Collocation

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