THE EFFECT OF LEARNER DIFFERENCES AND TEACHING OF COLLOCATION ON STUDENTS’ COLLOCATION COMPETENCE

Abstract

Collocation has a fairly prominent role in English Language. For non-native speakers, the years learning English does not mean non-native speakers are able to apply collocation correctly. Non-native speakers will face great difficulty in collocation because they have limited quantity of doing much exposure and their learner differences such as motivation. This current study critically reviews Mansoor Ganji’s (2012) work which investigated the influence of Gender and Years of Instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ Collocational Competence. Ganji’s found that Iranian English majors were weak in lexical collocation in spite of English had been taught at least 6 years and teachers seemed not to pay attention to collocation teaching in Iran. This study is descriptive qualitative. This study shows that teachers teach collocation both implicitly and explicitly. However, most of students are still weak in collocation. This study also shows that lack of exposure influences students’ collocational competence.