Teaching Of Collocations Research Articles

Collocational Competence as a measure of ESL / EFL Competency: A Scoping Review

The purpose of this review is to identify the appropriate strategies or methodologies that can help address those problems related to collocational competence amongst English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. The topic of collocational competence needs to be explored given that having collocational competence would advantage language learners to attain second or foreign language fluency. Collocational competence is in fact a reliable indicator of high language proficiency level. Numerous studies that explored collocational competence found that most learners are still facing difficulties in mastering different types of collocations. This problem seems unending despite major advancements in teaching technologies. Therefore, new and exciting ways of learning and teaching collocations that cater to students’ individual needs and that are useful for teachers should be devised. A scoping review protocol was established for this study. A total of 21 articles from 2010 to 2020 were qualitatively synthesised. Of the 21, nine articles on corpus-based methodology, eight articles on traditional methods of teaching collocations and three articles discussing other relevant learning and teaching strategies that focus on solving the problem of lack of collocational competence were isolated and analysed. The findings suggested that implementing an indirect corpus approach in language classrooms may be the most suitable and practical approach that can cater to almost all levels of proficiency whilst consuming a limited amount of resources. The use of corpora in language classrooms is beneficial as it also offers reliable references for learners to explore and for teachers to adopt and teach. Keywords: Scoping Review; ESL; EFL; Collocations; Collocational Competence

EFL Learners of Pre-Service Teacher Programs’ Knowledge of Collocation and Their Perceptions on Collocation

This paper was aimed to find out: (1) EFL learners of pre-service teaching program’s knowledge of collocation, and (2) EFL learners of pre-service teaching program’s perception about their knowledge of collocation and on collocation teaching in EFL setting. The data was collected from EFL learners of pre-service teaching programs of IKIP Muhammadiyah Maumere in Maumere East Nusa tenggara, Indonesia. To collect the data, a multiple choice of collocation test that consisted of thirty items was administered and 9 item of questionnaires about their perception toward collocation teaching materials, collocation learning methods, and collocation teaching techniques. The findings revealed that the average percentage of EFL learners of pre-service teaching program’s collocation errors through statistical analysis using SPSS 25.0 was 51, 50% (an average of 4.85 errors per participants). It was identified that 56.30% grammatical errors (an average of 10.68 errors per participants) and 42.60% lexical errors (an average of 10.54 errors per essay) were found. This implies that the most frequently committed errors were in the grammatical category. The study also revealed that 80% of EFL learners of pre-service teaching program agreed that the role of collocation in teaching and learning vocabulary was very important. 43% of them mostly learn collocations from the course book. They agreed that the most suitable level to learn o r teach collocations are from around elementary. They learn collocation bacause It is important for language proficiency while 30% of them said that techniques do you use in learning collocations was through translating. 40% of them agreed that reading was language skill(s) would be the most effective in learning collocations. The causes their collocational errors were 43% of them agreed that there is interference from Indonesian.

A Socio-Pragmatic Analysis of Social Media Comments on Online Learning at the Time of COVID 19

This paper was aimed to find out: (1) EFL learners of pre-service teaching program’s knowledge of collocation, and (2) EFL learners of pre-service teaching program’s perception about their knowledge of collocation and on collocation teaching in EFL setting. The data was collected from EFL learners of pre-service teaching programs of IKIP Muhammadiyah Maumere in Maumere East Nusa tenggara, Indonesia. To collect the data, a multiple choice of collocation test that consisted of thirty items was administered and 9 item of questionnaires about their perception toward collocation teaching materials, collocation learning methods, and collocation teaching techniques. The findings revealed that the average percentage of EFL learners of pre-service teaching program’s collocation errors through statistical analysis using SPSS 25.0 was 51, 50% (an average of 4.85 errors per participants). It was identified that 56.30% grammatical errors (an average of 10.68 errors per participants) and 42.60% lexical errors (an average of 10.54 errors per essay) were found. This implies that the most frequently committed errors were in the grammatical category. The study also revealed that 80% of EFL learners of pre-service teaching program agreed that the role of collocation in teaching and learning vocabulary was very important. 43% of them mostly learn collocations from the course book. They agreed that the most suitable level to learn o r teach collocations are from around elementary. They learn collocation bacause It is important for language proficiency while 30% of them said that techniques do you use in learning collocations was through translating. 40% of them agreed that reading was language skill(s) would be the most effective in learning collocations. The causes their collocational errors were 43% of them agreed that there is interference from Indonesia.

A corpus-based analysis of differences in the use ofveryfor adjective amplification among native speakers and learners of English

AbstractThis paper analyzes the use ofveryas an adjective amplifier by native speakers and advanced learners of English with diverse language backgrounds based on theInternational Corpus of Learner English(ICLE) and theLouvain Corpus of Native English Essays(LOCNESS). The study appliesMultifactorial Prediction and Deviation Analysis Using Regression/Random Forests(MuPDARF) to find differences between native speakers and advanced learners and evaluates which factors contribute to learners’ non-target-like use ofvery. The analysis finds language background and adjective-specific differences in the use ofverybetween learners and native speakers. It shows that collocational preferences of specific adjective types are the most important factor, which is interpreted to show that differences between native speakers and learners are predominantly dependent upon the collocational profiles of individual adjective types. This finding supports approaches that focus on teaching collocations and contextualizing word use.

КОЛОКАЦІЯ ЯК МІНІМАЛЬНА ОДИНИЦЯ ПОБУДОВИ СЛОВНИКОВОГО ЗАПАСУ В ПРОЦЕСІ ВИВЧЕННЯ АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ

This paper presents an academic research primarily focuses on defining collocation as a minimal unit in vocabulary acquisition building, on its importance for English Learners during English Learning Process and finally on its main role in practical usage of the English language. The main objectives were realized through various materials exploration of general English vocabulary acquisition building in Canadian English (CE), American English (AE), and British English (BE). The research area was original Canadian, American, and British informational sources with special emphasis on different scholars’ ideas as forEnglish spoken language and vocabulary load in written texts. The research highlighted the significance of collocations through their necessary and completely right usage in English Teaching and Learning Processes. The investigation made it possible to specify the definition of ’collocation’ and provide background information about collocations by gathering and analyzing Contemporary Linguistics scientists’ works and expressed their opinions. General scientific methods include deduction and induction, observation and generalization. Major linguistic methods employed in this paper are the structural (adefinitive and distributional analysis) and contrastive (based on three variants of English) ones. The methodology used for this academic research is simple being profound and scientifically approved. The notion of ’collocation’ refers to the frequent co-occurrence and mutual expectation of some words which appear more often than by chance. In this sense, collocation can be called ’a restricted combination’, which exists between a free combination and anidiom and has semantic transparency. The study of collocations was scanned through modern international researchers of CE / AE / BE. On having specified the definition of collocation and then shown the importance of collocations usage, we could finally provide some recommendations for the teaching and learning processes of collocations in order to improve and refresh modern English studies for students of linguistics / philology departments. These recommendations are as follows: teach / learn English via modern CE / AE / BE sources; emphasize on collocations structure and meaning during English Teaching and Learning vocabulary; pay a special attention to difference in similar collocations among various variants of English (for instance, as presented for CE / AE / BE in this paper);give preference to teaching / learning materials in native English; encourage students to read and listen to genuine CE / AE / BE written by native speakers; make use of online dictionaries, free corpora, and the Internet rich materials on a regular basis. Nowadays, there are many excellent dictionaries of CE / AE / BE collocations which are free and easy to be accessible. The prospects for further study may cover building of a digital dictionary of most frequent collocations in Canadian English, American English, and British English.

Use of mobile applications in collocation teaching

In this study, the importance of vocabulary knowledge in language education and the use of mobile applications in the teaching of collocations are emphasized. The application of collocation was realized through a mobile instant messaging application. It has been determined that students use a mobile application in a word learning process to provide more meaningful learning than in classroom learning. In this study, which was applied to 54 people using experimental and controls grouped research design, the experimental group was given mobile cards and the control group was given word cards in the class. In quantitative aspect, the study aimed to see the difference between the academic achievements of both group. At the end of the process, an academic achievement test was applied to the students, and a significant difference was found between the groups in favor of the experimental group. In qualitative aspect, the students opinions was given on use of mobile applications in teaching vocabulary. Individual interviews were conducted with the students at the end of the process accordingly and these interviews were used in the evaluation of the process.
 
 Keywords: Educational technology; language learning, mobile learning; teaching collocations.

Investigating the co-development of reading fluency and reading comprehension through mindful teaching of collocations in EFL classroom

Investigating the co-development of reading fluency and reading comprehension through mindful teaching of collocations in EFL classroom

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

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.

Çeviride Açık Sözcüksel Eşdizim Öğretimi

Bu çalışmanın amacı çeviri öğretimi bağlamında açık sözcüksel eşdizim öğretimi için tasarlanan ve Çeviri için Sözcüksel Eşdizim Öğretimi (ÇSEÖ) adı verilen öğretim programının etkilerini incelemektir. ÇSEÖ programı İngilizce Mütercim Tercümanlık anabilim dalındaki öğrencilerine 10 hafta uygulanmıştır. Bu programda öntest, sontest, Compleatlextutor (http://lextutor.ca/concordancers/) adlı çevirimiçi bağımlı dizin aracını kullanarak verilen İngilizce edebi metinden eylem+ad eşdizimleri bulma, Türkçeİngilizce çevirisi yapılmış bir romandan eylem+ad eşdizimleri eşleştirme ve çözümleme ve özellikle anadili Türkçe olan öğrenciler için zor bulunan eylem+adeşdizimleri içeren (Nişancı, 2014; Şen Bartan, 2019) tümcelerin Türkçeİngilizce çevirilerinin yapılması, Türkçe-İngilizce yazınsal çeviriler yapıp iki dilli eşdizim listeleri çıkarma uygulamaları yer almaktadır. Çalışmada tek grup kontrol grupsuz öntest sontest deseni benimsenmiştir. (Creswell, 2014). Çalışmanın sonuçları ÇSEÖ programının öğrencilerin sözcüksel eşdizim farkındalıklarını ve çeviri edimlerini arttırdığını göstermektedir.

Problems in medical translation among professional and non-professional translators: Collocations as a key issue

English is currently the lingua franca in medicine, especially due to the development of new terms that combine the medical field with technical areas. The aim of this study is to compare the problems encountered by professional and non-professional translators (physicians) with special attention paid to collocations. Further valuable observations and comments are also added by the respondents. The paper discusses the key position of collocations in the medical register in which the erroneous use of collocations discredits the paper and the researcher, thus hindering the dissemination of medical knowledge. Additionally, some other problematic issues are also highlighted. The author postulates further collocation-related empirical studies with attention paid to the phenomena of both teaching collocations and assessing the competence of the translator in the domain of collocations.

Analysis of noun (direct object) collocations with the high-frequency verb DO by Spanish students in an online learner corpus

This paper analyzes noun (direct object) collocations with the high-frequency verb do by Spanish university students in a computerized learner corpus that includes 155 participants and a total of 246 writing samples. The corpus includes the students' spontaneous written contributions to a compulsory online forum from the nonlinguistic subject, ICT Tools Applied to the Learning of English, included in the curriculum of the Degree in Early Childhood Education at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), from 2014-2015 to 2015-2016. The analysis reveals that these learners produce collocation errors with the high-frequency verb do in two different cases: 1) when they use do instead of make; and, 2) when they make use of do as an alternative to other verbs. Results show different underlying factors which are clearly interrelated. First, the students have problems to differentiate between do and make. Second, they make use of do with delexical constructions that require make and with causative make structures. Third, they make use of patterns from their mother tongue which are not always accurate in English. Finally, the students show low collocational awareness and competence. All these aspects suggest pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of collocations with do which are also included in the paper.

Explicit and Implicit Collocation Teaching Methods: Empirical Research and Issues

The need for integrating collocations into English language syllabuses in order to enhance EFL/ESL learners’ language accuracy and fluency has been emphasized by a great number of researchers and scholars. Given this, finding viable collocation teaching methods has become the focal center of some specialists’ interest. This has led into the emergence of various pedagogical suggestions some of which have aroused controversy. One of the most significant points of disagreement between these specialists concerns the effectiveness of implicit versus explicit collocation teaching methods. This article reviews the pedagogical potential of these two teaching approaches as well as the issues limiting generalizability of findings in the related literature. The review reveals that the scarcity of empirical studies which have compared the efficacy of these two controversial methods, lack of consistency in the reported findings, and neglect of some determining factors, such as learners’ individual differences, have caused a great deal of confusion in the literature regarding the most effective pedagogical intervention. Further research is, therefore, required to address these gaps in the realm of collocation and help teachers, instructional designers and material developers effectively support learners in the learning process. Some suggestions for future research are provided.

Effect of Persian and English colour collocations on L2 learners' proficiency

Collocations play an important role in L2 teaching and learning. The present study investigated the effect of color collocations in L2 learning. This study was done in 2 phases: In the first phase, the frequency of color collocations was calculated in English and Persian. Two lists of English and Persian color collocations were chosen. Each list included 100 color collocations. The English collocations were chosen from English collocation dictionaries, but the Persian color collocations were chosen by the Persian native speakers. Chi-square results indicated that there were some differences between the 2 languages, but the differences were not statistically significant. In the second phase, the (possible) effect of color collocations on upper-intermediate and advanced L2 learners� proficiency was investigated. Sixty upper-intermediate and advanced L2 learners, both male and female, were chosen from a private language institute in Isfahan, Iran. The minimum and maximum ages of the participants were about 15-38, and their homogeneity was tested by the OPT. Participants were given a pretest in order to measure their color collocational knowledge. Then, after the treatment, a posttest was administered. Results revealed that teaching collocations had a significant effect on the participants� proficiency.

The Metaphorical Use of Collocations: A Corpus-Based Study

The meanings of collocations, which have been accepted as an abstraction at the syntagmatic level, may have been defined by the way human beings conceptualize the world. The patterns in the use of the English word “contain” are summarized using the British National Corpus and an attempt is made to use conceptual metaphors to interpret how these patterns came into being and how they could have derived from human beings’ earliest bodily experience in the physical world. Such insight into English collocations may help improve the teaching of collocations to EFL learners.

Against teaching collocations

Against teaching collocations

Mind the Gap: Towards Determining Which Collocations to Teach

Collocations form part of formulaic language use that is considered by many scholars as central to communication (Henriksen 2013; Wray 2002). Today, most scholars agree that teaching collocations to second and/or foreign language users (henceforth “L2 students”) is a must. This study offers a reflection on the directions L2 researchers and teachers may explore, and that could contribute to modelling the teaching of collocations or at least spark the debate on this issue. The fundamental point raised here is the extent to which pedagogy may be informed by knowing the most common lexical collocations (combinations of content words) and using frequency of collocates as a key factor in selecting which collocations to bring to learners’ attention. The results from this study indicate that out of the eight different lexical collocations, adjective+noun and verb+noun collocations are the most common, and should therefore be introduced first. Furthermore, most collocates (“co-occurring words” in Sinclair’s (1991) terms) come from the 1,000 and 2,000 most frequent words. Therefore, this study suggests that the same way that “[u]sing the computational approach as a starting point makes it possible to distinguish between collocations of varying frequency of use” (Henriksen 2013: 32), frequency may be used to select the target words and their collocates once collocations have been identified. This could potentially contribute to addressing the issue of selection criteria of which collocations to teach.

Cooperative Corpus Consultation for Acquisition of Adjective + Preposition Collocations

Teaching collocations through corpus consultation can highlight not only linguistic patterns but also association between meaning and patterns. However, previous studies have reported learners’ problems during corpus consultation. Corpus consultation refers to learning activities in which a group of learners explore concordance lines in a corpus as to observe language patterns. It is assumed that the integration of group work into corpus consultation tends to facilitate the learning process. The study therefore investigated the effects of cooperative corpus consultation on the acquisition of L2 English adjective + preposition collocations. The participants were 74 first-year Thai undergraduate students divided into a control and an experimental group with 38 and 36 learners, respectively. The instruments were corpus-based materials and activities covering both paper-based and online activities, a pre-test and a post-test. While the control group consulted the corpus individually, the experimental group employed the cooperative corpus consultation approach before both groups took the post-test. The statistical results showed a significant difference in the pre-test and the post-test results of the experimental group, in both production and perception of the targeted collocations. The findings suggested that cooperative corpus consultation could promote discussion and cooperation in the experimental group, resulting in the acquisition of the adjective + preposition collocations.

LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS: ISSUES IN TEACHING AND WAYS TO RAISE AWARENESS

Vocabulary knowledge is considered essential in using a foreign language either in spoken or written forms. Therefore, it is common to hear language learners referring to their poor vocabulary knowledge when they fail to produce enough content in writing or speaking. As it is estimated that there are almost 20,000 million words in English, they mention it as a reason for their misuse of words, phrases and collocations. It is too ambitious to aim language learners to learn that many words to communicate effectively in English, yet because language is phrasal in its nature, awareness and knowledge of collocations, i.e. words that occur together, may help learners comprehend written and spoken discourse (Wray, 2002). This article focuses on the nature and formation of collocations and the issues in learning and teaching collocations especially in foreign language settings. In an attempt to raise awareness of collocations, some practical ideas are also suggested. Article visualizations:

The effects of pictures on short and long-term retention of congruent and incongruent English collocations

The present study investigates the effects of pictures on short and long-term retention of English collocations. It also explores whether retention ability varies according to Korean-English collocational congruency. Participants in the study were Korean elementary school students who learn English as a foreign language (N = 64). These students were assigned to either a Picture or No-Picture condition, and were instructed to remember eight congruent English collocations (i.e., collocations that have Korean translation equivalents) and eight incongruent collocations (i.e., collocations that do not have Korean translation equivalents). Their short- and long-term retention of these collocations was assessed using collocation tests, both immediately and one week after learning. Overall findings indicate that pictures may be useful in promoting both short and long-term retention of English collocations. The study also found that the effects of pictures on collocational recall may not vary according to Korean-English collocational congruency. Given that this study is the first to examine the role of pictures in collocation learning, its findings appear to make significant contributions to existing L2 acquisition literature. Additionally, findings from this study could have an important influence on collocation teaching and learning for young EFL learners.

Learning collocations: Effects of online tools on teaching English adjective‐noun collocations

AbstractCollocations are word combinations essential for achieving fluency in a given language. Considerable emphasis should therefore be placed on teaching collocations as a part of vocabulary instruction in language teaching. However, there is no current consensus on how best to teach collocations, and few studies have addressed the issue. This quasi‐experimental study investigated the effectiveness of online tools for learning English adjective‐noun collocations compared to learning collocations via traditional activities. A quasi‐experimental design with a pretest and immediate and delayed posttests was applied to 53 participants (n = 25 for the control group;n = 28 for the experimental group). The test results reveal that participants in the experimental group who learned collocations with online tools performed significantly better on both immediate and delayed posttests, demonstrating the effectiveness of these tools on learning adjective‐noun collocations.