The Effect of Lexical Collocation on Learners’ Listening Comprehension in Rasht Language Institutes

تعداد93 صفحه در فایل word

A Thesis M.A. in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

The Effect of Lexical Collocation on Learners’ Listening Comprehension in Rasht Language Institutes

1.0.Introduction

Many researchers have considered the importance of collocations in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) and TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). But each researcher has approached collocations from a different dimension. So, there are different categories:

some researchers have approached the problem of translating collocations in a purely linguistic description. Others have been much interested in contrastive and error analysis while the rest of researchers have investigated collocations’ use and in some cases its relation to proficiency in speaking and/or writing. Since researches about this subject are extensive, we are going to state only some examples from each category.

Lewis (1993) notes that teaching collocation warrants better learning vocabulary and grammar in particular and the whole language in general.Brown (1974) underscores that collocations enhance improvement of learners’ oral communication, listening comprehension, and reading speed, and that teaching collocations enables learners to be aware of language chunks used by native speakers in speech and writing. Cowie (1992) found that a large number of familiar and stable collocations appear in newspaper writing and emphasized essential receptive as well as productive language competence. Conzett (2000) asserts her frustration about the fact that students in her reading and writing classes often use their new vocabulary in the wrong way when they move from receptive to productive language. She indicates that teaching collocations can complement the deficiency of vocabulary instruction in reading and writing. Training students to observe and note collocations in reading will gradually shift students’ focus away from individual words to chunks of language.

Karbalaei and Azimi (2011) also examined the effect of Paraphrasing Strategy Intervention, based on the model proposed by Schumaker, Denton, and Deshler (1984). Findings indicate that intervention or explicit instruction was effective in improving Indian ESL college students’ reading comprehension.Halliday (1966) defined collocation as “a linear co-occurrence relationship among lexical items which co-occur together.Firth (1957) (known as the father of collocations) introduced the lexical approach to teach collocations. Advocates of the lexical approach claim that words receive their meanings from the words they co-occur with. Lexical units were addressed by many different labels, including “lexical phrases” (Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992), “gambits” (Keller, 1979), “speech formulae” (Peters, 1983), and “lexicalized stems” (Pawley & Syder, 1983).Halliday (1966) and Sinclair (1966) (linguists known as Neo-Firthians) developed Firth’s theory of meaning and emphasized the importance of lexical collocations (e.g., verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations). According to Halliday (1966), collocations cut across grammatical boundaries.

Some studies reported the lack of collocation competence of EFL learners; for instance, Bahns and Eldaw’s (1993) study revealed that EFL learners’ general knowledge of vocabulary does not include their knowledge of collocation.Most findings showed that general collocational knowledge among EFL learners was insufficient and that collocational knowledge is beneficial for EFL learning, by greatly facilitating language learning, comprehension, and production. Nevertheless, research investigating the impact of explicit collocation instruction on other aspects of EFL learners’ general English proficiency, such as listening, speaking, writing, reading, and lexical fluency is not so much (e.g., ‘reading’, Lien, 2003; ‘writing’, Ying & Hendricks, 2004; ‘listening, Hsu & Hsu, 2007; & Hsu, 2010).

According to Nesselhauf (2003, pp. 223-224), “owing to the nature of collocations (i.e. the fact that they are fairly transparent), comprehension is normally unproblematic for learners, so that identifying the problems of learners must mean analyzing their production”.

Hsu (2002) holds that Firth describes the meaning of a word at the collocational level by focusing on the relationship between words on a syntagmatic level rather than a paradigmatic one.

Zarei (2002) believes that this syntagmatic level refers to the ability of a word to combine with other words in the same string and that this defines a collocation.According to Zarei (2002), there are two general types of collocations including grammatical and lexical collocations. Grammatical collocations are the combination of a content or dominant word (verb, noun or adjective) and a grammatical or function word (preposition or structural pattern). In contrast to grammatical collocations, lexical collocations do not contain grammatical elements.

 Lewis (2000) believes that “lexical collocations are the combination of two equal lexical components (e.g. an evasive answer), while grammatical collocations combine a lexical word, typically a noun, a verb or an adjective with a grammatical word” (p. 133).

Jeng-yih (Tim) Hsu (2010) study the teaching Lexical Collocations to Enhance Listening Comprehension of English Majors in a Technological University of Taiwan. The quantitative data showed that a significant difference was found in listening comprehension among these participants based on the type of instruction they received. The results indicated that the participants received the highest mean score in the comprehension test after lexical collocation instruction.

Khonamri (2014) study The Impact of Task-based Extensive Reading on Lexical Collocation Knowledge of Intermediate EFL Learners. This study attempted to investigate the effect of form versus meaning-focused tasks added to an ER program on the development of lexical collocations among Iranian Intermediate EFL learners. To this end, 41 students of English language and literature studying at the department of foreign languages in Mazandaran University participated in this study. A reading comprehension test taken from TOEFL was used to measure candidates’ reading ability to homogenize them in terms of their entry behaviour. Moreover, Word Associates Test (WAT) developed by Read (1993) was administered to examine the participants’ depth of vocabulary knowledge. Participants were divided into two experimental groups: Both groups were assigned to read extensively and do some after reading tasks; the first group was given a form-focused task (FFT) while the second group worked on a meaning-focused task (MFT). The results of paired and independent sample t-tests revealed the fact that both FFT and MFT groups progressed in the interval between the pre- and post-test, but, there was not a significant difference between the effects of form-focused and meaning-focused task

Tekingul (2013) studies the Collocation teaching effect on reading comprehension in advanced EFL setting. This study tried to address whether explicit collocation teaching has a positive effect on reading comprehension compared to explicit single-item vocabulary instruction. Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKL) and vocabulary pretest were used to determine prior knowledge of 3rd year ELT department students in Pamukkale University. Of the two treatment groups one received explicit collocationteaching and the other received single-item vocabulary instruction followed by a reading passage (Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 28).Five of the six reading comprehension questions aimed to elicit the target collocations in the answers.The two-tailed t-test significance values were higher than 0.05 for all the questions and yet indicated differences between participant means were likely due to chance and not likely due to the difference in treatment types(single-item vocabulary instruction and collocation instruction).

Hashemi (2012) studied the Collocation a neglected aspect in teaching and learning EFL. The aim of present study is to focus on investigating collocational error types made by the participants, in EFL learning. The issues for teachers during teaching collocations, the frequency of collocational errors and the sources of collocational errors. The participants’ perceptions of difficulty in collocations were also examined. Moreover, it attempts to find answers for these questions. What are collocations in the classroom? Hence, collocational knowledge is essential for EFL learners and collocation instruction in EFL courses is required for every teacher or student who is dealing with English.