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Contextual learning of L2 lexical and grammatical collocations with and without

typographic enhancement

Mark Toomer, Irina Elgort, Averil Coxhead

PII: S0346-251X(24)00017-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2024.103235
Reference: SYS 103235

To appear in: System

Received Date: 6 July 2022

Revised Date: 2 November 2023
Accepted Date: 9 January 2024

Please cite this article as: Toomer, M., Elgort, I., Coxhead, A., Contextual learning of L2 lexical and
grammatical collocations with and without typographic enhancement, System (2024), doi: https://
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Contextual learning of L2 lexical and grammatical collocations with and without

typographic enhancement

Mark Toomera (corresponding author)

a
School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600
Wellington 6140
New Zealand

Email: toomermark4@gmail.com

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Telephone: +64 21 246 9707

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Irina Elgortb
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School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
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Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600
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Wellington 6140
New Zealand
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Email: irina.elgort@vus.ac.nz
Phone: +64 4 463 5970
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Averil Coxheadc
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c
School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600
Wellington 6140
New Zealand

Email: averil.coxhead@vuw.ac.nz
Telephone: +64 63 64 3449
CONTEXTUAL LEARNING OF L2 LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL

COLLOCATIONS WITH AND WITHOUT TYPOGRAPHIC ENHANCEMENT

Abstract

Multiple repetitions of collocations in second language (L2) reading produce gains in

collocational knowledge. However, it is less clear how typographic enhancement affects the

learning of different types of L2 collocations through reading. The present experiment

investigated contextual learning of English lexical (verb+noun) and grammatical

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(preposition+noun) collocations by Chinese speakers over two days. We manipulated the

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learning conditions by bolding or not bolding multiple instances of the target collocations in
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reading texts. A cued-recall (gapfill) post-test was used to measure collocational knowledge.
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We observed greater accuracy of responses with grammatical (but not lexical) collocations
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when the collocations were bolded than when they were not bolded. We argue that bolding
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likely made prep+noun collocations more perceptually salient to the learners during

reading. We conclude that contextual learning of L2 grammatical collocations is likely to

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benefit from drawing explicit attention to the whole expressions in written input.
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Keywords: collocations; lexical; grammatical; vocabulary; typographic enhancement;

bolding; contextual learning; repetition

1. INTRODUCTION

Mastery of multiword units (MWUs) is an important aspect of mastery of a language

(Schmitt, 2010). The acquisition of second language (L2) MWUs in reading can benefit from

deliberately directing readers’ attention to MWUs in context using input enhancement. A

number of studies have found that one type of input enhancement known as input flooding

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(i.e., repetition of the MWUs in the input) is effective, and its effectiveness increases with an

increased number of repetitions (e.g., Hulstijn et al., 1996; Parkibakht & Wesche, 1997;

Webb, 2007). Another type of input enhancement, typographic enhancement (TE), has been

generally found to be more effective for the learning of MWUs than no-TE (e.g., Boers et al.,

2016; Peters, 2012; Sonbul & Schmitt, 2013; Szudarski & Carter, 2016). In an eye-tracking

study, Choi (2017) observed that participants spent more time reading bolded than unbolded

collocations.

Research into the learning of L2 collocations has, so far, examined mostly the

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acquisition of lexical collocations (e.g., adjective+noun and verb+noun collocations—see

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Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Laufer & Waldman, 2011; Nesselhauf, 2003). Fewer L2 studies have
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investigated the acquisition of other types of collocations, such as grammatical collocations
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(e.g., preposition+noun collocations), even though the latter are very common (Durrant,
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2009; Gitsaki, 1999). Also, few studies have compared how different instructional
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approaches affect the learning of different types of L2 collocations (but see Gitskai, 1999;

Huo, 2014). It is possible that, because grammatical collocations are less salient than lexical
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collocations, drawing learners’ attention to whole collocations in context using TE may be

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more beneficial for learning grammatical than lexical collocations. The current experiment

investigates the learning of L2 lexical and grammatical collocations from reading, with or

without typographic enhancement (bolding), using a gapfill task as an outcome measure.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Lexical and grammatical collocations

Collocations can be identified according to two predominant approaches. In the

phraseological tradition, collocations are habitually-occurring sequences of two or three

words with a moderate level both of transparency and restriction (fixedness) (Howarth,

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1998a; Nesselhauf, 2003; Paquot & Granger, 2012). In the frequency-based tradition,

multiword units (including collocations) are identified mostly through phrase frequency in

large corpora and strength-of-association measures, such as asymptomatic hypothesis tests

(e.g., t-scores) and mutual information (Hunston, 2002; Sinclair, 1987). Much of the recent

research into MWUs has used a mixed-method approach, combining aspects of both

traditions (e.g., Ackerman & Chen, 2013; Simpson-Vlach and Ellis, 2010).

Collocations in the phraseological tradition are frequently divided into two types: lexical

collocations, comprising two content words and possibly an article (e.g., strong tea, play the

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guitar); and grammatical collocations, consisting of at least one content word and at least one

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preposition or a grammatical structure, such as a clause or an infinitive (e.g., under attack;
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agreement that + clause) (Benson, Benson, & Ilson, 1997; Gyllstad, 2014; Howarth, 1998a).
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The majority of phraseological research appears to have been conducted into lexical
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collocations (Henriksen, 2012), with some researchers (e.g., Ackerman & Chen, 2013;
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Howarth, 1998b) claiming that lexical collocations are difficult for second-language learners

to master because they are less fixed and thus less predictable than grammatical collocations.
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Probably the most frequently-researched type of lexical collocations is verb+noun

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combinations (e.g., Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Laufer & Waldman, 2011; Nesselhauf, 2003),

which may be the most common source of lexical-collocation errors among learners (Gitsaki,

1999; Huo, 2014). Verb+noun combinations tend to be abstract, polysemous, and often high-

frequency (Altenberg & Granger, 2001), thereby causing problems for learners.

Grammatical collocations can also be problematic (Hemchua & Schmitt, 2006). Schmitt

(2010, p. 55) claims that function words are generally more difficult for language learners to

learn than content words. A common type of grammatical collocation is the prepositional

collocation, which comprises a content word and a dependent preposition or postposition

(e.g., at school, account for) (Biber et al., 1999; Sicherl, 2004). It is possible that prepositions

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are mostly phraseological in nature in that each preposition is bound to another word (Cosme

& Gilquin, 2008; Mueller, 2011). Errors with prepositions, which include errors with

prepositional collocations, are a common source of language-learner errors (Hemchua &

Schmitt, 2006; Catalán, 1996; Tyler, Mueller, & Ho, 2011). Although such errors do not

generally cause major communication problems, they sometimes change the intended

meaning (e.g., …discussions about laws can go of course vs. …discussions about laws can

go off course…, Catalán, 1996). Thus, knowing how to correctly use prepositions is important

for accuracy and the overall effectiveness of oral and written communication (Howarth,

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1998b; Catalán, 1996).

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There are several barriers to learning prepositional collocations. First, prepositions are
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generally polysemous, having many different but related senses, many of them figurative
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(Boers & Demecheleer, 1998). Second, prepositions often do not have congruent translation
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equivalents in the first language of the learner (Cosme & Gilquin, 2008). Third, there is
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variability in the usage of prepositions as shown in the disagreement among native speakers

as to the best choices of prepositions in use (Chodorow, Gamon, & Tetreault, 2010).
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Despite these barriers, prepositional collocations and other grammatical collocations

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have been largely ignored by L2 researchers (e.g., Rundell, 2010). One possible reason for

this is grammatical collocations’ lack of “striking salience” compared with lexical

collocations (Durrant, 2009). One of the few studies to have explored the learning of

grammatical collocations was conducted by Gitsaki (1999). In a gapfill task, she found that

L2 (English) verb+noun collocations were produced less accurately than preposition+noun

collocations, but more accurately than noun+preposition collocations, by Greek junior high

school students. Gitsaki (1999) suggested that preposition+noun collocations are easier to

learn because they are quite fixed and rule-governed, whereas noun+preposition collocations

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are “also fixed but less regular, more unpredictable (i.e., no rules can be generated for them)”

(p. 141).

To address this gap in measuring the development of knowledge of grammatical

collocations—specifically, prepositional collocations—our experiment investigates how

different conditions of learning collocations from reading (bolding vs. no-bolding) affect

cued recall of verb+noun and preposition+noun collocations, by learners of English. The next

section reviews research on learning MWUs from reading, including the use of input

enhancement.

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2.2. Vocabulary learning from reading and input enhancement

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Learning vocabulary from reading (or contextual learning) is a major part of second
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language acquisition. Contextual learning takes place within the context of a meaning-
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focused activity. Although researchers refer to this type of learning as incidental (e.g.,

Hulstijn, 2001) to contrast it with deliberate learning, following Elgort et al. (2018) we opt
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for contextual vocabulary learning as it is a term that does not denote any particular type of
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attention that readers pay to unfamiliar vocabulary during reading. This is because, in normal
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L2 reading, L2 learners tend to actively infer meanings of unfamiliar words and expressions

from context and engage vocabulary learning strategies, even under so-called incidental

learning conditions (e.g., Elgort & Warren, 2014).

Contextual vocabulary learning can be improved by manipulating the input presented to

the learner. Input enhancement is the manipulation of input in a way which makes it more

salient to the learner; Schmidt, the first proponent of the noticing hypothesis, argued that

“more noticing leads to more learning” (Schmidt, 1994, p. 18). Some forms of input

enhancement promote noticing of aspects of language through a brief externally-induced

focus on target words or structures, usually in the context of meaning-focused activities

(Boers et al., 2016; Sharwood Smith, 1991; Tomlin & Villa, 1994).

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 Input enhancement techniques include input flooding: increasing the number of

repetitions in the text and typographic enhancement (TE) (e.g., Boers et al., 2006; Ellis, 1999;

Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996). Repetition is effective for learning both single

words and MWUs, and is often used in conjunction with TE. Studies have found that the

larger the number of exposures to individual words in context the better the learning (e.g.,

Elgort & Warren, 2014; Hulstijn et al., 1996; Paribakht & Wesche, 1997; Webb, 2007).

Repetition in the input can also be effective for the learning of MWUs. Durrant and Schmitt

(2010), for example, report that participants remembered more low-frequency, transparent

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combinations in a timed naming task after two exposures than one; in addition, verbatim

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repetition of the combinations had an advantage over varied repetition. Webb, Newton, and
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Chang (2013) found that the more often a collocation was encountered in a graded reader (1,
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5, 10 or 15 times) the more likely it was to be learned, as measured in post-tests of explicit
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knowledge. On the other hand, Pellicer-Sanchez (2017), in tests of form and meaning recall
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and recognition, found no difference between learners’ contextual learning of six collocations

after four repetitions and after eight repetitions in a reading text; however, the lack of
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difference may have been due to the small number of items. Szudarski and Carter (2016)
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found that 12 exposures to 20 typographically-unenhanced collocations over a three-week

period overall produced no more collocational learning than six exposures, as measured in

delayed post-tests of recall and recognition. A possible reason for this finding is that the

collocations comprised low-frequency nouns, likely unknown to the participants, which

resulted in a higher burden of learning for the nouns as well as the collocations.

TE, such as bolding, italics, underlining and quotation marks, is commonly used in

introductory university textbooks and English-language textbooks to familiarise students with

key words and phrases (Bramki & Williams, 1984). The small number of studies which have

investigated the effects of TE on the learning of the forms of single words have produced

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mixed results (e.g., Gass, Svetics, & Lemelin, 2003; Kim, 2006; Peters, 2012). In contrast,

studies investigating the effects of TE on the retention of MWUs (e.g., Boers et al., 2016;

Peters, 2012; Sonbul & Schmitt, 2013; Szudarski & Carter, 2016) have largely found an

advantage for enhanced input over non-enhanced input in offline tests of explicit knowledge.

In Choi’s (2017) eye-movement study, the enhanced treatment group read a text containing

14 bolded collocations while a comparison group read an unenhanced version of the text. The

TE group spent longer processing bolded collocations in reading than the comparison group

spent processing unbolded collocations, and the TE group performed better on a one-week

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delayed recall cloze test. Toomer and Elgort (2019) exposed advanced English-as-a-second-

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language speakers to nine contextual occurrences of low-frequency English lexical (medical)
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collocations in three sessions over two days. Collocations that were bolded were more
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accurately recognised and recalled than collocations that were not bolded.
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The difference in the effects of TE on learning outcomes for single words and MWUs
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may be due to the higher salience of novel single words compared with MWUs, since single

words may be immediately recognised as unknown. Conversely, if the component words of

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MWUs are known, without enhancement the units may not be recognised as being unknown
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or even as MWUs. Similarly, less salient collocations (e.g., preposition+noun) may benefit

more from TE than more salient ones (e.g., verb+noun). The present study incorporates

learning conditions with repeated occurrences of typographically-enhanced and unenhanced

lexical and grammatical collocations.

3. AIM AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The present experiment investigated contextual learning of two types of L2 collocations,

using different approaches to input enhancement1. The following research questions were

posed:

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 RQ1. Does repeated exposure to verb+noun and prep+noun collocations in written input

with and without TE result in gains in collocational knowledge?

RQ2. Which contextual learning approach better facilitates the development of

knowledge of verb+noun and prep+noun collocations: TE or no-TE?

RQ3. Do repeated exposure and typographic enhancement differentially affect the

development of knowledge of V+N and prep+N collocations?

4. METHOD

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4.1. Participants

Seventy-eight native speakers of Chinese took part in the experiment (56 females and 22

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males) ranging in age from 17 to 35 (M = 24.19; SD = 4.43). They were ESL students
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enrolled in the English Proficiency Programme or in degree courses at a university in an
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English-speaking country. They had higher-intermediate proficiency in English (their overall

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International English Language Testing system, IELTS, scores were 5.0-6.5). Their mean

score on the 2000 level of the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT, Schmitt, Schmitt, & Clapham,
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2001) was 27.62 (SD 2.65), meaning that, on average, they had mastery of the most common
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2000 English word families and would be able to easily understand the treatment materials

(see Materials section). The participants’ mean score for levels 2, 3 and 5 of the VLT was

68.10 (SD 13.81) (Appendix A).

Each participant who had volunteered to take part in the study was rewarded with a gift

voucher.

4.2 Materials

Forty-eight target non-technical collocations of low to moderate frequency comprising high-

frequency words were selected for the experiment: 24 pairs of verb+noun collocations (e.g.,

raise the issue) and matching prep+noun collocations (e.g., at issue) with the same terminal

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noun (see Appendix B for the final set of 38 collocations, and see the Analysis and Results

section for the reasons for exclusion). This was done to enable a direct comparison of the

learning of the two types of collocations. Our mixed-method approach to item selection used

a combination of statistical information (phrase frequency in corpora) to identify potential

target items and human judgements about their pedagogical value (Ackerman & Chen, 2013).

The following criteria were used when selecting target collocations for the present study:

1. At least one collocation in each verb+noun and prep+noun pair was found in the

Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English (OCD) (2nd Edition) (McIntosh

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et al., 2009). In fact, nearly all of the target collocations in the study came from the

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OCD, whose editors have stated that they included collocations that were typical and
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that expressed an idea that English learners would want to express (ibid.).
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2. The collocations comprised two or three words. If a collocation contained three
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words, the extra word was an article (a, an or the).

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3. The collocations contained only single-word verbs and single-word prepositions.

4. The prepositional combinations did not have synonyms (or near-synonyms) in which
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two or more prepositions co-occurred with the same noun (e.g., at a distance and from
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a distance).

5. The prep+noun combinations were not commonly followed by another preposition

(most frequently, of—e.g., at the mention of).

6. The constituent words of the collocations were high-frequency words, in the first and

second most frequent thousand words of the BNC-COCA-25 list (Cobb, n.d.; Nation,

2012). The five target nouns at K3 level were trialled with intermediate-level students

using a yes/no measure and found to be known.

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 7. The raw-frequency cut-off for each collocation was 2000 occurrences in COCA

(Davies, 2008-). Note: The original frequencies of the collocations in COCA were

obtained in 2018.

8. The collocations were semi-transparent: their meanings were neither fully transparent

nor completely idiomatic and opaque. In most of the collocations selected, the verbs

and prepositions were used in a figurative sense and the nouns in a literal sense (e.g.,

hold the belief, under protest). Transparency was assessed by two raters, one native

speaker of English and one near-native speaker.

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We also conducted a norming study to assess the perceived naturalness of the target

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collocations. The participants (n=28) were Chinese students studying English at two
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universities and an English language institute in China. Participants sought were those with
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valid IELTS scores of 5.0 to 7.0 or the equivalent on China’s English College Test scale, i.e.,
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of similar or slightly higher proficiency than the participants in the main study. The Chinese
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speakers rated the target English collocations and an equal number of matched non-

collocation fillers according to how likely they thought each phrase was to be used in
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English, on a scale from 1 (very likely) to 6 (very unlikely) (Appendix C). The rating task
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was administered online, using Qualtrics. A small but significant difference of 0.22 between

the ratings of the target collocations and fillers was found using paired-samples t-test (95%

CI: lower=0.40, upper=0.04, t(37)=-2.50, p = .02). The mean ratings of the target collocations

was 2.70 (SD 0.43). Based on these ratings, which were close to the middle of the 6-point

scale, we concluded that the target collocations had a clear learning potential for our target

participant population. We included the perceived naturalness ratings in the data analysis.

Twelve 170-word texts containing the target collocations were created on various, mostly

business- and employment-related, topics (Appendix D). The lexical load in the texts was

controlled to ensure that each text had a lexical coverage score of 98%+ (Hu & Nation, 2000;

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Schmitt, Jiang, & Grabe, 2011). The words assumed to be known in the texts were well-

known place names, words on the BNC/COCA list of the 2000 most frequent English words

(Nation, 2012), and a number of 3000-level words on the BNC/COCA list which a trial had

shown to be known by intermediate-level students of English. Each text contained six target

verb+noun and six prep+noun collocations, used once. Three of each collocation type were

bolded and three were unbolded.

Each text was read twice by the participants, who were exposed to a total of six

occurrences of each collocation: three occurrences in varied contexts on the first day of

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treatment, and three more occurrences on the second day of treatment (in the same texts as

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they read on day one). The repetition of the texts on the second day of treatment was intended
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to strengthen the learning of the collocations by reducing the cognitive burden on participants
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and promoting fluency of form recognition (Durrant & Schmitt, 2010). Thus, we used a
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combination of varied repetition and verbatim repetition (ibid.). The participants answered an
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easy comprehension question after each text without looking back at the text. The questions

following the repeated versions of the texts on day two were different from those on day one
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to ensure ongoing attention.

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The learning conditions (bolding = TE vs. no-bolding = no_TE) were counter-

balanced in two versions of the texts (collocations bolded in one version were not bolded in

the other version, and vice versa). Each collocation was presented in the same learning

condition to the same participant throughout the experiment (across all texts); in other words,

each participant saw a particular collocation either bolded or unbolded for all six textual

occurrences. Each prep+noun collocation was placed in the same learning condition as its

verb+noun equivalent to allow a comparison of equivalent verb+noun and prep+noun

collocations experienced in the same learning condition.

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4.3. Procedure

Participants were assigned alternately to one of two Treatment subgroups (subgroup 1:

n=27; subgroup 2: n=26) or the No-treatment group (n=25) in the order in which they

volunteered for the study.2 The Treatment group participants were randomly assigned to one

of the two subgroups to receive the alternate versions of the experiment, in which the learning

conditions were counterbalanced. Two variables, each with two levels, were used: learning

condition: bolding and no-bolding; and phrase type: V+N and prep+N. Participants read 12

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texts, each containing six occurrences of V+N collocations and six occurrences of prep+N

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collocations. The same texts were read twice, first on day one and again on day two; on the

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second day, the texts were presented in a randomly pre–determined order different from that
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on day one. Each participant read 12 bolded V+N combinations, 12 unbolded V+N
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combinations, 12 bolded prep+N combinations and 12 unbolded prep+N combinations across
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all texts (see Appendix D). Overall, all texts included collocations in both TE and no-TE
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conditions; the combined time for both text-reading sessions was about 50 minutes.
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The post-test was conducted on day 2, after the learning treatment. The order of the

elements of the session on the second day was: learning treatment → intervening task →
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sentence reading task3 → gapfill test → Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT, Schmitt, Schmitt, &

Clapham, 2001) → yes/no self-report of prior familiarity with the target collocations. To

minimise the effect of episodic memory on the outcome measures, participants performed an

intervening task after the learning treatment: they counted backwards, subtracting by 7s from

300 (Kroll & Kellicutt, 1972).

The No-treatment group participants attended only one session. They completed only the

post-tests in the same order as the Treatment group participants.

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4.4. Measures

A gapfill post-test was used to measure outcomes of the contextual learning of the

collocations (see below). No pre-test was administered in order to prevent alerting

participants to the purpose of the study and avoid unintentional learning of the target

collocations before the treatment phase. This was critical because one of the main-interest

predictors in our study was whether or not readers’ attention was deliberately drawn to the

target collocations through TE. To measure the degree of prior knowledge in the study, we

compared the Treatment group participants’ knowledge of the target collocations after the

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treatment with the No-treatment group participants’ knowledge, using the same tests. In

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addition, the participants self-reported their prior familiarity with each collocation after the
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main post-tests. No delayed post-tests were administered since the purpose of the experiment
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was to measure initial learning, not long-term retention (Hulstijn, 2001).
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4.4.1. Gapfill post-test

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The pen-and-paper gapfill post-test measured productive cued recall of the collocations (see
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Appendix E). The sentences (one for each target collocation) were adapted from the treatment
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texts. The first word of each collocation was removed (e.g., If you are a business owner, it is

important that your business does not _______ a loss on sales.). Treatment group participants

were instructed to write the first word of the collocations from the reading texts in the gap.

An answer incorrectly spelled or with a morphological error was marked correct if the word

was easily identifiable and the provided collocation matched the target collocation.

Alternative answers (e.g., make a comparison instead of draw a comparison) were marked as

incorrect, since the purpose of the test was to evaluate how accurately the learners were able

to recall the collocations encountered in the reading-texts (and not just provide any plausible

alternative). Thus, the gapfill test measured how likely the participants were able to retrieve

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the first word of the target collocations, having been exposed to these collocations in the

reading-texts under typographically-enhanced or unenhanced learning conditions.

4.4.2 Prior familiarity report

All participants completed a yes/no self-report of prior familiarity with the target collocations

(a modified version of Meara & Buxton, 1987) at the end of the study after all other post-

tests. The meaned self-report scores for each collocation (subjective measure) were added to

the meaned control group participants’ gapfill scores for the same collocation (objective

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measures) to create prior knowledge scores (see Appendix F). These scores were included in

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the mixed-effects regression models of the gapfill accuracy scores in order to partial out the

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effect of prior knowledge of the collocations. The reported familiarity with the collocations
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was not significantly different for the Treatment and No-treatment groups (t=-0.96 p=.34),
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meaning that participants in both groups overall had similar levels of prior familiarity with

the target collocations.

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4.5. Approach to data analysis

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The post-test data were analysed in two steps: in step 1, the preliminary comparison was
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made between the outcome variables for the Treatment and No-treatment groups (i.e.,

response accuracy in the gapfill task); in step 2, the analyses of the same outcome variables

were performed for the Treatment group only, adding Learning Condition as the primary-

interest predictor. The goal of the preliminary analyses was to establish whether the results

for the Treatment and No-treatment groups were significantly different, i.e., to show that

some contextual learning took place even if the collocations had been partially known before

the learning treatment. In other words, the preliminary analysis was needed to confirm the

learning potential for the target collocations. On confirming the difference between the two

groups, the main analysis was conducted on the Treatment group data to establish whether

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one of the learning conditions resulted in a better learning outcome. Our primary-interest

predictor in both analyses was Phrase Type. In addition, Group (Treatment/Control) was used

as a primary-interest predictor in the preliminary analysis, and Learning Condition (bold/no-

bold) was used as a primary-interest predictor in the main analysis. We also included self-

reported Prior Knowledge, Vocabulary Levels test score, and the mean naturalness ratings in

the analyses as covariates. Initial models were fitted with a three-way interaction (preliminary

model: Group x Phrase Type x Prior Knowledge; main model: Learning Condition x Phrase

Type x Prior Knowledge).

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The gapfill accuracy data (correct=1; incorrect=0) were analysed using a generalized

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linear mixed-effects model (Jaeger, 2008), using the R package, lme4 (Bates et al., 2015).
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The odds ratios (OR) and standardised effect sizes (Chinn, 2000) are reported for this
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analysis. The odds are defined as the probability of an event occurring divided by the
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probability of it not occurring (Field, 2013, p. 767). When the odds are more than 1.0, a
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“success” (in this case, a correct answer) is more likely than a “failure” (an incorrect answer)

(Agresti, 2007, p. 28).

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The most complex models (with three-way interactions and all predictors of interest)
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were fitted to the data first; the final model was identified using backwards stepwise model

simplification and the likelihood ratio test for model comparisons (Baayen et al., 2008).

Participants and items were included in all models as crossed random effects. The final

models contained random slopes supported by the data (i.e. parsimonious mixed models

based on Matuschek et al., 2017). (For the final model formulas, see Appendix G.) The

emmeans package (Lenth, 2019) was used to conduct the post-hoc analyses, and Bonferroni p

value correction was used for multiple comparisons. The categorical predictors with two

levels were contrast coded as -.05 and 0.5, in order to interpret their main effect in the

models.

15
5. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

5.1. Analysis

Ten collocations in total were excluded from the analysis. Five collocations were initially

excluded for the following reasons. One collocation (make arrangements) was reported as

known by 90% of all participants in the prior knowledge test and 56% of the No-treatment

group participants provided correct responses to this collocation in the gapfill post-test. We

removed four items (shed tears, push the limits, by profession and under protest) due to

f
experimenter errors in the treatment materials. To ensure comparability of lexical and

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grammatical collocations, we had to also exclude the five corresponding collocations of the

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other type (e.g., by arrangement, through tears), leaving a total of 38 of the original 48
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collocations for analysis.
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5.2. Results

Descriptive statistics for the gapfill response accuracy are presented in Table 1. Section a) of
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the table shows response accuracy by Group and Phrase type (Preliminary analysis).
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Treatment participants had a mean accuracy rate of 0.21 of the 38 collocations (8.0
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collocations) compared with 0.05 (1.9 collocations) for the No-treatment group. Section b)

shows response accuracy for the Treatment group by Learning Condition and Phrase Type

(Main analysis). For the prep+noun collocations, the mean accuracy rate in the TE condition

was noticeably higher than that in the no-TE condition (i.e., 6.1 vs. 3.2 out of 19

collocations). For the verb+noun collocations, however, the mean accuracy rate in the TE

condition was only slightly higher than in the no-TE condition (3.6 vs. 3.0 out of 19

collocations). The reliability of the gap-fill task was acceptable: Cronbach's Alpha = 0.88.

16
Table 1. Descriptives: Accuracy of responses in the gapfill task

a) Prep.noun Verb.noun All collocations

Group Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
No-treatment 0.06 0.23 0.04 0.19 0.05 0.21
Treatment 0.24 0.43 0.17 0.38 0.21 0.41

Treatment group only

b) Prep.noun Verb.noun All collocations
Learning Condition Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
(-)bold 0.17 0.38 0.16 0.37 0.17 0.37

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(+)bold 0.32 0.47 0.19 0.39 0.25 0.43

In the preliminary analysis (see Table 2), a significant difference in the accuracy of

r
-p
gapfill responses between the Treatment and No-treatment groups was observed. The odds of
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obtaining an answer that matched the target collocation for the Treatment group were 8 times
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the odds of obtaining a matched answer in the No-treatment group, with a large standardised
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mean difference (SMD) effect size of d=1.15. The absence of an interaction between Group

and Phrase Type suggests that there was a large effect of the contextual learning treatment on
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the accuracy of gapfill responses irrespective of the collocation type. There were also
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significant positive main effects of the self-reported prior knowledge, vocabulary knowledge

(VLT) and phrase naturalness ratings on the accuracy of gapfill responses in this analysis.

Table 2. Preliminary analysis. Gapfill response accuracy analysis by group: Fixed effects
Parameter β SE z p Odds 95% CI 95% CI d
Ratios Lower Upper
(Intercept) -4.12 0.37 -11.27 < 2.0E-16
Group=Treatment 2.09 0.36 5.75 8.8E-09 8.05 3.96 16.39 1.15
PhrType=verb+noun -0.56 0.12 -4.65 3.4E-06 0.57 0.45 0.72 0.31
PrevKnow=yes 0.95 0.13 7.20 5.9E-13 2.58 1.99 3.34 0.52
VLT.c 0.05 0.01 5.92 3.2E-09 1.05 1.04 1.07 0.03
lg.m.rating.c -0.84 0.21 -3.90 9.6E-05 0.43 0.29 0.66 0.46
rating.sd.c 2.52 0.60 4.21 2.6E-05 12.47 3.85 40.39 1.39

17
Note. VLT.c = Vocabulary Levels Test score (cumulative), centred; lg.m.rating.c = mean
phrase naturalness rating, log-transforms, centred; rating.c = phrase naturalness rating, log-
transforms, centred. Intercept levels: Group=No-treatment group, Phrase Type = prep+noun,
Prior Knowledge = no.

In the main analysis of the Treatment group response accuracy (see Table 3), there was

a significant interaction (z=3.25 p<.01 d=.45) between the Learning Condition and Phrase

Type, such that bolding significantly improved the accuracy of responses for the prep+noun

collocations (by about 13%) but not for the verb+noun collocations (Figure 1). These results

f
suggest that TE was particularly beneficial in the contextual learning of prep+noun

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collocations. The main effect of Learning Condition was medium (d=0.50), with the odds of

r
-p
correct recall being about 2.5 times greater in the (+)bold than (-)bold condition. We also
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observed significant main effects of self-reported prior knowledge (z=5.58 p<.001),

vocabulary knowledge (VLT) (z=5.57 p<.001), the mean phrase naturalness rating (z=-3.27
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p<.01) and the standard deviation of the phrase naturalness rating (z=3.74 p<.001). The
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presence of self-reported prior knowledge was associated with more accurate gapfill
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responses, as were higher VLT scores, higher ratings of naturalness and greater variability in
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the ratings. These results suggest that that L2 collocational learning is dependent on a number

of different factors, including both item-related and learner-related factors.

Table 3. Main analysis. Gapfill response accuracy analysis for the Treatment group: Fixed
effects

Parameter β SE z p Odds 95% CI 95% CI d

Ratios Lower Upper
(Intercept) -2.54 0.26 -9.81 <2.0E-16
LearnCond=(+)bold 0.91 0.17 5.23 1.7E-07 2.48 1.77 3.49 0.50
PhrType=verb+noun -0.11 0.19 -0.60 .548 0.89 0.62 1.29 0.06
PrevKnow=yes 0.93 0.17 5.58 2.5E-08 2.55 1.83 3.54 0.52
VLT.c 0.05 0.01 5.57 2.5E-08 1.06 1.04 1.08 0.03
lg.m.rating.c -0.80 0.24 -3.27 .001 0.45 0.28 0.73 0.44
rating.sd.c 2.61 0.70 3.74 1.8E-04 13.57 3.46 53.19 1.44
LrnCnd=(+)b:PhrT=v -0.82 0.25 -3.25 .001 0.44 0.27 0.72 0.45
+n

18
Note. Intercept levels: Learning Condition = (-)bold, Phrase Type = prep+noun, Prior
Knowledge = no.

Figure 1. Gapfill response accuracy for the Treatment group: Results by Learning Condition

and Phrase Type.

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5. DISCUSSION
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5.1. Discussion
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Six contextual exposures to L2 collocations over two days resulted in significant learning.
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The knowledge of the target collocations measured by the gapfill test was significantly

greater for the Treatment group (21% accuracy), compared with the No-treatment group (5%

accuracy), across both collocation types. The gapfill accuracy scores for the bolding and no-

bolding conditions were 25% and 17% respectively in the Treatment group. These findings

suggest that repeated exposure to L2 collocations in written input can lead to their learning.

In response to RQ1, we conclude that, after repeated exposure in written L2 input to

verb+noun and prep+noun collocations, the participants developed explicit knowledge of the

collocations, which they could retrieve when the collocations were presented in context.

These results corroborate the findings of the previous studies which report gains through

19
repetition of collocations in written texts (e.g., Durrant & Schmitt, 2010; Sonbul & Schmitt,

2013; Toomer & Elgort, 2019; Webb et al., 2013).

Let us now consider the effect of the learning conditions (i.e., TE = (+)bold and no-TE =

(-)bold) on the development of knowledge of the collocations (RQ2). TE led to greater

accuracy in recalling the first word of the prep+noun collocations than no-TE (by about

15%). The odds of recalling prep+noun collocations were 2.5 times higher in the TE than the

no-TE learning condition, but bolding did not affect the recall of verb+noun collocations.

Bolding likely made prep+noun collocations more perceptually salient to the learners,

f
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drawing attention to them and possibly helping the learners detect a formal and semantic link

r
between the prepositions and the nouns. Prepositions may be often ignored by readers for
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several reasons. First, they tend to contain fewer letters than verbs. Second, prepositions tend
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to be more frequent than verbs in natural language, thus being seen as very well known
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(Boers et al., 2014). Third, prepositions may seem very familiar because they are highly
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polysemous. Since readers often do not notice prepositions, typographic enhancement may

have a stronger effect in increasing the salience of prepositions than it does the salience of
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verbs. It appears that, once the prep+noun collocations were noticed, it was more likely they
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would be recalled.

Unexpectedly, no difference was found between the accuracy of the cued recall of

verb+noun collocations encountered in the TE and no-TE conditions. The lack of TE effect in

the learning of L2 verb+noun collocations could be due to a combination of factors specific

to the present study. One possible reason is that bolding did not make the verb+noun

combinations more salient to the learners because verbs are already sufficiently salient in the

input compared with prepositions. Another possible reason is the type of collocations in the

present study compared with the types in other studies in which TE produced greater learning

of lexical collocations than no-TE (e.g, Sonbul & Schmitt, 2013; Toomer & Elgort, 2019).

20
Our study participants reported relatively high familiarity with the target collocations, and the

control group had a 5.0% accuracy rate for the collocations in the recall (gapfill test). This

suggests greater prior knowledge than the minimal knowledge of technical lexical

collocations reported by Toomer and Elgort (2019), with their control group accuracy rate of

1.62% and low self-reported familiarity ratings across all participants. The assumption that

collocations in the present study were known could have resulted in less effort by the learners

to commit the TE lexical collocations to memory.

It is commonly argued that more attention to and noticing of particular linguistic items

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leads to better learning of those items (e.g., Schmidt, 1994). L2 learners may fail to notice

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common MWUs because the constituent words are frequent and because many of the MWUs
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appear familiar and lack novelty (Bishop, 2004; Boers, Lindstromberg, & Eyckmans, 2014).
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As a result, techniques which promote noticing of MWUs, such as TE, have been found to
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lead to gains in their knowledge (Boers et al., 2016; Peters, 2012; Szudarski & Carter, 2016).
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Our findings support this: repetition of the L2 collocations in the input, with and without TE,

facilitated the development of offline knowledge in our experiment. Also, compared with no-
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TE, TE led to a larger amount of learning for the less salient type of collocations.
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The findings of this experiment with respect to the learnability of lexical and

grammatical collocations (RQ3) overall support the claims of Howarth (1998b) and

Ackerman and Chen (2013) that (1) lexical collocations are more difficult to master than

grammatical collocations and (2) grammatical collocations are more easily internalised

because they are more predictable (Ackerman & Chen, 2013). Our findings also partially

corroborate Gitsaki’s (1999) finding of higher scores in a gap-fill task for previously

encountered prep+N than V+N collocations. Finally, prep+N collocations were more

amenable than V+N collocations to gains resulting from attentional manipulation (when

collocations were made more perceptually salient through typographic enhancement). In

21
 summary, grammatical collocations encountered multiple times in reading were more likely

to benefit from typographic enhancement than lexical collocations.

5.2. Limitations

There are several limitations of this study that we need to acknowledge. The transparency of

the collocations was not formally normed (although we aimed to choose semi-transparent

collocations using selection criteria). Nevertheless, learning may have been affected by

semantic transparency of individual collocations. Because participants reported being familiar

f
with some (but not all) of the target collocations, the effect of one or both learning conditions

oo
may have been reduced or amplified by this prior knowledge; to mitigate this, we attempted

r
-p
to partial out the effect of Prior Knowledge by including it as a predictor in the analyses.
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Finally, the measurement of Prior Knowledge may not have always been accurate because it
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was self-reported.

5.3.3. Pedagogical implication and recommendation for future research

na

One pedagogical implication of the present study is that second-language learners

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need to be exposed to multiple repeated occurrences of collocations in reading (e.g., in

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learners’ textbooks and graded readers) to facilitate the development of collocational

knowledge. Bolding appears to be particularly beneficial for less salient collocations that are

partially known, such as grammatical collocations containing short function words and

collocations comprising high-frequency familiar words; it may not be needed for more salient

combinations, such as verb+noun collocations.

Future studies could investigate whether fluency of online processing is more

effectively developed through repetition with TE of lexical and grammatical collocations or

repetition without TE. Toomer and Elgort (2019) found that not bolding lexical collocations

produced greater processing fluency of the collocations than bolding but less collocational

22
knowledge. Future experiments could also test a mixed approach to the use of TE in the

contextual learning of collocations, with TE used only on the first occurrence in the text but

not on subsequent occurrences. This is consistent with Ellis’s (2007) claim that focused

attention may only need to be applied once to a non-salient linguistic item (since explicit

knowledge can be gained very fast). After the item has been noticed the first time, “mere use

in processing for meaning is enough for implicit tallying” (Ellis, 2007, p. 30). Such an

approach might facilitate a more evenly balanced development of explicit knowledge of the

target MWUs and their online processing. The initial-only TE would also reflect the approach

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often used in university textbooks when introducing technical terms.

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-p
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1
The results reported in the article are part of a larger multi-experiment project which
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investigated how the use of typographic enhancement affects contextual learning of L2

collocations from reading.

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2
The VLT scores of the Treatment and No-treatment groups were not statistically different
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(t=-0.04 p=.97). Because participants assigned to the No-treatment group were drawn from
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the same student population as those in the Treatment groups and did not differ in terms of

their L2 vocabulary knowledge, we were satisfied that we could use the No-treatment

participants’ knowledge and processing of the target collocation as a baseline, with which the

contextual learning gains of the Treatment participants would be compared.

3
After the learning treatment, participants also completed a self-paced sentence-reading task

which included the studied verb+noun and prep+noun collocations (e.g., The government will

create work for many jobless people) and the matching control phrases (The government will

develop work for many jobless people). Participants were instructed to read the sentences for

meaning and answer yes/no comprehension questions (no words from the target collocations

were used in these questions). This task was administered to estimate online processing of the

23
collocations. The results of the self-paced sentence-reading task are not presented in the

present article due to space limitations.

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24
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We, the authors, declare that we have no potential competing interests.

This manuscript has not been previously published and is not under consideration for
publication elsewhere. Its publication is approved by all authors. If published, it will not
be published elsewhere in the same form without the consent of the copyright holder.

Mark Toomer
Irina Elgort
Averil Coxhead

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