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When native speakers learn their own language in a natural setting, they can quickly
pick up common word patterns through being immersed in the language and by relying
on their intuitions. This type of implicit knowledge is acquired unconsciously through
frequent exposure to the strings of words and set phrases encountered in everyday
communicative interaction (Kirsner, 1994). In the case of non-native learners,
however, exposure to the target language is not so readily available and opportunities
for implicit learning are greatly reduced. They therefore do not have access to the
significant store of core words and collocations that form the basis of native speaker
fluency. In particular, they lack the ability for native-like selection (Pawley & Syder,
1983) in that they are less able to choose the preferred linguistic sequence from a
number of grammatically acceptable alternatives. They therefore do not have the same
level of fluency and pragmatic competence that they possess in their first language.
(Brian & Ohtake, 2003)
When someone learns English as a second language, the situation is the same. Hence,
as English learners, we decide to carry out this paper “A study on learning English
collocations among the 2nd year students of Faculty of English Teacher Education,
ULIS, VNUH”. Firstly, we know that it is very difficult to learn English collocations
because of a great number of English collocations without any rules to learn. After this
study, we hope to bring readers some effective ways to learn English collocations.
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Another reason for this present study is due to the importance of English collocations
in learning English. English collocations are used in many situations such as speaking
(formal and informal), writing (formal and informal). Besides, they also play an
important role in making our speech and writing more natural and beautiful.
Moreover, we find that there are not many researches on learning English collocation
among students. For example, when we found materials for this paper in English
Department Library, there were only two studies related to collocations, namely “How
to learn collocations with common verbs effectively in writing skill for first-year
students” (Loan& Quynh, 2007), and “How to deal with phrasal verbs among second-
year students” (Chi & Giang, 2007). For the big problem as collocation, it is not
enough. Hence, we decided to carry out this study to bring out more information about
collocation. We think both lecturers and students have to be aware of the importance of
English collocations and the situation of learning them among students as well so that
they can work out the methods to teach and to learn English collocation effectively.
First of all, we want to raise awareness in students and lecturers about the importance
of English collocations and learning English collocations.
Secondly, we will provide readers with the ways of learning English collocations
among 2nd year students of Faculty of English Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH.
2
Thirdly, we want to suggest some tips to help the 2nd year students to learn English
collocations more effectively.
In brief, these objectives could be summarized into three research questions as follows:
1. What is the attitude of the 2nd students of Faculty of English Teacher Education,
2. What are the common ways the 2nd students of Faculty of English Teacher
3. Which is the most effective way to learn English collocations according to the
2nd students?
Due to the small scope of a student research paper and to serve the practical purpose of
the student researchers, this paper only focuses on the overview of learning
collocations among the 2nd year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher
Education, ULIS, VNUH. Specifically, the paper looks at how the 2 nd year students
deal with collocations when they learn English and the common and effective ways
they often use to learn English collocations. Consequently, suggestions to help English
learners in general and the 2nd year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher
Education, ULIS, VNUH in particular improve in learning English collocations can be
pointed out. This will give the researchers focused aims, which may be conducive to
bringing about the desired outcomes.
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With collocations, we will focus on finding the effective ways to learn them and try our
best to give some more suggestions to help second-year students overcome difficult
collocation exercises.
1.4. Methods of the study
1.4.1. Data collection methods
In order to carry out this study, firstly, a questionnaire was used for 100 second-year
students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH so that data
about collocations and learning English collocations could be gathered from different
viewpoints.
In addition, a set of interview schedule was applied to exploit further information from
80 students out of 100 students above right after they had completed the
questionnaires.
To begin with, the collected data would be classified to answer the three research
questions. Specifically, all of the data gathered for the first three questions in the
questionnaire are used to answer the first research question. The second research
question is expected to be solved by analyzing the data collected from the 4th and 6th
questions in questionnaire, while the 7th and 8th questions would help to solve the
last research question of the study.
Then, for each research question, data would be displayed into pie charts to facilitate
the synthesis, comparison and generalization of the data. Graphs are principally used to
analyze and compare figures, while tables are preferably applied when further details
are required.
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Finally, the data from interviews are frequently used to combine with results from
questionnaire to illustrate the analysis of data.
Chapter 4 – Results and Discussion - presents, analyzes, discusses the findings that the
researchers found out from the data collected according to the three research questions,
gives implications and recommendations as well.
Summary
In this chapter, the researchers have elaborated on these following points:
(1) Statement and rationale for the study
(2) Aims of the study
(3) Scope of the study
(4) Methods of the study
(5) An overview of the rest of the paper
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Generally speaking, these elaborations have not only justified the major contents and
structure of the study but will also work as the guidelines for the rest of the paper.
2.1.1. Collocation
Collocation can be defined as the restrictions on how words can be used together, for
example, which prepositions and verbs are used together, or which nouns appear with
particular verbs (Richards, Platt and Platt, 1992). As Sinclair (1991) points out, it is
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obvious that words do not appear at random in texts, and people could not produce
natural sentences simply by operating on the principle of grammar. Rather, words seem
to be selected in pairs or groups and language users are considered to have available to
them “a large number of semi- preconstructed phrases that constitute single choices”
(Sinclair, 1991, cited in Kasuya, 2008)
Another definition is: “Collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce
natural-sounding speech and writing.” (Margaret et al., 2002).
According to C. Fernando in “Idioms and Idiomacity” (1996), there is the shortest way
to define collocation: “Collocation is defined as the company words keep”.
According to the researchers, collocations are groups of words going together in typical
cases.
To sum up, though there are many different definitions of collocation, all of them share
a common feature that collocations are collections of words that “fit together” or, in a
figurative way, collocation is said “to be a marriage contract between words, and some
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words are more firmly married to each other than others”. (Mc Carthy). This research
paper adopts the viewpoint of C. Fernando, Firth, H. Jackson, Margaret et al, Sinclair,
and Wikipedia.
2.1.1.2. Types of collocations
According to Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English, in general,
collocations can be divided into 10 types:
Type Example
Adj+ Noun Beautiful girl
Quantifier+Noun Little sugar
Verb + Noun Have a look
Noun + Verb The situation arises
Noun + Noun A surge of anger
Prep + Noun In astonishment
Verb + Prep Look into
Verb + Adv Wave frantically
Adv + Adj Extremely beautiful
Adj + Prep Interested in
Another way to classify collocations is based on the principle: how the words in
collocations are fixed. In “Teaching Collocation” (2000), Jimmie Hill offers the
following schema for pointing out collocations to students:
Type Example
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Unique collocations
Strong collocations See the point
Medium- strength collocations See a doctor
Weak collocation See a film
(Hill, 2000)
In our paper, we will focus on the first classification because of three main reasons.
Firstly, the classification of Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English is
very popular with English learners. Moreover, most of the collocation exercises are
based on this classification. And at last, our focused aims are to give some more
suggestions to help the 2nd year students to learn English collocations more effectively,
in other words, help them overcome difficulties when learning the 10-type-listed
collocations. So, to the end of this paper, these types of collocations are examined.
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In this study, two researchers focused on using vocabulary in general, English
collocational patterns in particular in scientific writing. The researchers also pointed
out the importance of using vocabulary proficiently even when someone knew about
meanings of words. In other words, the researchers emphasized the importance of
understanding the ways in which patterns of words went together.
Languages are full of strong collocational pairs and, therefore, the study of collocation is
fundamental in the study of vocabulary. Collocation is “an important organizing principle
in the vocabulary of any language” (McCarthy, 1990, p.12). (…) Collocational knowledge
is part of native speakers’ competence, and can be problems for learners in cases where
collocability is language-specific and is not solely determined by universal semantic
restrictions (McCarthy, 1990). The argument that collocation is an important level of
language selection is persuasive when we observe foreign-learner texts containing deviant
collocations. There is surely need for an understanding of and a concern with collocation
by teachers and students (Carter and McCarthy, 1988).
(Kasuya, 2008)
In this case, Michiko Kasuya reemphasized the vital play of collocations as well as
learning collocations. The author also agreed that collocations are really challenging to
non- native learners because of the greatly reduced implicit learning.
So, as we can see, collocation is really important to many fields of language using,
especially to writing. It makes speech and writing sound natural and alive. English
learners often create very long and wordy ways of defining and discussing the issues
because they do not know much about collocation. It is collocation that helps to bring
language production closer to native speakers’ norms.
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Collocation also saves us a lot of time and effort when we are trying to express
ourselves. Learning collocation leads to an increase in written and spoken fluency. It is
also the thoughts of Kasuya:
Moreover, collocation provides “chunks” of English that are ready to use. Our brain
tends to store languages in chunks rather than individual words. Therefore, when we
speak or write, it is more efficient for us to remember and use phrases as chunks than
constructing one word at a time. Native English speakers will unconsciously predict
what is going to be said or written based on their own use of these phrases while non-
native speakers often combine some words into phrasing patterns in their ways. This
makes them harder to be understood by the native speakers.
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Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values or preferences;
involving processing different types of information; and occurring as a result of
habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of
more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals.
Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. Human learning may
occur as part of education or personal development. It may be goal-oriented and may
be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology,
educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy. (Wikipedia, 2010)
Learning strategies refer to methods that students use to learn. This ranges from
techniques for improved memory to better studying or test-taking strategies. For
example, the method of loci is a classic memory improvement technique; it involves
making associations between facts to be remembered and particular locations. In order
to remember something, you simply visualize places and the associated facts.
(Learning Strategies, 2010).
While searching for the materials, we found that there were many different learning
strategies from many authors. However, because of the limitation of scope and time,
we only listed several learning strategies.
Some learning strategies involve changes to the design of instruction. For example, the
use of questions before, during or after instruction has been shown to increase the
degree of learning according to Ausubel's theory. It is concerned with how individuals
learn large amounts of meaningful material from verbal/textual presentations in a
school setting (in contrast to theories developed in the context of laboratory
experiments). In Ausubel’s opinion, learning is based upon the kinds of superordinate,
representational, and combinatorial processes that occur during the reception of
information. A primary process in learning is subsumption in which new material is
related to relevant ideas in the existing cognitive structure on a substantive, non-
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verbatim basis. Cognitive structures represent the residue of all learning experiences;
forgetting occurs because certain details get integrated and lose their individual
identity.
"These organizers are introduced in advance of learning itself, and are also presented at a
higher level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness; and since the substantive content
of a given organizer or series of organizers is selected on the basis of its suitability for
explaining, integrating, and interrelating the material they precede, this strategy
simultaneously satisfies the substantive as well as the programming criteria for enhancing
the organization strength of cognitive structure." (1963 , p. 81).
Ausubel emphasizes that advance organizers are different from overviews and
summaries which simply emphasize key ideas and are presented at the same level of
abstraction and generality as the rest of the material. Organizers act as a subsuming
bridge between new learning material and existing related ideas. (Learning Strategies,
2010).
Methods that attempt to increase the degree of learning that occurs have been called
"mathemagenic" (Ropthkopf, 1970).
In the mid-1960's, Rothkopf (1965, 1966), investigating the effects of questions placed
into text passages, coined the term mathemagenic, meaning "to give birth to learning."
His intention was to highlight the fact that it is something that learners do in processing
(thinking about) learning material that causes learning and long-term retention of the
learning material.
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When learners are faced with learning materials, their attention to that learning material
deteriorates with time. However, as Rothkopf (1982) illustrated, when the learning
material is interspersed with questions on the material (even without answers), learners
can maintain their attention at a relatively high level for long periods of time. The
interspersed questions prompt learners to process the material in a manner that is more
likely to give birth to learning. The adjunct- question research showed us that test-like
events are useful in helping learners to bolster memory for the information targeted by
the question and to stay attentive to the most important aspects of the learning material.
The concept of mathemagenic behavior is very much a central component in the way
we think about learning. (Thalheimer, 2006).
A typical study skill program is SQ3R which suggests 5 steps: (1) survey the material
to be learned, (2) develop questions about the material, (3) read the material, (4) recall
the key ideas, and (5) review the material.
To sum up, there are many types of learning strategies with their own characteristics as
well as helpfulness. So make use of them to have a good way of learning.
There have been numerous documents discussing collocation learning strategies. The
following highlights some of the most common strategies that may be helpful for
Vietnamese learners, especially second year students at ULIS, VNUH.
Be aware of collocations, and try to recognize them when see or hear them.
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When learning a new word, write down other words that collocate with it (remember
rightly, remember distinctly, remember vaguely, remember vividly).
Revise what you learn regularly. Practice using new collocations in context as soon as
possible after learning them.
Learn collocations in groups that work for you. You could learn them by topic (time,
number, weather, money, family) or by a particular word (take action, take a chance,
take an exam).
You can find information on collocations in any good learner's dictionary. And you can
also find specialized dictionaries of collocations. (EnglishClub, 2010).
2.1.3. Attitude
Attitude is the way someone thinks or feels about something or the behaviours towards
something.
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In our opinion, we must raise the awareness of students about the importance of
English collocations, and encourage their positive attitudes towards learning English
collocations.
There are regularities underlying the way in which words co-occur. Words tend to be
subject to certain constraints or preferences which affect language choice in discourse in
a systematic way. Furthermore, Stubbs (2001) notes that “native speakers’ unconscious
knowledge of collocations is an essential component of their idiomatic and fluent
language use and an important part of their communicative competence” (p. 73). A
knowledge of collocations is exactly what distinguishes native speakers from
foreign learners and evidence derived from corpus analysis may contribute to narrowing
the gap between the two.
(Brian & Ohtake, 2003)
They also showed corpus evidence, “which are found in Japanese scientific research
writing that has been published and is also available via the Internet”.
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This type of error is known to be one of the most difficult to identify by non-native
writers but is also one that is likely to be most detrimental to their efforts to express
themselves adequately in English. We intend to show how certain words are used in a
given context by taking advantage of corpus analysis, concordance, collocation, and
statistical data. In particular, we illustrate what kinds of patterns are the norm among
native speakers and then provide examples of faulty expressions found in Japanese
scientific papers so as to draw attention to certain stylistic infelicities that appear
repeatedly in such writing and that need to be avoided”.
(Brian & Otake, 2003)
Through the study, readers can be aware of the importance of collocation using,
learners should be encouraged to explore their various functions and usages and learn
how to manipulate the patterns they find if they wish to achieve greater
flexibility and balance in their writing.
At the end of the paper, they gave the implications that learners need to have
opportunities to encounter lexical items in multiple contexts in order to engage in
deeper processing and thereby derive a fuller understanding of their various
meaning senses (Laufer, 1990; Schmitt, 1997). Besides, “learners should be made
aware of how such words are bound together with other words so that they may
learn to express their ideas with greater clarity and fluency. In this regard, care
must be taken to ensure that awkward, non-native expressions are eliminated. Care
should also be taken to focus on the particular collocations that are relevant to learners’
needs and that may be of some benefit to them. Learners should be encouraged to
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explore their various functions and uses and adopt those patterns that are relevant
to their own particular communicative purpose in writing”. (Brian& Otake, 2003)
Besides, when we found materials in the library, we came across the research on the
topic “How to learn collocations with common verbs effectively in Writing skill for
First- year students” (Loan, N.T.T & Quynh, V.T.N, 2007). In this paper, they showed
the problems which students often encountered with collocation, especially collocation
with common verbs and gave some suggestions to solve these.
Actually, collocations really play a vital role in using languages. Two first related
studies all emphasized it both in teaching and in learning English. However, these
studies were carried out by foreign researchers, not Vietnamese ones. When doing this
paper, we had a strong desire to collect as much information, especially about
Vietnamese related pieces of research as possible. Nevertheless, because of the scope
of the research and the time limitation as well, we only found out one research related
to our topic. For this related scientific research, the researchers only focused on one
aspect of collocations (phrasal verbs and using them in writing skill). Despite the
helpful findings, collocations should be taken care of more by English learners in
18
Vietnam in general, English majors in our university in particular. Therefore, we
decided to carry out this paper so that all of us will have the overview of learning
collocations among the 2nd year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher
Education, ULIS, VNUH, and then we all together find out the effective ways to learn
collocations. In other words, the researchers want to give some more suggestions in
order to help the 2nd year students improve on learning English collocations.
Chapter 3: Methodology
3.1. Participants
Because our topic is “A study on learning English collocations among the 2nd year
students of Faculty of English Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH” so the 2nd year
students play a vital role for our paper. There are 100 second-year students chosen
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randomly, 19 out of 100 students have been studying in Fast-track program and the last
are from mainstream classes.
We have used two types of data collecting methods: questionnaire and interview.
3.2.1. Questionnaire
First, we provided our 100 participants with 9 questions of two types. Specifically, the
first 8 questions were organized in multiple choice form and the 9th question was a mini
exercise for the participants.
For the first 8 questions, we aimed to survey their concern about English collocations
in order to add data to four parts focused in this research:
Research question 1
• The attitude of the 2nd students of E.D, ULIS, VNUH to English collocation
(Using the result of the 1st question in questionnaire)
Research question 2 (Using the results of the 4th & 6th questions in
questionnaire).
Research question 3 (Using the results of the 7th & 8th questions in
questionnaire)
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Besides, we want to check their knowledge on English collocations by designing the 9 th
question as a mini exercise. In this one, we included 8 sentences focusing on 5 types of
the word combination in English collocations: verb and noun, verb and preposition,
preposition and noun, adjective and noun, adverb and adjective.
3.2.2. Interview
Unlike the questionnaires, only open-ended questions were included in the interview
schedule. We have made a short interview with 80 out of 100 participants to find out
the most challenging type of English collocations for them. We had two questions for
the interview:
The information collected from interview will be combined with one from
questionnaire to analyze.
Broadly speaking, the process of data collection could be put into three major phases as
follows.
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• Phase 1
The first phase was the preparation for the data collection process, which included the
designing the interview schedule and the questionnaire. Whatever forms the data
collection instruments took, personal information of all participants was ensured to be
kept confidential and anonymous for ethical reasons.
• Phase 2
The second phase was delivering the questionnaires to participants. Following the time
for questionnaire was the interview. It was only the short and informal talk but
significant.
• Phase 3
Throughout the questionnaire completion and the interview, the results from both the
questionnaires and interviews were quickly synthesized. In fact, the data from
interviews gave us some unexpected outcomes.
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In our opinion, before teaching students about a new issue, we must truly understand
their attitudes to that one. That is the reason why we put ‘attitude’ as the key term for
our first research question.
We aim to find out their levels of concern about English collocations in four language
skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening). To clarify this matter, we divided their
concern into five levels: never, seldom, sometimes, frequently and always.
Figure 1
After doing a survey among 100 participants, we found that their levels of concern
were distributed differently among four language skills. First, looking at Figure 1, we
noticed that our participants paid most attention to the appearance of English
collocations in writing due to the fact that the number of participants choosing option
‘never’ for this skill was the lowest. In contrast, they paid least attention to English
23
collocations in listening as the number of people choosing option ‘never’ for this skill
was the highest.
The reason for this situation base on the requirements for each skill and the methods 2 nd
year students use to learn these four skills. Specifically, writing strictly requires the
agreement in word combination so the students are involved in selecting words and
phrases. Moreover, students have time to consider the word choice in their papers,
especially in at-home papers, which makes them somehow be aware of the necessity of
collocations. However, for 1st year and 2nd year students, listening skill does not require
too much attention in the appearance of collocations. Besides, when listening, students
often focus more on key words that relate to the questions in their exercises rather than
catching all speakers’ words including their collocations.
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Not important at all Important somewhat Important Veryimportant
Figure 2
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We were pleased to know that all 100 participants found English collocations
important. Thanks to their attitudes towards English collocations, we had a stronger
motivation to continue this research. 45% of people questioned thought English
collocations were important and 41% said they were very important.
After asking them about the importance of learning English collocations, we had the 3rd
question focusing collocation using in four situations: in everyday spoken language in
everyday written language, in classroom spoken communication and in classroom
written communication.
Figure 3
The figure shown in Figure 3 agrees with the one in Figure 1 in terms of using English
collocations in written form (both in everyday written language and in classroom
written communication). This result reflects the situation of collocation using among
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2nd year students, that is, they thought of written language and paid attention to writing
first when being asked about collocation using. On the contrary, the number of
participants choosing ‘in classroom spoken language’ was the least (25%), from which
we inferred that 2nd students did not pay much attention to English collocations when
speaking in classroom.
4.2. Research question 2: What are the common ways the 2nd students of Faculty of
English Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH often use to learn English collocations?
Figure 4
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We listed out four ways of learning English collocations to find out which ways were
mostly used by 2nd year students. The result was: among all the answers, 34.4% was
‘reading books, articles, fictions, etc.’; 21% was ‘using dictionary’; 20.96% was
‘watching movies, listening to music; 11.83% was ‘through other people in everyday
communication and 1.6% was ‘others’. The last group pointed out other ways used to
learn English collocations: from lectures, when doing exercises on collocations with a
collocations dictionary. We think that the result shown in Figure 4 matches the real
situation in studying among 2nd year students of English Department, HULIS, VNUH.
Most of us have been using books and articles as the main materials for studying
English in general, and English collocations in particular. Ranking after books and
articles in this query is dictionary, another printed materials that we can more easy find
in the market than other materials such as movies and clips in authentic English. There
were quite few participants choosing the option ‘through other people in everyday
communication’. Again, this figure showed that they did not pay much attention to
everyday communication, which resulted from their lack of communication skills in
terms of using English as a second language, their hesitation to use English
collocations (because they found it hard to make other people understand the meaning
of collocations they used, or to understand the meaning of collocations the others
used). The lowest number of our participants answered that 2 nd year students learned
English collocations from other resources such as lectures and exercises, which partly
reflected an inactive method in their studying.
100% participants answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you learn English collocations
when you learn English?’. So it was easier for us to collect more specific ideas from
them.
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Next step, we focused on finding their own ways to learn English collocations among
many ways they had chosen in the previous question.
Figure 5
The result was: among all the answers, 36% was ‘using dictionary, especially English
collocations one’; 20.48% was ‘reading books, articles, fictions, etc.’; 19.5% was
‘watching movies, listening to music’; 14.02% was ‘through other people in everyday
communication’ and no answer was ‘others’. In comparison with the result of the
previous question, there was an exchange of the two options ‘reading books, articles,
fictions, etc.’ and ‘using dictionary, especially English collocations one’ in their
queries. Therefore, we made an inference that the ways each student used were not
very different from the ways the major used. The minor difference showed that they
often chose the common ways to ensure the success in learning English collocations,
which matched the general method in studying among Vietnamese students.
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Afterwards, we worked on the most effective ways they used to learn English
collocations.
4.3. Research question 3: Which is the most effective way to learn English
collocations according to the 2nd students?
Figure 6
The result was: 45% chose ‘reading books, articles, fictions, etc.’; 33% chose ‘using
dictionary, especially English collocations one’; 12% chose ‘watching movies,
listening to music’; 9% chose ‘through other people in everyday communication’ and
1% chose ‘others’ (and pointed out that he or she often flicked through some
collocations books, which was quite the same as the option ‘reading books, articles,
fictions, etc.’. Again, we found that the most effective ways they chose were similar to
the common ways many people chose.
29
In the next question in our questionnaire, we aimed to found out the reasons for their
choice in the previous question.
Figure 7
Among all the answers, 44.74% was ‘it helps they learn a variety of English
collocations’; 36.84% was ‘it helps them remember English collocations much more
easily than other ways’; 17.54% was ‘it helps them learn a lot of English collocations’
and 1% was ‘others’ (and pointed out ‘it helps to follow and review English
collocations easily’. The result showed that most of the participants preferred learning
collocations in many topics, which meant quantity, rather than focusing on
remembering them. And this is also the reason for their result in our exercise of which
the result will be performed in the next chart.
30
4.4. Implications
Figure 8
We designed the 9th question as a mini exercise. In this one, we included 8 sentences
focusing on 5 types of the word combination in English collocations: verb and noun,
verb and preposition, preposition and noun, adjective and noun, adverb and adjective.
The result was: 74% of the participants were true in adverb and adjective combination
sentence; 69% were true in noun and verb combination sentence, 68% were true in
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preposition and noun combination sentence; 53% were true in adjective and noun
combination sentence.
After collecting data from an exercise, we applied a set of interview schedule to exploit
further information from 80 students out of 100 students above after they had
completed the questionnaires.
Figure 9
There were three types of collocations that they found difficulty in learning: adverb and
adjective combination, adjective and noun combination, verb and preposition
combination. The result was: 57.5% referred the first type, 25% referred the second
one and 17.5% referred the third one among the three types of collocations above. This
figure somehow matched the result found out after our exercise.
32
From the data analysis of Figure 8 and Figure 9, we have realized that there are two
most troublesome types of English collocations for 2nd year students: adverb and
adjective combination, adjective and noun combination.
Although the type of collocation “adverb and adjective combination” has many correct
answers (74%) according to Figure 8, it is still a difficult type of collocation as shown
in Figure 9. In fact, when we had the interview, many second year students said that
they always felt confused to choose an appropriate adverb going with an adjective. In
many cases, they really did not know which adverbs were more exact for adjective. To
learn more about two types: adverb and adjective combination & adjective and noun
combination, the researchers suggest that the second year students and English learners
also should visit this website: http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/easy/colloc.htm. In this page,
the researchers have found out a lot of information and exercises. It may be very
helpful and interesting for English learners.
Besides, we also want to suggest some tips to improve 2nd year students’ collocation
learning according to our own experience. The 2nd students maybe can consider for
reference.
Firstly, collocations can be found in authentic texts, so the 2nd year students can learn
collocation by topics, arrange collocations by groups of sorts logically. They can
choose the book “English Collocations in Use Intermediate” by Michael McCarthy &
Felicity O'Dell. This book presents and practices hundreds of collocations in typical
contexts, a view full components listing for English Collocations in Use Intermediate
for intermediate level students and above who want to take their English to the next
level. There are five main topics in this book such as Travel & The environment,
People & Relationships, Leisure & Lifestyle, Work & Study, and Society &
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Institutions with variable and easily- remembered examples. Besides, a lot of
information about other aspects is provided. This is the link the students can visit to
find more helpful books for themselves
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521603782
Another way is learning with your friends by doing small tests or games, take small
notes and revise them regularly. This link can be used for reference of more ideas
about collocation games such as Card Game with collocations: http://www.tefl-
magic.com/material/exp/col.htm. The students can download and print the materials for
self-study or group work.
Plus, when speaking, learn the ways other people use collocation and then imitate and
remember.
All in all, there are some common and effective ways to learn English collocations
shown. In general, the materials are not the most important thing to learn collocations.
The most essential is whether learners’ methods are scientific and suitable with their
levels or not. So, try to choose to have your own ways to learn collocation.
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4.5. Recommendations
The teachers should point out the essential role of collocations for their students,
introduce kinds of collocations. Next, they can conduct variable activities to help
students remember collocations thoroughly. They should encourage students to look
for and learn collocation more often.
We also need to have access to a good dictionary. The researchers strongly recommend
the Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary or the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary as both of these give exactly the kind of information that English learners
need to have about collocations. They do this both through the examples provided for
each word entry and through their special collocations boxes or mini- panels. Another
book is Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English, (2002), University
Press, Oxford. It is also a reliable source to learn English collocations.
There are some links listed as follows so that the students can use for reference:
http://esl.about.com/library/vocabulary/blcollocation_1.htm
http://www.esl-galaxy.com/collocation.html
http://www.englishforums.com/English/Collocations/bnmbb/post.htm
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/easy/colloc.htm
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http://www.better-english.com/strongcoll.htm
Last but not least, students should be more active in learning, especially learning
collocation. Remember that in a figurative way, collocation is said “to be a marriage
contract between words, and some words are more firmly married to each other than
others”. (Mc Carthy). Make use of it to have more beautiful writing and speech.
Chapter 5: Conclusion
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On the whole, this research paper performs as a fairly comprehensive study on learning
collocation among 2nd year students of Faculty English Teacher Education, ULIS,
VNUH. Through exhaustive analysis and discussion of data collected from
questionnaires and interview, significant findings concerning the research questions
were revealed as follows:
Initially, we found that participants paid the most attention to the appearance of
English collocations in writing (both in everyday written languages and in classroom
written communication), the least in listening. However, all the participants agreed that
collocation in general and learning collocation in particular was important.
Secondly, the data showed that reading books, articles, fictions, etc and using
dictionary, especially collocation dictionary were the common ways 2nd year students
often used to learn English collocation. But using dictionary was said to be the most
effective way to learn English collocation.
Besides, we tried to list out some appropriate ways to help 2nd year students improve in
learning English collocation and give some recommendations for both students and
teachers as well.
With regard to researchers, those who happen to develop an interest in this topic on
collocation could rely on this research paper to find useful information for their related
studies in the future.
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focus on more effective solutions to help 2nd year students improve their collocations
learning. Secondly, our mini exercise was just for comparing with the results of other
questions in our questionnaire; so it was not specific enough to make readers
understand clearly. We want number of questions in our exercise to be larger, the types
of collocations provided to be more typical, and the types of exercises to be more
various. Thirdly, the data of each Figure should have been demonstrated in a more
obvious way. At last, we greatly appreciate the feedbacks from readers.
We have some suggestions for the next studies (if there is any) on this topic. Firstly, the
next researchers can expand the scope of this study. For example, they can focus more
on finding the solutions to help students overcome difficulties in learning English
collocations. Next, they can clarify the groups of participants (for example, fast-track
students and mainstream students) to present clearer and more reliable results. Besides,
they should pay attention to make use of the data collecting methods. Specifically, they
can balance the using of questionnaire, interview and observation.
References
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Adrienn Karoly, The importance of raising collocational awareness in the vocabulary
development of intermediate level learners of English. 2005. Retrieved from
http://anglisztika.ektf.hu/new/content/tudomany/ejes/ejesdokumentumok/2005/Kar
oly_2005.pdf
Brian Morren & Hiroshi Ohtake. (2003). Corpus Evidence on English Collocational
Patterns in Scientific Writing- Implications for Effective Writing Development.
Retrieved from http://lsd-project.org/en/document/archive/humana_2003.pdf
Loan, N.T.T & Quynh, V.T.N. (2007). How to learn collocations with common verbs
effectively in Writing skill for First- year students.
http://www.inveling.amu.edu.pl/pdf/malgorzata_martynska_inve11.pdf
Margaret, D., James, G., Joseph, N., and Janet, P. (2002). Oxford collocations
dictionary for students of English (pp. vii). New York: Oxford University Press
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Michiko Kasuya. (2008). Teaching Collocation in Japanese Classroom
Retrieved from www.cels.bham.ac.uk/.../Kasuya_Lexis__MichikoKasuya_.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collocation
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/easy/colloc.htm
APPENDICES
Scientific Research Questionnaire
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We are Dao Thi Thu Ha and Nguyen Phuong Thao from group 08.1.E1, ULIS, VNUH.
Our topic is “A study on learning English collocations among the 2nd year students
of English Department, ULIS, VNUH”. Your doing this questionnaire will help us
find out the common and effective ways to learn English collocations. We greatly
appreciate your effort to finish this questionnaire.
Definition: Collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce natural-
sounding speech and writing. For example, in English you say “strong wind” and
“heavy rain”. It would not be normal to say “heavy wind” or “ strong rain”.
(Margaret, D., James, G., Joseph, N., and Janet, P. (2002). Oxford collocations
dictionary for students of English (pp. vii). New York: Oxford University Press.
Put a ‘×’ in the box according to your choice:
1. Do you pay attention to English collocations?
1 2 3 4 5
In reading
In writing
In speaking
In listening
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Very important
4. In your opinion, what are the ways the 2nd year students use to
learn English collocations?
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5. Do you learn English collocations when you learn English? If
yes, please proceed to questions 6, 7, 8, and 9. If no, please specify your
reason(s).
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
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Others (please write down your choice(s)):
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………
a. She struggled to get / have/ offer the necessary finance for her training.
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Thanks for your effort!
INTERVIEW SCHEDULE
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