Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
31 6
Dec2008
Vol
31 No
6
Abstract
Collocation as an im portant co m ponent of foreign language learners co m petence has attracted substantial
attention fro m researchers on second language acquisition in the past 15 years A wide range of e m pirical
studies have been conducted covering assessment of L2 learners kno wledge of collocations
investigation of
the develop mental patterns analysis of L2 learners collocational errors examination of the correlation
between collocations and general language skills and assessment of direct collocation instructionThe present
paper reviews previous e m piricalstudies on collocation in the field of SLAat ho me and abroad
and atte m ptsto
point out their limitations in order to give reco m mendations for further study
Key w ords
review
collocational kno wledge develop mental pattern
collocational error
collocation instruction
CELEA Journal 82
2
1 Measuring of L2 Learners KnowledgeUse of Collocations
To investigate L2 learners knowledge of collocation both receptive and productive knowledge of
collocation researchers have devised collocation tests to find out w hether L2 learners have acquired
sufficient collocational knowledge as is expectedReceptive knowledge is tested through m ultiple choice
questions w hile productive knowledge is tested using fill
in
the
blank
cloze and translation tasks w hich
can elicit learners production of collocations Norm ally in the fill
in
the
blank task subjects are given
part of a collocation and are required to supply the rest so that the co m bination m akes acceptable
collocation in the target languageIn the translation task subjects are generally asked to translate
collocations of their native language into the target language Both the tasks provide contexts on the
sentence level By exa mining w hether learners elicited production of collocations are acceptable and
valid
researchers co m e to conclusions as to w hether learners have acquired the target collocations or not
Bahns and Eldaw 1993exa mined Germ an advanced EFLstudents productive knowledge of English
collocations e m ploying a translation task and a fill
in
the
blank taskThe results of the test revealed that
learners capacity of collocations does notexpand in parallel with their knowledge of general vocabulary
p108and the deficiencym ay be partly due to the fact that collocations have been largely neglected
in EFLinstruction
p108Based on co m parison of the acceptable translation and sentences translated
with English collocations
they suggested that teachers should focus on collocations that cannotat all or
not easily be paraphrased
rather than collocations that could be paraphrasedTheir study has actually
guided later research on collocational knowledge as one aspect of the depth of vocabulary knowledgeThe
contrastive m ethod of co m paring the co m position of collocations in learners first language and target
language is also widely adopted by later researchers in this field
Farghal and Obiedat1995selected 22 co m m on collocations relating to specific topics such as food
color and weather to exa mine Jordanian ESL students knowledge of English collocations e m ploying a
fill
in
the
blank test and a translation test They found that subjects did well in tasks involving
collocations with equivalents in Arabic but had proble ms w hen they faced English collocations that do not
exist in their native languageIn other w ords
the incongruence of the structure of collocations between
their native language and the target language posed a great difficulty to learners The researchers
attributed the resultto the factthatlearners were not m ade aware of collocations as a funda m ental genre
of m ulti
w ord units because vocabulary was taught as single lexical ite ms Based on learners
perform ance in the test
they su m m arized four principles that were used by the subjects w hen they did not
know certain collocations
synony m y avoidance
transfer and paraphrasing
Collocational knowledge is also m easured with other forms of research designShei1999designed
a questionnaire to test native speakers as well as non
native speakers knowledge of so m e verb
noun
collocations
in w hich subjects were asked to rank four alternatives of verbs in order of their relationship
with the nouns in the ste ms He co m pared the ranking orders provided by non
native speakers native
speakers and corpus data fro m the BNC using Z
scores as indicators of the collocates closeness to the
nodesHe found that there was a significant difference in the knowledge of collocations between native
speakers and non
natives speakers Native speakers judg m ents largely coincided with the corpus
processing results w hile non
native speakers m anifested a different degree of proficiency in using English
collocations fro m native speakers to so m e extent
As to the actual use of collocations by learners
learner corpus was the m ajor source of evidenceItis
believed that the corpus approach has advantage for studying learner languageGranger 1998for the
collection of a corpus of learner language allows the researcher access to language in context and
73
provides data that m ay be significantly different fro m specific elicitation tasks The corpus analysis
approach is therefore used in order to ensure both that w hat is being studied is w hat students have
the mselves chosen to produce and that the larger discourse context is retrievable
Nesselhauf2005 studied the use of collocations involving verbs in a learner corpus of native
speakers of Germ an Of the slightly m ore than 2
000 verb
noun collocations in the corpus GeCLE a
quarter were found to be wrong a third devianti
e wrong or questionable Factors affecting the
acquisition of verb
noun collocations include non
congruence of the structures between L1 and L2
restriction of collocations
exposure to the targetlanguage
a m ong othersIt was also found thatlearners
w ould use free co m binations w here collocations could be used In this study the use of specific
collocations was also investigated in great detail to exa mine the acquisition of verb
noun collocationsIt
was by far the m ost co m prehensive one of this kind
Chinese L2 learners knowledge of collocations was also m easured by several researchers in recent
years with m uch the sa m e design
Huang2002is one of the first to carry out a study on Chinese learners collocational knowledge
He investigated both the productive and receptive knowledge of English collocations by English learners
Subjects of the study were 80 college juniors m ajoring in English They were requested to finish three
tests one is collocational co m petence test co m posed of 38 m ultiple choice questions a second is
collocation recognition test co m posed of 28 m ultiple choice question and the other is a co m prehensive
co m petence test including listening reading co m prehension and writing He concluded that the
collocational co m petence is correlated with learners co m prehensive co m petence and good L2 learners
enjoy a higher level of collocation co m petenceAs to receptive knowledge
itis found that collocations of
strong collocability are easier to recognize
Diao 2004 conducted a survey to exa mine English m ajors knowledge of chunks collocations
includedThe subjects of the research were fresh m en and seniors of English m ajorsThe survey consists
of tw o tests a receptive test of 30 m ultiple choices and a productive test of 20 translations fro m Chinese
collocations into English collocationsIt is found that collocation co m petence is a good indicator of
learners language proficiency but their collocation co m petence as a w hole is far fro m satisfactory
Learners are liable to create free co m binations in cases w here collocations are preferred The findings
coincide with that by Farghal and Obiedat s
Shei s
and Nesselhauf s
indicating thatitis co m m on a m ong
learners to produce free co m binations disregarding the collocability of valid collocations
To su m up
investigations conducted to assess L2 learners overall knowledge of collocations confirm
the fact that regardless of learners native language m ost EFL ESLlearners fail to develop collocational
knowledge of the w ords they haveacquired
and their collocational co m petence leaves m uch roo m to be
im proved
Whatever the research design is all the findings suggested that non
native speakers tend to select
collocates for a certain node on a rando m basis
in m uch the sa m e way as how theopen
choice principle
operatesin language production w hich can be understood as aslot
and
fillerm odel and runs opposite to
theidio m principle
choice m odel each slot opened up by a structure constitutes one
In the open
choice and for each slot alm ost every w ord can occur Both elicited production and spontaneous
production see m to operate on the open
choice principle rather than the idio m principle
and learners are
likely to co m e up with free co m binations as synony ms to acceptable collocations
As to factors affecting the acquisition of collocations both intra
linguistic transfer and collocability
of collocations were found to be at w ork for learners of different language backgroundsThere might be
other factors affecting the collocation acquisition for exa m ple the input and output frequency
frequency and m orphological co m plexity of collocation co m ponents etcbut those ele m ents were not
dealt with in previous studies on collocation acquisition
Besides
the study by Huang and Diao indicate that there see ms to be a gap between the receptive
knowledge and productive knowledge but none the studies has addressed this proble m
74
CELEA Journal 82
2
2 Investigation of the Develop mental Pattern of L2 Learners Knowledge of Collocations
Apart fro m m erely m easuring L2 learners knowledge and use of collocations in isolation so m e
studies are devoted to investigating the develop m ental patterns of L2 learners knowledge or use of
collocations
Gitsaki1999 is one of the few and first to address this issue She e m ployed the structural
approachto exa mine the knowledge of collocations fro m a broader view point She exa mined the
knowledge of collocations of 275 Greek junior high school students w ho were divided into three
proficiency levels
i e post
beginner
interm ediate and post
interm ediateThe subjects were asked to
Zhang 2002 approached this proble m on the basis of CLEC and a co m parison with the native
speakers corpus
the LOCNESSShe analyzed learners use of collocations involving the high
frequency
verb m ake in the writing in TEM
4 and TEM
8She concluded fro m her data that second
year English
m ajors showed no significant difference in the frequency of collocationsinvolving m ake w hile the senior
English m ajors underuse collocationsinvolving m akeAs far as the specific uses are concerned
itis found
that there was a significant difference between Chinese students and native speakersBesides
seniors are
found to misuse the causative and delexical uses of m ake than sopho m ores Unlike the studies using
collocation tests
the study defined collocation in a broad sense
that is
any co m bination of tw o or m ore
w ords
rather than co m binations with a certain degree of constraint
Tan2006also conducted a cross
sectional study to explore the develop m ental pattern of the use of
collocations of high
frequency w ords a m ong English m ajorsShe collected the essays of a total of 157
students fro m different acade mic years in a se m ester and exa mined the use of collocations of the 8 high
frequency w ords in the essays with the help of co m puters Only co m binations that could be checked in
collocation dictionaries are counted as collocationsFro m the quantitative data
she found that there is a
significant growth of collocational perform ance between fresh m en and sopho m ores and between
sopho m ores and juniors but seniors show little develop m ent fro m juniorsBesides Tan contented that
students use of collocations was greatly influenced by their L1 useIn m easuring students collocation
co m petence
the researcher distinguished the tokens and types of collocations used in one text
so thatthe
frequent repetition of one collocation w ould not produce extre m e results But the proble m is the
researcher did not state clearly how collocation co m petence was m easured quantitatively though SPSS
results were provided
Sun and Chen2006studied the use of collocations involving nouns through the writing of learners
of different proficiency levels in the CLEC corpus The three groups are high school students non
English m ajors in colleges and English m ajors in collegesThey found that students with the increase of
their English proficiency learners use m ore gra m m atical collocations but the use of noun collocations
does not show consistent im prove m ent with different types of noun colligation developing in a different
patternThey claim ed that learners develop m ent of the use of noun colligation is m odeled by the three
stage sche m e of language learning proposed by Skehan 1998 80 lexicalization
gra m m aticalizaiton
relexicalizationThe study uncovers the sa m e finding as Gitsaki1999 as learners overall language
proficiency develops
they are inclined to use m ore co m plex construction in their writingBut this study
shares the sa m e proble m with Zhang s that is the researcher did not take into consideration w hether
students use the colligation correctlyIn fact producing inappropriate co m binations of w ords is no
indication of students collocational co m petence
Wang and Chen2007 addressed the collocation of intensifiers based on writings of students fro m
junior high schools non
English m ajors in universities and English m ajors in universitiesTheir found
three develop m ental patterns
1 the m ore proficient learners are the m ore collocations of intensifiers
they use 2 students fro m high schools overuse collocations involving so very and very m uch and
w hen collocations of these w ords are counted out
learners use m ore collocations of intensifiers both in
type and nu m ber 3significant develop m ent in collocational use is only between English m ajors and the
other groups w hile non
English m ajors in universities do not show m uch differenceIt was also found
that for learners of different native language
their use of collocations involving intensifiers share so m e
co m m on points in terms of se m antic selectionBut the difference in use was not investigated in detail
Besides
the researcher did not distinguish between collocations co m posed of verbs and adjectives
both of
w hich could be m odified by intensifiers in collocations
The studies m entioned above are all basically data
basedIt was done by exa mining the concordance
lines and m aking su m m aries and generalizations based on the concordanceSyntag m atic relations of the
collocation co m ponents are taken into consideration in the data
based m ethod Wei 2002bw hile the
data
driven m ethod in studying collocations was not usually adopted in SLA
These studies have shed m uch light on Chinese L2 learners develop m ental patterns of collocation
acquisitionHowever there are questions left unaddressed such as the acquisition order of different
types of collocations Gitsaki 1999 has uncovered the acquisition order of sim ple gra m m atical
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CELEA Journal 82
2
3 Analysis of L2 Learners Collocational Errors
Unlike the abovem entioned studies w hich focused on determining the subjects general collocational
knowledge in a certain stage or develop m ental patternsin acquiring or using collocations
so m e studies are
solely dedicated to investigating the collocational errors co m mitted by L2 learners
or finding explanations
for the errors learners co m mitted in their writing or collocation test
Lo m bard1997 classified collocational errors in 52 sa m ples written in English by 8 Taiwanese
graduate MBA students at the University of Texas into four types ofidiosyncrasiesincluding lexical
transfer phonological similarity gra m m atical irregularity and se m antic choice More than half of the
587 errors collected by Lo m bard were the type of se m antic choice
followed by gra m m aticalirregularity
phonologicalsimilarity
and lexicaltransferGra m m aticalinfluence consisted of three types w ord form
preposition choice and genitive structures Lexical transfer errors were attributed to tw o sources a
direct lexical translation b lexical overgeneralization because of a mism atch between English and
Mandarinp150
Lo m bard concluded that in order to acquire adequate co m petence of collocation
learners should be m ade aware of the difference between their native language and the target language
Altenberg and Granger2001co m pared the gra m m atical and lexical patterning of the verb m ake in
native and non
native student writing using co m puterized corpora the International Corpus of Learner
English ICLE and Louvain Corpus of Native English EssaysLOCNESS
It was found out that the
typical collocations of the verb m ake that is the delexical and causative uses pose so m e difficulty to
EFLlearners na m ely Swedish and French speaking learners even at an advanced levelThey not only
underuse delexical structures
they also misuse the m As to the causative uses of m ake
it was found that
Swedish learners show a significant overuse of adjective and verb structure w hile the French
speaking
learners reveal a consistent underuse of causative m ake especially noun and adjective structuresFro m
the results
it was de m onstrated that so m e of the proble ms were shared by both tw o groups w hile others
correlate to the learners first language
that is both interlingual and intralingual transfer play a part in
learners collocational errors
Nesselhauf2003analyzed the use of verb
noun collocations by advanced Germ an speaking learners
of English in free written production He identified the types of mistakes that the learners m ake w hen
producing collocations and investigated the influence of the degree of restriction of a co m bination and of
the learners native language on the production of collocationsIt was found out that w hile the degree of
restriction e m erges to have so m e but co m paratively little
im pact on the difficulty of co m binations for
the learners
the learners native language turned out to have a greater degree of influence Types of
mistakes that were probably influenced by the learners native language were verb mistakes noun
mistakes usage mistakes preposition mistakes and article mistakes
In China with the construction of CLEC Chinese Learner English Corpus
a considerable a m ount
of studies have been conducted to investigate Chinese EFLlearners collocational errors in their writing
77
and fruitful findings have been identifiedPu 2003 Zhang Li 2004 Sun 2004 Miu Sun 2005 Deng
2005 Wang Zhang 2007 etc
To su m m arize the findings Li2004 listed the reasons for collocational errors in COLEC and
regarded those as strategies that learners actively adopt in the case of difficulty Largely four types of
strategies are believed to be frequently adopted 1transfer both interlingual transfer and intralingual
transfer
2 repetition 3substitution 4 productivityLi suggested that isolated and decontextulized
presentation of collocations might m ake incorrect language input with w hich learners are likely to m ake
false assu m ptions and rely too m uch on translation of equivalents
With access to learner corpora L2 learners collocational errors can be exa mined in particular
contextsThough m uch has been know n about the errors that students m ade in their writing
there lacks
convincing explanation for learners inadequacy in their use of collocationsItisim perative that thisissue
draws m ore insights fro m the perspective of cognitive linguistics and neurocognitive linguistics for
exa m ple how is collocation stored in learners long
term m e m ory how is collocation processed
cognitively etc
Another proble m concerns the validity of the studies conducted by non
native speakersCollocational
errors in learner corpora were m ainly annotated m anually by non
native speakersIt is true that those
w ho did the annotation w ork had m anaged to acquire certain degree of proficiency of English
still doubts
could not be totally dispelled concerning the accuracy of the identification of collocational errorsFor
instance
in a review of CLEL Wang 2003
the collocationa good fortuneis listed as an exa m ple of
collocational error w hich in fact de m onstrates an MI
value1 of 1
53 in BNCNational Bank of English
and islisted in Oxford Collocations DictionaryAlthough cases of this kind are rare
the corpus analysisis
not exe m pt fro m mistakes
In addition few of the previous studies focused on the misused collocations that is collocations
w hich are acceptable in isolation in terms of se m antics and gra m m ar but are used in inappropriate
contexts With the availability of learner corpora and with the aid of co m puters this proble m shall be
approached with m ore detailed m echanism for the annotation of collocational errors so that the use of
collocations can be exa mined in a larger context with consideration given to other ele m ents such as
registerThough tim e
consu ming
the findings will enable us to know better aboutlearners acquisition of
collocations
2
4 Exa mination of Correlation between Collocations and General Language Proficiency
Since written contexts necessarily require m ore precision in w ording than spoken contexts
learners
of English w ho are seeking to achieve near
nativeness m ust be able to produce in written form collocations
that are appropriate and accurate Therefore the correct use of collocations accounts m uch for L2
learners writing
and several researchers have investigated the use of collocationsin L2 learners writing
and 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 research
designZhang tested 60 30 native and 30 non
native speakers of English by using a blank
filling
collocation test and a writing testThe collocation test m easured students collocational knowledge w hile
the writing task collected their use of collocations and writing fluency He co m pared the correlation
between his subjects knowledge of collocations and their writing quality and the application of
collocations in the subjects essays and writing qualityHe found thatcollocational knowledge is a source
of fluency in written co m m unication a m ong college fresh m enand thatquantity
i e
the nu m ber of
collocations found in the subjects writing sa m plesbut m ore im portantly quality
i e variety and
accuracy of collocations used in the writing of collocational use distinguish between Good and Poor
college fresh m en writing as well as between native and non
native college fresh m en writing
In fact
Zhang set off a trend in collocation studies in w hich the correlations between the EFL students
knowledge of collocations use of collocations and English writing fluency were exa mined
Al
Zahrani1998 carried out a study to investigate the differences in the knowledge of English
lexical collocations a m ong four acade mic levels of Saudi EFL students and the relationship between the
78
CELEA Journal 82
knowledge of lexical collocations and these participants general language proficiency The test of
collocations involved 50 verb
noun co m binations with the verb missing but the first letter or phone m e
givenThe participants general English proficiency was elicited by co m pleting a writing test and a
TOEFL exa m Al
Zahrani found that there were significant differences in students knowledge of
collocations in the co m parison between the fresh m en and sopho m ores and the co m parison between the
juniors and seniors w hile there was a slight difference between the sopho m ores and juniorsIn addition
there was a strong relationship between the participants knowledge of collocations and their overall
language proficiency Al
Zahrani also pointed out that students knowledge of collocations was a good
predicator for their scores in the writing test
Hsu2002did a research on the develop m ent of collocational proficiency in a w orkshop on English
for General Business Purposes for Taiwanese college students Based on the data he collected fro m
students writing he concluded that there was a positive connection between the students use of lexical
collocations and their proficiency
though there are several factors that affected the learnability oflexical
collocations such as classroo m instruction extra learning experience leaner needs frequency of
collocation co m ponents L1L2 difference degree of idio m aticity m orphological co m plexity of
collocation co m ponents
In a later study by Hsu 2007 he investigated the use of English lexical collocations and their
relation to the online writing of Taiwanese college English m ajor and non
English m ajorsThe web
based
writing progra m Criterion Version 7
0 was used to ad minister the online writing test and to score the
writings produced by students He found that there was a significant correlation between L2 learners
frequency of lexical collocations and their online writing scores and between learners variety of lexical
collocations and their scores It was also show n that verb
noun collocations and adjective
noun
collocations are easier to acquire than other sub
types
In m ainland China Lu2006studied the correlation between L2 learners use oflexical collocations
and their writing proficiency Their subjects were non
English m ajors and the writings were collected
fro m the College English TestCET Band 4It was found that the frequency of collocations correlates
significantly with the writing score and that students of different proficiency level de m onstrated great
difference in their use of collocations
Ding and Qi2007 exa mined the correlation between the co m petence of collocation form ulaic
sequenceand speaking and writingThey analyzed 70 second
year English m ajors speaking in the TEM
4 exa mination and 22 four
year students writing
concentrating on the use of chunks in their production
Total and correct uses of collocations in both forms of production are counted and it is m ade clear that
learners collocations can better predict their language co m petence than gra m m atical knowledgeThey
suggest that a better awareness of chunks contributes greatly their language production
and that teachers
should help to raise learners awareness of the collocational knowledge
Though all the studies are prim arily data
based they do not share the sa m e m easure m ent of
collocationsSo m e studies involve both tokens and types of collocationseg Zhang 1993 Hsu 2002
Hsu 2007w hile others use frequencyi
e tokensas the only m easure m enteg AlZahrani 1998 Lu
2006 Ding Qi 20007
According to Zhang and Hsu s findings it is advisable for researchers to
distinguish tokens fro m types for the tw o variables might lead to distinct findings
Allin all despite the differences in m easure m ent of collocational knowledge and use those studies
co m e to the consensus that learners knowledge and use of collocations both correlate with the general
language proficiency either writing or speaking Thus it can be said that collocational knowledge is
indicative of learners productive skills However no study has explored the question w hether
collocational knowledge can predict learners reading and listening abilities w hich might be an area of
interest for future researchers
2
5 Assessment of Direct Collocation Instruction for L2 Learners
As is substantiated by the previous studies L2 learners can be seriously inco m petentin the knowledge
and use of collocationsTherefore
it poses challenges for teachers to develop better teaching m ethods for
79
collocation instructionHowever
there are few published articles illustrating how to carry out effective
collocation instruction in classroo m settingYet
the issue did draw the attention of so m e researchers
In the abovem entioned study by Hsu 2002 he did an experim ent to investigate w hether the
teaching of lexical collocations in a business English w orkshop w ould enhance Taiwanese college EFL
learners develop m ent of language proficiency and collocational proficiencyIn classroo m instruction he
highlighted the target collocations and m ade students aware of the m The findings de m onstrated that the
direct e m phasis on lexical collocations have assisted the students to acquire new collocationsin the written
and spoken discourse and helped the m use previously acquired collocations in new and creative ways
In a later study Hsu 2008 studied the effects of collocation instruction on the reading
co m prehension and vocabulary learning of Taiwanese College English m ajors at three acade mic levels
The experim ental group received lexical collocation instruction w hile the tw o control groups received
single
ite m vocabulary instruction and no instruction respectively The quantitative data indicate that
direct lexical collocation instruction im proves the learners vocabulary learning at all acade mic levels
Liu2008also conducted a study to exa mine the effects of verb
noun collocation instruction using
online corporaSubjects of her study are sopho m ore non
English m ajors in a university in Wuhan and
they were divided into three groupsOne group attended classes with the aid of on
line concordancer to
su m m arize the frequently occurred verbs that collocated with the key nouns A second group received
collocation instruction with the paper w orksheet prepared by the teacher and a third group of learners
were given traditional deductive teachingFindings of the study show that concordance
based collocation
instruction is m ore beneficial than the traditional deductive lecturing and that collocations are optim ally
learned fro m m ultiple contextsThus
the researcher proposed the use of concordance
based w orksheets
in collocation instruction
Since there are few studies of this kind
it is difficult to validate the effects of various m ethods of
collocation instructionAnyway the wide range of learner errors in their use of collocations calls for
m ore effective instruction on collocations
and larger sa m ple groups are needed to determine w hether the
proposed m ethods are optim al
Note
1 MI
value of collocations can be checked http
corpusbyuedubnc
References
Alternberg B S Granger2001The gram matical and lexical patterning of MAKE in native and non
80
CELEA Journal 82
1
2004
4
2005
3
2003
2002
3
2004 COLEC
3
Continued on p19
81