DOES LEARNERS’ DEGREE OF EXPOSURE TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE INFLUENCE THEIR COLLOCATIONAL KNOWLEDGE? (original) (raw)

Collocational knowledge is indicative of the maturity of learners’ language proficiency and plays an important role for ESL/EFL learners in promoting both their language comprehension and production abilities. This study specifically focused on productive and receptive Verb+ Noun and Adjective+ Noun collocational knowledge of two different groups of learners with different degrees of exposure to the English language. One hundred ninety six, 4th year university students enrolling in two different programs (International Program and English Major Program) participated in the study. Data were collected using two instruments: 1) COLLMATCH 3 receptive collocation test, and 2) productive collocation test. Results indicated that, overall, the two groups of learners had a significantly higher test score of receptive knowledge than productive knowledge, and that the international program students outperformed the English major students on both tests. Besides, the results also revealed that the participants successfully produced Adjective + Noun collocation better than Verb + Noun collocation. Finally, it is recommended that a substantial amount of time should be devoted to learning activities such as essay writing and conversation to elevate language learners’ productive collocational knowledge in these two categories. For further research, focus should be given to measuring EFL learners’ grammatical collocational knowledge or measuring collocational knowledge of learners with different educational levels.

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