Collocation and the Non-native English Language Teacher

Abstract

There is a commonplace assumption that the more single form
words B Isarner knows, the larger is the leamer's vocabulary knowledge,
and hence he/she is a good language user. As a result of this assumption,
vocabulary leaching' is too often associated with the provision of a single
word synonym for a new word or words leamers encounter during English
lessons. This approach entertains only one aspect of vocabulary
knowledge: the substitutability of one word for the other in a sentence
because of meaning similarity. There is also another kind of vocabulary
knoWledge known as collocation - the way words are combined in
permiSsible manners in the context of use. However, this aspect of
vocabulary knpw/edge has usually been overlooked or at best been seen as
marginal to English language courses. This paper argues that knowing
words as independent synonymous, linguistic units does not guarantee
learners' ability to collocate the words with the restricted range of
possibilities. Hence, collocation is an important aspect of vocabulary
knowledge that requires explicit training. Two questions are addressed in
the present study: (1) Given two groups of content words (verb-noun and
adjective-noun) that are very well familiar to non-native teachers of English,
to what extent can they recognize the combinatory possibilities of these
words, and form with them acceptable and meaningful English phrases? (2)
Do the teachers combine the words to form unacceptable phrases in spite of
their knowledge of the individual words? The results show that the subjects
of the study have severely limited collocational knowledge. They have also
manifested the inability to distinguish typical collocations from untypical
ones. The results support the view that collocations need to be taught
explicitly. Thus, teaching implications have been provided