Collocation

M99C0101 JoyceM99C0214 Wendy

• Definition • Why to learn collocation?• Types of collocation• How to teach?• Concordance

Definition

• Lewis(2002) - Certain words co-occur in natural text with greater than random frequency

• Oxford Collocations Dictionary - Collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing

Why to learn collocation?

• It is an important part of learning the vocabulary of a language.

• Easy to remember and use language in chunks or blocks

• To use or speak language more natural

• To understand various ways to express ourselves

Types of collocation

grammatical collocation• G1 – n. + prep.• G2 – n. + to + infinitive• G3 – n. + that clause

• G4 – prep. + n.• G5 – adj./ participle + prep.• G6 – adj. + to + infinitive• G7 – adj. + that clause

• G8 – 19 English v. patterns

Examples − blockade against− a pleasure to do it− He took an oath that he

would do hiss duty.− by accident− They were angry at him.− It was necessary to work.− She was afraid that she

would fail the exam.

Types of collocation

lexical collocation• L1 – v.+ n./pron.

v. + prep. phrase• L2 – v. + n.• L3 – adj. + n.• L4 – n. + v.• L5 – n.1 of n.2• L6 – adv. + adj.• L7 – v. + adv.

Examples − reach a verdict

− repeal a law− weak tea− bees buzz− a herd of buffalo− strictly accurate− argue heatedly

G1 – n. + prep.

• What is the reason of Hong Kong's air pollution?• What is the reason for Hong Kong's air pollution?• This figure could reflect their dissatisfaction of the lack of

training.• This figure could reflect their dissatisfaction with the lack of

training.• What are the main differences of US English and the English

spoken in the UK?• What are the main differences between US English and the

English spoken in the UK?

G5 – adj./ participle + prep.

• They are excited their trip to Rome next

June.• That house is different the one I was

looking for.• I must admit I was shocked her behavior at

the party.• Cezanne is famous his landscapes.

about

from

at

for

about at for from

How to teach?

• Make students be aware of collocations. – The effects of collocation instruction on English vocabulary

development of senior high students in Taiwan(林玉萍 )• Remind students

• Teaching individual collocations.– The effect of lexical collocation instruction on Taiwanese

college EFL learners’ listening comprehension(徐麗珍 )• instruction on single item vocabularies, instruction on lexical

instruction, no instruction

How to teach?

• Storing and Creating collocation corpus.

• Practice of collocation cloze.

Concordance

• The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)– http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/

• Web Concordancer– http://vlc.polyu.edu.hk/concordance/wwwconcap

pe.htm

• A Study of The Effects of Collocation Instruction on Taiwanese EFL Senior High Students’ Learning of Grammatical Collocations

• Using Corpora to Teach Collocations

A Study of The Effects of Collocation Instruction on Taiwanese EFL Senior High Students’ Learning

of Grammatical Collocations

Jiaming Huang

Introduction

Motivation

• In Taiwan, numerous studies focused on the instruction of lexical collocation, however, some studies pointed out that grammatical errors outnumbered lexical errors.

• Some learners (the author’s students) have problems deciding and distinguishing the proper use of preposition.

Research Questions

• Can explicit collocation instruction help senior high school students upgrade their competence in grammatical collocation?

• Which proficiency level of senior high school students (high, middle, or low) benefit most from explicit collocation instruction in the learning of grammatical collocation?

• What types of grammatical collocation are the most difficult for EFL high school learners?

Methodology

ParticipantsParticipant

sAge Gender Language

BackgroundEducation

Experimental Group

(Class101)

35 16 years oldFirst gradersin the senior high school

Male Similar language proficiency

Six years of basic

education

Control Group

(Class109)

34 16 years oldFirst graders in the senior high school

Female Similar language proficiency

Six years of basic

education

InstrumentsInstruments ObjectiveTwo questionnaires 1. The background of vocabulary

learning.2. The explicit collocation instruction

and which grammatical collocations seemed difficult.

A multiple-choice task(The first collocation test)

Test the students’ familiarity with the collocations and see if their familiarity with the collocations had positive relationship with their overall language proficiency.

A fill-in-the-blank task(The second collocation test)

The students in the experiment group can have practice effect and more awareness of the specific prepositions.

Experimental Procedure

The First Questionnaire The First Questionnaire

The First Collocation test (Fifty Minutes of one period of class) The First Collocation test (Fifty Minutes of one period of class)

Dividing of two groups of identical numbers of each levelDividing of two groups of identical numbers of each level

Control groupControl group Experimental groupExperimental group

Received the regular vocabulary instructionReceived the regular

vocabulary instructionReceived 15-minute

the explicit collocation instruction

Received 15-minute the explicit collocation

instruction

13 weeks (about 3 months)Six hours/ per week

The Second Collocation test (Fifty Minutes of one period of class) The Second Collocation test (Fifty Minutes of one period of class)

Experimental group taking the second questionnaireExperimental group taking the second questionnaire

(Next day of the second collocation text)

Data CollectionData Collection

Collocation Instruction Design

• Instruction of Collocations • Introduction of Five Collocation Dictionaries• The Introduction of Uses of Prepositions• Examples and Practices of Four Grammatical

Collocations• Reviews of Four Grammatical Collocations

Results and Discussion

• Discusses the participants’ attitudes towards vocabulary learning and their concept of the term “collocation.”

• Collocation competence concerning grammatical collocations of the participants is tested and discussed.

• The effects of collocation instruction on EFL students’ learning of grammatical collocations and the most difficult grammatical collocations will be discussed.

• Deals with the learners’ attitudes towards the collocation instruction and their perception about the grammatical collocations tested in this study.

Answers to the three research questions are investigated of four sections:

The Results and Discussion of the First Questionnaire

The Results and Discussion of the First Collocation Test

The Results and Discussion of the Second Collocation Test

The Results and Discussion of the Second Questionnaire Test

• The first research question – The performance of the experimental group was better than that of the control group, and a significant difference could be found between the performances.

• The second research question – collocation instruction is effective to learners at different proficiency levels.

• The third research question – in the first collocation test, they have found the particular reasons for the difficult collocation.

Conclusion

Five sections

． Major Findings． Comparison with Previous Studies． Pedagogical Implications． Limitations of the Study． Suggestions for Further Research

Major Findings• The results of the first questionnaire show that almost

all participants are in general ignorant of the concept of collocation.

• The results in the first collocation test provide more information about the participants’ collocation competence concerning grammatical collocation.

• The results of the second collocation test further examine the effect of the explicit collocation test.

• The results in the second questionnaire provide the participants’ perception about the grammatical collocations and about the collocation instruction.

Comparison with Previous Studies

• Chen’s(2002) – related • Tang(2004) – no significant difference• Lin’s(2002), Tseng’s(2002), Chan’s(2004) and

Hsieh’s(2007)- effective for EFL learners’ learning of lexical collocations.

• Mahmoud(2005) – the grammatical miscollocations are caused by incorrect prepositional selecting.

• Chen(2002) – result from L1 interference because “the preposition doesn’t exist when expressing the same meaning in Chinese.”

• Chiang(1981) - the English preposition relate closely to collocations or idioms instead of grammatical rules.

Pedagogical Implications• Pay more attention to the multi-word items.• Due to the EFL learner’s heavy reliance of the

L1.• Headwords should be highlighted in teaching

and learning English vocabulary.• Provide the students with examples of the

collocation restrictions in grammatical collocations.

• Make full use of collocation dictionaries.

Limitations of the Study

• The participants were not randomly selected from all the senior high schools and the number of the participants was not large enough

• The effects of the explicit collocation instruction might not be applicable to female students.

• The time of explicit collocation instruction might not be long enough, and the second test administered immediately after the explicit collocation instruction.

• The sentence items in the collocation tests do not provide enough contexts.

Suggestions for Further Research

• More participants should be included in collocation instruction to clearly see its effects.

• The present study investigated EFL learners’ collocation competence of four difficult preposition-based grammatical collocations.

• Conducted to build and sustain students’ collocation competence.

• The relationship between EFL learners’ overall language proficiency and other grammatical collocation is worthy of further research.

Using Corpora to Teach Collocations

Nina Daskalovska

Introduction

Research Question

• How effective are corpus-based activities in teaching collocations compared to traditional activities?

Procedure

Experimental Group

Control Group

Spent an equal amount of time

Took a test

Discussion

Conclusion

• Corpora and concordance programmers are a powerful tool in the hands of EFL students.

• An area that deserves more attention, and more studies are needed in.

Q&A

Activity

Reference

• Using Corpora to Teach Collocations-Nina Daskalovska• Jiaming, Huang. (2009). A Study of The Effects of Collocation

Instruction on Taiwanese EFL Senior High Students’ Learning of Grammatical Collocations (Master Thesis). Retrieved from http://etds.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/cgi-bin/gs/ntnugsweb.cgi?o=dntnucdr

• 廖柏森 ( 民 98 年 10 月 )。英語搭配詞的教與學，敦煌英語教學電子雜誌， 2009。取自 http://www.cavesbooks.com.tw/e_magazine/e_magazine_article.aspx?sn=303&language1=0

Work List

• Introduction of the topic and activity– Joyce

• Introduction of the literature review– Wendy

• Data collection – Joyce & Wendy