Review of Empirical Studies on Collocation

2008 12 31 6

CELEA JournalBimonthly

Dec2008Vol31 No6

REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES ON COLLOCATIONIN THE FIELD OF SLA

Cao PeiNanjing Nor m al University

AbstractCollocationas an importantcom ponentofforeign language learners?competencehas attracted substantialattention from researchers on second language acquisition in the past 15 yearsA wide range of em pirical

studies have been conductedcovering assessment of L2 learners?knowledge of collocationsinvestigation ofthe develop mental patternsanalysis of L2 learners?collocational errorsexamination of the correlationbetween collocations and general language skills and assessment of direct collocation instructionThe presentpaper reviews previous em piricalstudies on collocation in the field of SLAat ho me and abroadand attem ptstopoint out their limitations in order to give recom mendations for further study

Key wordsreview collocational knowledgedevelopmental patterncollocational errorcollocation instruction

1Significance of Collocation in Second Language Acquisition and ResearchA collocation is a conventionalsyntagm atic association of a string oflexicalitems which cooccur in a

gram m atical construct with m utual expectancy greater than chance as realization of nonidio m aticmeaning in textsWei 2002a100Wei 2003Though this definition is not form ally agreed upon by allscholarsit covers the general features ofcollocationsas were studied by different scholars in secondlanguage acquisitionSLA

The greatimportance of collocationie recurrent cooccurrence of two or m ore wordsis welldocumented in the work of many linguistics and second language researchersAs is agreed by manyscholarscollocational knowledge is the prerequisite for the native speakers to produce naturaland fluentlanguage discourseEllis 1996Produro mou 2003and it is one of the important components of foreignlanguage learners?co mpetenceMcCarthy 1990Lewis1997claimsthatcollocations will help learnersto com m unicate more efficientlybecause they havethe ability to say more of what they want to saywith the limited language resources attheir disposalp33and his ideas are shared by many othersinrelated fields

Howeverlearning collocations is no easy job for second languages learnersWolter2006noticesthat in second language learninglearning collocational knowledge is more difficult than learninggram m atical rulesLom bard1997explains that collocations are difficult constructions for nonnativespeakers because collocations follow some constraints that are com pletely unmarked for nonnativespeakers unless they are awarep4Even advanced learners have considerable difficulties in theproduction of collocationsBahns 1993Nesselhauf 2003thus collocations do deserve a place inlanguage learning and second language research

2Brief Review of Studies on CollocationDuring the past two decadesa great num ber of studies have been conducted to grope into the

27

problem of collocation acquisition of second language learnersL2 learners Recentlywith thepopularity of corpus linguisticsthis field has witnessed quite some notable findingsPublished studies oncollocation as they pertain to learners of English tend to focus on five pointsnam elymeasuring of L2learners?knowledge of collocations in generalinvestigation of the developmental patterns of theknowledge and use of L2 collocationsanalysis of L2 learners?collocational errorsexamination of thecorrelation between collocations and general language skills and assessment of direct instruction ofcollocations for L2 learners

21 Measuring of L2 Learners?KnowledgeUse of CollocationsTo investigate L2 learners?knowledge of collocationboth receptive and productive knowledge ofcollocationresearchers have devised collocation tests to find out whether L2 learners have acquiredsufficient collocational knowledge as is expectedReceptive knowledge is tested through m ultiple choicequestionsw hile productive knowledge is tested using fillintheblankcloze and translation tasksw hichcan elicit learners?production of collocationsNorm ally in the fillintheblank tasksubjects are givenpart of a collocation and are required to supply the rest so that the com bination makes acceptablecollocation in the target languageIn the translation tasksubjects are generally asked to translatecollocations of their native language into the target languageBoth the tasks provide contexts on thesentence levelBy examining whether learners?elicited production of collocations are acceptable andvalidresearchers come to conclusions asto whether learners have acquired the target collocations or not

Bahns and Eldaw1993examined German advanced EFLstudents?productive knowledge of Englishcollocations em ploying a translation task and a fillintheblank taskThe results ofthe test revealed thatlearners?capacity of collocations does notexpand in parallel with their knowledge of generalvocabularyp108and the deficiencymay be partly due to the factthat collocations have been largely neglectedin EFLinstructionp108Based on com parison ofthe acceptable translation and sentences translatedwith English collocationsthey suggested that teachers should focus on collocations that cannotat all ornot easily be paraphrasedrather than collocations that could be paraphrasedTheir study has actuallyguided later research on collocational knowledge as one aspect ofthe depth of vocabulary knowledgeThecontrastive m ethod of co mparing the com position of collocations in learners?first language and targetlanguage is also widely adopted by later researchers in this field

Farghal and Obiedat1995selected 22 com mon collocations relating to specific topics such as foodcolorand weather to examine Jordanian ESL students?knowledge of English collocationsem ploying afillintheblank test and a translation test They found that subjects did well in tasks involvingcollocations with equivalentsin Arabic but had problems when they faced English collocations that do notexist in their native languageIn other wordsthe incongruence of the structure of collocations betweentheir native language and the target language posed a great difficulty to learnersThe researchersattributed the resultto the factthatlearners were notmade aware of collocations as a fundamental genreof m ultiword unitsbecause vocabulary was taught as single lexical items Based on learners?performance in the testthey sum marized four principlesthat were used by the subjects when they did notknow certain collocationssynonymyavoidancetransferand paraphrasing

Collocational knowledge is also measured with other forms of research designShei1999designeda questionnaire to test native speakers?as well as nonnative speakers?knowledge of some verbnouncollocationsin w hich subjects were asked to rank four alternatives of verbs in order of their relationshipwith the nouns in the stemsHe com pared the ranking orders provided by nonnative speakersnativespeakers and corpus data fro m the BNC using Zscores as indicators of the collocates?closeness to thenodesHe found thatthere was a significant difference in the knowledge of collocations between nativespeakers and nonnatives speakers Native speakers?judgments largely coincided with the corpusprocessing resultsw hile nonnative speakers manifested a different degree of proficiency in using Englishcollocations from native speakers to so me extent

As to the actual use of collocations by learnerslearner corpus wasthe m ajorsource of evidenceItisbelieved that the corpus approach has advantage for studying learner languageGranger 1998for thecollection of a corpus of learner language allows the researcher access to language in contextand

37

CELEA Journal?82

provides data that may be significantly different fro m specific elicitation tasksThe corpus analysisapproach is therefore used in order to ensure both that what is being studied is what students havethemselves chosen to produceand that the larger discourse context is retrievable

Nesselhauf2005studied the use of collocations involving verbs in a learner corpus of nativespeakers of GermanOf the slightly more than 2000 verbnoun collocations in the corpus GeCLE aquarter were found to be wronga third deviantie wrong or questionableFactors affecting theacquisition of verbnoun collocations include noncongruence of the structures between L1 and L2restriction of collocationsexposure to the targetlanguageam ong othersIt was also found thatlearnerswould use free com binations where collocations could be usedIn this studythe use of specificcollocations was also investigated in great detail to examine the acquisition of verbnoun collocationsItwas by far the m ost com prehensive one of this kind

Chinese L2 learners?knowledge of collocations was also measured by several researchers in recentyears with much the same designHuang2002is one of the first to carry out a study on Chinese learners?collocational knowledgeHe investigated both the productive and receptive knowledge of English collocations by English learners

Subjects of the study were 80 college juniors m ajoring in EnglishThey were requested to finish threetestsone is collocational com petence test co mposed of 38 m ultiple choice questionsa second iscollocation recognition test co mposed of 28 m ultiple choice questionand the other is a com prehensivecom petence testincluding listeningreading com prehension and writing He concluded that thecollocational com petence is correlated with learners?co mprehensive competenceand good L2 learnersenjoy a higherlevel of collocation co mpetenceAsto receptive knowledgeitis found thatcollocations ofstrong collocability are easier to recognize

Diao2004conducted a survey to examine English m ajors?knowledge of chunkscollocationsincludedThe subjects of the research were freshmen and seniors of English m ajorsThe survey consistsof two testsa receptive test of 30 m ultiple choices and a productive test of 20 translations from Chinesecollocations into English collocationsIt is found that collocation com petence is a good indicator oflearners?language proficiencybut their collocation com petence as a whole is far from satisfactoryLearners are liable to create free com binations in cases where collocations are preferredThe findingscoincide with that by Farghaland Obiedat?sShei?sand Nesselhauf?sindicating thatitis com m on am onglearners to produce free co m binations disregarding the collocability of valid collocations

To sum upinvestigations conducted to assess L2 learners?overall knowledge of collocations confirmthe factthat regardless of learners?native languagem ost EFLESLlearners fail to develop collocationalknowledge ofthe wordsthey haveacquiredand their collocationalcom petence leaves m uch roo m to beim proved

Whatever the research design isall the findings suggested that nonnative speakers tend to selectcollocates for a certain node on a random basisin much the same way as how theopenchoice principleoperatesin language productionw hich can be understood as aslotandfillerm odeland runs opposite totheidiom principleIn the openchoice modeleach slot opened up by a structure constitutes onechoiceand for each slotalm ost every word can occurBoth elicited production and spontaneousproduction seem to operate on the openchoice principle rather than the idio m principleand learners arelikely to come up with free com binations as synonyms to acceptable collocations

As to factors affecting the acquisition of collocationsboth intralinguistic transfer and collocabilityof collocations were found to be at work for learners of different language backgroundsThere might beother factors affecting the collocation acquisitionfor exam plethe input and output frequencyfrequency and morphological com plexity of collocation co mponentsetcbut those elements were notdealt with in previous studies on collocation acquisition

Besidesthe study by Huang and Diao indicate that there seems to be a gap between the receptiveknowledge and productive knowledgebut none the studies has addressed this problem

47

Review of Empirical Studies on Collocation in the Field of SLA Cao Pei

22 Investigation of the Developmental Pattern of L2 Learners?Knowledge of CollocationsApart fro m m erely measuring L2 learners?knowledge and use of collocations in isolationsomestudies are devoted to investigating the developmental patterns of L2 learners?knowledge or use ofcollocationsGitsaki1999is one of the few and first to address this issueShe em ployed thestructural

approachto examine the knowledge of collocations from a broader viewpointShe examined theknowledge of collocations of 275 Greek junior high school studentswho were divided into threeproficiency levelsie postbeginnerintermediateand postintermediateThe subjects were asked tofinish three tasksan essay writing task for eliciting freeproduction dataa translation taskand a blankfilling task for eliciting the use of collocationsShe found that L2 learners?knowledge of collocationsdeveloped with their overalllanguage proficiencyThe postbeginners used m ore lexical collocationsthangram m atical collocationsand intermediate learners had a better acquisition of gram m atical collocationsw hile postintermediate learners show considerable progress in both gram m atical and lexical collocationsShe concluded that sim ple gram m atical collocations were acquired firstlexical collocations were thenextand the com plex gram m atical collocations were the lasttype acquired by L2 learnersIn view of herfindingsGitsaki contended thatitis necessary to help L2 learnersim prove their collocational knowledgeand become aware of collocationsWhen it com es to the teaching of collocationsshe suggested that itisim perative to help them develop strategiesto learn collocationsin line with the sequence ofthe acquisitionof collocational typesHer study holds much sway in the field of studies on collocation in that it wasindeed the first one to come up with an acquisition order of collocations in L2 learnersand her findingsare frequently quoted in later researchersHsu 2002Sun Chen 2006etc

Bonk2000investigated the relationship between collocational knowledge and language proficiencyin order to design valid tests on collocationThe results revealed that collocational knowledge increaseswith proficiency and even learners atlowintermediate levels of general proficiency in Englishaccordingto their TOEFL scoreshave developed some productive knowledge of target collocationsIt wassuggested that such knowledge might be acquired naturalisticallybecause classroom teaching norm ally didnot focus on collocationsp33The collocation test devised in the study was later adapted by otherresearchers to measure L2 learners?collocational knowledgefor exam ple Smith2005in w hichcorrelation of scores of the collocation test and length of residence in the USA was examined

With the Chinese studentsZhang and Chen2006conducted a crosssectional study to investigatethree groups of EFL learners?receptive and productive knowledge of adjectivenoun collocationsTwotypes of tests are done by the three groups of subjectsGrade 3 high school studentssopho moresm ajoring in Englishand graduate students m ajoring in Applied LinguisticsThey are required to givejudgments for the 66 collocations in the receptive knowledge tests and translate 48 collocations intoEnglish in the productive testIt was found that learners?acquisition of collocations expands with theyears of learningbut still even the high levellearners failto com mand a good m astery of adjectivenouncollocationsbut in general the subjects do not have a good com mand of English adjectivenouncollocationsMeanwhilegap exists between and within different groups of subjects in their receptiveknowledge and productive knowledgew hile the transformation from receptive knowledge into productiveskills appears to be a slow and gradual processThe study is innovative in that the adjectivenouncollocations are divided into three categories according to the collocabilitynam elycollocationscom posed of polysem oussynonymous and deverbal participial adjectivesThe categorization based oncollocability is indeed enlightening for the investigation of other types of collocationsFurther researchcan be conducted to find out whether collocability affects the acquisition of other types of collocationsand to what extent

Developmental pattern of the use of collocations has recently attracted m uch attention in ChinaValuable findings have been revealed from these studies with a co mputerassisted approach using the datafro m the CLECChinese Learner English CorpusGuiYang2003It is revealed that for Englishlearners of different proficiency levelstheir ability of appropriate use of collocations is far fro mdesirablebut differences exist between students of different levels

57

CELEA Journal?82

Zhang2002approached this problem on the basis of CLEC and a com parison with the nativespeakers?corpusthe LOCNESSShe analyzed learners?use of collocations involving the highfrequencyverb make in the writing in TEM4 and TEM8She concluded from her data that secondyear Englishm ajors showed no significant difference in the frequency of collocationsinvolving makew hile the seniorEnglish m ajors underuse collocationsinvolving makeAsfar asthe specific uses are concerneditis foundthatthere was a significant difference between Chinese students and native speakersBesidesseniors arefound to misuse the causative and delexical uses of make than sophomoresUnlike the studies usingcollocation teststhe study defined collocation in a broad sensethatisany co m bination of two or m orewordsrather than com binations with a certain degree of constraint

Tan2006also conducted a crosssectional study to explore the develop mental pattern ofthe use ofcollocations of highfrequency words among English m ajorsShe collected the essays of a total of 157students from different academic yearsin a sem esterand examined the use of collocations ofthe 8 highfrequency words in the essays with the help of com putersOnly com binations that could be checked incollocation dictionaries are counted as collocationsFro m the quantitative datashe found that there is asignificant growth of collocational performance between fresh men and sophom oresand betweensophomores and juniorsbut seniors show little development from juniorsBesidesTan contented thatstudents?use of collocations was greatly influenced by their L1 useIn measuring students?collocationcom petencethe researcher distinguished the tokens and types of collocations used in one textso thatthefrequent repetition of one collocation would not produce extreme results But the problem is theresearcher did not state clearly how collocation com petence was measured quantitativelythough SPSSresults were provided

Sun and Chen2006studied the use of collocations involving nouns through the writing of learnersof different proficiency levels in the CLEC corpusThe three groups are high school studentsnonEnglish m ajors in collegesand English m ajors in collegesThey found that students with the increase oftheir English proficiencylearners use m ore gram m atical collocationsbut the use of noun collocationsdoes not show consistentimprovementwith different types of noun colligation developing in a differentpatternThey claimed that learners?develop ment of the use of noun colligation is modeled by the threestage scheme of language learning proposed by Skehan199880lexicalizationgram m aticalizaitonrelexicalizationThe study uncovers the same finding as Gitsaki1999as learners?overall languageproficiency developsthey are inclined to use more co m plex construction in their writingBut this studyshares the same problem with Zhang?sthat isthe researcher did not take into consideration whetherstudents use the colligation correctlyIn factproducing inappropriate co m binations of words is noindication of students?collocational competence

Wang and Chen2007addressed the collocation of intensifiers based on writings of students fro mjunior high schoolsnonEnglish m ajors in universitiesand English m ajors in universitiesTheir foundthree develop mental patterns1the more proficient learners arethe more collocations of intensifiersthey use2students from high schools overuse collocations involving soveryand very m uchandwhen collocations of these words are counted outlearners use m ore collocations of intensifiersboth intype and number3significant development in collocational use is only between English m ajors and theother groupsw hile nonEnglish m ajors in universities do not show much differenceIt was also foundthat for learners of different native languagetheir use of collocations involving intensifiers share somecom mon points in terms of semantic selectionBut the difference in use was not investigated in detailBesidesthe researcher did not distinguish between collocations com posed of verbs and adjectivesboth ofwhich could be m odified by intensifiers in collocations

The studies mentioned above are all basically databasedIt was done by examining the concordancelines and making sum maries and generalizations based on the concordanceSyntagm atic relations of thecollocation co mponents are taken into consideration in the databased m ethodWei 2002bw hile thedatadriven m ethod in studying collocations was not usually adopted in SLA

These studies have shed m uch light on Chinese L2 learners?develop mental patterns of collocationacquisitionHoweverthere are questions left unaddressedsuch as the acquisition order of differenttypes of collocations Gitsaki1999has uncovered the acquisition order ofsim ple gram m atical

67


collocation lexical collocation com plex gram m atical collocationbut doesthe syntactic com positionof lexical collocations affect their order of acquisitionIn other wordsdo students show differentpatterns in acquiring verbnoun collocationsadjectivecollocationsnounnoun collocationsand othertype of collocationsOr do semantic dom ains ofthe collocation com ponents affectthe acquisition order ofcollocations

Concerning verbnoun collocations w hich are frequently focused in previous studiesm ost wereexamining m erely collocationsinvolving highfrequency wordsw hichin factdo not accountfor a largeproportion in learners?writing productionThe use and development of collocations involving verbs of arelatively low frequency also need investigating

Besidesno authentic longitudinal study has been conducted in this respectfor m ost of the studiescollected data from different learners of different stagesrather than following the development of thesame group of learnersThough it might be timeconsuming and painstaking to design and carry outlongitudinal studiesthe findings would be wellworth the efforts and could improve the learning andteaching of collocations

23 Analysis of L2 Learners?Collocational ErrorsUnlike the abovementioned studies w hich focused on determining the subjects?general collocationalknowledge in a certain stage or developmental patternsin acquiring or using collocationssome studies aresolely dedicated to investigatingthe collocational errors com mitted by L2 learnersor finding explanationsfor the errors learners com mitted in their writing or collocation test

Lo mbard1997classified collocational errors in 52 sam ples written in English by 8 Taiwanesegraduate MBA students at the University of Texas into four types ofidiosyncrasiesincluding lexicaltransferphonological similaritygram m atical irregularityand semantic choiceMore than half of the587 errors collected by Lo mbard were the type of semantic choicefollowed by gram m aticalirregularityphonologicalsimilarityand lexicaltransferGram maticalinfluence consisted ofthree typesword form preposition choice and genitive structuresLexical transfer errors were attributed to two sourcesadirect lexical translationblexical overgeneralization because of a mismatch between English andMandarinp150Lo mbard concluded that in order to acquire adequate competence of collocationlearners should be made aware of the difference between their native language and the target language

Altenberg and Granger2001co mpared the gram m atical and lexical patterning ofthe verb makeinnative and nonnative student writing using com puterized corporathe International Corpus of LearnerEnglishICLEand Louvain Corpus of Native English EssaysLOCNESSIt was found out that thetypical collocations of the verb makethat isthe delexical and causative usespose so me difficulty toEFLlearnersnam ely Swedish and French speaking learners even at an advanced levelThey not onlyunderuse delexical structuresthey also misuse themAs to the causative uses of makeit was found thatSwedish learners show a significant overuse of adjective and verb structurew hile the Frenchspeakinglearners reveal a consistent underuse of causative makeespecially noun and adjective structuresFro mthe resultsit was dem onstrated thatso me ofthe problems were shared by both two groupsw hile otherscorrelate to the learners?first languagethat isboth interlingual and intralingual transfer play a part inlearners?collocational errors

Nesselhauf2003analyzed the use of verbnoun collocations by advanced German speaking learnersof English in free written productionHe identified the types of mistakes that the learners make whenproducing collocations and investigated the influence of the degree of restriction of a com bination and ofthe learners?native language on the production of collocationsIt was found outthat w hile the degree ofrestriction em erges to have so mebut com paratively littleim pact on the difficulty of co m binations forthe learnersthe learners?native language turned out to have a greater degree of influenceTypes ofmistakes that were probably influenced by the learners?native language were verb mistakesnounmistakesusage mistakespreposition mistakesand article mistakes

In Chinawith the construction of CLECChinese Learner English Corpusa considerable am ountof studies have been conducted to investigate Chinese EFLlearners?collocational errors in their writing

77

CELEA Journal?82

and fruitful findings have been identifiedPu 2003Zhang Li 2004Sun 2004Miu Sun 2005Deng2005Wang Zhang 2007etc

To sum marize the findingsLi2004listed the reasons for collocational errors in COLEC andregarded those as strategies that learners actively adopt in the case of difficultyLargely four types ofstrategies are believed to be frequently adopted1transferboth interlingual transfer and intralingualtransfer2repetition3substitution4productivityLi suggested that isolated and decontextulizedpresentation of collocations might make incorrect language inputwith w hich learners are likely to makefalse assum ptionsand rely too much on translation of equivalents

With access to learner corporaL2 learners?collocational errors can be examined in particularcontextsThough much has been known aboutthe errors that students made in their writingthere lacksconvincing explanation for learners?inadequacy in their use of collocationsItisim perative thatthisissuedraws more insights from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and neurocognitive linguisticsforexam plehow is collocation stored in learners?longterm mem oryhow is collocation processedcognitivelyetc

Another problem concernsthe validity ofthe studies conducted by nonnative speakersCollocationalerrors in learner corpora were m ainly annotated manually by nonnative speakersIt is true that thosewho did the annotation work had managed to acquire certain degree of proficiency of Englishstill doubtscould not be totally dispelled concerning the accuracy of the identification of collocational errorsForinstancein a review of CLELWang 2003the collocationa good fortuneis listed as an exam ple ofcollocational errorw hich in fact dem onstrates an MIvalue1 of 153 in BNCNational Bank of Englishand islisted in Oxford Collocations DictionaryAlthough cases ofthis kind are rarethe corpus analysisisnot exem pt from mistakes

In additionfew of the previous studies focused on the misused collocationsthat iscollocationswhich are acceptable in isolation in terms of semantics and gram marbut are used in inappropriatecontextsWith the availability of learner corpora and with the aid of com putersthis problem shall beapproached with more detailed mechanism for the annotation of collocational errorsso that the use ofcollocations can be examined in a larger contextwith consideration given to other elementssuch asregisterThough timeconsumingthe findings will enable us to know better aboutlearners?acquisition ofcollocations24 Examination of Correlation between Collocations and General Language Proficiency

Since written contexts necessarily require m ore precision in wording than spoken contextslearnersof English who are seeking to achieve nearnativeness m ust be able to produce in written form collocationsthat are appropriate and accurateThereforethe correct use of collocations accounts much for L2learners?writingand several researchers have investigated the use of collocationsin L2 learners?writingand identified the correlation between L2 learners?collocational knowledge and their writing proficiency

Zhang?s study1993was one of first on this topic and later studies generally followed the researchdesignZhang tested 6030 native and 30 nonnativespeakers of English by using a blankfillingcollocation test and a writing testThe collocation test measured students?collocational knowledge w hilethe writing task collected their use of collocations and writing fluencyHe com pared the correlationbetween his subjects?knowledge of collocations and their writing qualityand the application ofcollocations in the subjects?essays and writing qualityHe found thatcollocational knowledge is a sourceof fluency in written com munication am ong college freshmenand thatquantityie the num ber ofcollocations found in the subjects?writing sam plesbut more im portantlyqualityie variety andaccuracy of collocations used in the writingof collocational use distinguish between Good and Poorcollege freshmen writing as well as between native and nonnative college fresh men writingIn factZhang set off a trend in collocation studies in w hich the correlations between the EFL students?knowledge of collocationsuse of collocationsand English writing fluency were examined

AlZahrani1998carried out a study to investigate the differences in the knowledge of Englishlexical collocations among four academic levels of Saudi EFL students and the relationship between the

87


knowledge of lexical collocations and these participants?general language proficiency The test ofcollocations involved 50 verbnoun com binations with the verb missing but the first letter or phonemegivenThe participants?general English proficiency was elicited by co m pleting a writing test and aTOEFL exam AlZahrani found that there were significant differences in students?knowledge ofcollocations in the co mparison between the fresh men and sophom ores and the com parison between thejuniors and seniorsw hile there was a slight difference between the sophomores and juniorsIn additionthere was a strong relationship between the participants?knowledge of collocations and their overalllanguage proficiencyAlZahrani also pointed out that students?knowledge of collocations was a goodpredicator for their scores in the writing test

Hsu2002did a research on the development of collocational proficiency in a workshop on Englishfor General Business Purposes for Taiwanese college studentsBased on the data he collected fro mstudents?writinghe concluded that there was a positive connection between the students?use of lexicalcollocations and their proficiencythough there are several factorsthat affected the learnability oflexicalcollocationssuch as classroom instructionextra learning experienceleaner needsfrequency ofcollocation com ponentsL1L2 differencedegree of idiom aticity morphological com plexity ofcollocation co mponents

In a later study by Hsu2007he investigated the use of English lexical collocations and theirrelation to the online writing of Taiwanese college English m ajor and nonEnglish m ajorsThe webbasedwriting program Criterion Version 70 was used to administer the online writing testand to score thewritings produced by studentsHe found that there was a significant correlation between L2 learners?frequency of lexical collocations and their online writing scoresand between learners?variety of lexicalcollocations and their scores It was also shown that verbnoun collocations and adjectivenouncollocations are easier to acquire than other subtypes

In m ainland ChinaLu2006studied the correlation between L2 learners?use oflexical collocationsand their writing proficiencyTheir subjects were nonEnglish m ajors and the writings were collectedfro m the College English TestCETBand 4It was found that the frequency of collocations correlatessignificantly with the writing scoreand that students of different proficiency level demonstrated greatdifference in their use of collocations

Ding and Qi2007examined the correlation between the com petence of collocationform ulaicsequenceand speaking and writingThey analyzed 70 secondyear English m ajors?speaking in the TEM4 examination and 22 fouryear students?writingconcentrating on the use of chunks in their productionTotal and correct uses of collocations in both forms of production are countedand it is made clear thatlearners?collocations can better predict their language com petence than gram m atical knowledgeTheysuggest that a better awareness of chunks contributes greatly their language productionand that teachersshould help to raise learners?awareness of the collocational knowledge

Though all the studies are primarily databasedthey do not share the same measurement ofcollocationsSome studies involve both tokens and types of collocationseg Zhang 1993Hsu 2002Hsu 2007w hile others use frequencyietokensasthe only measurementeg AlZahrani1998Lu2006Ding Qi 20007According to Zhang and Hsu?s findingsit is advisable for researchers todistinguish tokens from typesfor the two variables might lead to distinct findings

Allin alldespite the differences in measurement of collocational knowledge and usethose studiescome to the consensus that learners?knowledge and use of collocations both correlate with the generallanguage proficiencyeither writing or speakingThusit can be said that collocational knowledge isindicative of learners? productive skills Howeverno study has explored the question whethercollocational knowledge can predict learners?reading and listening abilitiesw hich might be an area ofinterest for future researchers25 Assessment of Direct Collocation Instruction for L2 Learners

As is substantiated by the previousstudiesL2 learners can be seriously incom petentin the knowledgeand use of collocationsThereforeit poses challengesfor teachersto develop better teaching m ethodsfor

97

CELEA Journal?82

collocation instructionHoweverthere are few published articles illustrating how to carry out effectivecollocation instruction in classroom settingYetthe issue did draw the attention of some researchers

In the abovementioned study by Hsu2002he did an experiment to investigate whether theteaching of lexical collocations in a business English workshop would enhance Taiwanese college EFLlearners?development of language proficiency and collocational proficiencyIn classroom instructionhehighlighted the target collocations and made students aware ofthemThe findings dem onstrated thatthedirect emphasis on lexical collocations have assisted the students to acquire new collocationsin the writtenand spoken discourseand helped them use previously acquired collocations in new and creative ways

In a later studyHsu2008 studied the effects of collocation instruction on the readingcom prehension and vocabulary learning of Taiwanese College English m ajors at three academic levelsThe experimental group received lexical collocation instructionw hile the two control groups receivedsingleitem vocabulary instruction and no instruction respectivelyThe quantitative data indicate thatdirect lexical collocation instruction im proves the learners?vocabulary learning at all academic levels

Liu2008also conducted a study to examine the effects of verbnoun collocation instructionusingonline corporaSubjects of her study are sophomore nonEnglish m ajors in a university in Wuhanandthey were divided into three groupsOne group attended classes with the aid of online concordancer tosum marize the frequently occurred verbs that collocated with the key nounsA second group receivedcollocation instruction with the paper worksheet prepared by the teacherand a third group of learnerswere given traditional deductive teachingFindings of the study show that concordancebased collocationinstruction is more beneficial than the traditional deductive lecturing and that collocations are optim allylearned from m ultiple contextsThusthe researcher proposed the use of concordancebased worksheetsin collocation instruction

Since there are few studies of this kindit is difficult to validate the effects of various m ethods ofcollocation instructionAnywaythe wide range of learner errors in their use of collocations calls form ore effective instruction on collocationsand larger sam ple groups are needed to determine whethertheproposed m ethods are optim al

3Conclusion and Recom mendations for Further StudiesWith the bulk of literature on collocations home and abroadit is now fairly clear that collocations

have begun to receive substantial attentionThough studies on collocations have been carried out in thepast two decades and fruitfulfindings have been revealedlearners?collocationalcompetence still calls form ore devotion

Firstlylongitudinalstudies on learners?knowledge and use of collocations are to be conducted to gaina better understanding of the develop mental patterns of collocationsSecondlythe acquisition order of different types of collocations needs to be addressed based on a

longitudinal study

Thirdlyapart fro m the collocational errors stem ming from semantic or gram m atical problemsthosemisused collocations are also to be studied in the specific contexts with the use of learner corpus

Fourthlybetter m ethods for the teaching of collocations are to be brought forward with persuasiveevidence of positive effects

Allin allcollocationslie atthe center of second language acquisition as well as EFLESLeducationIt requires considerable effort from researchers in linguisticsapplied linguisticsand com putationallinguisticscorpus linguisticsand classroom teachers

Note1MIvalue of collocations can be checked httpcorpusbyuedubnc

ReferencesAlternbergBSGranger2001The gram matical and lexical patterning of MAKE in native and non

08


native student writingApplied Linguistics 222173194AlZahraniMS1998Knowledge of English lexical collocations among make Saudi college students

majoring in English at a Saudi universityUnpublished doctoral dissertationIndiana University ofPennsylvaniaPennsylvania

BahnsJ1993Lexical collocationsA contrastive viewELTJournal 4715663BahnsJMEldaw1993Should we teach EFLstudents collocationsPaper given at 9th World Congress

of Applied Linguistics ThessalonikiBonkWJ2000 Testing ESL Learners?Knowledge of CollocationsERIC Docu ment Reproduction ServiceNoED 442309EllisNC1996Sequencing in SLA Phonological memorychunkingand points of order Studies in

Second Language Acquisition 1891126FarghalMHObiedat1995CollocationsA neglected variable in EFLIRAL33315317GitsakiC1999Second Language Lexical AcquisitionA Study of the Development of Collocational Knowledge

San FranciscoInternational Scholars PublicationsGrangerSed1998Learner English on ComputerLondon New YorkAddison Wesley LongmanHsuJengyih2002Development of collocational proficiency in a workshop on English for general business

purposes for Taiwanese college students Unpublished doctoral dissertationIndiana University ofPennsylvaniaPennsylvania

HsuJengyih2007Lexicalcollocationsand their relation to the online writing of Taiwanese college EnglishmajorsElectronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 42192209

HsuJengyih Tim2008The effect of collocation instruction on the reading com prehension and vocabularylearning of Taiwanese college English majorsPaper presented at PacSLRF 2008 The 3rd NationalSy mposiu m on SLA Beijing

LewisM1997Implementing the Lexical ApproachPutting Theoriesinto PracticeLondonLanguage TeachingPublications

LiuShan2008The effect of using concordance on verbnoun collocation learningAn empirical studyPaper presented at PacSLRF2008 The 3rd National Sy mposiu m on SLA Beijing

Lom bardRJ1997Nonnative speaker collocationsA corpusdriven characterization from the writing ofnative speakers of MandarinUnpublished doctoral dissertationUniversity of Texas at ArlingtonTexas

McCarthyM1990VocabularyOxfordOxford University PressNesselhaufN2003The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and some implications for

teachingApplied Linguistics 242223242NesselhaufN2005 Collocations in a Learner Corpus Studies in Corpus Linguistics 14PhiladelphiaJohn

Benjamins Publishing CompanyProduromouI2003Idiomaticity and the nonnative speakerEnglish Today 1924248SheiChichiang1999A brief survey of English verbnoun collocationhttpw w wdaieduacuk

homessheisurveyhtmlSinclairJ M1999 CorpusConcordanceCollocationShanghaiShanghai Foreign Language Education

PressSkehanP1998A Cognitive Approach to Language LearningOxfordOxford University PressSmithC2005The Lexical ApproachCollocation in High School English Language LearnersOregonGeorge

Fox UniversityWolterB2006Lexical netw ork structures and L2 vocabulary acquisitionThe role of L1 lexicalconceptual

knowledgeApplied Linguistics 274741747ZhangX1993English collocations and their effect on the writing of native and nonnative college

fresh menUnpublished doctoral dissertationIndiana University of PennsylvaniaPennsylvania20071 20044 20053 200320023 2004COLEC

3 Continued on p19

18

CELEA Journal?82

Documents

Review of Empirical Studies on Collocation