COLLOCATION
BY
ENDANG
SUMARLIN
AUTHOR
:
GÜLAY
KOÇ
(
DEVELOPING COLLOCATIONAL AWARENESS )
ENGLISH
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
FACULTY
OF EDUCATION AND TEACHERS TRAINING
LANCANG
KUNING UNIVERSITY
2017
A collocation is a familiar grouping of words, especially words that habitually appear together and
thereby convey meaning by association. Collocational range refers to the set of items that typically
accompany a word. The size of a collocational range is partially determined by
a word's level of specificity and number of meanings.
There are different kinds of collocations in English. Strong
collocations are word
pairings that are expected to come together. Good collocation examples of this
type of word pairing are combinations with 'make' and 'do'. You make a cup of
tea, but do your homework. Collocations are very common in business settings
when certain nouns are
routinely combined with certain verbs or adjectives. For example, draw up a
contract, set a price, conduct negotiations, etc.
The
Purpose of collocation
Collocation
requires a word in english because there is no special word for keyword of
collocation. so if there are native speakers of English words with a
collocation we must understand without the aid of a dictionary, therefore it is
important for us to Learn about a collocation In a word.
This
experimental study was designed to investigate whether explicit instruction of
vocabulary in collocations, using different techniques, develops any awareness
in students towards collocations and whether such instruction has any positive
effect on retention when compared with teaching vocabulary in isolation with
traditional techniques.
This
chapter covers information about the setting and participants, instruments,
data collection procedures, and data analysis procedures.
Setting
and Participants
This
study was conducted with the participation of eight intact classrooms with 160
EFL students of upper intermediate proficiency level who were enrolled in the
preparatory program at Ankara University School of Foreign Languages, which is
an intensive English language program preparing students for their further
university studies. Regular course teachers of the eight classrooms, who had at
least four year- experience with the same proficiency level students, also
participated in the study to teach in three treatment sessions and administer
the pre- and post-test.
Piloting the Vocabulary Retention Test
The
test was piloted two weeks prior to the first treatment session with two
classes who were at the same proficiency level as the control and experimental
groups but did not take part in the experimental study. The test was reduced to
45 items excluding ten items from each section, which were answered by the
majority of the pilot group. Thus the items to be used in the pre-test, three
treatment sessions and post-test were determined. (See Appendix A for the final
version of the pre- and post-test.)
Materials Used in the Treatment Sessions
All
treatment sessions in one of the experimental groups were observed, audiotaped,
and these tapes were later transcribed for analysis. After each treatment
session, all the participant teachers were interviewed to see whether anything
interfering with the treatments happened and whether the tasks were performed
in the desired way.
Additionally,
two months after the treatments three teachers who administered the lessons in the
experimental groups were interviewed to draw conclusions about whether the
treatments affected their teaching and their learners’ attitudes towards
collocations.
Data
Collection Procedures
The
procedures followed in the data collection process, which were administration
of the pre-test, the training sessions conducted with the participant
instructors, the first second and third treatment sessions, administration of
the post-test, classroom observation and retrospective interviews held with
participant instructors will be covered in this section.
Administration of the Pre-test
As
a first step in exploring the viability of integrating collocations into second
language vocabulary teaching, a test comprising 75 collocations was designed
and piloted with students at the same proficiency level as those in the control
and experimental groups two weeks prior to the first treatment session. The
goal of the pilot study was to determine the collocations to be used in the
pre- and post-test and three treatment sessions. Based on the results of the
pilot test, 10 items from each subtest, which were correctly answered by the
majority of the participants were excluded and the pre- and post-test was
revised. The pre-test was administered to 160 students one week prior to the
first treatment session.
Training Sessions for the Tasks
Three
tasks for three treatment sessions were designed and all the participant
instructors were trained in workshops, which were held one day prior to each
treatment session by the researcher.
The First Treatment Session
In
the first treatment session, participants of both control and experimental
groups were exposed to the same reading text, the article on anorexia nervosa.
The participants in the control group read the article twice, worked on the
vocabulary unfamiliar to them, answered comprehension questions and summarized
the article in their own words. On the other hand, in the experimental
classrooms, the participants were first asked to work in groups of four to
translate some Turkish sentences, all of which contained targeted collocations,
into English in groups of four. The teachers then introduced some information
about collocations and asked them to read the text to reshape their actual
versions. (See appendix C for the information given about collocations.) The
groups worked on their versions after reading the text on anorexia nervosa and
corrected their mistakes on collocations. Then, they completed a table drawn by
their teachers with types of lexical collocations they encountered in the text.
They
also summarized the text using the word combinations they worked on.
The Second Treatment Session
In
the second treatment session, a dictaglossing technique was used with a short
text on pollution, which was retrieved from a web site. The text was read aloud
by the instructors twice or three times and the participants in the control
group were asked to collect words while it was being read and work in groups of
four to reconstruct the passage using the words they compiled. On the other
hand, the participants in the experimental group were asked to collect words
during the first round of the reading to reconstruct the passage and their
collocates in the second round to reshape their first versions. Their attention
to collocations was also ensured by three questions eliciting some of the
targeted phrases after the first round of the reading.
The Third Treatment Session
In
the last treatment session, grammatical collocations were focused on and
participants in both groups were delivered a handout consisting of fifteen sets
of sentences. In each set, there were sentences containing one or two
collocational mistakes or none. The participants in the control group were
asked to work in pairs to mark and correct the mistakes looking up the
headwords in their dictionaries, while those in the experimental group were
provided with concordancing extracts for the same procedure. The experimental
group participants were also asked to find the most frequent collocates of the
headwords looking at the extracts as well as making funny sentences with the
collocations they corrected. Thus they had the chance to recycle the target
collocations and to solidify their learning.
The
treatment sessions were conducted at the same class hour in all classrooms
under the supervision of their regular course teachers on subsequent days. As
for the time allotted to the treatments, in both groups, it was 100 minutes to
the first treatment, and 50 minutes each for the second and third treatment
sessions.
Administration of the Post-test
One week following the last treatment
session, the Vocabulary Retention Test was administered to control and
experimental groups as a post-test. The researcher, comparing the results of
the pre-test and post-test, aimed at collecting data for the assessment of
whether the three treatments with different techniques focusing on collocations
promoted retention of vocabulary.
Classroom Observation and Retrospective
Interviews
The
duration of the experiment was 27 days together with the piloting of the
vocabulary retention test. Additionally, all treatment sessions in one of the
experimental classrooms were observed and audiotaped and participant
instructors were interviewed immediately after each treatment session to
collect data about the implementations of the tasks. Furthermore, as the final
step, three teachers who administered lessons to experimental groups were
interviewed two months after the treatments to see to what extent their
students developed awareness towards collocations and whether they utilized the
techniques used in the treatments.
Data
Analysis
To
explore the research questions of the study, quantitative and qualitative data
collection instruments were used in the study. The quantitative data was
gathered from comparing the pre- and post-test scores. The vocabulary retention
test was administered as a pre-test one week before the first treatment session
and it was conducted a second time as the post-test one week following the last
treatment session. The pre- and posttest scores of the control group and
experimental group were assessed by running a paired samples test. The pre- and
post-test scores of the two groups were compared running independent samples t-
test. The test scores served as the values of the between and within-
participants variables of the study. Additionally, to compare the effectiveness
of each technique used in treatment sessions independent samples t-test was run
for subtest scores of the experimental group from subtest one, two and
three.
As
for the qualitative data, one of the classrooms in experimental group was
observed and audiotaped throughout the treatment sessions, and some segments
from the verbal processes of the participants were transcribed and translated
into English. The participant instructors of both groups were also interviewed
with three questions after each treatment to explore how the students reacted
to the corresponding learning conditions and whether the tasks were implemented
in the desired way, and the responses were noted. Two months after the
treatments, three interviews with four questions were held with three of the
experimental group instructors, and their responses were audiotaped and
transcribed.
Conclusion
This
chapter introduced the methodology of the study designed to find answers to the
research questions. It also provided information about the participants, the
instruments, the data collection procedures and data analysis. The next chapter
will provide information on the results of the data analysis using the above
mentioned statistical methods.
The
Weakness
Rivers
(1983) posits, one of the Weaknesses of this method was that vocabulary was
taught in context without much explanation since it adopted the idea that if
vocabulary was involved too much in teaching, students would consider language
an accumulation of words. Additionally, another flaw of this method was that it
emphasized teaching secondary students how to read in a foreign language,
highlighting receptive vocabulary skills but neglecting productive vocabulary
skills.
Conclusion
A
combination of commonly used words together. The simplest way to describe
collocation is to explain the words just the right sound for native speakers of
English. Any combination that might mean the same thing would seem unnatural
A
combination of commonly used words together. The simplest way to describe
collocation is to explain the words just the right sound for native speakers of
English. Any combination that might mean the same thing would seem unnatural
