5 exercises — each question asks whether a given expression is a natural English collocation used by native speakers.
How to approach True or False collocations
Ask yourself: would a native speaker say this naturally, or does it sound translated?
Check the verb: many errors come from using a generic verb (do/make) instead of the precise one
Some expressions sound almost right — the difference is often one word
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
True or False: 'spin up a server' is a natural English expression in cloud computing contexts.
TRUE — "spin up" is idiomatic and widely used in cloud and DevOps contexts.
The phrase originates from mechanical spinning — hard disk drives and turbines "spin up" when powered on. In cloud computing, it has become the standard informal collocation for starting any resource quickly.
spin up a server ✅ — "We spun up a new server in us-east-1."
spin up a container ✅ — "The orchestrator spins up containers on demand."
spin up an environment ✅ — "Let me spin up a staging environment for testing."
spin up an instance ✅ — equally natural for virtual machines
All major cloud providers use this vocabulary in their communities (AWS, GCP, Azure). Also natural: launch, provision, start, bring up. "Start a server" is correct but sounds more general. "Spin up" implies speed and on-demand provisioning — key concepts in cloud elasticity.
2 / 5
True or False: 'make an instance' is the natural English way to describe creating a virtual machine or cloud instance.
FALSE — "make an instance" is not standard cloud vocabulary.
AWS documentation — the de facto standard for cloud English — consistently uses precise verbs. "Make" does not appear in AWS EC2 documentation for this action.
The natural collocations:
launch an instance ✅ — AWS's official verb: "Launch an EC2 instance."
provision an instance ✅ — infrastructure-as-code vocabulary: "Terraform will provision the instances."
spin up an instance ✅ — informal but widely used in DevOps teams
create an instance ✅ — general, accepted in most cloud UI contexts
start an instance ✅ — restart a stopped instance
Why not "make"? "Make" is too generic and does not carry the technical connotation of provisioning infrastructure. In cloud vocabulary, the choice of verb signals whether you understand the domain — "launch" implies the full lifecycle initiation, while "make" sounds non-native to the cloud engineering context.
3 / 5
True or False: 'provision resources' is a real English collocation used in cloud computing and infrastructure.
TRUE — "provision" is a core verb in infrastructure and cloud vocabulary.
To provision means to prepare, configure, and make available a resource for use. It implies more than just starting something — it covers the full setup process.
provision resources ✅ — "Terraform provisions resources defined in the configuration."
provision servers ✅ — "The Ansible playbook provisions the web servers."
provision a database ✅ — "Provision an RDS instance with the required specs."
provision a VPC ✅ — virtual private cloud setup
Related collocations:
auto-provisioning — automatic resource creation on demand
infrastructure provisioning — the broad practice of setting up infrastructure
over-provisioning — allocating more resources than needed
Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation) use "provision" extensively. "Allocate resources" is also valid but refers specifically to assigning capacity, not the full setup process.
4 / 5
True or False: 'do a deployment' is the natural English expression used by DevOps engineers and developers.
FALSE — "do a deployment" is not natural professional English in DevOps contexts.
"Do" is a generic verb that rarely collocates precisely with technical deployment actions. Native speakers use more precise verbs:
trigger a deployment ✅ — most common in CI/CD: "A push to main triggers a deployment."
run a deployment ✅ — natural: "Run the deployment script."
execute a deployment ✅ — more formal, used in runbooks
kick off a deployment ✅ — informal, very common in team conversations
push to production ✅ — the most natural informal phrase: "We pushed to prod this morning."
ship ✅ — ultra-informal: "We shipped the feature last night."
"Do a deployment" ❌ and "make a deployment" ❌ both sound like direct translations. In DevOps, the vocabulary around deployments is precise — choosing the right verb signals familiarity with the domain.
5 / 5
True or False: 'roll back' (or 'rollback') is a standard English collocation in software and cloud contexts — meaning to revert to a previous working state.
TRUE — "roll back" is a core DevOps and database collocation.
Understanding the verb/noun distinction is important:
roll back (verb, two words) ✅ — "We need to roll back the deployment immediately."
rollback (noun, one word) ✅ — "The rollback was completed in under two minutes."
trigger a rollback ✅ — automated systems trigger rollbacks when health checks fail
execute a rollback ✅ — more formal
Usage across contexts:
Database: "Roll back the migration" — undo schema changes
Deployment: "Roll back the release" — revert to the previous version
Git: "Revert a commit" — Git-specific term for undoing a commit while preserving history
Both "roll back" and "revert" are used in deployment contexts — "revert" is Git-specific while "roll back" is broader. "Undo a deployment" ❌ is not the natural phrase — in professional engineering, you always "roll back."