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B1 · Intermediate

B1 English Collocations: Abstract Nouns and Their Verbs

At B1 the nouns turn abstract — a decision, an argument, an effect, a responsibility — and abstract nouns almost never choose their verb by meaning. This is the level at which collocation quietly replaces vocabulary size as the thing holding your English back.

36 collocationsReal example sentencesLinked to the word listsB1 level

Written and reviewed by Vugar Novruzov, Academy Director · How we write our lessons

What changes at B1

Something changes around B1. Your vocabulary is large enough to express a real thought, and yet the sentences come out slightly wrong in a way you cannot locate. The usual cause is that you are assembling abstract nouns with plausible verbs instead of retrieving the pairs English actually uses. Take a decision is a reasonable guess and a rare collocation; make a decision is the standard one, in British and American English alike.

Our B1 word lists flag this repeatedly, because at this level the pairings genuinely carry no logic. The legal sequence is a good example: you commit a crime, are arrested for it, charged with it, found guilty of it and sentenced to a punishment. Five different prepositions, none of them deducible. They have to be learned as blocks, and once they are, a whole domain of English opens at once.

make + abstract noun

The verb that governs decisions, mistakes, profits and progress. Note especially that a decision is made and not taken — the error most languages push their speakers towards.

have + event or state

At B1 have extends to disagreements, medical procedures and abstract qualities. It is doing the work that a dedicated verb does in most other languages.

give + abstract noun

Where the thing handed over is not physical. Advice, comfort, confidence and praise are all given, and none of them can be said or made.

face and cause + problem

The two verbs of trouble. You face a problem that has arrived at you, and something causes a problem that did not exist before. Getting the direction right is half of writing clearly about difficulties.

Fixed prepositions after nouns and adjectives

Not verb collocations at all, but the same phenomenon: a word permanently bonded to one preposition. Our B1 prepositions lesson tabulates the adjective set — interested in, afraid of — where no substitution is possible.

What to watch out for

Where these examples come from

Every sentence above is the example already published for that word on our B1 vocabulary lists — the same sentence you will see if you follow the link under it. Nothing on this page was written to demonstrate a collocation; the collocations were selected from what the site already teaches, which is why each one can be followed straight to a full word list with a definition, British pronunciation and flashcards.

That constraint is deliberate. A collocation page built from invented examples would be a second vocabulary set competing with the first, and a learner who met make profit here would have nowhere to go next. Built this way, the 36 pairings on this page are 36 doors into the intermediate word lists.

Questions about B1 collocations

Is it “make a decision” or “take a decision”?

Make a decision is the standard collocation in both British and American English. Take a decision exists in formal British usage, particularly about institutional decisions, but it is far rarer and a learner is safer with make in every register.

Why does my English sound wrong even when the grammar is right?

Almost always collocation. Grammar governs whether a sentence is possible; collocation governs whether it is the sentence a native speaker would produce. Because nothing is technically broken, no grammar check and no amount of proofreading will find it.

What are the most important B1 collocations to learn?

The abstract-noun ones on this page, because they recur across every topic: make a decision, have an argument, give advice, have an effect, face a problem, cause damage. Between them they cover most of what an intermediate learner needs to discuss.

How do I learn fixed prepositions?

As part of the word, never separately. Record interested in and afraid of as single items — the preposition is not attached by a rule you can look up, so storing it apart from its adjective guarantees you will have to guess later.

Do collocations differ between British and American English?

Some do — Americans say take a shower and write someone where British speakers more often say have a shower and write to someone. The pairs on this page are British English, matching the rest of the site, and almost all of them are equally correct in American English.

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