Murat Şahin – 310465

The Use of Collocations by Advanced Learners of English

and Some Implications for Teaching

The idea that collocations, or specific combinations of words such as "to make a
decision" or "a bitter disappointment," play an important role in native speaker competence
and should therefore be included in foreign and second language teaching is widely accepted
today. This is especially true for learners who are striving for a high level of proficiency in a
second language, as collocations can enhance both accuracy and fluency in their speech and
writing. However, despite some recent suggestions for teaching collocations (e.g. Lewis
2000), it is not entirely clear how to effectively teach these word combinations, or which
specific collocations should be prioritized.
To better understand how to teach collocations, it is essential to identify the problems
that learners have when working with them. Comprehending collocations is typically not an
issue for learners, so the problems must lie in their production of these word combinations.
Unfortunately, studies that analyze non-native speaker collocation production are not only
rare, but also often lacking in detail. Many of these studies rely on small-scale elicitation tests,
often consisting of translation tasks, which raises questions about the generalizability of the
results and whether they accurately reflect the learners' production problems. Additionally,
some studies include a wide range of word combinations without clearly defining what
constitutes a collocation.
Very few studies have analyzed learner collocations based on a substantial amount of
natural production data (e.g. Chi et al. 1994; Howarth 1996; Granger 1998; Lorenz 1999). The
present paper aims to shed light on the problems advanced learners of English have when
producing collocations by reporting on a study of verb-object-noun collocations (e.g. "take a
picture" or "draw up a list") in 32 essays written by German-speaking advanced learners of
English. The study is exploratory in nature, and due to the lack of previous studies in this
field, a new definition of collocations and methodology for analyzing them in a corpus of
learner language had to be developed. Despite the relatively large dataset used in this study,
the sample size is still relatively small, so firm conclusions cannot yet be drawn.
The first part of the paper discusses the definition of collocations and the research
methods used, the second part identifies the types of mistakes learners make when producing
collocations, and the third part investigates the influence of the degree of restriction of a
combination and of the learners' first language on the production of collocations. Finally,
suggestions are made as to how the teaching of collocations can be improved based on the
results of this study and further research that may be conducted in the future.
In this paper, the term "collocation" is used in a phraseological sense, which refers to
specific combinations of words, such as "to make a decision," rather than to the co-occurrence
of words within a certain context. In order to understand the difficulties learners have with
collocations, it is necessary to clearly define collocations as distinct from other types of word
combinations. However, it should be noted that this distinction is not always clear-cut, as
different researchers have used different criteria to define collocations.
Murat Şahin – 310465

One widely accepted criterion for distinguishing collocations from other word
combinations is the degree of restriction on substitutability. This means that a distinction is
made between word combinations in which the restriction on substituting elements is due to
their semantic properties (known as "free combinations"), and those in which the restriction is
arbitrary or conventional (collocations). For example, in the combination "read a newspaper,"
the reason why substitutions such as "drink a newspaper" or "read water" are not possible is
because drink requires a liquid noun and read requires a written language noun. In contrast, in
the combination "reach a decision," decision can be substituted by a number of nouns
denoting a specific aim, such as "conclusion," "verdict," "compromise," or "goal" but not, for
example, by "aim."
However, this distinction between semantic motivation and arbitrary restriction is not
always clear-cut. For example, it may be difficult to determine whether a combination such as
"dial a number" is the result of a specific sense of the verb "dial" or arbitrary restriction. To
address this issue, I have developed a concept called "restricted sense" which is central to my
definition of collocations and my classification of combinations. This concept has been
developed specifically for verb-object-noun combinations and will be presented in this paper.
It refers to a sense of a verb or noun that is considered "restricted" if at least one of two
criteria applies:
1. The sense of the verb (noun) is so specific that it only allows its combination
with a small set of nouns (verbs).
2. The verb (noun) cannot be used in this sense with all nouns (verbs) that are
syntactically and semantically possible.
Overall, this paper attempts to provide a clear definition of collocations, as well as a
methodology for analyzing and classifying them, specifically in the context of advanced
learners of English and their difficulties with producing them. It also highlighted the difficulty
in distinguishing collocations from other word combinations and providing a solution with the
help of restricted sense concept.
This paper presents an investigation into the difficulties that advanced learners of
English have with verb-noun collocations and the factors that may contribute to these
difficulties. The data for this investigation comes from the German subcorpus of ICLE (The
International Corpus of Learner English), which includes 32 essays written by German-
speaking university students of English, mainly in their 3rd or 4th year, who are probably
trying to achieve a high level of competence in the language. The essays were selected
randomly, although a few non-linguistic criteria were applied. The primary focus of this study
is on verb-object-noun combinations.
The first step in the analysis of the data was to manually extract all verb-object-noun
combinations from the essays. In the second step, the combinations were classified according
to their degree of restriction and in the third step, they were evaluated as to their acceptability
in English. The classification and evaluation of the combinations proved to be challenging as
it was difficult to determine whether words, especially verbs, were used in a restricted sense
in a given combination. The main source used to determine whether a word is used in a
restricted sense or not was the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD 2000) and the
Collins COBUILD English Dictionary (CCED l995) as they provided the most detailed
information on what words the headwords can combine with.
Murat Şahin – 310465

The procedure used to classify the combinations is as follows: If both dictionaries gave
no indication of a possible restriction of the verb or sense of the verb, the verb was considered
as having an unrestricted sense and the combination was classified as free (F). If there were
clear indications that the use of the verb (in a particular sense) is restricted to a few nouns, it
was considered as having a restricted sense in the context, and the combination was classified
as a collocation (RC). If the signals were unclear, further analysis was done with the help of
native speaker judgments and some corpus analysis. This study has revealed that even
advanced learners of a language have significant difficulties with collocations. It confirms the
idea that collocations are an important aspect of language learning that should be incorporated
into language instruction. However, many current publications on teaching collocations focus
solely on making learners aware of the phenomenon rather than providing strategies for
learning collocations. It is crucial for learners to understand that certain combinations of
words that may be easily understood can still cause problems in production because the
elements cannot be freely combined.
Rote learning, which has traditionally fallen out of favor with behaviorist
methodologies, seems necessary in order to teach and learn a specific set of collocations.
However, it is not possible to teach all collocations in a language, so criteria must be
established to determine which collocations should be included in language instruction. Some
obvious criteria include that the collocations should be both frequently used and acceptable in
a neutral and specialized register. Additionally, this study suggests that non-congruence
between the learners' first language (L1) and the target language (L2) as well as the degree of
restriction in the collocation should also be taken into account when selecting collocations for
instruction.
In terms of teaching collocations, it is important not only to teach the individual lexical
elements but also the entire collocation, including prepositions and articles. Using grids, a
common method for teaching collocations, is not effective for presenting and practicing
collocations. Additionally, teaching collocations with reference to L1 and highlighting
differences between L1 and L2 is important for learners to fully grasp the correct usage of
collocations. Furthermore, even when collocations are congruent between L1 and L2,
mistakes can still be made, so further research is needed to identify which of these
collocations are difficult for learners. . . . . . . . . . . .