Measuring improvement in first-year ESL university students’ productive knowledge of verb-noun collocations through integrated productive oriented teaching strategies
Abstract
Research has firmly established that vocabulary plays a crucial role in both receptive and productive skills. Several studies have shown that learners who are able to use complex vocabulary, particularly multiword items, tend to come across as being more proficient and are closer to reaching native-like proficiency, both in speaking tasks (Boers, Eyckmans, Kappel, Strengers & Demecheleer, 2006; Strengers, Boers, Housen, and Eyckmans, 2010, 2011; Boers, Demecheleer, Coxhead & Webb, 2014) and writing tasks (e.g., Crowther, Dignen, & Lea, 2002; Dai & Ding, 2010). Researchers are thus in agreement on the benefits for L2 and FL learners to acquire "considerable numbers of multiword items" (Boers, 2020:143; also see Hatami, 2015), emphasising its status as "fundamental to the way language is used, processed and acquired in both the L1 and L2" (Martinez & Schmidt, 2015: 299). Formulaic language is thus central to communicative competence (Nation, 2001; Schmitt, 2004; Wray, 2002). According to Nation (2001:317-318), mastering language chunks in relation to fluency shows the benefits of focussing on formulaic language in L2 teaching. However, language learners seem to have difficulty especially in acquiring multiword units, collocations, lexical bundles, and idioms (e.g., Abel, 2003; Irujo, 1986; Kecskés, 2000). However, vocabulary is a complex phenomenon and it is difficult to develop a sense for multiword units (Martinez et al. 2015). As a result, many scholars consider teaching collocations as an integral part of teaching vocabulary (e.g., Barfield & Gyllstad, 2009; Basal, 2019; Boers & Lindstromberg, 2012; Chen, 2011; Nesselhauf, 2003).
The same applies to ESL learners at South African universities (Scheepers, 2017:109). Understanding what to count when identifying multiword items (MWI) to measure competence in this regard, is crucial in order to accurately determine a learner’s level of proficiency. In addition, attempts to support students in building their vocabulary adequately and appropriately through formal instruction must be informed by a clear definition of vocabulary. However, a lack of clear guidelines on what to count when identifying collocations in student writing for measurement purposes effectively limits research in this important area. Defining MWI can be challenging since such definitions depend greatly on what words or multiword items are understood to be, as well as what exactly is meant by knowing a word. Likewise, the results of a study also depend on how the object of interest – i.e., vocabulary and specifically collocations – is defined and assessed for the purpose of that particular study. This study aimed to define collocational knowledge within the framework of a psycholinguistic approach to language, with particular focus on form-meaning mapping. Having defined the notion of collocations within the context of the present study, the researcher compared the proficiency of verb-noun
collocations of two cohorts of participants. The cohorts consisted of a control group and an experimental group. Following a quasi-experimental design, the two cohorts were assessed repeatedly using a productive version of the Vocabulary Levels Test that was adapted to assess collocations. The tests were based on the Academic Collocations List (Ackermann & Chen, 2013) and compiled using a variety of published, peer reviewed articles. Participants were also required to complete writing tasks that were used to conduct a collostructional analysis to determine which verb-noun collocations occurred frequently in their writing, and whether participants made errors in their use of collocations. The experimental group received treatment in the form of teaching interventions based on awareness-raising techniques. The results from the control group were compared with that of the experimental group pre- and post-treatment to determine whether the techniques employed in the intervention phase resulted in statistically significant improvement. Results indicated that the intervention was successful. The results from the present study could be used to inform future research on measuring and teaching collocations, as well as the process utilised to select which collocations are necessary to teach.
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