In recent years collocation has emerged as an important category of lexical patterning and it is fast becoming an established unit of description in language teaching courses and meterials. This paper first gives a pedagogic definition of collocation. And then deals with one defining feature of collocation, i. e. arbitrary, which is ideally suited to independent language learning. And then the main part of the paper focuses on raising students' awareness of collocation and especially equipping them with skills to enable them to develop their knowledge of collocation independently of the teacher, during which concordance serves as a small but powerful tool. The purpose is to develop students' independent language learning.
