Learners' use of collocations: insights from the research

By jjpacres via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

I often cite research in
my talks so in this series of posts I would like to share some interesting studies
which looked at how second language (L2) learners use collocations. This post reviews
three studies which sought to answer, among others, the following questions:

1. At what level of proficiency are learners more likely to make
collocational errors? 



2. To what extent are learner’s errors caused by negative transfer
(aka interference) from L1?

One of the most widely
cited studies on the topic (283 citations according to Google Scholar) was
conducted in Germany by Nadja Nesselhauf. Nesselhauf investigated how advanced
level students use verb+noun collocations (e.g. raise the question of, perform a
task or conduct a study - from the previous sentence). After analysing
more than 30 essays which were written by L2 German students and judged by
native speakers she concluded that advanced learners have considerable
difficulties producing correct verbs in verb-noun collocations. Their essays
often included infelicitous combinations such as *make homework and *close
lacks which she attributes to the negative transfer from L1 much more than
earlier studies had suggested. In fact, L1 influence was responsible for
more than half of all the learner errors in the essays under study.

In their study of Hebrew and
Arabic-speaking students of different levels of proficiency Batia Laufer and Tina
Waldman also concluded that negative transfer from L1 was one
of the main factors in producing incorrect L2 collocations. About 1/3 of all (attempted) collocations produced in the large sample of learner writing were
deviant. The sample included argumentative and
descriptive essays by learners at three levels of proficiency (basic – Middle school,
intermediate – High school and advanced – University). What is interesting is that the
number of collocational errors increased with the level of proficiency. The
researchers attribute it to the fact that collocations are often semantically transparent
when encountered in texts and learners tend to overlook them. They stress the importance of contrastive analysis in class in order to
raise learners' awareness of different collocational patterns in L1 and English, for example drawing students' attention that in English we make a decision while the same meaning is expressed by prendre une decision ("take a decision) in French or prinyat resheniye ("receive/host a decision") in Russian. See more examples in the tables below:

English	Russian	German
make a decision	prinyat resheniye	eine Entscheidung treffen
	receive/host a decision	meet a decision

English	French	Hebrew
meet requirements	répondre aux exigences	la'amod bedrishot
	respond to the requirements	stand in the requirements

Despite seemingly convincing
evidence that collocational errors are almost always caused by L1 transfer,
Ying Wang and Philip Shaw came to a different conclusion in their study. Once again the focus was on verb+noun collocations but this time two groups were compared: Swedish and Chinese learners of English.
Their results revealed that learners’ mistakes were quite similar despite
their vastly different L1s. The researchers attribute it to intralingual factors, i.e. factors inherent in the language being learnt, for example overgeneralization or misapplication of a rule, rather than stemming from L1 transfer. One such factor could be the learners’ tendency
to resort to general words (e.g. do, make, put) rather than words of specific meaning, which sometimes works just as fine, for example make a visit as an alternative to pay a visit but oftentimes result in an error, for example *do a threat instead of pose a threat.

L1 transfer or inadequate
teaching?

So where does this leave us? Certainly
L1 has a role to play and transfer is inevitable especially when learners aren’t
aware that certain words that can be combined in their L1 cannot be combined in
English. Not having the right English collocation in their lexicon, they resort
to word-for-word translation from L1 producing as a result such infelicities as *strong rain or *use a chance.

But the reason may also be their lack of awareness of the phenomenon of collocation, specifically collocational restrictions on word use
and collocational differences between English and their L1. So while it’s easy
to blame L1, lexical errors may also stem from the lack of explicit focus on collocations in the class or teaching
materials. So teachers should take some responsibility too.

References

Laufer, B. &
Waldman, T. (2011). Verb-noun collocations in second language writing: a corpus
analysis of learners’ English. Language Learning, 61(2), 647-672



Nesselhauf, N. (2003). The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and some
implications for teaching. Applied Linguistics, 24(2), 223–242



Wang, Y. & Shaw, P. (2008). Transfer and universality: Collocation use in advanced Chinese and
Swedish learner English. ICAME Journal 32, 201-228