2008 12

31 6

CELEA JournalBim onthly

Dec2008
Vol
31 No
6

REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES ON COLLOCATION

IN THE FIELD OF SLA
Cao Pei
Nanjing Nor m al University

Abstract
Collocation as an im portant co m ponent of foreign language learners co m petence has attracted substantial
attention fro m researchers on second language acquisition in the past 15 years A wide range of e m pirical
studies have been conducted covering assessment of L2 learners kno wledge of collocations
investigation of
the develop mental patterns analysis of L2 learners collocational errors examination of the correlation
between collocations and general language skills and assessment of direct collocation instructionThe present
paper reviews previous e m piricalstudies on collocation in the field of SLAat ho me and abroad
and atte m ptsto
point out their limitations in order to give reco m mendations for further study
Key w ords
review
collocational kno wledge develop mental pattern
collocational error
collocation instruction

1Significance of Collocation in Second Language Acquisition and Research

A collocation is a conventionalsyntag m atic association of a string oflexicalite ms w hich co
occur in a
gra m m atical construct with m utual expectancy greater than chance as realization of non
idio m atic
m eaning in texts Wei 2002a 100 Wei 2003
Though this definition is not form ally agreed upon by all
scholars
it covers the general features ofcollocationsas were studied by different scholars in second
language acquisitionSLA

The great im portance of collocation

i e recurrent co
occurrence of tw o or m ore w ordsis well
docu m ented in the w ork of m any linguistics and second language researchers As is agreed by m any
scholars collocational knowledge is the prerequisite for the native speakers to produce natural and fluent
language discourseEllis 1996 Produro m ou 2003and it is one of the im portant co m ponents of foreign
language learners co m petence McCarthy 1990
Lewis1997claims that collocations will help learners
to co m m unicate m ore efficiently because they have the ability to say m ore of w hat they want to say
with the limited language resources at their disposal
p33and his ideas are shared by m any others in
related fields
However
learning collocations is no easy job for second languages learners Wolter2006 notices
that in second language learning learning collocational knowledge is m ore difficult than learning
gra m m atical rulesLo m bard 1997explains that collocations are difficult constructions for non
native
speakers because collocations follow so m e constraints that are co m pletely un m arked for non
native
speakers unless they are aware p4
Even advanced learners have considerable difficulties in the
production of collocations Bahns 1993 Nesselhauf 2003 thus collocations do deserve a place in
language learning and second language research

2Brief Review of Studies on Collocation

During the past tw o decades a great nu m ber of studies have been conducted to grope into the
72

CELEA Journal 82

proble m of collocation acquisition of second language learners L2 learners

Recently with the
popularity of corpus linguistics
this field has witnessed quite so m e notable findingsPublished studies on
collocation as they pertain to learners of English tend to focus on five points na m ely m easuring of L2
learners knowledge of collocations in general investigation of the develop m ental patterns of the
knowledge and use of L2 collocations analysis of L2 learners collocational errors exa mination of the
correlation between collocations and general language skills and assessm ent of direct instruction of
collocations for L2 learners

2
1 Measuring of L2 Learners KnowledgeUse of Collocations
To investigate L2 learners knowledge of collocation both receptive and productive knowledge of
collocation researchers have devised collocation tests to find out w hether L2 learners have acquired
sufficient collocational knowledge as is expectedReceptive knowledge is tested through m ultiple choice
questions w hile productive knowledge is tested using fill
in
the
blank
cloze and translation tasks w hich
can elicit learners production of collocations Norm ally in the fill
in
the
blank task subjects are given
part of a collocation and are required to supply the rest so that the co m bination m akes acceptable
collocation in the target languageIn the translation task subjects are generally asked to translate
collocations of their native language into the target language Both the tasks provide contexts on the
sentence level By exa mining w hether learners elicited production of collocations are acceptable and
valid
researchers co m e to conclusions as to w hether learners have acquired the target collocations or not
Bahns and Eldaw 1993exa mined Germ an advanced EFLstudents productive knowledge of English
collocations e m ploying a translation task and a fill
in
the
blank taskThe results of the test revealed that
learners capacity of collocations does notexpand in parallel with their knowledge of general vocabulary
p108and the deficiencym ay be partly due to the fact that collocations have been largely neglected
in EFLinstruction
p108Based on co m parison of the acceptable translation and sentences translated
with English collocations
they suggested that teachers should focus on collocations that cannotat all or
not easily be paraphrased
rather than collocations that could be paraphrasedTheir study has actually
guided later research on collocational knowledge as one aspect of the depth of vocabulary knowledgeThe
contrastive m ethod of co m paring the co m position of collocations in learners first language and target
language is also widely adopted by later researchers in this field
Farghal and Obiedat1995selected 22 co m m on collocations relating to specific topics such as food
color and weather to exa mine Jordanian ESL students knowledge of English collocations e m ploying a
fill
in
the
blank test and a translation test They found that subjects did well in tasks involving
collocations with equivalents in Arabic but had proble ms w hen they faced English collocations that do not
exist in their native languageIn other w ords
the incongruence of the structure of collocations between
their native language and the target language posed a great difficulty to learners The researchers
attributed the resultto the factthatlearners were not m ade aware of collocations as a funda m ental genre
of m ulti
w ord units because vocabulary was taught as single lexical ite ms Based on learners
perform ance in the test
they su m m arized four principles that were used by the subjects w hen they did not
know certain collocations
synony m y avoidance
transfer and paraphrasing
Collocational knowledge is also m easured with other forms of research designShei1999designed
a questionnaire to test native speakers as well as non
native speakers knowledge of so m e verb
noun
collocations
in w hich subjects were asked to rank four alternatives of verbs in order of their relationship
with the nouns in the ste ms He co m pared the ranking orders provided by non
native speakers native
speakers and corpus data fro m the BNC using Z
scores as indicators of the collocates closeness to the
nodesHe found that there was a significant difference in the knowledge of collocations between native
speakers and non
natives speakers Native speakers judg m ents largely coincided with the corpus
processing results w hile non
native speakers m anifested a different degree of proficiency in using English
collocations fro m native speakers to so m e extent
As to the actual use of collocations by learners
learner corpus was the m ajor source of evidenceItis
believed that the corpus approach has advantage for studying learner languageGranger 1998for the
collection of a corpus of learner language allows the researcher access to language in context and
73

Revie w of Em pirical Studies on Collocation in the Field of SLA Cao Pei

provides data that m ay be significantly different fro m specific elicitation tasks The corpus analysis
approach is therefore used in order to ensure both that w hat is being studied is w hat students have
the mselves chosen to produce and that the larger discourse context is retrievable
Nesselhauf2005 studied the use of collocations involving verbs in a learner corpus of native
speakers of Germ an Of the slightly m ore than 2
000 verb
noun collocations in the corpus GeCLE a
quarter were found to be wrong a third devianti
e wrong or questionable Factors affecting the
acquisition of verb
noun collocations include non
congruence of the structures between L1 and L2
restriction of collocations
exposure to the targetlanguage
a m ong othersIt was also found thatlearners
w ould use free co m binations w here collocations could be used In this study the use of specific
collocations was also investigated in great detail to exa mine the acquisition of verb
noun collocationsIt
was by far the m ost co m prehensive one of this kind
Chinese L2 learners knowledge of collocations was also m easured by several researchers in recent
years with m uch the sa m e design
Huang2002is one of the first to carry out a study on Chinese learners collocational knowledge
He investigated both the productive and receptive knowledge of English collocations by English learners
Subjects of the study were 80 college juniors m ajoring in English They were requested to finish three
tests one is collocational co m petence test co m posed of 38 m ultiple choice questions a second is
collocation recognition test co m posed of 28 m ultiple choice question and the other is a co m prehensive
co m petence test including listening reading co m prehension and writing He concluded that the
collocational co m petence is correlated with learners co m prehensive co m petence and good L2 learners
enjoy a higher level of collocation co m petenceAs to receptive knowledge
itis found that collocations of
strong collocability are easier to recognize
Diao 2004 conducted a survey to exa mine English m ajors knowledge of chunks collocations
includedThe subjects of the research were fresh m en and seniors of English m ajorsThe survey consists
of tw o tests a receptive test of 30 m ultiple choices and a productive test of 20 translations fro m Chinese
collocations into English collocationsIt is found that collocation co m petence is a good indicator of
learners language proficiency but their collocation co m petence as a w hole is far fro m satisfactory
Learners are liable to create free co m binations in cases w here collocations are preferred The findings
coincide with that by Farghal and Obiedat s
Shei s
and Nesselhauf s
indicating thatitis co m m on a m ong
learners to produce free co m binations disregarding the collocability of valid collocations
To su m up
investigations conducted to assess L2 learners overall knowledge of collocations confirm
the fact that regardless of learners native language m ost EFL ESLlearners fail to develop collocational
knowledge of the w ords they haveacquired
and their collocational co m petence leaves m uch roo m to be
im proved
Whatever the research design is all the findings suggested that non
native speakers tend to select
collocates for a certain node on a rando m basis
in m uch the sa m e way as how theopen
choice principle
operatesin language production w hich can be understood as aslot
and
fillerm odel and runs opposite to
theidio m principle
choice m odel each slot opened up by a structure constitutes one
In the open
choice and for each slot alm ost every w ord can occur Both elicited production and spontaneous
production see m to operate on the open
choice principle rather than the idio m principle
and learners are
likely to co m e up with free co m binations as synony ms to acceptable collocations
As to factors affecting the acquisition of collocations both intra
linguistic transfer and collocability
of collocations were found to be at w ork for learners of different language backgroundsThere might be
other factors affecting the collocation acquisition for exa m ple the input and output frequency
frequency and m orphological co m plexity of collocation co m ponents etcbut those ele m ents were not
dealt with in previous studies on collocation acquisition
Besides
the study by Huang and Diao indicate that there see ms to be a gap between the receptive
knowledge and productive knowledge but none the studies has addressed this proble m

74

CELEA Journal 82

2
2 Investigation of the Develop mental Pattern of L2 Learners Knowledge of Collocations
Apart fro m m erely m easuring L2 learners knowledge and use of collocations in isolation so m e
studies are devoted to investigating the develop m ental patterns of L2 learners knowledge or use of
collocations
Gitsaki1999 is one of the few and first to address this issue She e m ployed the structural
approachto exa mine the knowledge of collocations fro m a broader view point She exa mined the
knowledge of collocations of 275 Greek junior high school students w ho were divided into three
proficiency levels
i e post
beginner
interm ediate and post
interm ediateThe subjects were asked to

finish three tasks

an essay writing task for eliciting free
production data
a translation task
and a blank
filling task for eliciting the use of collocationsShe found that L2 learners knowledge of collocations
developed with their overalllanguage proficiencyThe post
beginners used m ore lexical collocations than
gra m m atical collocations and interm ediate learners had a better acquisition of gra m m atical collocations
w hile post
interm ediate learners show considerable progress in both gra m m atical and lexical collocations
She concluded that sim ple gra m m atical collocations were acquired first lexical collocations were the
next and the co m plex gra m m atical collocations were the lasttype acquired by L2 learnersIn view of her
findings Gitsaki contended thatitis necessary to help L2 learners im prove their collocational knowledge
and beco m e aware of collocations When it co m es to the teaching of collocations
she suggested that it is
im perative to help the m develop strategies to learn collocationsin line with the sequence of the acquisition
of collocational types Her study holds m uch sway in the field of studies on collocation in that it was
indeed the first one to co m e up with an acquisition order of collocations in L2 learners and her findings
are frequently quoted in later researchersHsu 2002 Sun Chen 2006 etc

Bonk2000investigated the relationship between collocational knowledge and language proficiency

in order to design valid tests on collocationThe results revealed that collocational knowledge increases
with proficiency and even learners atlow
interm ediate levels of general proficiency in Englishaccording
to their TOEFL scores have developed so m e productive knowledge of target collocations It was
suggested that such knowledge might be acquired naturalistically
because classroo m teaching norm ally did
not focus on collocationsp33
The collocation test devised in the study was later adapted by other
researchers to m easure L2 learners collocational knowledge for exa m ple Smith 2005 in w hich
correlation of scores of the collocation test and length of residence in the USA was exa mined
With the Chinese students Zhang and Chen2006conducted a cross
sectional study to investigate
three groups of EFL learners receptive and productive knowledge of adjective
noun collocationsTw o
types of tests are done by the three groups of subjects Grade 3 high school students sopho m ores
m ajoring in English and graduate students m ajoring in Applied LinguisticsThey are required to give
judg m ents for the 66 collocations in the receptive knowledge tests and translate 48 collocations into
English in the productive testIt was found that learners acquisition of collocations expands with the
years of learning but still even the high levellearners fail to co m m and a good m astery of adjective
noun
collocations but in general the subjects do not have a good co m m and of English adjective
noun
collocations Mean w hile gap exists between and within different groups of subjects in their receptive
knowledge and productive knowledge w hile the transform ation fro m receptive knowledge into productive
skills appears to be a slow and gradual process The study is innovative in that the adjective
noun
collocations are divided into three categories according to the collocability na m ely collocations
co m posed of polyse m ous synony m ous and deverbal participial adjectives The categorization based on
collocability is indeed enlightening for the investigation of other types of collocationsFurther research
can be conducted to find out w hether collocability affects the acquisition of other types of collocations
and to w hat extent
Develop m ental pattern of the use of collocations has recently attracted m uch attention in China
Valuable findings have been revealed fro m these studies with a co m puter
assisted approach using the data
fro m the CLEC Chinese Learner English Corpus
Gui Yang 2003 It is revealed that for English
learners of different proficiency levels their ability of appropriate use of collocations is far fro m
desirable but differences exist between students of different levels
75

Revie w of Em pirical Studies on Collocation in the Field of SLA Cao Pei

Zhang 2002 approached this proble m on the basis of CLEC and a co m parison with the native
speakers corpus
the LOCNESSShe analyzed learners use of collocations involving the high
frequency
verb m ake in the writing in TEM
4 and TEM
8She concluded fro m her data that second
year English
m ajors showed no significant difference in the frequency of collocationsinvolving m ake w hile the senior
English m ajors underuse collocationsinvolving m akeAs far as the specific uses are concerned
itis found
that there was a significant difference between Chinese students and native speakersBesides
seniors are
found to misuse the causative and delexical uses of m ake than sopho m ores Unlike the studies using
collocation tests
the study defined collocation in a broad sense
that is
any co m bination of tw o or m ore
w ords
rather than co m binations with a certain degree of constraint
Tan2006also conducted a cross
sectional study to explore the develop m ental pattern of the use of
collocations of high
frequency w ords a m ong English m ajorsShe collected the essays of a total of 157
students fro m different acade mic years in a se m ester and exa mined the use of collocations of the 8 high
frequency w ords in the essays with the help of co m puters Only co m binations that could be checked in
collocation dictionaries are counted as collocationsFro m the quantitative data
she found that there is a
significant growth of collocational perform ance between fresh m en and sopho m ores and between
sopho m ores and juniors but seniors show little develop m ent fro m juniorsBesides Tan contented that
students use of collocations was greatly influenced by their L1 useIn m easuring students collocation
co m petence
the researcher distinguished the tokens and types of collocations used in one text
so thatthe
frequent repetition of one collocation w ould not produce extre m e results But the proble m is the
researcher did not state clearly how collocation co m petence was m easured quantitatively though SPSS
results were provided
Sun and Chen2006studied the use of collocations involving nouns through the writing of learners
of different proficiency levels in the CLEC corpus The three groups are high school students non
English m ajors in colleges and English m ajors in collegesThey found that students with the increase of
their English proficiency learners use m ore gra m m atical collocations but the use of noun collocations
does not show consistent im prove m ent with different types of noun colligation developing in a different
patternThey claim ed that learners develop m ent of the use of noun colligation is m odeled by the three
stage sche m e of language learning proposed by Skehan 1998 80 lexicalization
gra m m aticalizaiton
relexicalizationThe study uncovers the sa m e finding as Gitsaki1999 as learners overall language
proficiency develops
they are inclined to use m ore co m plex construction in their writingBut this study
shares the sa m e proble m with Zhang s that is the researcher did not take into consideration w hether
students use the colligation correctlyIn fact producing inappropriate co m binations of w ords is no
indication of students collocational co m petence
Wang and Chen2007 addressed the collocation of intensifiers based on writings of students fro m
junior high schools non
English m ajors in universities and English m ajors in universitiesTheir found
three develop m ental patterns
1 the m ore proficient learners are the m ore collocations of intensifiers
they use 2 students fro m high schools overuse collocations involving so very and very m uch and
w hen collocations of these w ords are counted out
learners use m ore collocations of intensifiers both in
type and nu m ber 3significant develop m ent in collocational use is only between English m ajors and the
other groups w hile non
English m ajors in universities do not show m uch differenceIt was also found
that for learners of different native language
their use of collocations involving intensifiers share so m e
co m m on points in terms of se m antic selectionBut the difference in use was not investigated in detail
Besides
the researcher did not distinguish between collocations co m posed of verbs and adjectives
both of
w hich could be m odified by intensifiers in collocations
The studies m entioned above are all basically data
basedIt was done by exa mining the concordance
lines and m aking su m m aries and generalizations based on the concordanceSyntag m atic relations of the
collocation co m ponents are taken into consideration in the data
based m ethod Wei 2002bw hile the
data
driven m ethod in studying collocations was not usually adopted in SLA
These studies have shed m uch light on Chinese L2 learners develop m ental patterns of collocation
acquisitionHowever there are questions left unaddressed such as the acquisition order of different
types of collocations Gitsaki 1999 has uncovered the acquisition order of sim ple gra m m atical
76

CELEA Journal 82

collocation lexical collocation co m plex gra m m atical collocation

but does the syntactic co m position
of lexical collocations affect their order of acquisition In other w ords do students show different
patterns in acquiring verb
noun collocations adjective
collocations noun
noun collocations and other
type of collocations Or do se m antic do m ains of the collocation co m ponents affectthe acquisition order of
collocations
Concerning verb
noun collocations w hich are frequently focused in previous studies m ost were
exa mining m erely collocationsinvolving high
frequency w ords w hich
in fact do not account for a large
proportion in learners writing productionThe use and develop m ent of collocations involving verbs of a
relatively low frequency also need investigating
Besides no authentic longitudinal study has been conducted in this respect for m ost of the studies
collected data fro m different learners of different stages rather than following the develop m ent of the
sa m e group of learners Though it might be tim e
consu ming and painstaking to design and carry out
longitudinal studies the findings w ould be well
w orth the efforts and could im prove the learning and
teaching of collocations

2
3 Analysis of L2 Learners Collocational Errors
Unlike the abovem entioned studies w hich focused on determining the subjects general collocational
knowledge in a certain stage or develop m ental patternsin acquiring or using collocations
so m e studies are
solely dedicated to investigating the collocational errors co m mitted by L2 learners
or finding explanations
for the errors learners co m mitted in their writing or collocation test
Lo m bard1997 classified collocational errors in 52 sa m ples written in English by 8 Taiwanese
graduate MBA students at the University of Texas into four types ofidiosyncrasiesincluding lexical
transfer phonological similarity gra m m atical irregularity and se m antic choice More than half of the
587 errors collected by Lo m bard were the type of se m antic choice
followed by gra m m aticalirregularity
phonologicalsimilarity
and lexicaltransferGra m m aticalinfluence consisted of three types w ord form
preposition choice and genitive structures Lexical transfer errors were attributed to tw o sources a
direct lexical translation b lexical overgeneralization because of a mism atch between English and
Mandarinp150
Lo m bard concluded that in order to acquire adequate co m petence of collocation
learners should be m ade aware of the difference between their native language and the target language
Altenberg and Granger2001co m pared the gra m m atical and lexical patterning of the verb m ake in
native and non
native student writing using co m puterized corpora the International Corpus of Learner
English ICLE and Louvain Corpus of Native English EssaysLOCNESS
It was found out that the
typical collocations of the verb m ake that is the delexical and causative uses pose so m e difficulty to
EFLlearners na m ely Swedish and French speaking learners even at an advanced levelThey not only
underuse delexical structures
they also misuse the m As to the causative uses of m ake
it was found that
Swedish learners show a significant overuse of adjective and verb structure w hile the French
speaking
learners reveal a consistent underuse of causative m ake especially noun and adjective structuresFro m
the results
it was de m onstrated that so m e of the proble ms were shared by both tw o groups w hile others
correlate to the learners first language
that is both interlingual and intralingual transfer play a part in
learners collocational errors
Nesselhauf2003analyzed the use of verb
noun collocations by advanced Germ an speaking learners
of English in free written production He identified the types of mistakes that the learners m ake w hen
producing collocations and investigated the influence of the degree of restriction of a co m bination and of
the learners native language on the production of collocationsIt was found out that w hile the degree of
restriction e m erges to have so m e but co m paratively little
im pact on the difficulty of co m binations for
the learners
the learners native language turned out to have a greater degree of influence Types of
mistakes that were probably influenced by the learners native language were verb mistakes noun
mistakes usage mistakes preposition mistakes and article mistakes
In China with the construction of CLEC Chinese Learner English Corpus
a considerable a m ount
of studies have been conducted to investigate Chinese EFLlearners collocational errors in their writing
77

Revie w of Em pirical Studies on Collocation in the Field of SLA Cao Pei

and fruitful findings have been identifiedPu 2003 Zhang Li 2004 Sun 2004 Miu Sun 2005 Deng
2005 Wang Zhang 2007 etc

To su m m arize the findings Li2004 listed the reasons for collocational errors in COLEC and
regarded those as strategies that learners actively adopt in the case of difficulty Largely four types of
strategies are believed to be frequently adopted 1transfer both interlingual transfer and intralingual
transfer
2 repetition 3substitution 4 productivityLi suggested that isolated and decontextulized
presentation of collocations might m ake incorrect language input with w hich learners are likely to m ake
false assu m ptions and rely too m uch on translation of equivalents
With access to learner corpora L2 learners collocational errors can be exa mined in particular
contextsThough m uch has been know n about the errors that students m ade in their writing
there lacks
convincing explanation for learners inadequacy in their use of collocationsItisim perative that thisissue
draws m ore insights fro m the perspective of cognitive linguistics and neurocognitive linguistics for
exa m ple how is collocation stored in learners long
term m e m ory how is collocation processed
cognitively etc
Another proble m concerns the validity of the studies conducted by non
native speakersCollocational
errors in learner corpora were m ainly annotated m anually by non
native speakersIt is true that those
w ho did the annotation w ork had m anaged to acquire certain degree of proficiency of English
still doubts
could not be totally dispelled concerning the accuracy of the identification of collocational errorsFor
instance
in a review of CLEL Wang 2003
the collocationa good fortuneis listed as an exa m ple of
collocational error w hich in fact de m onstrates an MI
value1 of 1
53 in BNCNational Bank of English
and islisted in Oxford Collocations DictionaryAlthough cases of this kind are rare
the corpus analysisis
not exe m pt fro m mistakes
In addition few of the previous studies focused on the misused collocations that is collocations
w hich are acceptable in isolation in terms of se m antics and gra m m ar but are used in inappropriate
contexts With the availability of learner corpora and with the aid of co m puters this proble m shall be
approached with m ore detailed m echanism for the annotation of collocational errors so that the use of
collocations can be exa mined in a larger context with consideration given to other ele m ents such as
registerThough tim e
consu ming
the findings will enable us to know better aboutlearners acquisition of
collocations

2
4 Exa mination of Correlation between Collocations and General Language Proficiency
Since written contexts necessarily require m ore precision in w ording than spoken contexts
learners
of English w ho are seeking to achieve near
nativeness m ust be able to produce in written form collocations
that are appropriate and accurate Therefore the correct use of collocations accounts m uch for L2
learners writing
and several researchers have investigated the use of collocationsin L2 learners writing
and identified the correlation between L2 learners collocational knowledge and their writing proficiency
Zhang s study1993was one of first on this topic and later studies generally followed the research
designZhang tested 60 30 native and 30 non
native speakers of English by using a blank
filling
collocation test and a writing testThe collocation test m easured students collocational knowledge w hile
the writing task collected their use of collocations and writing fluency He co m pared the correlation
between his subjects knowledge of collocations and their writing quality and the application of
collocations in the subjects essays and writing qualityHe found thatcollocational knowledge is a source
of fluency in written co m m unication a m ong college fresh m enand thatquantity
i e
the nu m ber of
collocations found in the subjects writing sa m plesbut m ore im portantly quality
i e variety and
accuracy of collocations used in the writing of collocational use distinguish between Good and Poor
college fresh m en writing as well as between native and non
native college fresh m en writing
In fact
Zhang set off a trend in collocation studies in w hich the correlations between the EFL students
knowledge of collocations use of collocations and English writing fluency were exa mined
Al
Zahrani1998 carried out a study to investigate the differences in the knowledge of English
lexical collocations a m ong four acade mic levels of Saudi EFL students and the relationship between the
78

CELEA Journal 82

knowledge of lexical collocations and these participants general language proficiency The test of
collocations involved 50 verb
noun co m binations with the verb missing but the first letter or phone m e
givenThe participants general English proficiency was elicited by co m pleting a writing test and a
TOEFL exa m Al
Zahrani found that there were significant differences in students knowledge of
collocations in the co m parison between the fresh m en and sopho m ores and the co m parison between the
juniors and seniors w hile there was a slight difference between the sopho m ores and juniorsIn addition
there was a strong relationship between the participants knowledge of collocations and their overall
language proficiency Al
Zahrani also pointed out that students knowledge of collocations was a good
predicator for their scores in the writing test
Hsu2002did a research on the develop m ent of collocational proficiency in a w orkshop on English
for General Business Purposes for Taiwanese college students Based on the data he collected fro m
students writing he concluded that there was a positive connection between the students use of lexical
collocations and their proficiency
though there are several factors that affected the learnability oflexical
collocations such as classroo m instruction extra learning experience leaner needs frequency of
collocation co m ponents L1L2 difference degree of idio m aticity m orphological co m plexity of
collocation co m ponents
In a later study by Hsu 2007 he investigated the use of English lexical collocations and their
relation to the online writing of Taiwanese college English m ajor and non
English m ajorsThe web
based
writing progra m Criterion Version 7
0 was used to ad minister the online writing test and to score the
writings produced by students He found that there was a significant correlation between L2 learners
frequency of lexical collocations and their online writing scores and between learners variety of lexical
collocations and their scores It was also show n that verb
noun collocations and adjective
noun
collocations are easier to acquire than other sub
types
In m ainland China Lu2006studied the correlation between L2 learners use oflexical collocations
and their writing proficiency Their subjects were non
English m ajors and the writings were collected
fro m the College English TestCET Band 4It was found that the frequency of collocations correlates
significantly with the writing score and that students of different proficiency level de m onstrated great
difference in their use of collocations
Ding and Qi2007 exa mined the correlation between the co m petence of collocation form ulaic
sequenceand speaking and writingThey analyzed 70 second
year English m ajors speaking in the TEM
4 exa mination and 22 four
year students writing
concentrating on the use of chunks in their production
Total and correct uses of collocations in both forms of production are counted and it is m ade clear that
learners collocations can better predict their language co m petence than gra m m atical knowledgeThey
suggest that a better awareness of chunks contributes greatly their language production
and that teachers
should help to raise learners awareness of the collocational knowledge
Though all the studies are prim arily data
based they do not share the sa m e m easure m ent of
collocationsSo m e studies involve both tokens and types of collocationseg Zhang 1993 Hsu 2002
Hsu 2007w hile others use frequencyi
e tokensas the only m easure m enteg AlZahrani 1998 Lu
2006 Ding Qi 20007
According to Zhang and Hsu s findings it is advisable for researchers to
distinguish tokens fro m types for the tw o variables might lead to distinct findings
Allin all despite the differences in m easure m ent of collocational knowledge and use those studies
co m e to the consensus that learners knowledge and use of collocations both correlate with the general
language proficiency either writing or speaking Thus it can be said that collocational knowledge is
indicative of learners productive skills However no study has explored the question w hether
collocational knowledge can predict learners reading and listening abilities w hich might be an area of
interest for future researchers

2
5 Assessment of Direct Collocation Instruction for L2 Learners
As is substantiated by the previous studies L2 learners can be seriously inco m petentin the knowledge
and use of collocationsTherefore
it poses challenges for teachers to develop better teaching m ethods for
79

Revie w of Em pirical Studies on Collocation in the Field of SLA Cao Pei

collocation instructionHowever
there are few published articles illustrating how to carry out effective
collocation instruction in classroo m settingYet
the issue did draw the attention of so m e researchers
In the abovem entioned study by Hsu 2002 he did an experim ent to investigate w hether the
teaching of lexical collocations in a business English w orkshop w ould enhance Taiwanese college EFL
learners develop m ent of language proficiency and collocational proficiencyIn classroo m instruction he
highlighted the target collocations and m ade students aware of the m The findings de m onstrated that the
direct e m phasis on lexical collocations have assisted the students to acquire new collocationsin the written
and spoken discourse and helped the m use previously acquired collocations in new and creative ways
In a later study Hsu 2008 studied the effects of collocation instruction on the reading
co m prehension and vocabulary learning of Taiwanese College English m ajors at three acade mic levels
The experim ental group received lexical collocation instruction w hile the tw o control groups received
single
ite m vocabulary instruction and no instruction respectively The quantitative data indicate that
direct lexical collocation instruction im proves the learners vocabulary learning at all acade mic levels
Liu2008also conducted a study to exa mine the effects of verb
noun collocation instruction using
online corporaSubjects of her study are sopho m ore non
English m ajors in a university in Wuhan and
they were divided into three groupsOne group attended classes with the aid of on
line concordancer to
su m m arize the frequently occurred verbs that collocated with the key nouns A second group received
collocation instruction with the paper w orksheet prepared by the teacher and a third group of learners
were given traditional deductive teachingFindings of the study show that concordance
based collocation
instruction is m ore beneficial than the traditional deductive lecturing and that collocations are optim ally
learned fro m m ultiple contextsThus
the researcher proposed the use of concordance
based w orksheets
in collocation instruction
Since there are few studies of this kind
it is difficult to validate the effects of various m ethods of
collocation instructionAnyway the wide range of learner errors in their use of collocations calls for
m ore effective instruction on collocations
and larger sa m ple groups are needed to determine w hether the
proposed m ethods are optim al

3Conclusion and Reco m mendations for Further Studies

With the bulk of literature on collocations ho m e and abroad
it is now fairly clear that collocations
have begun to receive substantial attentionThough studies on collocations have been carried out in the
past tw o decades and fruitfulfindings have been revealed
learners collocational co m petence still calls for
m ore devotion
Firstly
longitudinalstudies on learners knowledge and use of collocations are to be conducted to gain
a better understanding of the develop m ental patterns of collocations
Secondly
the acquisition order of different types of collocations needs to be addressed based on a
longitudinal study
Thirdly apart fro m the collocational errors ste m ming fro m se m antic or gra m m atical proble ms
those
misused collocations are also to be studied in the specific contexts with the use of learner corpus
Fourthly better m ethods for the teaching of collocations are to be brought forward with persuasive
evidence of positive effects
All in all
collocationslie at the center of second language acquisition as well as EFL ESLeducation
It requires considerable effort fro m researchers in linguistics applied linguistics and co m putational
linguistics corpus linguistics and classroo m teachers

Note
1 MI
value of collocations can be checked http
corpusbyuedubnc

References
Alternberg B S Granger2001The gram matical and lexical patterning of MAKE in native and non
80

CELEA Journal 82

native student writing Applied Linguistics 222173

194
Al
Zahrani M S1998 Kno wledge of English lexical collocations am ong make Saudi college students
majoring in English at a Saudi university Unpublished doctoral dissertation Indiana University of
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania
Bahns
J1993Lexical collocations A contrastive view ELTJournal 471
56
63
Bahns
J M Eldaw 1993Should we teach EFLstudents collocations Paper given at 9 th World Congress
of Applied Linguistics Thessaloniki
Bonk W J2000 Testing ESL Learners Knowledge of CollocationsERIC Docu ment Reproduction Service
NoED 442309
Ellis N C 1996Sequencing in SLA Phonological me m ory chunking and points of order Studies in
Second Language Acquisition 18 91
126
Farghal M H Obiedat1995Collocations A neglected variable in EFLIRAL33 315
317
Gitsaki C 1999 Second Language Lexical Acquisition A Study of the Development of Collocational Knowledge
San Francisco
International Scholars Publications
Granger Sed
1998 Learner English on ComputerLondon New York Addison Wesley Long man
Hsu
Jeng
yih2002Develop ment of collocational proficiency in a w orkshop on English for general business
purposes for Taiwanese college students Unpublished doctoral dissertation Indiana University of
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania
Hsu
Jeng
yih2007Lexical collocations and their relation to the online writing of Taiwanese college English
majors Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 42
192
209
Hsu
Jeng
yih Tim 2008The effect of collocation instruction on the reading co m prehension and vocabulary
learning of Taiwanese college English majorsPaper presented at PacSLRF 2008 The 3rd National
Sy m posiu m on SLA Beijing
Lewis M 1997Implementing the Lexical Approach Putting Theoriesinto PracticeLondon Language Teaching
Publications
Liu Shan 2008 The effect of using concordance on verb
noun collocation learning An e m pirical study
Paper presented at PacSLRF2008 The 3rd National Sy m posiu m on SLA Beijing
Lo m bard R J1997 Non
native speaker collocations A corpus
driven characterization fro m the writing of
native speakers of MandarinUnpublished doctoral dissertation University of Texas at Arlington Texas
McCarthy M 1990 VocabularyOxford Oxford University Press
Nesselhauf N 2003 The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and so me im plications for
teaching Applied Linguistics 242
223
242
Nesselhauf N 2005 Collocations in a Learner Corpus Studies in Corpus Linguistics 14Philadelphia John
Benjamins Publishing Co m pany
Produro m ou
I2003Idio maticity and the non
native speaker English Today 192
42
48
Shei Chi
chiang1999 A brief survey of English verb
noun collocationhttp
w w w daieduacuk
ho mes
shei
survey
html
Sinclair
J M 1999 Corpus Concordance CollocationShanghai Shanghai Foreign Language Education
Press
Skehan P1998 A Cognitive Approach to Language LearningOxford Oxford University Press
Smith C 2005 The Lexical Approach Collocation in High School English Language LearnersOregon George
Fox University
Wolter B 2006Lexical netw ork structures and L2 vocabulary acquisition The role of L1 lexical
conceptual
kno wledge Applied Linguistics 274
741
747
Zhang X 1993 English collocations and their effect on the writing of native and non
native college
fresh menUnpublished doctoral dissertation
Indiana University of Pennsylvania Pennsylvania
2007

1
2004

4
2005

3
2003

2002

3
2004 COLEC

3
Continued on p19
81