slightly more difficult, use it as a means of introducing students to the collocations, seeing if any students have already picked them up from readings or listening to native speakers.
Certain verbs are used extensively in the English language, forming the basis of a immense range of collocations. For example, "do" and "get" can take on many meanings, depending on the context and the words you pair them with. Have students brainstorm all the different collocations that use a specific verb. For example, they might think of "do her the courtesy," "do the laundry," "do one's hair" and "do someone in." Once students have created a list of collocations, see if they can write a creative story using as many collocations as possible, all with the same verb.
As a review exercise, have students spot mistakes in collocations by reading a sample text, as if written by an ESL student of approximately their own level. However, when preparing the text, switch out at least one word of each of the collocations. Let students work individually or in pairs to spot all the errors.