This instructional intervention investigated the potential for the text reconstruction task "dictogloss" to facilitate the learning of English verb-noun collocations, for example 'carry a risk'. Research has shown that learners have difficulties in using such collocations, but few useful instructional techniques are on offer. Participants in the study were 64 L1 Swedish adolescent learners of English. The effectiveness of two modified versions of the "dictogloss" was compared in a within-subjects design. This implied that participants in pairs co-reconstructed two texts containing target collocations, where each co-reconstruction was preceded by a specific priming activity to induce learners to process collocations as intact wholes. Results showed that having learners elaborate on the meaning of collocations in a pre-task activity outperformed a form-oriented pre-task activity on all measures, notably for productive knowledge on delayed post-tests. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research and their implications for ELT.