Abstract
The influence of association measures has been little examined in research on L2 collocation processing. For this reason, the present study replicated Öksüz et al. (2020) experiment on intermediate L2 learners of English to determine whether the association measure mutual information (MI) is a stronger predictor of L2 performance than the Log Dice measure. Twenty-two intermediate Arab learners of English completed a timed acceptability judgment task on the online Gorilla platform. The task included (1) high-frequent collocations (e.g., bad news), (2) low-frequent collocations (e.g., only friend), and (3) non-collocates (e.g., true news, wrong friend) which had differing MI and Log Dice scores. Mixed-effects models were built to analyze the participants’ reaction times to the three conditions. The results showed that the frequency of the collocation (operationalized as item type) and its length significantly influenced reaction times, while both MI and Log Dice scores did not surface as significant predictors. This suggests that intermediate English L2 learners are not sensitive to corpus-based association measures. The results have important implications for L2 teaching and testing and may indicate that it is not worthwhile to determine which collocations to include in the materials based mainly on the strength of the association.
Highlights
Collocations have received considerable attention in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research as they are essential for fluency for second language (L2) learners (Henriksen, 2013; Wray, 2012)
The results showed that the frequency of the collocation and its length significantly influenced reaction times, while both mutual information (MI) and Log Dice scores did not surface as significant predictors
The results have important implications for L2 teaching and testing and may indicate that it is not worthwhile to determine which collocations to include in the materials based mainly on the strength of the association
Summary
Collocations have received considerable attention in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research as they are essential for fluency for second language (L2) learners (Henriksen, 2013; Wray, 2012). Due to the facilitative role of collocation in L2 proficiency, researchers have compiled collocations lists (Ackermann & Chen, 2013; Durrant, 2009) and developed a web-based collocation assistant (Frankenberg-Garcia et al, 2019) to help L2 learners in producing the most appropriate collocation sequences. Despite these efforts, it has been constantly reported that L2 learners find it challenging to acquire and appropriately use collocations (Laufer & Waldman, 2011; Nesselhauf, 2005; Nguyen & Webb, 2017). Knowledge of formulaic sequences such as collocations helps L2 and native speakers process language faster and communicate better (Wray, 2012)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
