Marijana Macis | Manchester Metropolitan University (original) (raw)
Papers by Marijana Macis
ELT journal, May 17, 2016
There is little guidance on how to teach different meaning senses of collocations as most pedagog... more There is little guidance on how to teach different meaning senses of collocations as most pedagogical materials treat collocations as word partners which co-occur together. However, if we consider meaning, collocations fall into three categories. Literal collocations are combinations where the literal meanings of the words are simply added together. Figurative collocations have idiomatic meanings which are not derivable from the component words. Duplex collocations are polysemous, having both literal and figurative meanings. This exploratory study analysed 54 collocations and found that even though the majority of the collocations appeared to be literal, a substantial percentage had both literal and figurative meanings, and relatively few seemed to be solely figurative. We discuss the teaching implications of this, depending on whether the most important collocational characteristic is a pattern of co-occurrence or of meaning. Overall, we argue that considering meaning can bring useful insights into the nature of collocations and how to teach them.170) early definition, 'Collocation is the occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a text', which is reflected in typical descriptions of collocation in recent textbooks: • 'Collocation means a natural combination of words; it refers to the way English words are closely associated with each other'. English Collocations in Use: Intermediate (McCarthy and O'Dell 2005: 4). • 'It is important to know which words collocate (commonly go together)'.
MACIS, Marijana. The effect of enhanced input through multimedia presentations on performance in ... more MACIS, Marijana. The effect of enhanced input through multimedia presentations on performance in the retention of collocations. ReVEL, v. 9, n. 17, 2011. [www.revel.inf.br/eng].
Multilingual Matters eBooks, Dec 31, 2022
The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Jun 21, 2019
It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by ... more It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by syntax, but rather has a strong tendency to occur in multiword phraseological units. Keywords: first language acquisition; second language acquisition; vocabulary
English teaching professional, 2018
There is little research available on incidental learning of figurative language from reading (We... more There is little research available on incidental learning of figurative language from reading (Webb et al., 2013; Pellicer-Sánchez, 2017). This study looked at collocations that had both literal and figurative meanings, i.e. duplex collocations (Author Aa) and whether reading could enhance lexical knowledge of the figurative meanings of these collocations. In three case studies, relatively advanced L2 learners read a semi-authentic novel that contained 38 target items. Through one-to-one interviews, conducted one week and three weeks after the treatment, the study examined how much learning occurred at the meaning-recall level and how repetition affected this knowledge. Results showed that figurative language could be learned incidentally and that knowledge of more than half of the target collocations for each participant was enhanced either partially or fully. They also indicated that repetition was consistently positive, but that the correlations did not always reach the significa...
Reading in a foreign language, 2018
There is little research available on the incidental learning of figurative language from reading... more There is little research available on the incidental learning of figurative language from reading (e.g., Webb, Newton, & Chang, 2013). This study looked at collocations with both literal and figurative meanings, that is, duplex collocations (Macis & Schmitt, 2017a) and whether reading could enhance lexical knowledge of the figurative meanings of these collocations. In three case studies, relatively advanced second language (L2) learners read a semi-authentic novel that contained 38 target items. Through one-to-one interviews, the study examined how much learning occurred at the meaning-recall level and how repetition affected this knowledge. Results showed that knowledge of more than half of the target collocations for each participant was enhanced either partially or fully and that repetition was consistently positive, although not always statistically significant.
English teaching professional, 2017
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
Language Teaching Research, 2016
This study investigated learner knowledge of the figurative meanings of 30 collocations that can ... more This study investigated learner knowledge of the figurative meanings of 30 collocations that can be both literal and figurative. One hundred and seven Chilean Spanish-speaking university students of English were asked to complete a meaning-recall collocation test in which the target items were embedded in non-defining sentences. Results showed limited collocation knowledge, with a mean score of 33% correct. The study also examined the effects of frequency, semantic transparency, year at university, and everyday engagement with the second language (L2) outside the classroom on this collocation knowledge. Mixed-effects modelling indicated that there was no relationship between frequency and semantic transparency and the knowledge of the figurative meanings. However, a positive relationship was found between this knowledge and year at university, time spent in an English-speaking country, and time spent reading.
The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, 2012
It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by ... more It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by syntax, but rather has a strong tendency to occur in multiword phraseological units. Formulaic language is very common in language overall, in both spoken and written modes. For example, Erman and Warren (2000) calculated that 52-8% of the language they analyzed was formulaic, and Foster (2001) came up with a fi gure of 32% using different procedures and criteria. Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999) found that around 30% of the words in their conversation corpus consisted of lexical bundles, and about 21% of their academic prose corpus. Howarth (1998) looked at frequent verbs in a social science/academic corpus and found that they occurred in either restricted collocations or in idioms in 31-40% of the cases. This research convincingly shows that formulaic language is no mere peripheral feature of language, but rather is a ubiquitous and essential feature of how it is used.
Vocabulary Theory, Patterning and Teaching, 2022
This paper reports findings regarding the effect of Mayer's Redundancy Principle on the reten... more This paper reports findings regarding the effect of Mayer's Redundancy Principle on the retention of collocations in a second language. According to the redundancy principle, students learn better from animation and narration than from animation, narration and on-screen text. It has only been applied in disciplines other than second language acquisition. Two groups of students were involved in the study. Whereas the experimental group received "enhanced input", which was characterised as the presentation of material through narration (i.e. the teacher's spoken input), animation (i.e. static images) and on-screen text, the control group was exposed to non-enhanced input, defined as a combination of narration and monomodal text. The results revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the enhanced and non-enhanced input in the impact on the retention of the collocations. However, both groups showed gains in terms of retention of the colloca...
A multi-site replication of Yang and Lyster (2010) study Effects of form-focused practice and fee... more A multi-site replication of Yang and Lyster (2010) study Effects of form-focused practice and feedback on Chinese EFL learners' acquisition of regular and irregular past tense forms. Replication to be conducted in Bosnia and Italy with learners who are not university students (not WEIRD). The study is part of the Language Learning SLA-for-All Reproducibility Project.
Previous studies investigating the effects of spacing on vocabulary learning have primarily focus... more Previous studies investigating the effects of spacing on vocabulary learning have primarily focused on single words. There is limited research on how distributed practice affects the learning of the phrasal lexicon. The present study addresses this gap by focusing on collocations. In a pretest-treatment-delayed-posttest design, two controlled quasi-experiments (N = 55 and N = 50) were conducted in order to evaluate two spacing schedules, spaced versus massed. The participants learned 25 adjective-noun collocations either incidentally (Experiment 1) or deliberately (Experiment 2). In each experiment, a control group was included. Participants' collocational gains were measured at a form-recall level of mastery three weeks after the treatment. Mixedeffects regression modelling results indicate that spacing had a significantly large effect on vocabulary gains in the deliberate learning condition and a small effect on gains in the incidental learning condition. Massing, on the other hand, appears to be more effective (with a medium effect) in incidental learning situations. Implications for pedagogy and materials design are followed by suggestions for future research.
There is little research available on the incidental learning of figurative language from reading... more There is little research available on the incidental learning of figurative language from reading (e.g., . This study looked at collocations with both literal and figurative meanings, that is, duplex collocations 1 (Macis & Schmitt, 2017a) and whether reading could enhance lexical knowledge of the figurative meanings of these collocations. In three case studies, relatively advanced second language (L2) learners read a semi-authentic novel that contained 38 target items. Through one-to-one interviews, the study examined how much learning occurred at the meaning-recall level and how repetition affected this knowledge. Results showed that knowledge of more than half of the target collocations for each participant was enhanced either partially or fully and that repetition was consistently positive, although not always statistically significant.
ELT journal, May 17, 2016
There is little guidance on how to teach different meaning senses of collocations as most pedagog... more There is little guidance on how to teach different meaning senses of collocations as most pedagogical materials treat collocations as word partners which co-occur together. However, if we consider meaning, collocations fall into three categories. Literal collocations are combinations where the literal meanings of the words are simply added together. Figurative collocations have idiomatic meanings which are not derivable from the component words. Duplex collocations are polysemous, having both literal and figurative meanings. This exploratory study analysed 54 collocations and found that even though the majority of the collocations appeared to be literal, a substantial percentage had both literal and figurative meanings, and relatively few seemed to be solely figurative. We discuss the teaching implications of this, depending on whether the most important collocational characteristic is a pattern of co-occurrence or of meaning. Overall, we argue that considering meaning can bring useful insights into the nature of collocations and how to teach them.170) early definition, 'Collocation is the occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a text', which is reflected in typical descriptions of collocation in recent textbooks: • 'Collocation means a natural combination of words; it refers to the way English words are closely associated with each other'. English Collocations in Use: Intermediate (McCarthy and O'Dell 2005: 4). • 'It is important to know which words collocate (commonly go together)'.
MACIS, Marijana. The effect of enhanced input through multimedia presentations on performance in ... more MACIS, Marijana. The effect of enhanced input through multimedia presentations on performance in the retention of collocations. ReVEL, v. 9, n. 17, 2011. [www.revel.inf.br/eng].
Multilingual Matters eBooks, Dec 31, 2022
The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Jun 21, 2019
It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by ... more It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by syntax, but rather has a strong tendency to occur in multiword phraseological units. Keywords: first language acquisition; second language acquisition; vocabulary
English teaching professional, 2018
There is little research available on incidental learning of figurative language from reading (We... more There is little research available on incidental learning of figurative language from reading (Webb et al., 2013; Pellicer-Sánchez, 2017). This study looked at collocations that had both literal and figurative meanings, i.e. duplex collocations (Author Aa) and whether reading could enhance lexical knowledge of the figurative meanings of these collocations. In three case studies, relatively advanced L2 learners read a semi-authentic novel that contained 38 target items. Through one-to-one interviews, conducted one week and three weeks after the treatment, the study examined how much learning occurred at the meaning-recall level and how repetition affected this knowledge. Results showed that figurative language could be learned incidentally and that knowledge of more than half of the target collocations for each participant was enhanced either partially or fully. They also indicated that repetition was consistently positive, but that the correlations did not always reach the significa...
Reading in a foreign language, 2018
There is little research available on the incidental learning of figurative language from reading... more There is little research available on the incidental learning of figurative language from reading (e.g., Webb, Newton, & Chang, 2013). This study looked at collocations with both literal and figurative meanings, that is, duplex collocations (Macis & Schmitt, 2017a) and whether reading could enhance lexical knowledge of the figurative meanings of these collocations. In three case studies, relatively advanced second language (L2) learners read a semi-authentic novel that contained 38 target items. Through one-to-one interviews, the study examined how much learning occurred at the meaning-recall level and how repetition affected this knowledge. Results showed that knowledge of more than half of the target collocations for each participant was enhanced either partially or fully and that repetition was consistently positive, although not always statistically significant.
English teaching professional, 2017
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
Language Teaching Research, 2016
This study investigated learner knowledge of the figurative meanings of 30 collocations that can ... more This study investigated learner knowledge of the figurative meanings of 30 collocations that can be both literal and figurative. One hundred and seven Chilean Spanish-speaking university students of English were asked to complete a meaning-recall collocation test in which the target items were embedded in non-defining sentences. Results showed limited collocation knowledge, with a mean score of 33% correct. The study also examined the effects of frequency, semantic transparency, year at university, and everyday engagement with the second language (L2) outside the classroom on this collocation knowledge. Mixed-effects modelling indicated that there was no relationship between frequency and semantic transparency and the knowledge of the figurative meanings. However, a positive relationship was found between this knowledge and year at university, time spent in an English-speaking country, and time spent reading.
The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, 2012
It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by ... more It is now clear that vocabulary typically behaves not as single words which are held together by syntax, but rather has a strong tendency to occur in multiword phraseological units. Formulaic language is very common in language overall, in both spoken and written modes. For example, Erman and Warren (2000) calculated that 52-8% of the language they analyzed was formulaic, and Foster (2001) came up with a fi gure of 32% using different procedures and criteria. Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999) found that around 30% of the words in their conversation corpus consisted of lexical bundles, and about 21% of their academic prose corpus. Howarth (1998) looked at frequent verbs in a social science/academic corpus and found that they occurred in either restricted collocations or in idioms in 31-40% of the cases. This research convincingly shows that formulaic language is no mere peripheral feature of language, but rather is a ubiquitous and essential feature of how it is used.
Vocabulary Theory, Patterning and Teaching, 2022
This paper reports findings regarding the effect of Mayer's Redundancy Principle on the reten... more This paper reports findings regarding the effect of Mayer's Redundancy Principle on the retention of collocations in a second language. According to the redundancy principle, students learn better from animation and narration than from animation, narration and on-screen text. It has only been applied in disciplines other than second language acquisition. Two groups of students were involved in the study. Whereas the experimental group received "enhanced input", which was characterised as the presentation of material through narration (i.e. the teacher's spoken input), animation (i.e. static images) and on-screen text, the control group was exposed to non-enhanced input, defined as a combination of narration and monomodal text. The results revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the enhanced and non-enhanced input in the impact on the retention of the collocations. However, both groups showed gains in terms of retention of the colloca...
A multi-site replication of Yang and Lyster (2010) study Effects of form-focused practice and fee... more A multi-site replication of Yang and Lyster (2010) study Effects of form-focused practice and feedback on Chinese EFL learners' acquisition of regular and irregular past tense forms. Replication to be conducted in Bosnia and Italy with learners who are not university students (not WEIRD). The study is part of the Language Learning SLA-for-All Reproducibility Project.
Previous studies investigating the effects of spacing on vocabulary learning have primarily focus... more Previous studies investigating the effects of spacing on vocabulary learning have primarily focused on single words. There is limited research on how distributed practice affects the learning of the phrasal lexicon. The present study addresses this gap by focusing on collocations. In a pretest-treatment-delayed-posttest design, two controlled quasi-experiments (N = 55 and N = 50) were conducted in order to evaluate two spacing schedules, spaced versus massed. The participants learned 25 adjective-noun collocations either incidentally (Experiment 1) or deliberately (Experiment 2). In each experiment, a control group was included. Participants' collocational gains were measured at a form-recall level of mastery three weeks after the treatment. Mixedeffects regression modelling results indicate that spacing had a significantly large effect on vocabulary gains in the deliberate learning condition and a small effect on gains in the incidental learning condition. Massing, on the other hand, appears to be more effective (with a medium effect) in incidental learning situations. Implications for pedagogy and materials design are followed by suggestions for future research.
There is little research available on the incidental learning of figurative language from reading... more There is little research available on the incidental learning of figurative language from reading (e.g., . This study looked at collocations with both literal and figurative meanings, that is, duplex collocations 1 (Macis & Schmitt, 2017a) and whether reading could enhance lexical knowledge of the figurative meanings of these collocations. In three case studies, relatively advanced second language (L2) learners read a semi-authentic novel that contained 38 target items. Through one-to-one interviews, the study examined how much learning occurred at the meaning-recall level and how repetition affected this knowledge. Results showed that knowledge of more than half of the target collocations for each participant was enhanced either partially or fully and that repetition was consistently positive, although not always statistically significant.