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Collocational errors of financial management studentsAbstract
This paper deals with the collocational errors of students of Financial Management. It
starts with the brief theory of collocations from Firth to other theoreticians. It emphasises
the importance of collocational competence by showing the hierarchy of errors as
perceived by McCreton and Rider (in James 1998). Therefore, learners should be aware of
the importance of collocations and the problems they might encounter at all the stages of
learning English. There have been many applied linguists who explored the acquisition of
collocations and they mostly focused on collocations in general English. This paper wants
to show the most common collocational errors made by students of Financial Management
by determining the most frequent mistakes in the use of collocations and establishing the
level of collocational competence of non-native users of financial English. Forty-two
students were tested. The obtained results were processed by SPSS. The analysis of
erroneous use of collocations showed the use of approximation as well as the ignorance of
financial terms. The results of the study also bear important implications for teaching
financial English collocations.
Key words: collocations, collocational errors, collocational competence, English for
Financial Management
1. Introduction
The aim of this paper is to show the collocational competence of student of Financial
Management.
In the 1950-ies, Firth (1957) was the first to use the term collocation, defining it is a mode of
meaning. After him, this lexical phenomenon has been more systematically researched,
mostly in general English (Channel 1981, Elkhatib 1984, Ghadessy 1989, Aghbar 1990,
Aghbar and Tang 1991, Hussein 1990, Bahns and Eldaw 1993, Zhang 1993, Arnaud and
Savignon 1994, Gitsaki 1999). Gledhill (2000) dealt with collocations in scientific English. In
Croatia, Špiranec (2005) dealt with collocations from technical English and Štefić, Mravak-
Stipetić and Borić (2010) from English for dentists.
Collocations represent a significant problem for non-native speakers due to interference with
their mother tongue. In 1999, Hill introduced the term ‘collocational competence’. He thinks
that the lack of collocational competence leads to grammatical mistakes as students, lacking
collocational competence create longer expressions in order to express what they want to say
(Hill 2000).
Collocational competence is an important segment in second language knowledge because the
misuse of collocations can lead to misunderstandings. McCreton and Rider (in James, 1998)
think that collocational mistakes which belong to the group of lexical mistakes, belong to the
group of the most serious errors of non-native speakers. Previous research dealing with
collocations showed that errors in collocational competence were mostly the result of
language transfer (Ghadessy 1989; Aghbar 1990; Fayez-Hussein 1990; Gitsaki 1999). Many
researchers have recognised collocational competence as an important component for
acquiring vocabulary (Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992, Lewis 1993, Woolard 2000) thinking
that it contributes to better understanding of problems that language learners usually
encounter. Some studies were oriented towards the direct research of the collocational
knowledge, e.g. Jaén (2007) published the results of the tests in collocational knowledge in
English done by the Spanish student. Table 1 shows the recent research in testing
collocational knowledge.
Table 1. Latest research in testing collocational knowledge
Research Collocations Subjects Instrument Results Laufer and
Waldman (2011)
Verb-noun
collocations
extracted from the
corpus
Native speakers of
Hebrew at three
proficiency levels
compared with
native speakers
Comparison of
non-native speakers
and native speaker
regarding their use
of collocations
Learners at all three
proficiency levels
produced far fewer
collocations than
native speakers.
The number of
collocations
increased only at
the advanced level.
Bazzaz (2012) Verb-noun
collocations
44 male and 168
female English
major students in
Iran
Cloze test and c-
test
There is a
relationship
between the
English knowledge
and collocational
proficiency of
Iranian students.
Miščin (2012) Verb-noun medical
collocations
297 first year
medical students
Multiple choice,
gap-fill,
translations
Receptive
knowledge is much
better than the
productive one.
Yumanee and Nine lexical and 60 high school Multiple choice, The performance
Phoocharoensil
(2012)
three grammatical
collocation patterns
students translation was influenced by
mother tongue
transfer on both
levels
Pavičić and Miščin
(2013)
Verb-noun medical
collocations
50 first year
medical students
51 fifth year
medical students
26 doctors
Multiple choice,
gap-fill,
translations
Collocational
competence similar
in all three groups.
Again, receptive
knowledge is much
better than the
productive one.
Miščin (2015) Verb-noun,
Adjective-noun
business
collocations
20 first year
students
20 second year
students
Multiple choice,
gap fill
The receptive
knowledge is much
better than the
productive one.
The collocational
competence of
‘verb-noun
combinations’ is a
bit better in a
productive task and
almost the same in
the receptive one.
Nizonkiza (2015) Verb-noun
collocations
115 first, third and
fourth year English
majors
Receptive
collocation test
Receptive
knowledge of
collocations grows
as a result of an
increase in EFL
proficiency ;
receptive
knowledge of
collocations added
from one level of
proficiency to
another can be
quantified; and
receptive
knowledge of
collocations varies
across word
frequency bands.
El-Dakhs (2015) Verb-noun
collocations
Adjective-noun
collocations
90 Arab
undergraduate
learners at three
academic levels
Gap-fill and
translation tests
Collocational
competence is
unsatisfactory and
improves very
slowly with
increased language
exposure. Learners
more confident in
the use of verb +
noun collocations
than adjective +
noun. Students
produce more
intralingual than
interlingual errors.
As it can be seen from Table 1, the conclusion of all the studies were the same and confirmed
that collocations are a problematic area for learners of English who still rely on their mother
tongue and use approximation, i.e. a collocate similar to a target collocate. Also, collocational
growth is higher at lower levels while later it is non-linear.
2. Materials and method
The focus of this study were collocations used in the financial management English. The
emphasis was on upward collocations, i.e. a collocate and a node. Verb and adjective
collocates were tested. The aims of the research were to investigate the level of collocational
competence of non-native users of financial management English and to clarify aspects of
collocations which require special approach in teaching financial management English.
The following research questions were posed:
1. What are the most frequent mistakes in the use of collocations?
2. What is the level of collocational competence of non-native users of financial management
English?
3. Are there any differences between the receptive and productive knowledge of students?
The null hypothesis was that the receptive knowledge was better than the productive one as
seen in previous studies.
2.1. Participants
The total number of non-native users who participated in the research was 42. These were all
fourth year students, i.e. first year financial management students. The research was carried
out in November 2015.
2.2 Instrument
The instrument which was used was a collocational competence test. It consisted of two
groups of exercises – multiple choice and gap-fill. Collocations were taken from the
coursebook “English for the Financial Sector” by Ian McKenzie (2008). Figure 1 gives one
example of the exercises from the book (2008:29)
Figure 1. Collocational exercise in the coursebook “English for the Financial Sector” by Ian
McKenzie (2008:29)
As it can be seen in Figure 1, the task of students is to make collocations (or word
combinations as they are called here) and then, to put them in the right place in the sentence.
Only the collocations used in the book were put in the test. Each task consisted of ten
sentences and each correct collocation was awarded a point which makes five points for each
task or the total of ten. Table 2 gives the list of collocations in the book in the order of
appearance.
Table 2. The list of collocations in the book
Verb + noun Adjective (Noun) + noun
Make loans
Arrange mergers
Provide pensions
Give financial advice
Receive deposits
Issue shares/bonds
Arrange mortgages
Arrange takeover bids
Fight takeover bids
Offer life insurance
Apply for a loan
Apply for an overdraft
Check the balance
Set up a standing order
Transfer money
Write a cheque
Pay a bill
Change a standing order
Delete a standing order
Cancel direct debits
View direct debits
Order foreign currency
Identify risks
Implement monetary policies
Influence exchange rates
Maintain stability
Reduce threats
Determine prices
Credit risk
Debt finance
Equity finance
Financial situation
Financial performance
Interest payments
Investment rating
Maturity date
Tradeable instruments
Corporate bond
Asset values
Capital accumulation
Asset management
Conservative industries
Growth investment
Growth industries
Investment management
Standing order
Stable earnings
Current account
Eliminate risks
Exercise options
Guarantee prices
Reduce risks
Reduce uncertainty
Swap interest payments
As it can be seen from Table 2 there are more verb + noun collocations (34) than adjective (or
noun in an adjectival function) + noun collocations (20). Only the collocations specifically
used in exercises were used here, excluding those which appear in texts.
2.3 Procedure
Students were tested during their regular class at the University of Applied Sciences
‘Baltazar’, Zaprešić, Croatia. The test lasted twenty minutes and was done anonymously. The
maximum group of points for each group of questions was five, which makes a total of ten
points. Each correct answer was given one point and only the target collocations were
evaluated. Grammatical competence and spelling were not evaluated.
3. Results and discussion
Answers are shown in Tables 2 and 3.
Table 2. Target collocations and results – multiple choice
Target collocation Sentence Answers obtained by
students
Make loan Banks create new money
whenever they
make/take/give loans.
Give loans/Take loans
Issue shares Companies give/emit/issue
shares to raise money for
their business
Give/Emit shares
Check balance With internet banking you
can check/look/provide
___________
your balance whenever you
want.
Transfer money You can also easily
move/transfer/send money
between your current and
saving account.
Send money/Move money
Implement monetary policy The Central Bank
uses/implements/sets
monetary policy in the cash
market.
Set monetary policy/Use
monetary policy
Table 3. Target collocations and results – gap fill
Target collocation Sentence Answers obtained by
students
Asset management ________ management
involves investing in bonds,
stocks, cash, precious
metals.
Finance (financial)
management/Cash
management/Corporate
management/Economic
management/Investment
management
Current account You can receive your salary
directly into your _______
account.
Giro account/Bank
account/Saving account
Standing order With Internet banking you
can easily set up, change
and delete your _______
orders.
Daily order/Shopping
order/Payment order/Stand
order/Online order/Account
order/Equity order/Transfer
order/Saving order
Corporate bond __________ bonds are
issued by companies to raise
capital.
Company bond/Cash
bond/Shares and
bonds/Share bond/Security
bond/Investment bond/Bank
bond/Market bond
Maturity date A debt becomes due for
payment on ________ date.
Due date/Transfer
date/Certain date/Regular
date/Right date
As we can see from Table 2, the first exercise, multiple choice, tested verb + noun
collocations. Although this belongs to a receptive type of exercises, students still made a lot of
mistakes. The easiest collocation was ‘check balance’ and all the students chose the correct
answer. Only eight students (19%) chose the correct collocation ‘make loan’ and the most
frequent mistake was ‘give loans’. ‘Issue shares’ was much easier collocation and 25 students
(59.5%) gave the correct answer. Only four students gave a wrong answer for the collocation
‘transfer money’ which means that 90.5% of students gave the correct answer. Out of four
students who used the wrong collocation, three used ‘send money’ and one ‘move money’.
Nineteen students (45.2%) used the correct collocation ‘implement monetary policy’ while
the others used either ‘set monetary policy’ or ‘use monetary policy’. So, in the reproductive
type of exercise, the easiest collocation was ‘check balance’ followed by ‘transfer money’,
while the most difficult collocation was ‘make loan’ probably due to the lack of
understanding of the whole sentence (or not reading it carefully). The situation was different
in the second exercise, a gap-fill (see Table 3) which belongs to a productive type of
exercises. In this exercise, students had problems with the majority of collocations. The
collocations tested here were noun/adjective + noun. Also, since no answers were provided,
there was a greater variety of obtained answers. None of the students wrote ‘asset
management’ and many omitted the answer. The most usual wrong answers were
‘finance/financial management’, ‘cash management’, ‘corporate management’, ‘companies
management’, ‘economic management’ and ‘investment management’. The next collocation
was ‘current account’. Students were more familiar with it and thirteen students (30.9%) had a
correct answer. However, another answer was accepted here as well and that is ‘bank account’
and twenty students (47.6%) used this collocation. The others either wrote a wrong
collocation like ‘giro account’ or ‘saving account’ or left the gap empty. ‘Standing order’
provided the highest number of interesting wrong collocations like ‘daily order’, ‘shopping
order’, ‘payment order’, ‘stand order’, ‘online order’, ‘account order’, ‘equity order’, ‘transfer
order’, ‘saving order’. Only eight students (19%) wrote a correct collocation. ‘Corporate
bond’ was another difficult collocation resulting in unusual combinations like ‘company
bond’, ‘cash bond’, ‘shares and bonds’, ‘share bond’, security bond’, investment bond’, bank
bond’ and ‘market bond’. Only six students (14.3%) wrote a correct collocation. It was
expected that ‘maturity date’ was the most familiar collocation in this group and that it would
cause the least problems. However, only fourteen students (33.3%) had the correct collocation
while the others either left the gap empty or used a wrong collocation like ‘due date’, ‘transfer
date’, ‘certain date’, regular date’, ‘right date’. Therefore, it can be concluded that both verb +
noun and adjective + noun collocations cause similar problems to students.
In order to check this, results were tested by SPSS and they can be seen in the following
tables.
Table 4. Descriptive statistics for collocational competence
n Min Max Mean SD
First task 42 2 4 3.21 .717
Second task 42 0 5 1.52 1.194
Table 4 shows the results of the descriptive statistics for collocational competence. Since the
average score is 3.21, i.e. 1.52, it can be concluded that overall collocational competence is
quite low. Also, it can be noticed that in the first, productive task the minimum number of
correct answers was 2 and the maximum 4, while in the second, the receptive one, the
minimum number of correct answers was 0 and the maximum 5.
Table 5. Paired sample t-test
Paired differences
Pair I first
task – second
task
Mean Std.
deviation
Std.
error
mean
95%
Confidence
Interval of the
Difference
t df Sig.
(2-
tailed)
Lower Upper
1.690 1.239 .191 1.304 2.077 8.84
0
41 .000
Table 5 shows a paired sample t test which was conducted to evaluate whether a statistically
significant difference existed between the mean results in receptive and productive level of
collocational competence. As it can be seen, the results of the paired sample t-test were
significant t(41)= 8.84, p<.0005 indicating that there is a significant difference between the
receptive (M=3.21, SD= .717, N=42) and the productive level (M=1.52, SD=1.194, N=42).
The mean difference was 1.69 with the 95% confidence interval between the mean 1.30 to
2.8. Thus, the null hypothesis was confirmed.
4. Conclusion and further suggestions
The aim of this research was to show collocational competence of students of financial
English. Forty-two fourth year (1st graduate year) students were tested by means of testing two
types of tasks targeting both their productive and receptive knowledge. Results show that
collocations present a problematic area for the students. The obtained collocations are not the
result of their mother tongue interference but lack of their knowledge of financial terms in
their mother tongue. Thus, they rely on approximation, guessing the collocate they consider
suitable. Therefore, students do not have only to improve their collocational competence but
also work on their professional terminology and knowledge of financial terms.
The answers to the questions posed at the beginning are as follows:
1. Students make mistakes both in verb + noun collocations and adjective + noun. The most
difficult collocation in the first group was ‘make loan’ where only 19% of students gave the
correct answer although this task was easier and belonged to a receptive one. The easiest
collocation in this group was ‘check balance’ where all the students gave the correct answer.
In the second group, the most difficult collocation was ‘asset management’ where none of the
students provided the right answer. The easiest one was ‘current account’ where ‘bank
account’ was also accepted and despite the transparency of the collocation in the sentence
students still used unacceptable combinations like ‘giro account’ or ‘savings account’.
2. Having analysed the results of the test and processed them by SPSS, it can be concluded
that the collocational competence level is quite low (the average score for the first task is 3.21
and for the second 1.52).
3. As in the previous studies mentioned at the beginning, the receptive knowledge is much
better than the productive one (p<.0005).
The results of the study have significant implications for teaching collocations of financial
English indicating that the method of teaching collocations should be more systematic and
more anchored in research. The limitations of the research are a small number of participants
but it included all the students of Financial Management in 2015/2016. Then, only ten
collocations were tested which is due to lack of time – they have only twenty hours of English
where they have to cover ten units and there is not much time for extra activities. Also, the
book itself does not include many collocational exercises which could be solved by extra
activities either done in the classroom or online for homework. Another option is to have a
kind of a project where students could extract collocations from the lessons in groups and
devise a glossary with translations in Croatian. In that way, they would not only remember
most of the collocations but also be able to brush up their knowledge of financial terms both
in English and Croatian.
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SažetakOvaj rad bavi se kolokacijskim greškama studenata Financijskog menadžmenta. Počinje s kratkom teorijom kolokacija od Firtha do ostalih teoretičara. Naglašava se važnost kolokacijske kompetencije prikazivanjem hijerarhije grešaka učenika stranih jezika prema McCretonu i Rideru (u James 1998). Učenici bi trebali biti svjesni važnosti kolokacija i problema na koje mogu naići u svim fazama učenja engleskog. Postoje mnogi primijenjeni lingvisti koji su istraživali usvajanje kolokacija i uglavnom su se bavili kolokacijama u općem engleskom. Ovaj rad želi pokazati najčešće kolokacijske greške studenata Financijskog menadžmenta utvrđivanjem najčešćih grešaka u uporabi kolokacija te nivoa kolokacijske kompetencije studenata engleskog za financijske svrhe. Testirano je 46 studenata. Dobiveni rezultati obrađeni su SPSS-om. Analiza kolokacijskih grešaka pokazalo je uporabu aproksimacije te nepoznavanje financijske terminologije i u materinjem jeziku. Rezultati ispitivanja također imaju važnu implikaciju za podučavanje kolokacija u engleskom za financijske svrhe. . Ključne riječi: kolokacije, kolokacijske greške, kolokacijska kompetencija, engleski za Financijski menadžment
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