The contribution of dictionary use to the production and retention of collocations in a second language

THE CONTRIBUTION OFDICTIONARY USE TO THEPRODUCTION AND RETENTIONOF COLLOCATIONS IN A SECONDLANGUAGE

Batia Laufer: University of Haifa, Israel ([email protected])

Abstract

Ninety five high school learners of English as L2 received thirty sentences without verbs

of the target verb-noun collocations. They were asked to fill in the missing verb, first

without any dictionary assistance and subsequently with it. Dictionary assistance con-

sisted of three dictionary entries for each of the nouns, from English-English-Hebrew

dictionary, LDOCE and either COBUILD, OALD, or CALD. Learners also reported

in which dictionary they found each verb. A week later, they were unexpectedly tested

on the recall of the target collocations. Three scores were compared: the number of

correct verbs supplied with and without the dictionary entries, and the number of verbs

retained on the test. Learners’ reports on dictionary effectiveness were analyzed as well.

Results showed that at times learners had difficulty finding the right verbs, but often

they thought they knew the collocations and did not think it was necessary to consult

the dictionary.

1. Introduction

One of the most problematic areas of lexical difficulty as evidenced by learners’

language is the use of native-like collocations, e.g. make a decision, face a

problem, offer help, submit an application, hand in a paper, etc. Native speakers

of a language operate with a large number of collocations which contribute

to idiomaticity and fluency of their expression while foreign learners do not

seem to perceive collocations as chunks and often produce them by combining

separate words that do not go together in a given language. When encountered

in the input, collocations are mostly comprehensible and do not look problem-

atic to the teacher or the learner, e.g. strong coffee, follow instructions, offer

help, regular service. Language production, however, reveals that even

International Journal of Lexicography, Vol. 24 No. 1, 2011, pp. 29–49doi:10.1093/ijl/ecq039 Advance access publication 12 December 2010 29

# 2010 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions,please email: [email protected]

at University of H

aifa Library on M

ay 24, 2014http://ijl.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from

https://ssl.haifa.ac.il/,DanaInfo=ijl.oxfordjournals.org+

advanced learners experience difficulties. It could be argued that, at least in

writing, the use of collocations can be aided by a good dictionary. A good

dictionary entry would probably include the most frequent collocates of the

headword and provide suitable examples to illustrate the various collocational

combinations of the headword. Whether this is indeed what happens is one of

the issues explored in this paper. I investigate whether learners who perform a

task in which they have to use verb-noun collocations with mostly unfamiliar

verbs can find the correct verbs in three dictionaries. Moreover, since a word-

focused activity is expected to reinforce the memory of the practiced words or

word combinations, I also examine how the use of the dictionaries affects the

retention of previously unfamiliar collocations after completing the above task.

2. Background

2.1 Collocations in second language production

The definition of collocations in this paper is based on the phraseological

approach of Aisenstadt 1979, 1981, Cowie 1981, Firth 1957, and Mel’cuk

1988. Collocations are defined as habitually occurring lexical phrases that

are characterized by relative transparency in meaning and form-restricted

co-occurrence of elements. Restricted co-occurrence distinguishes collocations

from free combinations in which the individual words are easily replaceable

following the rules of grammar. Relative semantic transparency of collocations,

on the other hand, distinguishes them from idioms whose meaning is opaque

since it cannot be understood from the words that compose it. Some examples

of restricted co-occurrence are: tea collocates with strong, but not with power-

ful, discussion collocates with hold or have, but not with deliver, speech with

deliver, not with hold. Relative semantic transparency is illustrated by the fol-

lowing example: throw in throw a party is not used with its original meaning,

but the expression is clearer than the idiom throw someone’s weight around.

Some collocations allow some substitution by synonyms, e.g. introduce/bring

forward a bill, run/manage a business. Other collocations don’t, e.g. shrug one’s

shoulders, meet expectations. Moreover, other words can appear between the

co-occurring elements, e.g. run his father’s business, address a difficult issue.

Recently, educational linguists have realized the importance of collocations

and other standardized multiword expressions (fillers, formulae, idioms, prov-

erbs) for second language learning in general (Foster 2001, Howarth 1998,

Nattinger and Carrico 1992, Wray 2002) and for lexical fluency in particular

(Boers et al. 2006, Nation 2001, Schmitt 2004). This explains the increasing

interest in researching collocation knowledge and use among language learners.

The overall picture that emerges from this research (error analyses, elicitation

and corpus analyses) is that the use of collocations is problematic for L2

30 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


learners, regardless of years of instruction they received in L2, their native

language, or type of task they are asked to perform.

Since many collocations are comprehensible if the learner is familiar with the

individual words, e.g. apply for a job, make a decision, submit a proposal, the

difficulties suggested by research are in the area of production. Bahns and

Eldaw (1993) found that the number of collocation errors was twice as high

as the number of errors in single lexical items in the translation tasks that

students performed. Laufer and Waldman (2009) found that productive know-

ledge of collocations lags behind the understanding of the collocations, and

that the use of collocations in free writing lags behind elicited productive know-

ledge, which suggests that use develops more slowly across proficiency levels

than the ability to translate a collocation from L1 into L2. In their study, the

receptive and the elicited productive knowledge increased through high school

and the university. However, use of collocations was similar for all high school

learners, those who studied 5 or 8 years of English. The improvement occurred

only with University students majoring in English.

Some collocations are overused by learners, by comparison with native

speakers. Among these are collocations constructed with core verbs (be,

have, make, etc.), or with particular amplifiers (very, completely, highly,

strongly), while other native-like collocations are not used at all (Altenberg

and Granger 2001, Cobb 2003, de Cock et al. 1998, Granger 1998, Howarth

1996, Kaszubski 2000). According to Cobb (2003), this over-reliance on a small

number of collocations may make learners sound fluent, but odd.

Errors are abundant in the performance of learners, including in the lan-

guage of advanced college learners. Elicitation studies showed that learners

often failed to produce the required collocations, and were producing different

phrases instead, with inappropriate synonyms instead of the correct verbs,

paraphrases, incorrect L1 translations, or leaving blanks (Biskup 1992,

Farghal and Obiedat 1995). Studies of free language production of advanced

learners showed that it contained numerous collocation errors, even though it

was usually free of grammatical errors and errors in single words (Altenberg

and Granger 2001, Hasselgren 1994, Laufer and Waldman 2011, Liu 1999,

Nesselhauf 2005). For example, in Nesselhauf’s (2005) corpus of English of

German learners, a quarter of the 2000 collocations extracted contained errors

and another third of the collocations were judged by some, but not all of her

judges as erroneous as well.

Though not all errors are the result of modelling the collocation on L1

(Howarth 1998, Dechert and Lennon 1989), many errors are indeed interlin-

gual. Nesselhauf (2005) found that 50% of errors exhibited L1 influence.

In Biskup (1992), different L1 groups translated the collocations differently,

in accordance with their native languages. In Laufer and Waldman (2011), over

60% of errors in the entire corpus were interlingual and this proportion did not

decrease in the sample of advanced learners.

The Contribution of Dictionary Use to the Production 31

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


It can be argued that dictionaries may improve learners’ use of collocations

in writing on the following three conditions: dictionaries provide the frequent

collocations and place them at the right headwords where users can find them,

learners decide to look for the appropriate collocations when they write, learn-

ers remember the correct collocations after completing the task which required

their search and use. I now turn to some studies which show whether these

conditions are met.

2.2 Collocations and learnerdictionaries

Since learners use mostly learner dictionaries for a variety of purposes,

I will discuss only the general learner dictionaries rather than collocation dic-

tionaries or dictionaries written for native speakers. Nesi (1996) examined the

treatment of collocational groups in a range of learners’ dictionaries, including

the 1995 editions of COBUILD, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary

English (LDOCE), the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD) and

the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (CIDE). She identified

eight different approaches dictionaries may use to show that words are used

together:

. the collocational group is given headword status

. the collocational group is listed as a subentry, possibly with a symbol to

indicate that it is a compound or idiom

. collocational groups are defined within the main entry

. indication of collocational range is given in the definition

. typical collocates are printed in dark type within examples

. typical collocates occur within examples

. collocates are grouped in boxes

. sections outside the A-Z dictionary are set aside for the study of

collocation

I looked up the word ‘instructions’ in three online dictionaries in order to see

if learners would be in a position to find the verb that collocates with ‘instruc-

tions’ to form an expression that means ‘do as the instructions tell us’. The

verbs I would expect to find are ‘follow’, or ‘carry out’. Here are the entries as

they appear in the dictionaries. Figures 1 and 2 present the Cambridge

Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (CALD) online entries for the noun

INSTRUCTION (this dictionary has a separate entry for each major sense; we

omit here the entry for as per instructions). Figure 3 gives the LDOCE online

entry and Figure 4 the OALD entry for the same word.

The three dictionaries above mark the collocations of ‘instructions’ by bold

font or different color in examples in the original online version of the

dictionary. However, CALD does not have examples with either of the two

32 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


verbs. LDOCE and OALD include both, but the former has them in two

different places in the entry, the latter lists the two verbs one after the other.

In principle, learners should be able to find the correct collocation, at least in

two of the three dictionaries above. The question is whether, during a writing

task, they would turn to a dictionary to search for the appropriate collocation.

Lew (2004) conducted a study on dictionary use. In response to his question-

naire, 24.4% students said they never looked up collocations and 43.8% said

they rarely did. Information on collocations belongs to what Lew refers to as

peripheral information type cluster which includes synonyms, style and regis-

ter, collocation, sentence structure, part of speech, and pronunciation.

However, advanced learners were found to consult the information on

collocations more frequently than the less advanced learners. A similar learner

behavior can also explain some of Nesselhauf’s (2005) findings. Her learner

language corpus included composition of learners who wrote with a dictionary

and without a dictionary. The number of collocation errors was not different in

the two cases. This suggests that learners do not necessarily seek information

on the use of collocations. These results corroborate earlier results (Atkins and

Varantola 1997) which showed that out of 910 look ups for L2 word, only 102,

i.e. one in ten were for collocations.

If learners looked for the right collocations during a writing task and found

them, would they retain them afterwards? Most studies investigated the reten-

tion of single words following a successful search during a task. They show that

some of the looked up words were indeed retained when tested later on. Bruton

(2007) found that following a translation task, learners could recall 72% of the

Figure 2: CALD online entry for INSTRUCTION noun (TEACHING)

Figure 1: CALD online entry for INSTRUCTION noun (ORDER)


at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


items correctly looked up in a bilingual dictionary. Laufer and Hill’s (2000)

study shows that after consulting an online dictionary during a reading task,

Hong Kong learners remembered 62% of the words and Israeli learners –

33.3%. They also examined the learning rates by learners’ look up preferences.

Figure 3: LDOCE online entry for INSTRUCTION noun. This figure appears in

colour in the online version of the International Journal of Lexicography

34 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


Some learners looked up the majority of words in L1, some in L2, some in

both languages, and consulted a definition or a translation together with other

dictionary information. The authors found that consulting an L1 translation

and an L2 definition led to the best results with the Israeli group while it fared

second best with the HK group. HK learners whose preferred look up strategy

was L2 definition achieved slightly higher retention scores. Lew and

Doroszewska (2009), who also conducted a study of look up patterns and

vocabulary learning from electronic dictionaries, found that, overall, students

could recall 56.6% of words they looked up. But the results were different

for different look up options. The best recall results 76.2% were found in

cases where learners looked up the translation and the definition. If consulting

a dictionary leads to some retention of single words, we could assume that

the same will happen with collocations since they are composed of words.

Dziemianko (2010) studied the retention of single words and collocations

when learners used either a paper or an electronic dictionary in a task.

In the productive test of collocations, they had to complete sentences with a

preposition removed from the target collocations. 45.6% were correctly re-

called in the paper dictionary condition and 63.9% in the electronic dictionary

condition. The collocations she chose were not very frequent, e.g. on the blink,

in cahoots with, up the creek. It can be argued that these collocations were

attended to and learnt similarly to new words. The question is whether un-

familiar combinations of familiar high frequency words, e.g. follow instruc-

tions, make headlines, are as easily retainable as new words, particularly if

the individual words in the collocation do not combine in the same way in

learners’ L1.

Figure 4: OALD online entry for INSTRUCTION noun, adj. This figure appears

in colour in the online version of the International Journal of Lexicography


at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


3. The study

The present study investigates the contribution of dictionary use to the pro-

duction and subsequent retention of collocations. It attempts to answer the

following research questions:

(1) How many correct collocations will learners use in a writing task if they

can consult three types of dictionaries: one bilingualized and two

monolingual?

(2) How many of the correctly looked up collocations will be retained?

(3) How do different dictionaries fare in terms of

(a) the number of correct collocations that learners can find?

(b) the number of collocations that learners cannot find?

3.1 Target collocations

Thirty verb-noun collocations in English were selected for investigation.

The individual words in the collocations belong to the 2000 most frequent

words and the frequency of the collocations is higher than 100 in the British

National Corpus. From my teaching experience and learner corpus data, I

knew that all the collocations could be problematic for the Israeli L2 learners.

They were either used with an incorrect verb, or underrepresented in the re-

cently compiled corpus of Israeli learners of English when compared with a

corpus of native speakers. The target collocations were: put pressure, take

measures, get the message, shed light, set an example, face a problem, meet the

needs, accept facts, make an attempt, discuss the issue, pay attention, express

feelings, take action, hit the headlines, raise a question, set goals, express an

interest, reduce costs, run a risk, keep an eye on, earn a living, cause damage,

draw conclusions, make a statement, provide a solution, support a claim, follow

instructions, hold a meeting, raise funds, break rules.

3.2 Participants

Two groups of learners of English participated in the study. One group

included forty learners who studied English for eight years in school. Their

level could be defined as intermediate. Half of them were native speakers of

Hebrew, half – of Arabic.

The other group included 55 learners who studied English in school for

6 years and could be defined as pre-intermediate. They were all native speakers

of Hebrew. The thirty collocations were divided into two halves of fifteen and

each learner was given 15 collocations either from the first or the second half.

36 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


This was done to prevent an unnecessary fatigue that would influence the

performance of the task.

3.3 Procedure

The study was conducted in three stages over a period of two class periods,

45minutes per period. Stage One was a pre-test that examined the learners’

knowledge of collocations, and it was performed without any dictionary sup-

port. The learners were given fifteen sentences in which the verbs of the target

collocations were omitted. Each sentence contained one collocation and its

translation was provided at the end of the sentence. The other words in the

sentences were frequent words that were assumed to be familiar to the learners.

If learners did not understand some words, they could ask the teacher.

Learners were asked to fill in the blanks with the correct translation of the

Hebrew or Arabic verb. Here are the instructions that the participants received

and an example of a sentence they had to complete.

In this exercise, you should fill in the missing word in each sentence.

The word and its following noun are translated for you at the end of each

sentence.

You are dreaming and not _______attention to what I am saying bl<?

Upon the completion of the task, the task sheets were collected.

Stage Two followed immediately after the collection of the sheets. It

examined the contribution of dictionaries to the production of collocations.

Learners received clean sheets with sentences identical to those in Stage One.

In addition, they received photocopies of the dictionary entries of the target

nouns which were the headwords of the collocations. For each noun, they were

given 3 entries of the noun from 3 different dictionaries. One was a bilingual-

ized dictionary which includes the material of a monolingual dictionary and

also a translation of all the meanings of the headword. The Hebrew speakers

received the entries from English-English-Hebrew dictionary, Oxford Student’s

Dictionary for Hebrew Speakers, which is based on the Oxford Student’s

Dictionary of Current English. The Arabic speakers received the entries from

the English-English-Arabic dictionary, Harrap’s English Dictionary for

Speakers of Arabic, which is based on the Harrap’s Easy English Dictionary.

The other two entries for each noun were from monolingual dictionaries. In

Group One, all the learners received entries from LDOCE. Half of them also

received entries from OALD, and half - from CALD (Cambridge Advanced

Learner’s Dictionary). In Group Two, in addition to the English-English-

Hebrew version of the bilingualized dictionary, all learners used LDOCE

and COBUILD.


at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


Each dictionary entry was on a separate page and was marked with a

number 1 for the English-English-Hebrew, or English-English-Arabic diction-

ary, 2 – for LDOCE and 3 – for OALD, CALD, COBUILD. The three entries

for each noun were clipped together. However, the order in which the diction-

aries appeared differed from entry to entry. This was done in order not to

influence the use of a specific dictionary by putting it in the same order for

each entry. The learners had two tasks. The first was identical to the task in

Stage One, i.e. they had to fill the missing verb. They were told to look for the

verb in the three dictionary entries they received. The second task was to say,

for each sentence, which of the three dictionaries provided them with the cor-

rect verb for the collocation. Here are the instructions they received and an

example of the two tasks for one sentence.

In this exercise you should fill in the blanks with the missing words. If you do

not know the word, or are unsure of it, you can use the material from 3

different dictionaries. Each dictionary is marked as 1,2,3. After each

sentence, you will be asked whether you used the material and if you did, you

will be asked to mark the dictionary in which you found the correct answer.

(dictionary number 1,2,3)

You are dreaming and not ____________attention to what I am saying

bl<?I used the dictionary material to try to complete the above sentence

Yes/No

If you answered ‘yes’, in which dictionary/dictionaries did you find the

answer?

- Dictionary 1 2 3

- Didn’t find the answer in any dictionary

Upon the completion of Stage Two, the exercise sheets were collected.

Stage Three investigated retention of the target collocations. One week after

Stage Two, learners received an unexpected test. In the test, they were given the

L1 translations of the target collocations and were asked to supply the English

collocations. The answers on the fill in tasks and the retention test were scored

as ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’. Minor spelling mistakes on the retention test that did

not distort the recognition of the word did not make the answer incorrect.

3.4 Dataanalysis

The following data were collected for each student: the number of correct

answers on the pre-test in Stage One (some learners knew some collocations),

the number of correct answers in the sentence completion task with the dic-

tionaries in Stage Two and the number of correctly retained collocations in the

38 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


post-test in Stage Three. In addition, based on the participants’ responses in

Stage Two, during the fill-in task, I calculated how many times the learners

reported they found the correct collocations in each of the three dictionaries,

how many times they really found it, how many times they thought they found

it even though they did not, and how many times they were aware of the fact

that they did not find the answers they were looking for. This was done as

follows. For each dictionary, students’ reports about finding the correct collo-

cation were added up. Since the number of students using different dictionaries

was not equal, the total number of responses was divided by the number of

students using each dictionary and the means were calculated per student, per

dictionary type. In addition, each response that stated that a correct collocation

was found was checked against the actual collocation that the learner provided.

When the collocation was correct, the student’s report on the dictionary’s help

was marked +. Whenever the collocation was incorrect, the student’s report

was marked �, indicating that the dictionary was of no help even though he

thought it was. The number of plusses and minuses was added up (separately)

and I calculated the number of times dictionary was and was not of help ac-

cording to the teacher’s report, as opposed to the student’s report. Finally, I

calculated the mean number of reports of not finding the collocation in any of

the dictionaries.

The scores in Stage One, Stage Two and Stage Three were compared by a

one-way ANOVA for correlated samples and post-hoc Tukey tests. An increase

in correctly provided verbs for the verb-noun collocations in Stage Two was

attributed to the use of the dictionary as the only difference between the two

stages was the additional dictionary information. The comparison between

responses in Stage Two and Stage Three showed whether there was a loss of

collocation gains from dictionary work. The data from students’ responses on

the effectiveness of the three dictionaries in finding the collocations will be

presented by means of descriptive statistics only.

4. Results

Table 1 and Table 2 present the results of collocation knowledge on the

pre-test, collocation use during the fill in task with three dictionaries and

collocation retention on the post-test.

Post-hoc Tukey tests in group 1 showed that all the means were different

from one another at p< 0.01. The results show that the use of a dictionary

significantly increased the number of correct collocations in a fill-in task. After

the task, the number of collocations decreased, but, by comparison with the

pre-test, there was some gain in collocation knowledge. To put it differently,

the use of dictionary resulted in an increase of 150% of correct collocations

(computed as (6.63� 2.65)/2.65*100%). The post-test results showed an in-

crease of 54% by comparison with the pre-test ((4.08� 2.65)/2.65*100%).


at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


Post-hoc Tukey tests in group 2 showed that the pre-test and the exercise

scores were different at p< 0.01. The use of a dictionary significantly increased

the number of correct collocations in a fill-in task. There were also significant

differences between the scores of the exercise and the post-test, but not between

the pre-test and the post-test. If we compare the three results in terms of per-

centage of increase in correct collocations, the increase in the Exercise is

(5.23� 2.67)/2.67*100%=96% while the increase in the post-test against the

pre-test is (3.02� 2.67)/2.67*100%=13%. This indicates that the learners did

not gain much beyond what they had previously known, before they used the

dictionaries.

Since learners in the two groups knew on average between two and three

collocations on the pre-test, they were supposed to look up and find 12–13

collocations that they did not know. However, Stage Two results show that

they found much less. This was not because the dictionaries did not include

them. Examination of the dictionaries used in the study revealed that out

of the thirty collocations, the dictionaries included the following numbers of

collocations: E-E-H/E-E-A – 12, OALD – 22, LDOCE – 24, CALD – 16,

COBUILD – 14.

Table 2: Correct collocation responses: Group Two (Max=15)

Stage One

Pre-test

(�dictionary)

Stage Two

Exercise

(+dictionary)

Stage Three

Retention test

(�dictionary)

N 55 55 55

Mean 2.67 5.23 3.02

Std. Dev. 1.92 2.88 1.82

F=46.15, p< 0.001

Table 1: Correct collocation responses: Group One (Max=15)

Stage One

Pre-test

(�dictionary)

Stage Two

Exercise

(+dictionary)

Stage Three

Retention test

(-dictionary)

N 40 40 40

Mean 2.65 6.63 4.08

Std. Dev. 1.74 2.32 1.88

F=48.75, p< 0.001

40 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


Table 3 shows how many collocations learners (in the two groups) reported

they found in the various dictionaries, how many they really found, how many

they thought they found, and how many they could not find. Since the numbers

of students using different dictionaries were not the same, the results are given

in mean number of collocations per student per dictionary.

Looking at the table, we should remember that each student had to fill in 15

collocations in the exercise in Stage Two and that some of the collocations were

reported to be found in more than one dictionary. The table shows that learn-

ers searched for the collocations in all the dictionaries, but mostly in the bilin-

gualized dictionaries even though it provided the smallest number of

collocations. This was the dictionary in which they thought they found most

of the correct collocations (see self report). However, nearly half of the look

ups that were thought to provide the correct collocation resulted in the use of a

wrong collocation. OALD seems to be not very different from the bilingualized

dictionary in the number of correct collocations found and LDOCE is the

second best even though it covers the largest number of collocations. Bearing

in mind the imbalance between the dictionaries in their coverage of colloca-

tions, the bilingualized dictionary seemed to be the most used and relatively

most useful source of finding the necessary collocations even though LDOCE

provides a larger number of the target collocations. Learners reported that

about three collocations could not be found in any of the dictionaries.

According to the results in Tables 1 and 2, about four correct collocations

were found in group 1 and between two and three in group 2. Since learners

knew between two and three collocations (see pre-test results in Tables 1

and 2), found around three and half correct ones, could not find three, this

leaves six, i.e. half of the unfamiliar collocations (15-2.5-3.5-3) that students

Table 3: The contribution of dictionaries to finding the correct collocations:

mean number of collocations per student, per dictionary

E-E-H/A

N=95

LDOCE

N=95

OALD

N=20

CALD

N=20

COBUILD

N=55

Collocation found

(self report)

3.51 2.81 3.20 2.50 0.98

Collocation found

(teacher’s report)

1.95 1.34 1.90 0.85 0.39

Collocation not found

(teacher’s report)

1.56 1.47 1.30 1.65 0.59

Collocation not found

anywhere (self report)

2.98


at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


looked up incorrectly during the exercise, or did not look up at all since, pre-

sumably, they thought they knew these collocations though they did not.

5. Discussion

The study examines the contribution of dictionary consultation to the use of

collocations that are unfamiliar to L2 learners and their subsequent retention.

All the participants in the study had the entries from LDOCE, which included

80% of the collocations that they were required to use in the exercise. They

claimed they could not find an average of three out of 15 collocations, i.e. 20%.

Some collocations are indeed not covered in the dictionaries, but many others

are, contrary to what learners reported. For example, I could not find raise a

question, provide a solution, express feelings in the H-E-H bilingualized diction-

ary, LDOCE, OALD. In other cases, the required collocations appeared in the

examples which explained the meaning of the noun and were not shown as

special uses of the headword. Moreover, the verbs may have appeared in a

different form from that in the exercise. For example, in the E-E-H bilingual-

ized dictionary, ‘take measures’ illustrates the meaning of ‘measure’ in the sense

of ‘an action used to obtain a particular result’. The example the dictionary

provides is: They took strong measures against dangerous drivers. Not only is the

collocation hidden in the example, but it also appears with the verb in the past

tense and an additional adjective ‘strong’. Similarly, one of the examples illus-

trating ‘action’ is: We must take immediate action to stop the fire spreading. The

collocation ‘face a problem’ appears in an example which explains what a

problem is: The biggest problem we face is the shortage of financial resources.

Here the collocations can be recognized if the learner perceives the relationship

between the noun and the verb that appears in the relative clause that modifies

the noun.

The same collocations are treated differently in LDOCE. Take measures

appears in an example which explains the noun measure and is used in the

Passive Voice, but the two words are bolded, probably to indicate the connec-

tion between them, thus: Measures are being taken to reduce crime in the city.

Take action appears in a special box with the heading COLLOCATIONS (see

Figure 5).

‘Face a problem’ is not in the collocation box in the entry ‘problem’, though

many other collocations are included there. Nor is it in any of the examples.

OALD presents the collocation ‘take measures’ in an example: We must take

preventive measures to reduce crime in the area. The bold font is used for ‘pre-

ventive’ and ‘measures’ showing the connectedness between ‘preventive’ and

‘measures’ rather than between ‘measures’ and ‘take’. Similarly, ‘take action’

appears in an example: Firefighters took action immediately to stop the blaze

spreading, but here the bold font is used for the verb and the noun. ‘Face a

42 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


problem’ can be found in one of the examples and is marked in bold. Most

students face the problem of funding themselves while they are studying.

I cannot see any reason to miss the collocation when it appears in a specially

designed box, as in LDOCE and is often explained as well. Lew and Radlowska

(2010) found that learners were rather successful with finding the right collo-

cations in LDOCE. However, I can understand some learners who become

frustrated reading through different explanations of the headword and ex-

amples which illustrate each meaning and stop before they reach the colloca-

tion they are looking for. This is specially the case when the collocations are

not bolded, but appear in the same font as the rest of the sentence. If the

collocation does not stand out, attention is not drawn to it, particularly

when the two components of the collocation are separated by another word,

as in ‘take immediate action’.

A more disconcerting finding was the erroneous use of six collocations on

average, which is about 50% of the unfamiliar collocations they were expected

to find in at least one of the dictionaries. One explanation is that learners did not

look up some collocations as they did not realize that these were unfamiliar to

them. To verify this assumption, I looked at a random sample of eleven exercise

sheets where the learners provided the verbs of the collocations, did not circle

any dictionary in which they were supposed to look up the verbs, but instead,

circled the ‘I knew the answer without a dictionary’ option. Here are some

examples of incorrect verb noun combinations they provided (starred). The

correct collocations are in brackets. The erroneous collocations fall into three

groups. In the first five examples, the correct verbs are replaced by frequent

verbs (put, do, have, give, get), some of which are often delexicalized in English.

The detective decided to *put light on the situation. (shed light)

Most people *do their goals at the beginning of each year (set goals)

Figure 5: Top part of the entry for ACTION noun in LDOCE online. This

figure appears in colour in the online version of the International Journal

of Lexicography


at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


Some people find it hard to *have their feelings (express their feelings)

The school does not *give the needs of disabled people (meet the needs)

The soldiers have to *get the fact that they cannot take part in political

activities (accept the fact).

(In the last sentence, the meaning of the Hebrew verb provided to the learn-

ers in the collocation is ‘accept’ in the sense of ‘come to terms with’. Hence,

though ‘get the fact’ is an acceptable collocation in English, it is inappropriate

here since it means ‘to understand’.)

In the next five examples, the verbs are direct translations from Hebrew.

The state should *give a solution to the problem of homeless people

(provide a solution)

The president’s affair *stole the headlines of the newspaper (hit the

headlines)

People need to *do action if they want to reach their goals. (take action)

My mother asked me to *put an eye on my little brother. (keep an eye on)

The head of the student council decided to *present the question about

uniforms (raise the question)

In the next three examples, the verbs are semantically related to the noun.

Two of them also appear in the part of the sentence provided by the teacher.

The teacher asked me to *notice attention in class today (pay attention)

We all had to *try an attempt and try to learn a new language (make an

attempt)

If you want to save money for a trip, you have to *save costs (reduce costs)

Learners who produced the above examples and probably many other learn-

ers were not aware of the nature of collocations, that is that certain nouns

combine with a restricted set of verbs. Instead, they fell into the trap of what I

would like to call ‘deceptive compatibility’. They combined these nouns with

verbs that felt compatible either because the compatibility was correct in L1, or

because the verbs were the kind of verbs that go together with many nouns, or

because the verbs were related in meanings to the nouns. This deceptive com-

patibility may explain Lew’s (2004) findings that most learners do not look for

collocational information in their dictionaries. The increase in collocation

look-ups of his advanced learners is probably due to better awareness of lan-

guage structure and language difficulties which results from progress in lan-

guage proficiency. As mentioned in the Background section, Nesselhauf (2005)

found that learners who wrote compositions with a dictionary and without a

dictionary made a similar number of collocation errors. I suggested that this

finding means that either learners do not seek information on the use of

44 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


collocations since they do not realize they need it, or that dictionaries do not

provide it. The results of the present study support the first option for about

half of the unfamiliar collocations.

The retention scores of the looked up collocations were very low. The inter-

mediate learners retained about 1.5 new collocations on average and the

pre-intermediate group – about 0.5 (the pre-test results were subtracted from

the retention test scores). This is not surprising bearing in mind the small

increase in collocation scores during the dictionary task. In terms of learning,

the retention scores can hardly be considered meaningful even if they are stat-

istically significant in Group One. These results are much worse than

Dziemianko’s (2010). The reason for the difference may lie in the nature of

collocations in the two studies. Dziemianko used collocations that must have

been totally new to her learners and may therefore have been treated by them

not differently from new single words. In the present study, on the other hand,

the learners were familiar with all the nouns in the target collocations.

Therefore, they may not have perceived the need to look for the verb, or

look for it too thoroughly, but combined the nouns with a deceptively com-

patible verb, as discussed earlier.

6. Concluding remarks

The results revealed that some learners could not find some target collocations

in the dictionaries even though they were included there. Sometimes learners

were not aware of the fact that the collocation was unfamiliar to them and did

not seek dictionary help. Most of the collocations they managed to find and use

correctly were forgotten a week later. These three observations lead to the same

practical conclusion and recommendation. Both lexicographers and teachers

should draw learners’ attention to the existence of a restricted co-occurrence of

lexical items which may be very different from the ‘equivalent’ combination in

their L1. Lexicographers may have to do more than inserting a collocation in

an example which illustrates the meaning of the headword. The collocations

should be given both prominence and easy access. Among the dictionaries in

this study, LDOCE does this quite well by putting the lists of most frequent

collocations and short example sentences for each collocation in a specially

designed and clearly displayed box. Teachers may need to train learners better

how to use different dictionaries, bilingualized and monolingual. The results of

this study may have been more encouraging if learners had searched the mono-

lingual dictionaries more thoroughly. Yet awareness of collocations is not

enough. It should be supplemented with word-focused instruction. The value

of word-focused instruction has been duly recognized and its effectiveness has

been demonstrated in a series of empirical studies, particularly with tasks that

require word production (Ellis and He 1999, Hulstijn and Laufer 2001, Keating

2008, Kim 2008, Laufer 2005, Peters 2006, Peters et al. 2009, Webb 2005).


at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


Of particular importance is contrastive word-focused instruction, where atten-

tion is drawn to the differences between the L2 and L1 ways of expressing

similar meanings. Such instruction was particularly effective in the case of

teaching collocations. Laufer and Girsai (2008) found that contrastive

word-focused instruction produced much better results than meaning-oriented

instruction and other non-contrastive word-focused activities.

Minimizing forgetting is also the responsibility of teachers and material

writers. If we want to rely on rich input, then studies show that much more

than 7-9 encounters with new words are necessary to prevent forgetting and

assure their recognition (Brown et al. 2008) and more encounters are necessary

to ensure recall of meaning (Waring and Takaki 2003). However, there is some

research that shows that fewer exposures are necessary when words appear in

demanding word-focused activities (Laufer and Roitblat-Rozovski 2011, Webb

2005). This is particularly encouraging for foreign language classrooms, where

input is limited, but where teachers can decide how new vocabulary should be

practised and recycled. Collocation was shown to be one of the major vocabu-

lary challenges for foreign language learners, even for advanced learners.

Lexicographers and teachers can play an important role in helping them to

meet this challenge.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to my students Nataly Almourian, Inas Shurrush and Tatiana

Volowelsky for administering the exercise and the tests in their classes.

References

A. Dictionaries

Collin, P., N. Kassis, and T. Angel, (eds) 1988. Harrap’s English Dictionary for Speakers

of Arabic. (Second Edition.) Toronto: Kernerman Publishing Ltd.Ruse, C., J. A. Reif, and Y. Levy, (eds) 1993. Oxford Student’s Dictionary for Hebrew

Speakers. (Second Edition.) Tel Aviv: Kernerman Publishing Ltd. and Lonnie Kahn

& Co Ltd.Procter, Paul (ed.) 1995. Cambridge International Dictionary of English. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press. (CIDE).

Sinclair, J. and P. Hanks, (eds) 2008. Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictionary. (Sixth

Edition.) Boston: Heinle Cengage Learning. Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers.

(COBUILD6). Online version for registered users: http://www.myCOBUILD.com.Summers, Della (ed.) 2003. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. (4th edition)

Harlow: Pearson Longman. (LDOCE4.). Free online version: http://www.ldoceon-

line.com.Walter, Elizabeth (ed.) 2005. Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary. (2nd Edition.)

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (CALD2) Free online version: http://

dictionary.cambridge.org.

46 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


Wehmeier, S. (ed.) 2005. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English.

(Seventh Edition.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. (OALD7) Free online version:

http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/teachersites/oald7

B. Other literature

Aisenstadt, E. 1979. ‘Collocability Restrictions in Dictionaries’ ITL Review of Applied

Linguistics, 45/46: 71–74.Aisenstadt, E. 1981. ‘Restricted Collocations in English Lexicology and Lexicography’

ITL Review of Applied Linguistics, 53: 53–61.Alternberg, B. and S. Granger. 2001. ‘The Grammatical and Lexical Patterning of

MAKE in Native and Non-native Student Writing’ Applied Linguistics, 22.2:

173–195.Atkins, B. T. S. and K. Varantola. 1997. ‘Monitoring Dictionary Use’ International

Journal of Lexicography, 10.1: 1–45.

Bahns, J. and M. Eldaw. 1993. ‘Should we Teach EFL Students Collocations?’ System,

21.1: 101–114.Biskup, D. 1992. ‘L1 Influence on Learners’ Rendering of English Collocations: A

Polish/German Empirical Study’. In P.J.L. Arnaud and H. Bejoint (eds),

Vocabulary and Applied Linguistics. London: Macmillan, 85–93.Boers, F., J. Eyckmans, J. Kappel, H. Stengers and M. Demecheleer. 2006. ‘Formulaic

sequences and perceived oral proficiency: putting a Lexical Approach to the test’

Language Teaching Research, 10.3: 245–261.

Brown, R., R. Waring and S. Donkaewbua. 2008. ‘Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

from Reading, Reading-while-listening, and Listening to Stories’ Reading in a Foreign

Language, 20.2: 136–163.

Bruton, A. 2007. ‘Vocabulary Learning from Dictionary Referencing and Language

Feedback in EFL Translational Writing’ Language Teaching Research, 11.4: 413–431.Cobb, T. 2003. ‘Analyzing Late Interlanguage with Learner Corpora: Quebec

Replications of three European Studies’ Canadian Modern Language Review, 59.3:

393–424.Cowie, A. P. 1981. ‘The Treatment of Collocations and Idioms in Learners’

Dictionaries’ Applied Linguistics, 2.3: 223–235.Dechert, H. W. and P. Lennon. 1989. ‘Collocational Blends of Advanced Second

Language Learners: A Preliminary Analysis.’ In W. Olesky (ed.), Contrastive

Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 131–168.De Cock, S., S. Granger, G. Leech and T. McEnery. 1998. ‘An Automated Approach to

the Phrasicon of EFL Learners.’ In S. Granger (ed.), Leaner English on Computer.

London: Longman, 67–79.Dziemianko, A. 2010. ‘Paper or Electronic? The Role of Dictionary Form in Language

Reception, Production, and the Retention of Meanings and Collocations’

International Journal of Lexicography, 23.3.Ellis, R. and X. He. 1999. ‘The Roles of Modified Input and Output in the Incidental

Acquisition of Word Meanings’. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21.2:

285–301.Farghal, M. and H. Obiedat. 1995. ‘Collocations: A Neglected Variable in EFL’

International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 28.4: 313–331.

Firth, J. R. 1957. ‘Modes of Meaning.’ In F.R. Palmer (ed.), Papers in linguistics

1934–1951. Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 190–215.Foster, P. 2001. ‘Rules and Routines: a Consideration of their Role in Task-based

Language Production of Native and Non-native Speakers.’ In M. Bygate,


at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


P. Skehan and M. Swan (eds), Researching Pedagogical Tasks: Second Language

Learning, Teaching and Assessment. London: Pearson, 75–97.

Granger, S. 1998. ‘Prefabricated Patterns in Advanced EFL Writing: Collocations and

Formulae.’ In A.P. Cowie (ed.), Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Applications.

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 145–160.Hasselgren, A. 1994. ‘Lexical Teddy Bears and Advanced Learners: A Study into the

Ways Norwegian Students Cope with English Vocabulary’ International Journal of

Applied Linguistics, 4.2: 237–258.Hulstijn, J. H. and B. Laufer. 2001. ‘Some Empirical Evidence for the Involvement Load

Hypothesis in Vocabulary Acquisition.’ Language Learning, 51.3: 539–558.Howarth, P. 1998. ‘The Phraseology of Learners’ Academic Writing.’ In A.P. Cowie

(ed.), Phraseology: Theory, Analysis, and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 161–186.

Howarth, P. 1996. ‘Phraseology in English Academic Writing: Some Implications for

Language Learning and Dictionary Making.’ Tubingen: Niemeyer.

Kaszubski, P. 2000. Selected Aspects of Lexicon, Phraseology and Style in theWriting of

Polish Advanced Learners of English: A Contrastive, Corpus-based Approach.

Retrieved November, 2004 http://main.amu.edu.pl/�przemka/research.html.Keating, G. D. 2008. ‘Task Effectiveness and Word Learning in a Second Language: The

Involvement Load Hypothesis on Trial’ Language Teaching Research, 12.3: 365–386.Kim, Y. 2008. ‘The Role of Task-Induced Involvement and Learner Proficiency in L2

Vocabulary Acquisition’ Language Learning, 58.2: 285–325.Laufer, B. 2005. ‘Focus on Form in Second Language Vocabulary Learning’.

In S.H. Foster-Cohen, M. Garcia-Mayo and J. Cenoz (eds), Eurosla Yearbook

Volume 5. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 223–250.Laufer, B. and M. Hill. 2000. ‘What Lexical Information Do L2 Learners Select in a

CALL Dictionary and How Does It Affect Word Retention?’ Language Learning and

Technology, 3.2: 58–76.

Laufer, B. and N. Girsai. 2008. ‘Form-focused Instruction in Second Language

Vocabulary Learning: A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation’ Applied

Linguistics, 29.4: 694–716.Laufer, B. and B. Roitblat-Rozovski. 2011. ‘Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition: the

Effects of Task Type, Word Occurrence and Their Combination’ Language

Teaching Research.Laufer, B. and T. Waldman. 2009. ‘Collocational Knowledge and Use in a Second

Language: How do they Develop?’ Paper Presented at AAAL Conference, Denver.Laufer, B. and T. Waldman. 2011. ‘Verb-noun Collocations in Second Language

Writing: A Corpus Analysis of Learners’ English’ Language Learning.Lew, R. 2004. Which Dictionary for Whom? Receptive Use of Bilingual Monolingual and

Semi-bilingual Dictionaries by Polish Learners of English. Poznan: Motivex.Lew, R. and J. Doroszewska. 2009. ‘Electronic Dictionary Entries with Animated

Pictures: Lookup Preferences and Word Retention’ International Journal of

Lexicography, 22.3: 239–257.Lew, R. and M. Radbowska. 2010. ‘Navigating Dictionary Space: The Findability of

English Collocations in a General Learner’s Dictionary (LDOCE4) and

Special-Purpose Dictionary of Collocations (OCD)’. In Andrzej Ciuk and

Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska (eds), Exploring Space: Spatial Notions in Cultural,

Literary and Language Studies; Volume 2: Space in Language Studies. Newcastle upon

Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 34–47.

48 Batia Laufer

at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


Liu, C. P. 1999. ‘An Analysis of Collocational Errors in EFL Writings. Proceedings of

the Eighth International Symposium on English Teaching.’ Taipei: Crane, 483–494.

Mel’cuk, I. 1998. ‘Collocations and Lexical Functions.’ In A. P. Cowie (ed.),

Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Applications. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 24–53.

Nation, I. S. P. 2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Nattinger, J. R. and J. S. DeCarrico. 1992. Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nesi, H. 1996. ‘The Teaching of Collocations in EAP.’ University of Leeds. BALEAP

(British associations in lecturers of English for academic purposes) PIM Reports, 3.

Nesselhauf, N. 2005. Collocations in a learner corpus. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Peters, E. N. 2006. Learning Second Language Vocabulary through Reading. Three

Empirical Studies into the Effect of Enhancement. Ph.D. Thesis. The Catholic

University of Leuven.

Peters, E., J. H. Hulstijn, L. Sercu and M. Lutjeharms. 2009. ‘Learning L2 German

Vocabulary Through Reading: The Effect of Three Enhancement Techniques

Compared’ Language Learning, 59.1: 113–151.Schmitt, N. (ed.) 2004. Formulaic Sequences. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John

Benjamins.Waring, R. and M. Takaki. 2003. ‘At What Rate do Learners Learn and Retain New

Vocabulary from Reading a Graded Reader?’ Reading in a Foreign Language, 15.2:

130–160.Webb, S. 2005. ‘Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning’ Studies in Second

Language Acquisition, 27.1: 33–52.Wray, A. 2002. Formulaic language and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.


at University of H

aifa Library on M


Dow

nloaded from


Documents

The contribution of dictionary use to the production and retention of collocations in a second language