Literature Review

5 research articles have examined a variety of grammar issues in the context of the
teaching strategies, including grammatical and lexical collocations (The Use of English
Collocations in Written Translation -- A Case of University English-Majored Students; Nguyen
Huynh Trang, Khau Hoang Anh, Truong Nhat Khanh, 2020), adjective-noun order (Adjective-
Noun Order: An Error Analysis of Colombian Learners of English; Andrew Connolly, 2020),
grammatical errors in essay writing (Students' Grammatical Errors in Essay Writing: A
Pedagogical Grammar Reflection; Fitrawati & Dian Safitri, 2021), adjective-forming suffixes
(Freshman Students' Difficulties with English Adjective-Forming Suffixes; Prof. Reima Al-Jarf,
2019), grammatical errors in English writing (Grammatical Errors Found in English Writing: A
Study from Al-Hussein Bin Talal University; Khitam Mohameed Alghazo & Mohamed Khaliefah
Alshraideh, 2020). However 5 research articles have in common to analyze students'
grammatical errors. Nguyen Huynh Trang, Khau Hoang Anh, and Truong Nhat Khanh (2020)
reported forty-one fourth-year English-majored students and three translation teachers in the
university, it revealed from the test of English collocations that just slightly over half of the
student participants were able to find the correct collocations in written translation, most of
students were not aware of collocations in written translation and still had difficulties in both
grammatical and lexical collocations in a noun going with a verb and a noun going with a
noun are the two main lexical errors,1 Andrew Connolly (2020) found the same noun
problem, Colombian students at all levels continue to make errors regarding clear difference
of grammatical rules regarding adjective-noun order.2 Similarly, Fitrawati and Dian Safitri
(2021) showed 30 second-year students who enrolled in an essay writing class as
participants, thirty written essays produced by the students were analyzed for grammatical
errors, the findings revealed that there were 368 grammatical errors found in the students’
essays, the most common one was in verb use (48%). 3 Analysis from Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
(2019) that English as a Foreign Language (EFL) freshman students at the College of
Languages and Translation error analysis from the test showed that 36% of the responses
were left blank or the subjects duplicated the stimulus word, in 32% they mismatched the
word and suffix, in 36% they made spelling mistakes; in 15% they spelled words
phonetically, and in 15% they added a noun- or an adverb-forming suffix. 4 For the last
researcher is Khitam Mohameed Alghazo and Mohamed Khaliefah Alshraideh (2020)
investigated Arab students’ taking English writing courses in AL-Hussein Bin Talal University
from the grammar test, the results showed that the most frequent grammatical error was with
the verb tense on a mean of (3.75), followed by errors in the article on a mean of (3.62),
wrong word order on a mean of (3.57), noun ending on a mean of (3.40) and least was
sentence structure on a mean of(3.39), the results also showed that the seniors on the
grammar test on all its parts did better than the freshmen, juniors and sophomores that are
the least problems were found among the seniors. 5 This proves that in all educational
settings across countries there are differences in grammar issues.

1
Trang Huynh Nguyen, Khau Hoang Anh, and Truong Nhut Khanh, ‘The Use of English Collocations in Written
Translation – A Case of University English-Majored Students’, International Journal of Higher Education, 10.1
(2020), 252 <https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v10n1p252>.
2
Siew Eng Lin, Luyue Chen, and Kuan Lim Chang, ‘A Comparison of the English Grammatical Errors of Chinese’,
International Journal of Instruction, 13(1), 931-950., 13.1 (2020), 931–50.
3
Fitrawati and Dian Safitri, ‘Students’ Grammatical Errors in Essay Writing: A Pedagogical Grammar Reflection’,
International Journal of Language Education, 5.2 (2021), 74–88 <https://doi.org/10.26858/ijole.v5i2.15241>.
4
Prof. Reima Al-Jarf, ‘Freshman Students’ Difficulties With English Adjective-Forming Suffixes’, Journal of
Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (J-FLTAL), 6.1 (2019), 169–80.
5
Khitam Mohameed Alghazo and Mohamed Khaliefah Alshraideh, ‘Grammatical Errors Found in English
Writing: A Study from Al-Hussein Bin Talal University’, International Education Studies, 13.9 (2020), 1
<https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v13n9p1>.
The Use of English Collocations in Written Translation – A Case of University English-Majored
Students

This research is an attempt to examine a group of fourth-year English majors’ ability

in using English collocations in study endeavours to explore the translation teachers’
opinions on their students’ ability in using English collocations group of students in using
collocations in their written translation in particular.

Methods
Participants
The study was conducted with the participation of 41 fourth-year students coming from three
classes of English course of 2016. Three teachers who are teaching translation subjects
were invited to participate in the research.
Program
The test consisted of 15 questions embracing only one correct collocation and the remaining
options were pseudo-collocates, all the items serving for the test were adopted from the
book English Collocations in Use Advanced (O’Dell and McCarthy 2017).
Data Collection
Gathering collocations from the book English collocations in use advanced (O’Dell &
McCarthy, 2017) and the test was delivered to the test-takers via Google Form and the
student. In order to analyze the data, the researchers used the Microsoft Excel.
Results
The teachers agreed that students’ mistakes also stem from the unwarranted interference of
their mother tongue.
Discussion
students should learn words
in chunks or phrases. Since many Vietnamese students’style of learning English is focused
on individual words.

Limitations and Suggestions

for Further Research
Despite a great deal of effort to finalize this paper, some of the possible limitations are
inevitable. Firstly, the test was
delivered to the participants via Google Form. Therefore, the researchers could not
exercise greater control over the
participants’ use of dictionaries and this test was undertaken mainly based on the
honesty of the implementers.
However, from the recorded data, it hinted no interference of the dictionary sources.
Secondly, although more than
half of all fourth-year students joined this study, the sample size of the study was
quite small, so the data collected
were not highly generalized. Thirdly, there were only three teacher interviewees, so
the information related to the
contemporary knowledge of these students in using English collocations was not
much. There should have been a
translation test for the student participants to do, so better results of their using
collocations would have been produced.
Finally, the test only arrived at the phrase level, so the contexts, the objects, and the
translation purposes for selecting
collocations have not been considered.
Conclusions
The results showed
that overall, although students realized the importance of collocations in translation,
their knowledge of English
collocations is limited. Moreover, collocations are something they still need to better
improve in the future. With the
suggestions made by the participant teachers, we hope students in the future can find
them helpful to improve their
use of collocations in their translation in particular and in producing language in
general.

Al-Jarf, Prof. Reima, ‘Freshman Students’ Difficulties With English Adjective-Forming

Suffixes’, Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (J-FLTAL), 6.1
(2019), 169–80
Alghazo, Khitam Mohameed, and Mohamed Khaliefah Alshraideh, ‘Grammatical Errors
Found in English Writing: A Study from Al-Hussein Bin Talal University’, International
Education Studies, 13.9 (2020), 1 <https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v13n9p1>
Fitrawati, and Dian Safitri, ‘Students’ Grammatical Errors in Essay Writing: A Pedagogical
Grammar Reflection’, International Journal of Language Education, 5.2 (2021), 74–88
<https://doi.org/10.26858/ijole.v5i2.15241>
Lin, Siew Eng, Luyue Chen, and Kuan Lim Chang, ‘A Comparison of the English
Grammatical Errors of Chinese’, International Journal of Instruction, 13(1), 931-950.,
13.1 (2020), 931–50
Nguyen, Trang Huynh, Khau Hoang Anh, and Truong Nhut Khanh, ‘The Use of English
Collocations in Written Translation – A Case of University English-Majored Students’,
International Journal of Higher Education, 10.1 (2020), 252
<https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v10n1p252>