European Journal of Foreign Language Teaching
ISSN: 2537 - 1754
ISSN-L: 2537 - 1754
Available on-line at: www.oapub.org/edu
10.5281/zenodo.208207
Volume 1│Issue 1│2016
RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS
(VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
Eser Ördem1i, Turan Paker2
Assistant Professor at Adana Science and Technology University, Turkey
1
Associate Professor, Pamukkale University, Turkey
2
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether teaching vocabulary via
collocations would contribute to retention and use of foreign language, English. A
quasi-experimental design was formed to see whether there would be a significant
difference between the treatment and control groups. Three instruments developed
were conducted to 60 participants. The experimental group was taught collocations
through lexical approach by means of ten different kinds of activities for ten weeks. On
the other hand, the control group was taught in a traditional way, only focusing on
word definitions from dictionary, antonyms, synonyms and guessing from the text. The
results showed that the participants in the experimental group outperformed the ones
in the control group in all of the three instruments. The study also indicated that a
period of treatment and exposure to lexical collocations led the treatment group to
remember and produce the collocations in the reading courses more appropriately and
less deviantly than the control group. This result showed that teaching collocations in
the class systematically week by week and scaffolding learners’ progress could lead to
better learners who can remember and use collocations in their reading comprehension
in English.
Keywords: collocations, retention, lexical approach, lexical collocations, lexical phrases,
pattern-centered learning
Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved
Published by Open Access Publishing Group ©2015.
144
Eser Ördem, Turan Paker –
RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
1. Introduction
Grammar teaching and communicative approach, dominant between 1960 and 1980,
downgraded the explicit teaching of vocabulary with the idea that learners can learn
vocabulary on their own with implicit strategy, guessing and inferring from the context
(Howarth, 1998; Lewis, 1998, 2000). Harwood (2002) explicates that vocabulary was
secondary in importance for nearly two decades. Language teaching has long regarded
grammar and vocabulary as a dichotomy, and it has also long been thought that the
former focused on structure, the latter on single words. In recent years, this dichotomist
distinction has changed into a continuum of grammar and lexis composed of idioms,
fixed and prefabricated phrases and collocations.
Collocation often used in different and vague senses is the key term in this study.
“s Nesselhauf
,p.
indicates,
Collocation was first defined by Firth
word combinations cannot be clearly delimited.
, p.
as an abstraction at the syntagmatic
level, and is not directly concerned with the conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of
words. Howarth
,p.
classifies collocations as lexical and grammatical units, and
explicates that lexical collocations consist of two open class words (verb +noun, adjective +
noun), while collocations between one open and one closed word are grammatical.
Lewis
,p.
emphasizes that collocations describe the way individual words co-
occur with others. “ccording to Sinclair
,p.
, collocation is the occurrence of two
or more words within a short space of each other in a text. Collocations are mostly seen as
either phraseological, frequency based units or collostructional (Nesselhauf 2005; Cowie
1981; Gries, 2012, 2013). On the other hand, Howarth (1998, p.24) defines that
collocations are combination of words with a syntactic function as constituents of sentences.
A more operational and functional definition of collocation is that collocation is the way
words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing,
which
emphasizes production in the target language rather than only comprehension (Oxford
Collocations Dictionary for students of English 2002, p.vii).
Pedagogic value of collocation has been emphasized by researchers in recent
years (Lewis 1998, 1993, 2000; Woolard, 2000). Lewis (1998, p.33) asserts that
collocations provide learners with a powerful organizing principle for language.
Furthermore, learning in chunks is more effective than breaking into pieces. Raising
learners’ awareness of collocation will help them feel self-confident during production,
and thus studying on collocations increases learners communicative power
Lewis
,
p.33). In this sense, teachers should encourage learners to keep a vocabulary notebook
and record collocations and help them identify collocations in texts
Woolard,
,
pp.30-31).
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Eser Ördem, Turan Paker –
RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
Collocation studies mostly focus on lexical category (Howarth 1998; Biskup 1992;
Al-Zahrani 1998; Nesselhauf 2005) because their number, which amounts to tens of
thousands, outweighs collocations of grammatical category (Bahns 1993; Nesselhauf
. “nother for choice of lexical collocation in this study is that they are among the
most difficult for the learner
Nesselhauf
, p.
and also
tend to form the
communicative core of utterances where the most important information is placed
“ltenberg,
1993, p.227). It was found that verbs are the most frequently deviant element and the
second most frequently deviant nouns. Some researchers (Laufer 1991; Kallkvist 1999;
Nesselhauf 2003) have stressed the difficulty of learning verb combinations because in
terms of linguistic account, verbs are arbitrarily restricted in its combinability. This
nature of arbitrariness of language makes usage of verbs more difficult because word
combinations are social institutions and naturally arbitrary (Lewis 1993, 2000).
Howarth’s findings
have also focused on the importance of verbs and nouns in
the collocations can be corrected by changing either the verb or the noun. In this study,
Nesselhauf’s definition of collocation
,
was taken as a criterion because she
divides restricted collocations into two categories as RC1 and RC2, which are more
appropriate to shed light on the collocations to be used.
In line with the development in formulaic language studies, in Turkish context,
the studies regarding lexical collocations have also been prolific only recently (Alpaslan,
1993; Eker,
; Çetinkaya,
; ”alcı and Çakır,
; ”ıçkı,
; Durrant,
.
These studies largely focused on written production of lexical collocations in foreign
language learning and language studies such as dictionary preparation or typological
studies in Turkey. Although some experimental studies of lexical collocations have also
been carried out in Turkish context in the last few decades “ltınok,
”alcı & Çakır,
; Gencer,
;
, these studies have contributed to gaining awareness of
collocations. ”alcı and Çakır
, different from the previous studies in Turkey,
focused on the primary language learning and found that collocation training was
important to help young learners learn a foreign language better.
2. Method
2.1. Participants
The study included 60 participants who were freshmen in an English Language
Teaching Department. The treatment group comprised of 30 participants. In the same
way, the control group composed of 30 participants whose age ranged from 18 to 20.
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Eser Ördem, Turan Paker –
RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
2.2 Data collection
The data for this study were collected through pre- and post-tests, guided writing tasks
and retention judgment test. At first, a pre-test was given to the participants to form
homogenous groups as experimental and control.
Another technique used to collect data is elicitation technique, and includes studies
based on the stimulus such as picture, diagram or standardized test, and covers
questionnaires, surveys and interview data (Nunan 1992). For this purpose, two
elicitation tasks were used; guided writing task aimed at measuring the performance of
collocations used in writing. A tentative disadvantage of elicitation tasks is that the
learners may not want to use the language items presented (Nunan 1992). The
disadvantage of this elicitation production task was that the learners had difficulty
writing in a guided way because they preferred to write freely. However, the design
and scope of the study did not let the participants write freely. Rather, they were asked
to write about the topics given using the words ranging from 15-20 in the guided
vocabulary box.
The second elicitation task was retention judgment test, which intended to collect
data by giving judgment on the sentences given. Although retention judgment test is
not found in the literature, this test can be called a kind of elicitation task because the
test was prepared in the form of a questionnaire, and since questionnaires are a kind of
elicitation techniques (Nunan 1992), it can be regarded as a kind of elicitation technique.
In addition, judgment test aims to elicit information required from the participants.
2.3. Instruments
The instruments were developed according to the research questions and the literature
reviewed by the researchers on the various elements of Lexical approach (LA)
techniques. Accordingly, three instruments; pre- and post-tests, guided writing tasks
and retention judgment test were used in this study.
2.3.1. Pre-test and post test
A test composed of 40 question items, 25 of which were verb + noun, and 15 of which
were adjective + noun collocational relations was used to see whether there was going
to be a significant difference between the two groups in the post-test. The sentences of
question items were taken from the text book used for the reading course. The question
items were chosen according to the criterion of importance of words in the text book
determined by Rudzka et al. (1981) who gave collocational grids and collocations of
active vocabulary in the text book.
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Eser Ördem, Turan Paker –
RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
2.3.2. Guided writing task
In order to see the performance of both groups in a productive skill, four guided
writing tasks were given to the participants. Each guided writing task was presented at
the end of each unit. The participants were given important and active words specified
by Rudzka et al. (1981) ranging from 15 to 20 in a guided vocabulary box to write a 200
word essay using the words. None of them was timed. The participants were instructed
that there would be no time limit in completing the writing task. In the guided writing
tasks, the participants wrote about the subtopics related to the unit topic they studied.
The participants did not have only one chance to write but rather various subtopics
were presented so as to facilitate their writing (Hughes 1996). The essays consisted of
non-academic and non-technical argumentative essays; namely, general essays arguing
a point were chosen from the textbook. Later, all lexical combinations were extracted
from the essays and checked whether they used the appropriate collocation in the
essays. The analysis was done manually.
2.3.3. Retention judgment test
A retention judgment test was given to the participants in order to see to what extent
they could remember and make judgments on the collocations they studied. The test
was composed of 76 sentences, 42 of which were verb + noun and 32 of which were
adjective + noun collocations. Non–restricted collocations were not given in the test
because free combinations are not hard for L2 learners at all (Nesselhauf 2003). RC1 and
RC2 collocations were scanned and given to the participants. The test was presented to
the participants four months later because they were exposed to different vocabulary in
the reading course in the spring term for 14 weeks. All sentences were deliberately
chosen as true collocations in the retention test, and extracted from the passages they
have read for ten weeks. A three point scale of judgment composed of true, false and
unsure was given to the participants. Collocation changes were not made but only some
minor changes such as subject or tense of the sentences were made.
2.4. Materials
As a textbook, The words you need by Rudzka et.al (1995) was used in the reading course.
This textbook was chosen because it was one of the best books that focused on
collocation grids, restricted collocations and semantic prosody, and mostly provided
the differences of collocations of synonymous words totally vital to students’ learning.
The importance of the book selected was also stressed and used by different researchers
since it emerged in the market (Carter & McCarthy 1996; Nesselhauf 2005; Ooi & Seah
1996). There were 10 units in the textbook but the first, second, fifth and seventh units of
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Eser Ördem, Turan Paker –
RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
the book were chosen according to the interests of the participants in order for them to
be motivated during the lessons. Each unit was composed of four passages focusing on
the same idea from different perspectives. This kind of choice was important to study
collocations because reading only one passage about one topic would not be effective in
the collocation study, but rather, for the purpose of the study, different passages on the
same idea would function as corpus to be scanned by the participants and to study
collocations, and as Tulving (1983) puts it, richness of the material is vital to retention.
Various reading passages on four topics were studied for ten weeks, and each week the
participants attended the reading course for six hours.
2.5. Procedures
The activities used in both groups were different. The control group was taught
vocabulary in a traditional way, focusing antonyms, synonyms, word definitions and
guessing. However, eight different kinds of collocation exercises were presented to the
experimental group. The collocations that addressed the design of the study were only
50 questions. However, since this study focused on only verb + noun and adjective +
noun collocations, ten lexical collocations were excluded from the poll because they
were either adverb or noun collocations The collocations mentioned in the passages
were chosen from the textbook because there were also other sentences including
collocations not mentioned in the textbook.
The guided writing tasks were formed according to the criterion of active role of
word combinations in the text. Whether the word combinations were active in the text
was based on the presence of words in collocation grids in the exercise part of the
textbook. The students were not also given only one topic to write but rather different
subtopics were given so that the participants could write with no force (Hughes 1996).
The participants were not given time limit because asking the learners to write in a
guided way requires more time and effort than in a free way. They were asked to write
an essay consisting of 200 hundred words. The essays were non–argumentative and
non-scientific. The topics they wrote depended on mostly their impressions from the
passages they read or the experiences they had from everyday life.
The passages in four units were scanned to form the retention judgment test, and
the most active lexical collocations were extracted from the textbook and presented to
the participants. There were 42 verb+ noun and 34 adjective + noun collocations. The
participants were given three point scale of judgment consisting of true, false and
unsure. In order to test the participants’ judgment, all sentences were deliberately
chosen as true collocations in the retention test. Minor changes were made in the
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Eser Ördem, Turan Paker –
RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
sentences; some of them were nativized without changing the meaning of word
combinations. For example,
In America, the slim majority still think that they are unhappy.
nativized to
In our campus, the slim majority still think that we need different restaurants.
As seen in the example, the word combination the slim majority was not changed at all.
These changes were made to measure whether the participants could remember and
judge word combination in a different context, even if it is used in a sentential context,
which means that the sentences were not totally context-free but were intended to
contain a context that would enhance clarity of the meaning.
2.6. Coding
Judgment on collocations is difficult even if there is a huge corpus. As Nesselhauf (2005)
puts it, the fuzziness in the area of collocation is relatively great. In this study,
Nesselhauf’s
five point scale of acceptability was used. However, in this study,
five point scale of acceptability was reduced to three point of acceptability for practical
reasons. Two types of sources were used to determine the degree of acceptability of
collocations produced by the learners in guided writing tasks. The former is
dictionaries, which are Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary (1988), Longman
Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003) and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for
Students of English (2002). The latter is native speakers, who were two Americans and
one British, three of whom were college graduates and spent most of their time in
English speaking countries.
The combinations were presented to them in context so as to make learners’
intended meaning as clear as possible. The scale was composed of acceptable (A),
questionable (Q), unacceptable (UA). The essays were analyzed by the native speakers.
If native speakers and dictionaries approve what the participants wrote down, it was
accepted as acceptable (A). If it is found in the dictionaries but native speakers are not
sure, it was taken again as acceptable (A). If it is not in the dictionary but the native
speakers accept it as questionable, it was accepted as questionable (Q). If sources, native
speakers and dictionaries do not accept the usage of collocation written, it was accepted
as unacceptable (UA). If it is not found in the dictionaries but the native speakers say
we do not clearly say in this way, it was again accepted as unacceptable (UA).
If native speakers judged the combinations unacceptable, they were asked to
provide an acceptable or better option to express the intended meaning. This coding
should not be taken to mean that all judgments are absolute but rather tentative.
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RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
3. Results
The main aim of this study was to investigate whether focusing on collocations would
make a significant difference between the two groups in terms of retention and
production of collocations. The results discussed under the subheadings of
homogeneity tests, results of pre- and post-test, retention judgment test and guided
writing tasks were given in the tables below.
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics and t Values of Treatment and Control Group for
Michigan Proficiency Test
Michigan test
Groups
N
X
SD
Results
Control
30
61.129
10.22
Treatment
30
64.451
9.35
D
58
t
1.33
P
.187
It is clear from Table 1 that there was no significant difference between the control and
treatment groups initially. In Table 2, while the mean for the treatment group is 362.57,
the mean for the control group is 363.84, which implied that there was homogeneity in
the scores they obtained from YDS exam. In the same way, there was no significant
difference between the groups (p >.005). In Table 2, while the mean for the treatment
group is 64.451, the mean for the control group is 61.129, which indicated that the
groups were similar to each other in terms of their homogeneity. There was also no
significant difference between the groups (p >.005).
3.1. Pre-test and post-test results for achievement test
The result below is an answer to the first research question, which aims to measure
achievement in appropriate collocations in a multiple choice task in both groups.
Independent t sample test was used to compare the mean of both groups and to see
whether there was a significant difference between the groups in terms of their learning
collocation. The scoring of pre-test and post-test was done by giving one point to each
correct answer and zero point to each wrong answer. Totally 60 students participated in
the study.
Table 2: Overall Results of the Retention Judgment Test According to the
Frequency Criteria
Groups
Judged as true collocations
Judged as false collocations
Judged as unsure collocations
Treatment
1704
264
320
Control
1409
430
449
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Eser Ördem, Turan Paker –
RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
As seen above, the treatment group judged collocations 1704 times correctly as true,
whereas the control group judged them only 1409 times correctly as true. When looked
at the collocation judged as false, it can be seen that the control group judged the
collocations out of 76 sentences 430 times as false while the treatment group judged
them as false only 269 times. The collocations judged as unsure by the control group
were 449, whereas the treatment group judged the collocations as unsure 320 times. In
overall results, it was seen that the treatment group remembered and judged
collocations better than the control group.
Table 3: Result of Independent t test between the Groups
Tests
Groups
N
X
SD
D
t
P
Pre-test
Control
30
15.03
3.35
58
-108
,100
Treatment
30
15.12
3,25
Control
30
23.03
3.91
Treatment
30
27.93
2.97
Post-test
,100
58
5.45
.000
.000
An examination of Table 3 shows that in pre-test, the mean for the treatment group was
15.12 and the standard deviation 3.25, while the mean for the control group was 15.03
and the standard deviation 3.35. There was no significant difference between the groups
in pre-test results (p > .001). When looked at the post-test results in Table 3, the mean for
treatment group was 27.93 and the standard deviation 2.97 while the mean score for
control group was 23.03 and the standard deviation was 3.91. There was a significant
difference between the groups (p < .001). The post-test results showed that the
treatment group exposed to 10 week collocation study in the reading course performed
much better than the control group.
4. Discussion and implicatıons for applied linguistics
Results of the findings will be discussed in several dimensions: sytematicity, length of
time, explicit teaching, L1 influence, questionable collocations and psychological
processing first, systematicity is vital in collocation studies in teaching reading because
randomly taught collocations may not be retrieved easily from mental lexicon.
Systematicity in vocabulary teaching has been emphasized and is thought to lead to
acquisition (Nation, 1990; Nesselhauf, 2005). Nattinger & DeCarrico (1992) argue that
since formulaic phrases are taught in any systematic way in second language classes,
non-native speakers often do not recognize the relationship of its parts and classify how
to teach lexical phrases systematically. In course books, useful expressions are given in
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Eser Ördem, Turan Paker –
RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
a certain part systematically but Nesselhauf (2005) points out that researchers do not
have necessary instruments and materials to teach collocation systematically.
Second, without adequate time, it is hard to keep words and word combinations
in the mental lexicon in order to retrieve them later. Incidental vocabulary may help
learners remember and use some words but the collocation studies show that it may not
help learners form appropriate word combinations. Length of time means sustaining
teaching the same vocabulary, and drives the learners to focus on the word
combinations of the words they have learned. Revisit and recycle strategy can be seen
as a waste of time by teachers or learners. However, frequent recycle and revisit
strategy in collocation studies is of great importance. Therefore, throughout the study
revisit and recycle strategy was applied; different activities such as five word stories, the
missing verb, and matching collocations were also given to the treatment group because
EFL learners are easily bored in classroom environments. Following learners’ progress
week by week may both require a long time and help learners acquire collocations
systematically and accurately. Fruitful results cannot be expected from collocation
studies in a short time. In this study too, a period of 15 hours was spent for each unit
and the collocations studied were often recycled and revisited.
Third, some findings (Nesselhauf, 2003; Lewis, 2000; Howarth, 1998) about
collocational competence show that even if a learner has long been exposed to English
in English speaking countries, it has been seen that it had a slight effect on collocational
accuracy and had no effect in language classrooms. It is assumed that explicit teaching
help learners gain awareness on what they have been learning. In this study too,
learners were often given explicit teaching. The participants were given the chance of
making comparisons between their L1 and L2 in order to focus on word combinations.
One of the activities stated in Lewis’
exercise is translation from L 2 to L1. He puts
forward the idea that translating from L2 to L1 is important in gaining awareness of the
differences in collocations in separate languages, so in Lexical Approach, translation
activity is regarded as a positive element. In addition, incidental learning is not
sufficient for collocation studies because even if learners are exposed to learning words
randomly, they may have difficulty producing L2 lexis appropriately. Explicit teaching
triggers awareness in learners and drive them to notice on collocations. Learners may
require explicit teaching activities.
Fourth, although some researchers (Martin, 1984; Dechert & Lennon, 1989;
Lennon, 1989) state that L1 influence is not much important in the area of lexis, recent
research findings (Biskup, 1990; Nesselhauf, 2003, 2005; Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Biskup,
1992) have discovered that L1 influence seems unavoidable in collocation studies. There
is frequent transfer by advanced learners, and such an influence is likely (Nesselhauf,
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RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
2005:180). In her study, she states that verbs and nouns form the higher degree of L1
influence. 200 verbs and 76 nouns out of 476 words were influential in her study. Verbs
in collocations are often transferred. The rate of transfer occurs higher than in free
combinations. This situation shows that cognitive energy is needed to lessen the rate of
L1 transfer. L1 influence seems to be unavoidable in collocation studies. In this study
too, L1 influence was observed in the production of the guided writing tasks.
Fifth, questionable collocations imply that collocations deserve more attention
than it does now (Nesselhauf, 2005). Learners should choose the collocations which will
meet their immediate needs. Arbitrariness of collocations is a relatively big problem in
terms of both diminishing the influence of L1 and the learners who want to learn them
appropriately because word combinations are arbitrarily restricted and fuzzy; complete
judgments are hard to make from time to time. In this study, nearly a quarter of the
collocations could not be judged completely, and finally, psychological processing has
not been dwelt on in detail. In most surveys, psychological process is often mentioned
with two or three statements (Nesselhauf, 2003, 2005). However, it deserves more
attention than it is mentioned. Without knowing the mechanisms of psychological
processing while teaching collocation, expected results may not be taken.
Sousa (2000) and Eric (2000), brain researchers, stressed the importance of
attention in processing information and added new categories into short and long term
memory systems. As Sousa (2000) puts it, less is better for the working memory and
short is better for attention. In this sense, one cannot expect L2 learners to learn entire
collocations in a short time because in learning collocations, cognitive energy is
required and arbitrariness of word combinations pose another problem for learners.
Only scanning and recording collocations from texts or corpora or concordances is not
enough because learners thus become exposed to a large pile of data. Rather, according
to Sousa (2000) and Jensen (2000), mostly adults have the ability to store only 7 chunks
in a lesson.
Paradoxically, teachers and learners are faced with a large group of combinations
while reading a text. Understanding the text at sentence and collocation level require a
great effort for learners. That’s why teachers should spend a lot of time on texts both
chunks and collocations via recycle and revisit strategy in the course. Recent brain
studies in collocations can be one of the solutions as to why even advanced learners in
English speaking countries or EFL classrooms make lots of collocational errors. In this
sense, as Nesselhauf (2005) suggests, systematicity is vital to help learners acquire
collocations. One more option can be included into her principle of systematicity.
Attention issue should be taken into consideration while teaching collocations
systematically considering because disregarding attention in collocation studies will
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RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
cause learners to attend to a great number of data at the same time, which may be
unlikely to help learners retrieve what is learned.
5. Implications of the study
Several implications can be elicited for teachers, material writers, testing members and
researchers through this study. First, teachers have new roles in collocation studies
because not only students but also teachers have much to learn from collocation studies.
Only knowing the meaning of the words and teaching meaning are not adequate alone.
Rather, lexical items should be stressed in reading courses and vocabulary teaching. In
addition, teachers should know how to use corpus and concordance in collocation
studies. They should help and encourage learners to regard the texts as corpora to scan
and record collocations they have read.
Second, material writers, while preparing course books or developing materials,
should present the same collocations in different activities and a challenging way,
which will facilitate learners’ retention of collocations. They should also sustain
collocation activities in the following chapters. They should not present lexis only once
in the units but rather use the strategy of recycle and revisit systematically, which is at
the heart of Lexical Approach. In addition, they should give concordance and corpus
examples so that the learners can make generalizations from patterns in a unit. This can
be of help to learners in that they can study word grammar through concordances. They
should also design activities which will direct the learners into the text again and rescan the text in order to focus on collocations and other lexical items such as fixed and
semi-fixed expressions.
Third, those who prepare tests should prepare items which stress not only
meaning of the word but also word combinations. Lewis (2000) gives an example of
collocation to be used in testing. He states that only one sentence to elicit word meaning
is not enough. More than one sentence should be given while preparing a sentence so
that the learners can retain the meaning in his/her mind because the sentences should
be in a kind of co-text, which will sound meaningful to the learners. The language test
should also ask the word combinations based on real language, that is, corpora studies.
Lastly, the researchers studying on collocation area may focus on lexical collocations,
which have syntactic functions in language production. Systematicity can be developed
through analysis of learner corpus studies as in Nesselhauf’s study
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RETENTION AND USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS (VERB + NOUN AND ADJECTIVE + NOUN)
BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
6. Suggestions for further research
This study aimed to investigate whether there was going to be a significant difference in
retention and production of lexical collocations via Lexical Approach. Further studies
can be conducted to examine not only lexical collocations but also grammatical
collocation relations because studies in this area mostly have focused on lexical
collocations, verb + noun relations so far. If other collocation categories are examined in
detail, the problem of systematicity can be solved in this area. What is needed is the reanalysis of corpus studies and learner corpus in second and foreign language settings so
that researchers can put forward systematic approach in collocation studies. Another
suggestion for the research in this area is that researchers should long expose learners to
scan, study and record collocations in experimental studies. To solve the problem of
questionable collocations, researchers should study with more researchers and relate
their studies to larger corpus texts. Lastly, following the progress of learners from
elementary level through intermediate and advanced levels will give researchers an
insight of to what extent collocations can be taught and what collocations should be
taught first. L2 processing of collocations, in this sense, can also be studied for a better
theoretical understanding of the theory.
Acknowledgements: This paper was constituted from the author’s master thesis titled
Retention and Use of Lexical Collocations Verb + Noun and Adjective + Noun by Applying
Lexical Approach in a Reading Course , Muğla University, ELT Department, Muğla,
Turkey
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BY APPLYING LEXICAL APPROACH IN A READING COURSE
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