2.4 Collocation Acquisition
2.4.2 L2 Collocation Teaching
Teaching L2 collocations is one of the daunting challenges in language pedagogy.
Corder (1981) suggested that the study of students’ errors helped teachers identify which part of target language learners had difficulties in correct production. Bahns
(1993) remarked that, teachers might ponder, “Which of the tens of thousands of collocations do we select for special treatment in the classroom?” “And are there any criteria to decide which collocations need to be taught and which do not?” Despite some fledgling attempts to design methodologies for teaching collocations (e.g., Lewis, 2000; Schmitt & Schmitt, 2005), they have yet come close to providing solutions.
It has been suggested to shift the focus of investigation away from learner collocation errors per se and more on what barriers keep learners from achieving native-like precision in a second language. A wide array of research has been conducted to describe the linguistic phenomena of collocation and the development of collocation acquisition. In particular, some studies focused on teaching models, web-based approaches to collocation learning and material design. Information about the sequence of collocation acquisition can also help syllabus designers and teachers presented collocations to facilitate learners’ step-by-step development of collocation knowledge. As such, teachers can use various teaching materials adaptive to learners’
different English proficiency and provide them with more information on collocations.
Lewis (1997, 2001), notably, emphasized the idea of teaching collocations when he posed that, given the present stage of our knowledge of acquisition, it was helpful to make learners explicitly aware of the lexical nature of language. This meant helping learners develop an understanding of a diversity of chunks found in the texts they met.
Lewis concluded that “the more aware learners are of the chunks of which any text is
made, the more likely that the input they notice will contribute to intake” (p. 163). He
further
provided some teaching principles for collocation instruction and suggested to present new words together with their partner-words, allowing students to learn them accompanied with strong or typical collocation patterns. Learners were encouraged touse collocation dictionaries which helped raise students’ awareness of collocation and could increase their communicative ability. Students were also encouraged to record lexical collocations in their own notebooks by using different formats. Some advice for selecting collocations to be recorded was given: (1) words that collocated frequently, (2) collocates that were new partners to the headword even though learners might have learned the individual words before, and (3) collocations which met individual students’ needs or interests. In addition to the guidelines, Lewis proposed various collocation activities and exercises that were practical and useful for collocation teaching and learning.
Nation (2001) agreed that time spent on collocation teaching was justifiable
“because of the return in fluency and native-like selection” (p. 317). In other words, it was important to direct students to examples of collocations in real texts because it illustrated to students that collocations were truly part of the language, and that by making use of such combinations the students would add fluidity and a native-like trait to their written work. Hinkel (2004) also concluded that “stock grammatical and lexical chunks can become an efficient means to expand L2 writers’ arsenals particularly when learners are also taught how to substitute discrete elements appropriately and in practical ways” (p. 38). She also maintained that teaching chunks might be a way to make the most of class time and teaching chunks might be a means to facilitate students’ development of L2 accuracy and fluency leading to production and subsequent automatization.
Several other researchers have also made suggestions toward teaching approaches (Hill, 2000;Lewis, 2000; McCarthy & O’Dell, 2005).
For Chinese learners of English, Liu (1999) investigated the effects of explicit collocation teaching on students’ ability to produce appropriate lexical collocations in their writings. It was found that although the total number of unacceptable collocations was not significantly reduced, the number and the variety of acceptable
lexical collocations were increased. Tseng (2002) conducted a study on integrating lexical collocation instruction into the high school regular curriculum. It was found that explicit collocation instruction could have positive effects on collocation learning, and collocation knowledge might not be learned implicitly or spontaneously.
However, the effect was not significant in students’ free writing tasks. The pedagogical implication was that teachers should teach collocations with no new words, collocations appearing less frequently in textbooks, and collocations rarely used in daily communication since these tended to be more difficult and unfamiliar.
Recent research on collocation teaching has been concerned with the use of computer-aided language learning facilities, in particular, Web-based concordancers.
Sun and Wang (2003) used a concordancer program to examine the relative effectiveness of inductive and deductive approaches to learning grammatical collocations at two levels of difficulty. The deductive group received rule explanations with examples, and the inductive group had to induce the patterns using a concordancer. Posttest results showed that the inductive group improved significantly more than the deductive group in learning collocation.
Chan and Liou (2004) applied CALL approaches to Taiwanese EFL learners’
improvement on collocation competence. Both deductive and inductive teaching methods were incorporated to help college students learn collocations via an online bilingual concordancing tool. It was found that (a) learners did improve in lexical collocations, (b) lower-level students benefited more from the online practice, and (c) collocation instruction had its effect on the retention of learners’ collocation knowledge. The study also supported that a web-based collocation instruction assisted EFL learners’ acquisition on collocations. Hsieh (2007) also used corpora-based approach to study the effect of collocation instruction on junior high students.
Comprehensive knowledge on three representative verbs was given to students
through “context providers,” i.e., the corpora, in-class awareness tasks, along with quizzes and complementary materials. Students became participants and created their own collocation knowledge
.
With respect to the form of collocation teaching, some researchers argued that most collocations could be learned incidentally through message-focused activities such as extensive reading (Ellis & Sinclair, 1996; Nation, 2001). Others advocated teaching collocations explicitly through form-focused activities that were conducted primarily for collocational development, rote-memorization or mechanical drills (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Nesselhauf, 2003, 2005; Murao, 2004). In particular, Nakata (2007) asserted that non-congruent collocations could not be acquired simply via exposures and required intentional learning through form-focused tasks
Although there is disagreement among researchers over the contributions that meaning-focused and form-focused activities make for the development of collocational knowledge, no studies has ever directly compared collocation learning under the two activities. The claims made so far regarding the relative effectiveness of meaning- and form-focused learning remain speculative. In addition, it is worth investigating what kinds of interventions might promote incidental collocation learning. As such, some suggestions were extracted from a number of collocational teaching activities. These could be applied as a generic framework for teaching collocations. For example, L2 teachers had their learners practice in the following activities:
1. Identify collocations in L2 texts simultaneously when they notice difficult or unknown words.
2. Understand that production of L2 collocations can be influenced by L1 collocations.
3. Be aware of the limitations of general-purpose dictionaries in terms of dealing
with collocations and thus use specialized collocational dictionaries as well.
4. Realize that it is not always the case that there is a word-for-word equivalent between L1 and L2.
5. Understand that when an L2 collocation exists, there might not be much room for creativity. Therefore, creating new collocations can be risky and may result in awkward or unacceptable word associations.
6. Make their own lists of all collocations they encounter in L2.
7. Try to expand their collocational repertoire in L2. One way to achieve this is probably through reading from and listening to a wide variety of L2 texts.