Lexical Phrases Research Articles

Which Formulaic Sequences to Teach in EFL Classrooms?: Different Types of Lexical Phrases and Their Impact on Perceived Oral Fluency

Which Formulaic Sequences to Teach in EFL Classrooms?: Different Types of Lexical Phrases and Their Impact on Perceived Oral Fluency

Lexis and Grammar Specifics of the English Language in Africa

This research work deals with the lexical and grammatical features of the English language variant widely used in Africa. The importance of the use of British English is also taken into account, as well as its transformational processes due to the interaction and mutual influence of local dialects on its structure. Examples of neologisms and modified lexical units are given, based on the influence of local culture and the lack of an equivalent in the recipient language. The article pays attention to the grammatical aspects of language in the functioning of phrasal, modal and prepositional verbs, and also reveals the peculiarities of articles and pronouns use due to the influence of autochthonous languages. The aim of the research work is to identify the specifics of the linguistic and cultural adaptation of the English language in Africa and systematize the lexical and grammatical aspects of the English language as the territorial variant type. The choice of working methods is determined by the goals and objectives of the study. In the research work the method of metalinguistic analysis, methods of contextual and definitional analysis, methods of systematization and classification of linguistic material are used. As a result of the work the high productivity of the realities functioning in autochthonous languages in the lexical structure of the English variant in African countries and the lexical borrowings of terms from autochthonous languages are revealed. This trend is also emphasized in the borrowing of entire lexical phrases from the thesaurus of native languages. With regard to the grammatical part, a significant deviation from British English is emphasized. The research work results in such grammatical changes as: the use of auxiliary verbs together with semantic ones; the functioning of a simplified form of modern forms of the verb; the productive use of uncountable nouns in speech in the form of a countable nouns; significant deviations from British English in the process of using articles, personal and possessive pronouns.

The application of the attractor model to cognitive poetics, journalism, and foreign language learning.

The article examines the issue of applying of the complex dynamic systems theory elements in the field of teaching foreign languages, analyzing the use of the Internet, cognitive poetics, and journalism. In all these areas, the attractor model is mainly used. An attractor is a potential state of a system to which it is evolving. The semantics of the term is clearly dominated by the meaning of attraction. The article presents the justification of the methodological aspect in the application of the attractor model in various fields of science. An overview of domestic and foreign works in these fields is given, and various types of attractors are considered. Special attention is paid to cognitive poetics, a relatively new field of cognitive linguistics that systematically explores the relationship between the literary texts structure and their perception and conceptualization. In cognitive poetics, attractors influence the level of discourse by creating attention-attracting text objects. New types of textual attractors are proposed – neologisms (nonword), as well as elements of non-trivial lexical phrase that are not collocations. A lexical unit is a textual attractor if it attracts the reader's attention. The proof that a nonword attracts attention is that it introduces dissonance into the text, or that the lexical solution takes longer time. The proof that a nontrivial phrase can be considered a textual attractor is an increase in the reaction time to this phrase. The main contribution of the author to the study of the topic can be called the presentation of two types of new textual attractors, namely nonword and non-trivial phrase. The study of the structure and methods of producing individual author's occasional nonwords and non-trivial phrases that act as attractors in a V. Pelevin’s dystopian novel is carried out.

Context-Aware Attentive Multilevel Feature Fusion for Named Entity Recognition.

In the era of information explosion, named entity recognition (NER) has attracted widespread attention in the field of natural language processing, as it is fundamental to information extraction. Recently, methods of NER based on representation learning, e.g., character embedding and word embedding, have demonstrated promising recognition results. However, existing models only consider partial features derived from words or characters while failing to integrate semantic and syntactic information, e.g., capitalization, inter-word relations, keywords, and lexical phrases, from multilevel perspectives. Intuitively, multilevel features can be helpful when recognizing named entities from complex sentences. In this study, we propose a novel attentive multilevel feature fusion (AMFF) model for NER, which captures the multilevel features in the current context from various perspectives. It consists of four components to, respectively, capture the local character-level (CL), global character-level (CG), local word-level (WL), and global word-level (WG) features in the current context. In addition, we further define document-level features crafted from other sentences to enhance the representation learning of the current context. To this end, we introduce a novel context-aware attentive multilevel feature fusion (CAMFF) model based on AMFF, to fully leverage document-level features from all the previous inputs. The obtained multilevel features are then fused and fed into a bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM)-conditional random field (CRF) network for the final sequence labeling. Extensive experiments on four benchmark datasets demonstrate that our proposed AMFF and CAMFF models outperform a set of state-of-the-art baseline methods and the features learned from multiple levels are complementary.

Phrase of cultural expression in Sulaimani dialect

This research is entitled (Lexical Determiner Phrase in Sulaimani Sub Dialect), It is an attempt to illustrate the views of phrase recognition in general and project of lexical determiner phrase in Kurdish-Sulaimani sub dialect in particular. The significance of the research is, (a) on the one hand. It depends on the identification of lexical items like (the project-making head) that are considered to be the mechanisms of producing the lexical determiner phrase project. (b) the essence of the research itself provides evidence for the existence of another type of determiner phrase, which is (the functional determiner phrase), The distinction, depends on the structure type\ component of the project-making items. The content of the research is to identify the lexical items, based on the principles of (X-bar) Theory, determined as lexical head for producing (lexical phrase), among these types of phrases, (lexical determiner phrase) has been taken into account concerning the project-making item and its mechanisms of production, has been working on. The result of research of cusses on type of information and the content of project managers from the perspective of (X-bar) theory, reason of recognition and acceptance of (lexical determiner phrase), and the phrases have their own structure, function and construction range.

Young EFL Learners Collaboratively Writing a Dialogue During a Regular Classroom Lesson

A growing body of research has explored collaborative writing (CW) among young learners. Nevertheless, studies have mainly focused on tasks such as the dictogloss, which is rather uncommon in regular classroom teaching and has neglected activities that are more common. In addition, research has focused on language-related episodes (LREs) without considering other important episodes including those that involve the teacher. Finally, only one study has explored to what extent the decisions made within LREs transfer into the written product. With these research gaps in mind, the present study examined CW of 12 pairs composed of 10 to 11-year-old learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) who jointly wrote a role-play. Drawing on audio recordings of pair work interactions and documentary analysis of students’ written work, the study has found that in addition to LREs, students frequently engaged in content-related and activity-related episodes with the teacher’s involvement being rather limited. Despite the teacher’s presence, a high proportion of LREs was resolved incorrectly or left unresolved. Nearly all correctly and incorrectly resolved LREs were also incorporated into the jointly written role-play. Students focused predominantly on the language targeted by the activity (lexical phrases) and attended to other language aspects minimally.

Exploring peer support among young learners during regular EFL classroom lessons

AbstractThis study explored peer support among grade 5 learners of English as a foreign language(N = 24)interacting during regular lessons. Grounded in sociocultural theory and applying mixed‐method research methodology, this study explored to what extent and how young learners support one another during classroom tasks targeting lexical phrases. Moreover, it investigated to what extent such support accounts for learning opportunities. Students relied mainly on linguistic support through suggesting or using resources while social–emotional support such as offering support, giving positive feedback, or inviting partners’ participation was limited. The analysis also revealed instances of lack of support in the form of reprimanding, impatience, expressing a lack of awareness of the partner's contribution, or disrespecting peer's linguistic resources which, however, differed widely across pairs.

Black Lives Matter in an EFL speaking class

Abstract Critical pedagogy in ELT mainly aims to encourage learners to address current sociopolitical issues and speak up for change. Thus, encountering a real-world issue might aid in deconstructing a given order of discourse found in the textbooks and gaining a more realistic perspective. This reflective study was conducted at a Turkish university and is based on a participatory approach in which the teacher-researcher and sixteen learners collaborated to develop a mini-syllabus to discuss the American racial movement Black Lives Matter (BLM). Five themes (historical background, activism, current events, media, and online platform) regarding BLM were identified to encourage meaningful action as well as develop oral skills. The outcomes show that the learners voiced their ideas freely in a democratic setting and worked to extract specific lexical phrases. This study brings the topic of BLM into Turkish EFL learners’ setting and invites EFL learners to create meaningful action.

What does translanguaging-for-equity really involve? An interactional analysis of a 9th grade English class

Abstract While much research on translanguaging is in bilingual and heritage language classrooms, it is under-researched in K-12 English-medium education. To better understand translanguaging in this context, this study applied interactional sociolinguistics, including analytical categories adapted from Conversation-for-Learning (Kasper and Kim, 2015; Kim, 2019), to a ninth grade English class in Honolulu with students from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The study examined interactional sequences as students did literary analysis of novels and poetry over 13 weeks. These sequences involved appropriation of others’ lexical phrases, collaborative word searches, miscommunication repair, and knowledge checks. Translanguaging, when it occurred, indicated joint meaning-making across linguistic asymmetries, and was not only a means of thinking aloud using an integrated language repertoire, but a form of helping peers as students signaled to each other to adopt language, teach them something, or work through a problem together, creating opportunities to learn. These findings suggest that equity hinges not only on allowing students to learn using their whole linguistic repertoires but on social and ethical dispositions made apparent through interactional analyses.

Towards a unified English technology-based writing curriculum in the Arabian Gulf countries: the case of Oman

This study investigates the efficacy of a new testing tool, a Web-based application known as the Academic Writing Wizard (AWW), in creating a unified English technology-based writing curriculum in the Arabian Gulf countries, focusing particularly on the case of Oman. The application was piloted in three Oman high schools selected by the Omani Education Ministry. All the schools have class grades 11 and 12 only. Over 2 weeks, 71 students and 6 teachers were trained in the effective use of AWW. In the pre-application phase, the selected students were asked to write a five-paragraph essay without using AWW. In the post-application phase, they were asked to write the same essay employing AWW, specifically elements of the Lexical Cohesive Trio (LCT), combining elements of textual reference: anaphora, cataphora, transitional signals, lexical repetition, and lexical phrases. A total of 71 respondents took part in the study. All were senior grade students (class grades 11 and 12). Comparisons of the two groups with respect to the quantitative and scoring scales were performed on the basis of the nonparametric Mann–Whitney criterion. An analysis of the dynamics of the indexes was conducted on the basis of the nonparametric Wilcoxon criterion. A multifactorial dispersive analysis was performed to study the influence of the factors in class. MANOVA was also conducted to study the influence of two factors simultaneously: the class and the time period. Based on the results of the statistical analysis, the following was found:1. The dynamics of the index Teacher’s Score and the values of indexes in all the grades were higher in the post-application period.2. There was a statistically significant positive increase across all indexes between the post-application and pre-application periods in each grade.3. The dynamics of the index Teacher’s Score and the values of indexes in all the grades were higher in the post-application period. There was an incremental increase from the post-app period to the pre-app period in the 11th grade and 12th grade of 3%. Thus, the index Teacher’s Score was influenced by the Period factor.4. The dynamics of the Score index were clearly visible. The values of the index Score in all the classes were higher in the post-app period.5. Based on the results of the multifactorial dispersive analysis per index Score, Teacher’s Score and Final Grade were influenced by the Period factor only.When the index Final Grade is compared, the average score was 46.3 ± 5.8% in the 11th grade in the pre-app period, which increased by 13% to 59.3 ± 5.5% (P < 0.0001) during the post-app period. In the12th grade, the average score of the same index was 48.1 ± 8.4% in the pre-app period, which increased by approximately 13% to 61.0 ± 7.5% (P < 0.0001) during the post-app period. The results further indicate that the application of AWW significantly improved Omani students’ English academic writing skills. Therefore, AWW will be a useful tool in the English curriculum of both Omani and Arabian Gulf English schools.

ANALYSIS OF LEXICAL WORDS AND PHRASES

ANALYSIS OF LEXICAL WORDS AND PHRASES

A DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL EVALUATION OF TEACHING APPROACH AND TECHNIQUES ON TEACHINGLEXICAL PHRASES IN A VIDEO LESSON

This paper presents and evaluates all the aspects of a video lesson on teaching lexical phrases. This is a story lesson which is taught by Tony as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher amongst twenty ESL upper-intermediate learners. The video lesson is taken from the book called “The Practice of English Language Teaching”. The purpose of the lesson is to describe feeling and speaking skills through lexical phrases. Another purpose of the lesson is to show the significance of “Rapport” as an important relationship between the teacher and learners in the lesson sequence. Additionally, this paper aims at assessing the approach, techniques, teaching aids, classroom activities descriptively and critically. The outcome of this paper is to show an excellent model lesson story and its aspects to ESL and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers

English Legal Terms Containing Adjectives

The article deals with English legal terms formed with the help of adjectives. The author points to the relevance of adjectives in the formation of legal terms due to their evaluation capacity which is an important component of legal concepts. The article reviews the most productive affixes used for the formation of adjectives. It identifies the usage frequency of legal terms with simple adjectives, terms with adjectives in the comparative and superlative degrees of comparison, attributive prepositional and postpositional word-combinations.The paper contains a classification of the legal terms in question according to their structure. Special attention is paid to word-combinations with connotative meaning. The author gives examples of connotative legal terms with adjectives including figurative connotative lexical units and connotative phrases with evaluation components. The article offers a set of exercises helping law students to understand the peculiarities of usage and functioning of legal terms with adjectives as a component.

LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL SPECIFICITY OF EPISTOLARY ADDRESS (ON THE MATERIAL OF “LETTERS TO OLES GONCHAR” COMPILED BY M. STEPANENKO)

The article is devoted to the study of lexical and grammatical features of epistolary addresses (on the material of “Letters to Oles Honchar” compiled by M. Stepanenko). The address is interpreted as one of the manifestations of human communication needs which serves to establish and maintain speech contact, as well as to express the emotional and evaluative characteristics of the interlocutor. An epistolary address is a word or phrase by which the author of a letter nominates his addressee in the text of a written message to establish contact with him.&#x0D; We processed 895 letters to Oles Honchar, in which 1185 addresses in Ukrainian and about 200 units in other languages had been recorded. Lexical features of addresses represent their belonging to the following semantic groups: addresses-anthroponyms (name, patronymic and surname); traditional etiquette forms (пан, товариш); general addresses (names of persons by generic or gender feature; names of persons by kinship in the indirect sense; names of persons by friendly relations); special addresses (names by profession, type of activity, position, academic titles); occasional addresses. Most often, senders address Oles Honchar by patronymic or by name, using it in full or in short form, and sometimes by surname.&#x0D; The lexical and semantic content of addresses depends on the intention of the speaker, his politeness, knowledge of language etiquette and the peculiarities of the relationship with the writer. In order to strengthen the address, attributive distributors expressed by honorific and emotional-evaluative adjectives аre used. Honorific adjectives (шановний, високошановний, найшанованіший, глибокошановний, вельмишановний, високоповажний, etc.) convey a polite attitude and perform etiquette function. Emotional-evaluative adjectives (дорогий, славний, щирий, незабутній, рідний, любий, коханий, etc.) denote sincerity, friendliness, friendly affection and perform an evaluative function. We reveal a significant proportion of constructions in which adjectives of both groups are used. This causes a change in the tonality of the communicative situation and reduces interpersonal distance. Possessive pronouns мій, наш, which have partially lost the meaning of possessiveness, strengthen the intimacy, cordiality and sincerity of the relationship. Addresses in Russian, Belarusian, Polish and English are described.&#x0D; It is found that the grammatical differentiation of addresses directly depends on lexical and grammatical features (proper or common names and substantivized parts of speech) and morphological means of their expression. It is confirmed that the typical morphological form of addresses is the vocative case of the noun, as well as the homonymous nominative case in letters written during the Soviet period. Violations of morphological norms (different case forms of lexical phrase components, a non-normative form Олесе) and orthographic mistakes in spelling of the writer’s patronymic are revealed. The non-normative form of the nominative case as a means of expressing the address in letters dated 1990–1995 is substantiated.&#x0D; The results of the research show that the most frequent lexeme is Олесю Терентійовичу. Forms Олесь Терентійович and Олесю are less used. Quantitative indicators of addressing forms are summarized in the table.&#x0D; We see the prospect of further scientific research in deepening other vectors of analysis of addresses, in particular in the study of their functional and stylistic potential.

LINGUISTIC AND INFORMATIVE FEATURES OF STUDYING THE THEME “PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION A PHYSICIAN AND A PATIENT WITH SYMPTOMS DISEASES OF DIGESTIVE SYSTEM’S ORGANS” OF DISCIPLINE “PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL COMMUNICATION OF A DOCTOR WITH A PATIENT IN UKRAINIAN

The article presents educational, informative and methodical materials necessary for studying the theme “Professional communication a physician and a patient with symptoms diseases of the digestive system’s organs” in classes on the discipline “Professional medical communication of a doctor with a patient in Ukrainian language”. The complex of tasks is aimed at the development of students’ communicative skills and abilities: to study the vocabulary to denote the organs of the digestive system, gastrointestinal diseases; be able to build monologue and dialogic expressions that describe the causes and symptoms of the digestive system’s diseases, using learned lexical units and phrases; to develop skills of collecting the anamnesis of gastroenterological diseases; memorize phrases and sentences for first aid in food poisoning, in emergencies during stomach pain; to create modern informative and expert systems for developing lesson’s materials. The proposed system of tasks will help to master the skills and abilities to communicate orally and in writing in accordance with the goals and social norms of speech behavior in typical spheres and situations. Taking into account different methods and forms of work, the tasks with which it was possible to ensure the active participation of each student in the class, to stimulate interest and desire to study medical terminology in accordance with the topic of the class are singled out. It was suggested a variety of test and creative tasks to check the knowledge of the student’s studied topic.&#x0D; The materials described in the article are intended for foreign students of medical specialties who speak the language at a sufficient level. Tasks selected on the basis of four main types of speech activity (listening, speaking, reading, writing) will help foreign students not only to expand their vocabulary, but also to achieve social interaction in a foreign language professional sphere.

Using Lexical Phrases to Help with the Flow of Deliverance in Public Speaking

Public speaking in Thailand especially in Thai youth who uses English as a second language still has lots of problems and needs some major development. The researcher noticed after weeks of observation that there were lots of problems in speaking of all the 45 students studying in the public speaking course since they paused too many times while speaking, each pause took a long time and they paused at the wrong places. This pausing manner made speaking sound unnatural even if it was accurate. Since the meaning of the message was disturbed by pausing wrongly, the researcher would like to try a new teaching method by teaching how to chunk their words while speaking by using lexical phrases as language input in order to help develop efficient lexical retrieval. This research aims at studying the effects that lexical phrases have on public speaking. The analysis of the study uses both quantitative and qualitative research by analyzing through a new teaching method in public speaking that is using lexical phrases as a means to keep the flow of deliverance in public speaking going. Lexical phrases were presented to language learners in several ways. Some are presented through mini lectures and some through simulated public speaking situations or activities. These include speaking connectors to buy time in speaking. There are three out of 45 research participants participating in this research because these three are advanced students which were chosen by their grades in the previous year in speaking class. The data were collected by individual elicitation interviews by using descriptive statistics. As a result, lexical phrases offer language learners the opportunity of fluent production. Furthermore, lexical phrases offer less likelihood of producing deviant language because lexical phrases come ready made.

Arabic Lexical Phrases

The Arabic traditional grammar as well as Chomsky’s mainstream theory may not be able to provide a good analysis of some fixed Arabic phrases. The challenge of such data directly stems from the fact that the general syntactic rules assumed by the two opposing theories cannot explain the syntactic and the semantic aspects of the fixed Arabic data. I argue that the Construction Grammar provides an adequate account that does not rely on syntactic structure alone, as assumed by the mainstream theory or the Arabic traditional grammar, but rather it links phonological, syntactic, and semantic information together in one basic construction by means of some correspondence rules. The Arabic data proves that there is a strong need for a linguistic theory that takes into consideration all data of different range of productivity.

Portrayal of Aasia Bibi Blasphemy Case: A Comparative Analysis of News Headlines in Pakistani Newspapers

Language is a tool used for the social construction to frame public opinion. The study highlights that newspapers shape, reshape and manipulate the news headlines by representing them differently to achieve the desired objectives. This paper aims to investigate the coverage of Pakistani newspapers on Aasia Bibi’s acquittal decision by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Content analysis considering Dijk Model and Framing Theory was conducted for the purpose. Unit of analysis was the news headlines of four famous dailies of Pakistan i.e., Daily Dawn, The Nation, Daily Jang and Daily Ummat published in the week of judgment of Aasia Bibi Case. Results revealed that the newspapers portrayed the same issue differently with the distinct discursive techniques. The Nation used lexical choices and emotional phrases to mold public opinions. Comparatively, Jang and Dawn were more objective and sensible in publishing its news headlines

LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC SYSTEM OF THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE IN CURRENT DYNAMIC USAGE

The article analyses the latest changes in the lexical-semantic system of the Ukrainian language within clearly defined period – the year of 2020. It has been proved that the appearance of a new lexeme is associated with some intra- and extra-lingual factors. These lexical units are the carriers of information about what is happening in the society, and how the representatives of various social strata are involved in a particular event. It has been established that the most used words in the defined are connected with medicine; the dominant position occupies such nouns as covid, coronavirus. The article underlines that the spread of the COVID-19 in Ukraine influenced the formation of the phraseological system, e.g. folk poetic rhymes, which are usually variants of widely used paremic constructions. The motivational basis of lexical coinages has been analysed. This refers to the lexical units based on the surname of the current president; the dynamics of this process has been traced for the period 2004–2020. The author determined the mechanism of coining new lexemes based on the surnames of the prominent Ukrainian politicians close to President. The article clarifies the onomasiological basis of new lexical units of proprietary and non-proprietary origins of previously coined and newly coined or renamed political forces. An important way to expand the lexicon is to change the meaning of words. This is due to the fact that the lexical unit enters the innovative linguistic sphere determined by extra-lingual factors, when it acquires a new meaning or becomes a creative resource for other lexemes. The nouns vodomor (water starving) and Velur (the name of the restaurant notorious for breaking quarantine restrictions) have been carefully analysed, the constitutive possibilities of the latter, which relate to its lexical-semantic, syntagmatic nature, have been clarified. Exceptional attention is paid to the precedent expression “what is the difference” in the focus of its semantization (acquisition of ambiguity), grammaticalization (existence in the role of noun-adjective phrase or its functional equivalent – a complex occasional word), phraseological, semantic, syntax, axiology (attributive, object, subjective functions), word-forming possibilities (becoming on its basis a way of composing and suffixing nouns “kakaiaraznik” (What-is-the-differenter), “kakayaraznitstvo” (What-is-the-differentment)). The subject of the study was also the innovative structures that were formed on the model of lexical phrases with social meaning which are on the stage of forming.

Cross-linguistic influence on the use of L2 collocations: the case of Vietnamese learners

AbstractUsing collocation is a key part of second language ability (Granger, Sylviane. 2018. Formulaic sequences in learner corpora: Collocations and lexical bundles. In Anna Siyanova-Chanturia &amp; Ana Pellicer-Sanchez (eds.),Understanding formulaic language: A second language acquisition perspective, 228–247. New York: Routledge; Nattinger, James R. &amp; Jeamette S. DeCarrico. 1992.Lexical phrases and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Nesselhauf, Nadja. 2004.Collocations in a learner corpus. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.; Pawley, Andrew &amp; Frances H. Syder. 1983. Two puzzles for linguistics: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In Jack Richards &amp; Richard W. Schmidt (eds.),Language and communication, 191–228. London: Longman). Researchers often hypothesize that the influence of the first language is an important factor in the production and understanding of unconventional collocations (Huang, Li-Shi. 2001. Knowledge of English collocations: An analysis of Taiwanese EFL learners.Paper presented at the Texas Foreign Languguage Education Conference, Texas; Laufer, Bhatia &amp; Tina Waldman. 2011. Verb-noun collocations in second language writing: A corpus analysis of learners’ English.Language Learning61(2). 647–672.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00621.x; Phoocharoensil, Supakorn. 2013. Cross-linguistic influence: Its impact on L2 English collocation production.English Language Teaching6(1). 1–10) but we are only now starting to understand this. The present study provides a robust investigation of cross-linguistic influences by exploring how Vietnamese influenced Vietnamese learners’ use of English language verb-noun and adjective noun collocations in 104 350-word argumentative essays, using a framework derived from Jarvis, Scott. 2012. The detection-based approach: An overview. In S. Jarvis &amp; S. A. Crossley (eds.),Approaching language transfer through text classification: Explorations in the detection-based approach, 1st ed., Vol. 64, 1–33. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, drawing on homogeneity among speakers of Vietnamese; heterogeneity between users of Vietnamese and other language; and formal and conceptual congruity between collocations learners produce in English and equivalent terms in Vietnamese. The study found that less than 10% of the collocations learners produced were unconventional and of these, 40% of collocations were influenced by the first language (L1); errors associated with incorrect use of prepositions in verb-noun collocations (e.g. the addition, omission or misuse of prepositions) are strongly L1-motivated. Learners make errors with not only incongruent collocations (collocations with no direct L1 equivalents) but also with congruent collocations (collocations with direct L1 translation).