Measuring receptive collocational competence across proficiency levels
Abstract
The present study investigates (i) English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ receptive
collocational knowledge growth in relation to their linguistic proficiency level; (ii) how much
receptive collocational knowledge is acquired as linguistic proficiency develops; and (iii) the
extent to which receptive knowledge of collocations of EFL learners varies across word
frequency bands. A proficiency measure and a collocation test were administered to English
majors at the University of Burundi. The results of the study suggest that receptive collocational
competence develops alongside EFL learners’ linguistic proficiency, which lends empirical
support to Gyllstad (2007, 2009) and Nizonkiza (2011), among others, who reported similar
findings. Furthermore, EFL learners’ collocational knowledge growth seems to be quantifiable,
where both linguistic proficiency level and word frequency occupy crucial roles. While more
collocational gains that EFL learners could potentially add as a result of change in proficiency
are found at lower levels of proficiency, collocations of words from more frequent word bands
seem to be mastered first, and more gains are found at more frequent word bands. These results
confirm earlier findings on the non-linear nature of vocabulary growth (cf. Meara 1996) and
the fundamental role played by frequency in word knowledge for vocabulary in general (Nation
1983, 1990; Nation and Beglar 2007), which are extended here to include collocational
knowledge.
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- Faculty of Humanities [2042]