The Enhancement of Lexical Collocation Learning Through Concordancing : A Case of Iranian EFL Learners

Collocation is one of the most problematic areas in second language learning and it seems that if one wants to improve his/her communication in another language the collocational competence should be improved. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of applying Collins Collocation Dictionary as a concordancing tool on learning lexical collocations of Iranian EFL university students. After selecting 30 students randomly, they were divided into 2 groups: experimental group and control group. A pretest was taken from both groups at the same time. In the following week concordancing practice (task1) was given to the students in the experimental group and they were asked to work with10 lexical collocations and identify (mis)collocations. At the same time students in control group received some texts and they were asked to notice the lexical collocations. Then, posttest1 was given to the students in both groups. In the next week, the same procedure with 10 other lexical collocations was repeated and posttest 2 was administered. The results showed that the experimental group performed better on lexical collocations than the control group and their results were significant. © 2013 Elixir All rights reserved. Elixir Psychology 58A (2013) 15034-15038 Psychology Available online at www.elixirpublishers. com (Elixir International Journal) Mahboobeh Pirmoradian et al./ Elixir Psychology 58A (2013) 15034-15038 15035 Quite a number of studies have suggested using concordancers to study collocation patterns in authentic texts (Hoey, 2000; Wang, 2002, Chang & Sun, 2009). The concordancer can search a selected word and list sentences or portions of sentences containing that word, called the Key-Word-In Context (KWIC). In this way, the lexical or grammatical items that collocate with the key word are sorted to the left and right side of the key word. It can also find collocations or words most often come together with the key word. The researcher aims to explore whether concordancing is effective in learning lexical collocations (verb + noun, adjective + noun) by advanced Iranian EFL learners. Based upon the studies on concordancing the researcher can assume that learning lexical collocations via concordancing does help learners to maximize their range of lexical collocations in a short and long period of time. This study is an attempt to introduce Collins Collocation Dictionary (CCD), a sort of concordancer that assists learners in using this concordancer to develop their knowledge of English lexical collocations. 2. Literature review According to Halliday (1966), language is organized in terms of lexico-grammatical features, rather than independent lexis or grammar. This perspective emphasizes the idiomatic nature of language, especially the dependent relationship between vocabulary and the grammatical system. Vocabulary items are not always single items or simply ‘Content words’. They can involve multiword units, such as idioms, clichés or fixed expressions that have both a consistency of form and of meaning (Cruse, 1984). Within the lexical approach special attention is directed to collocations and expressions that include institutionalized utterances and sentence frames and heads. As Lewis (1993) maintains, “instead of words, we consciously try to think of collocations, and to present these in expressions rather than trying to break things into ever smaller pieces, there is a conscious effort to see things in larger ,more holistic ways”(p.204). The notion of collocation is one of the favorite topics for those who follow the lexical approach-a school of thought that says language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar (Lewis, 1997). Benson, Benson and Ilson (1986) categorized collocations into two major groups: Lexical collocations and grammatical collocations. Lexical collocations do not contain preposition, infinitive or relative clauses but consist of various combinations of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Grammatical collocations consist of the main word (a noun, an adjective, a verb) with preposition. So the first six above categories are usually called lexical collocations and the other four are grammatical collocations. Nakata (2006) mentioned learners have to acquire a large number of collocations to be able to produce and comprehend ideas accurately, fluently and naturally. Collocations are also an inherent problem for L2 learners. Because it takes years of exposure to a language for its native speakers to get the competence sufficient to acquire acceptable collocation knowledge, and that competence of collocation knowledge belongs to native speakers’ intuition (McCarthy, 1990). It may be natural for L2 learners to have this area tricky and unmanageable for quite a long time. Learners’ problem with L2 collocational use has been repeatedly reported, for example (Marton,1997; Matsuno & Sugiura,2002; Koosha & Jafarpour,2006). In an investigation of Polish learners’ knowledge of collocations and their ability to use them, Marton (1997) used pre treatment and post treatment translation tests. The researcher used also two comprehension tests that included the same collocations used in the translation tests. However the results showed no significant differences in the participants’ scores on the two translation tests, which confirmed learners’ poor productive knowledge of collocations. Therefore, Marton concluded that limited exposure to collocations would not improve learners’ productive knowledge of those structures. Another study that confirmed the low collocational knowledge of EFL learners is Matsuno and Sugiura’s (2002) study, which addressed the question of whether the collocational expressions of L1 Japanese learners’ of English resemble those of native speakers. To answer this question, the researchers used 2 corpora: native speakers’ corpora and Japanese learners’ corpora to compare to compare the performance of the two groups. The college students who were asked to write about a certain topic as fast as possible. In this exercise, they were allowed to use dictionaries. The researchers’ conclusions confirmed Japanese learners of English. Another study that showed the difficulties language learners encounter learning English collocations is Koosha and Jafarpour’s (2006) study. The research was done on 200 Iranian university students (in three universities in Shahrekord) majoring in English. The subjects were then randomly divided into two groups. One group underwent the conventional treatment on prepositions and their patterns in which preposition and their collocational patterns were explicitly thought to the participants in English or Farsi. The second group (experimental group) received a data driven based instruction (treatment) that was based on concordancing lines presented in KWIC format. Two completion tasks on collocation of prepositions were administered as yielded the following results. First, DDL approach proved to be highly effective in teaching and learning of collocation of preposition. Second learners’ performance on collocation of preposition was shown to be positively related to their level of proficiency. Third, the analysis of errors of collocations indicated that Iranian EFL learners tended to carry over their L1collocational patterns to their L2 production. Generally results revealed that the Iranian students lacked collocation knowledge. Therefore it seems that collocations are L2 learners ‘serious problem and this problem tends to be solved. He remarks that the knowledge of collocations is an essential part of achieving native like competence in English, and if Iranian EFL learners want to achieve that competence, there will be no choice but to accept that the teaching collocations should be a part of their language instruction. It also should be pointed out that the neglect of collocation in EFL classroom should be a concern for teachers. Learner’s lack of knowledge of collocational patterns makes them to be prone to all sorts of collocational errors. EFL learners should be encouraged to make effective use of English dictionaries, especially the collocational dictionaries. Dictionaries such as Collins CoBuild English Dictionary and Oxford’s Dictionary on collocations which were based on extensive naturally occurring data are good for acquisition of collocational properties of English lexical items. Data Driven Learning (DDL) approach was originally proposed by Johns (1991), in order to describe the application of concordancing materials in EFL classroom activities. Through a Mahboobeh Pirmoradian et al./ Elixir Psychology 58A (2013) 15034-15038 15036 concordance and a corpus that is used as a database, teacher can help learners to make their own discoveries about language use. Learner’s investigations of the concordancing lines will lead to unpredictable results. This kind of learning encourages the learner autonomy by training them to draw their own conclusions about language use. Data Driven Learning studies vast data bases of English texts (corpora) with software programs called concordancers, which isolate common patterns in authentic language sample. An example of concordance implementation in the classroom is the collocational concordancer. This means that pupils are shown several collocations in various contexts in order to give them an indication on how these collocations are used. As a result learners must pay attention to how words are used rather than to individual words themselves. Then it can be concluded that concordancing materials and DDL approach, which present the teaching materials through concordancing lines, provide a great potentiality to highlight collocations and collocational patterns in language. 3. Research methodology 3.1. Research questions To achieve the purposes of the study, the following research questions have been posed. 1. Does concordancing have any significant effect on Iranian EFL learners as regards lexical colloc