(LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ) A study on common errors related to the usage of DO and MAKE collocations by English non major students at Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration (TUEBA)

------ PHẠM THỊ NGÀ A STUDY ON COMMON ERRORS RELATED TO THE USAGE OF DO AND MAKE COLLOCATIONS BY ENGLISH NON-MAJOR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS A

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- -

PHẠM THỊ NGÀ

A STUDY ON COMMON ERRORS RELATED TO THE

USAGE OF DO AND MAKE COLLOCATIONS BY ENGLISH

NON-MAJOR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP TRONG VIỆC DÙNG QUÁN NGỮ

CHỨA ĐỘNG TỪ DO VÀ MAKE CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH

Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KINH TẾ & QUẢN TRỊ KINH DOANH THÁI NGUYÊN)

M.A MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 60.22.15

Hanoi - 2012

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

- -

PHẠM THỊ NGÀ

A STUDY ON COMMON ERRORS RELATED TO THE

USAGE OF DO AND MAKE COLLOCATIONS BY ENGLISH

NON-MAJOR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP TRONG VIỆC DÙNG QUÁN NGỮ

CHỨA ĐỘNG TỪ DO VÀ MAKE CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH

Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KINH TẾ & QUẢN TRỊ KINH DOANH THÁI NGUYÊN)

M.A MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 60.22.15

SUPERVISOR: ASSOC PROF DR VÕ ĐẠI QUANG

Ha noi - 2012

TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com

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Part A: INTRODUCTION ………

1 Rationale of the study ……… …

2 Aims and objectives of the study ……….………

3 Scope of the study ……… …… …

4 Significance of the study ……… ………… …

5 Structure of the study ……….……… ………… …

Part B: DEVELOPMENT ……… ……….……

Chapter 1: Literature Review 1.1 Review of previous studies related to the research area of the thesis …

1.1.1 Related research 1……… …

1.1.2 Related research 2 ………

1.1.8 Related research 8 ……… ……

2 Theoretical background ……… ……

2.1 Collocations ………

2.2 Types of collocations ……… …… …

2.3 Characteristics of collocations ……… …………

2.4 Collocations, free compounds, and idioms ………

2.5 Collocations with Do and Make ……… ………

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3 Summary ………

Chapter 2: Methodology 2.1 Research – governing principles……… ……… … …

2.1.1 Research questions ……….………….…………

2.1.2 Sampling ……… ………

2.1.3 Research setting……….…… …

2.1.4 Research types……….…… …

2.1.5 Research approaches ……… ………

2.1.6 Principle/criteria for intended data collection and data analysis ………

2.2 Research methods………

2.2.1 Major methods and supporting methods ………

2.2.2 Research procedure ………

2.2.3 Data collection instruments ……….………

2.2.4 Data analysis techniques ………

2.3 Summary ……….……

Chapter 3: Analysis, Findings and Discussion ……… …

3.1 Criteria for classification of the findings……….…

3.2 Finding 1 & Discussion on this finding……… …

3.3 Finding 2 & Discussion on this finding……… ….……

3.4 Finding 3 & Discussion on this finding……… …

3.5 Summary ……….……….…

Part C: CONCLUSION ……….………

1 Recapitulation……… ……

2 Concluding remarks……… ……

2.1 Concluding remarks on objective 1……… …

2.1.1 Objective 1 restated

2.1.2 Remarks ……… ………

2.2 Concluding remarks on objective 2………

2.2.1 Objective 2 restated……… …….…

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3 Limitations of the study ……….…….…

4 Suggestions for further studies ……….……

REFERENCES ……… …… …

APPENDICES ………

Appendix 1: Test 1……… …

Appendix 2: Test 2……… … …

Appendix 3: Test 3……… ……….…

Appendix 4: Tables of the collocations under investigation …….… … …

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(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.study.on.common.errors.related.to.the.usage.of.DO.and.MAKE.collocations.by.English.non.major.students.at.Thai.Nguyen.University.of.Economics.and.Business.Administration.(TUEBA)(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.study.on.common.errors.related.to.the.usage.of.DO.and.MAKE.collocations.by.English.non.major.students.at.Thai.Nguyen.University.of.Economics.and.Business.Administration.(TUEBA)(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.study.on.common.errors.related.to.the.usage.of.DO.and.MAKE.collocations.by.English.non.major.students.at.Thai.Nguyen.University.of.Economics.and.Business.Administration.(TUEBA)(LUAN.VAN.THAC.SI).A.study.on.common.errors.related.to.the.usage.of.DO.and.MAKE.collocations.by.English.non.major.students.at.Thai.Nguyen.University.of.Economics.and.Business.Administration.(TUEBA)

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List of Tables Table 1: Collocations under investigation in the thesis Table 2: Nouns as object constituent in DO collocations Table 3: Nouns as object constituent in MAKE collocations Table 4: A summary of the results of the test on learners‟ understanding of DO

meanings

Table 5: A summary of the results of the test on learners‟ understanding of MAKE

meanings

Table 6: A summary of the results of the test on learners‟ understanding of nouns as

object constituent in DO collocations

Table 7: A summary of the results of the test on learners‟ understanding of nouns as

object constituent in MAKE collocations

Table 8: A summary of the results of the test on learners‟ use of both DO and

MAKE

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Definition of key technical terms

In this thesis, the key technical terms are to be employed in the senses as stated below:

i Error = Misuse or breach of the code arising from incompetence in the target language

ii Context = the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood (Oxford Dictionary) iii Pragmatic meaning = Meaning in context

iv Collocation= a group of words or phrase which is frequently used with another word or phrase, in a way that sounds correct to people who have spoken the language all their lives, but might not be expected from the meaning (CALD, 2005)

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Part A: INTRODUCTION

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1 Rationale of the study “No piece of natural spoken or written English is totally free of collocation” (OCD,

2009) Therefore, learning collocation is important for EFL learners For students, choosing the right collocation will make his/her speech and writing sound much more natural, more native-speaker-like Poor collocation in exams is also likely to lead to lower marks However, during the time working as a teacher of English at Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration (TUEBA), I have found out that English non- major students at different levels often make mistakes in using DO and MAKE collocations For this reason, I decided to choose this as the theme for my MA thesis

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The ultimate purposes of the research are:

i To help English non-major students gain an insight into DO and MAKE collocations

ii To examine the influenced factors to possible errors made by the students iii To improve my own teaching of English at TUEBA

To achieve these aims, the following objectives are pursued forward:

 Establishing the types of errors related to DO and MAKE collocations commonly committed by English non-major students at TUEBA

 Finding out the causes of students‟ errors related to the usage of DO and MAKE collocations

 Working out possible solutions to the problems encountered by students in using collocations with DO and MAKE

3 Scope of the study

The survey was conducted at TUEBA The population was not large, only 300 Accounting students who were at pre-intermediate level of English Only errors

related to the uses of DO and MAKE collocations in the form of “verb + noun” pattern were taken into consideration

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4 Significance of the study

It is much to the author‟s expectation that the research results will help students

gain a more insightful look into English MAKE and DO collocations And, on account of this, well-formed utterances containing DO and MAKE collocations

might be produced And, this constitutes the practical value of the research

5 Structure of the thesis

The thesis consists of three main parts: Part A, B and C Part A is an introduction that gives a rationale behind the study It also presents the aims, objectives, the significance as well as scope of the study Part B is divided into three chapters; chapter 1 both reviewed some previous studies related to the research area of the thesis and provides theoretical background to the concerning matters In chapter 2, the methodology of the thesis including research-governing principles and research methods are introduced Chapter 3 analyzes data collected from the students‟ tests Additionally, some significant findings of the study are written up and discussed Part C concludes the main issues which dealt with in the previous parts Accordingly, some concluding remarks are drawn out

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Part B: DEVELOPMENT

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CHAPTER 1

LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Review of previous studies related to the research area of the thesis

Prior to this thesis, there have been the following related studies:

1.1.1 Related research 1

- Title of the research: Applying semantic theory into vocabulary teaching

- Issue raised: The researcher carried out the study to examine collocational knowledge of eight advanced EFL learners of English

- Contribution: The results showed that these students did not succeed in completing

a collocational grid that included adjective-noun collocations although vocabulary was not a problematic matter The researcher emphazised that presenting highly frequent collocates for learners when they start is really important

- Contribution: The researcher came to such a conclusion that there was a significant positive relationship between learners‟ general knowledge of vocabulary and their knowledge of collocations The knowledge of the learners‟ on receptive collocation tasks of was better than their productive ones, and the learner had difficulty with some collocation categories, such as adjective-noun collocations in comparison with others

- Title of the research: Research methods in education and psychology: Integrating

diversity with quantitative & qualitative approaches

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- Issues raised: By using two instruments: pretreatment and post-treatment translation tests, Marton investigated Polish learners‟ knowledge of collocations and their abilities to use them

- Contribution: The researcher found that there were no significant differences in the participants‟ scores on the two translation tests, which confirmed learners‟ poor productive knowledge of collocations Marton, therefore, concluded that learners‟ limited exposure to collocation could not improve their productive knowledge of those structures

- Title of the research: The Acquisition of Basic Collocations by Japanese Learners

of English

-Issues raised: In Matsuno and Sugiura‟s study, the researcher probed the question

of whether the collocational expressions of L1 Japanese learners of English resemble those of native speakers Two types of corpora were used to compare the performance of the two groups The Japanese learners were asked to write about a certain topic as fast as possible and they were allowed to use dictionaries

- Contribution: The researcher‟s conclusions also confirmed that Japanese learners

of English were poor at collocational knowledge

- Title of the research: Should we teach EFL students collocations

- Issues raised: The pretreatment and post-treatment translation tests, consisting of a translation task and a gap-filling task were conducted among advanced learners of English with German as a native language

- Contribution: The study showed that the students‟ knowledge of collocations had not developed at the same rate as their knowledge of vocabulary in general

- Title of the research: Prefabricated patterns in Advanced EFL writing:

collocations and formulae in A P Cowie (ed.): Phraeology Theory, analysis and applications

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- Issues raised: The researcher investigated the role of the first language and acquisition of collocations among French learners of English

- Contribution: Granger‟s study confirmed the important role that learners‟ L1 plays

in the use and acquisition of collocations In this study, the researcher studied the difference between native speakers of English and French learners of English in

producing English collocations, in particular adjective amplifiers, such as totally and highly It was found that amplifiers with direct translation equivalents in French

were the most frequent ones She attributed that finding to the L1 positive transfer that facilitated learners‟ acquisition of the similar amplifiers to their L1 (French)

- Title of the research: Do English language learners know collocations?

- Issues raised: Martynska conducted the study of English collocation competencies among intermediate high school Polish students To collect data, the researcher used different types of tests, for example, matching, a completion, circling the correct option, and identifying and correcting errors in underlined parts of sentences

- Contribution: The findings showed that the students performed poorly on all tasks One important result was that their collocation competence did not depend on the length of time of learning English because the student studying English for a short time performed better on the English tests than those who studied English for longer time Moreover, in comparison between two types of task, it was found that some students got higher scores on the multiple-choice tasks but lower scores on the completion tasks This confirmed that the production of collocation among the students was much lower than their receptive skills Therefore, more attention to collocations when teaching English should be paid in the teaching and learning process

- Title of the research: The acquisition of collocation by Turkish EFL learners

- Issues raised: Elyildirm examined the comprehension and production of the target collocations of the first language (L1) Turkish learners of English By using three

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collocation tests: correct or incorrect test, translation test and a gap-filling test including two collocation categories, i.e verb-noun collocations and adjective-noun collocations,

- Contribution: The researcher found that the negative influence of L1 on the production of collocations was quite clear In fact, participants tended to generalize unfamiliar combinations in reference to the familiar ones that learners frequently encountered in the textbook Learners also have a tendency to incorrectly overgeneralize their L1 collocational knowledge with unknown collocations, which resulted in L1 negative transfer The researcher also confirmed that acquiring collocations that have L1 equivalent was easier than that of acquiring collocations that have no L1 equivalents Additionally, comparing two types of test it was observed that the participants performed better on the adjective-noun collocation test than verb-noun-collocation test, which they found to be more difficult The researcher recommended the teaching of common collocations and suggested learners to spend much time reading and listening to improve their knowledge of collocations instead of avoiding them

- Title of the research: The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and

some implications for teaching

- Issues raised: Nesslhauf carried out an exploratory study about the use of noun collocations by advanced learners of English and some implications for teaching The researcher pointed out the types of mistakes that learners make and the influence of the degree of restriction of a combination and the influence of the learners‟ L1 on the production of collocations

verb Contribution: The research showed that the highest rate of mistakes occurs in combination with a medium degree of restriction in combination where the verb only takes a few nouns, they are less aware of restrictions in combination where the verb takes a wider range of nouns And, in free combinations and idioms, only a few minor types of mistakes that were not observed in the analysis of collocation

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were identified The findings pointed out that the major types of mistakes that occurred were the same as in collocation The degree of restriction does not have a major influence on the types and amount of mistakes learners make, except that collocations with a low degree of restriction are the most difficult kind of combination for the learners In short, the results showed that almost a quarter of the combinations contained one or several mistakes with non-lexical elements like the articles and prepositions belonging to a combination, not only verb-noun mismatches However, the most common type of mistake was the wrong choice of verbs Therefore, the researcher recommended that teachers should focus on the verb in the teaching of verb-noun collocations

- Title of the research: A study of collocation behaviors on lexical pragmatics

- Issues raised: The study described how collocation behaviors of near synonyms can be recognized from contextual usage data in corpora to improve L2 lexical meaning Concordance and computational techniques were used to analyze collocates in corpora Three transitive verb; cause, promote and commit in students‟ corpus were analyzed to explore the potential of lexical collocation information, and

to observe their collocation behaviors and pragmatic implications

- Contribution: The study showed that the use of collocation profile as an effective instrument in recognizing and learning semantic meaning and pragmatic implications of lexical items was necessary The findings suggested that it could be beneficial for L2 learners to observe the collocates of near synonyms so that recognition of pragmatic characteristics could help improve their lexical usage Taken together, these studies focused on studying collocations in use, and examined learners‟ competence of using English collocations The instruments used to collect results were mainly the application of different tests It could be said that the use of tests was effective for researchers to evaluate learners‟ errors on using collocations Most of the researchers reached conclusions that collocation knowledge of learners studying English as foreign language was insufficient and teaching or learning

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collocations should be paid more attention due to the assumption that collocation teaching and learners‟ development of their collocation competence are necessary and important in order to achieve the globalized standards of English

My research differs from these previous studies in the following ways;

- First, its scale was much narrower and more specific and limited in a small piece

of language use, but directly relevant to students‟ collocation learning

- Second, the research was carried out in the real EFL classroom where Vietnamese

is the learners‟ native language

- Finally, the study investigated errors related to the usage of collocations by examining the use of each element

2 Theoretical background 2.1 Definitions of “collocation”

Forming a precise definition of collocation is not easy, though there is a vast literature on this subject because there are both conflicting definitions and conflicting terminologies: „Regrettably, collocation is a term which is used and understood in many different ways‟ (Bahns, 1993:57)

There have been a lot of ideas when considering the term „collocation‟ Different linguists have their own ways to define what a collocation is A collocation is mainly considered as a lexical relationship between words It is assumed that words receive their meanings from words they occur with One of the works should be

noticed is Second Interim Report on English Collocation (1933) by H.E.Palmer who

is considered the first linguist to use the term Collocation in the present-day sense

According to Palmer, collocation is defined as word combinations containing one or more words having meanings only in that collocation According to Halliday (1966:152), collocation is one of the main components and central part in his lexico-grammatical system He defines collocation as syntagmatic relation of words which is linear co-occurrence together with some measure of significant proximity

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It is a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected

by chance In phraseology, collocation is a sub-type of phraseme An example of a phraseological collocation, given by Michael Halliday, is the expression „strong tea‟ Although the expression „powerful tea‟ could be roughly conveyed the same meaning, it is considered incorrect by English speakers Or the corresponding expression for computer, „powerful computers‟ is widely used rather than „strong computers‟

In his study, Greenbaum approaches collocation as an integration between lexis and grammar which are different in lexical and syntactic patterning but interrelated

“Collocation meaning is changed according to different syntactic patterning” (Greenbaum, 1960:12) The term „collocation‟ introduced by Firth (1957) is often defined as a characteristic word combination whose lexical constituents developed

an idiomatic relation based on their frequent co-occurrence According to Cruse,

1984 a collocation, along with a lexeme and an idiom, is a kind of lexical item and

is “Sequences of lexical items, which habitually co-occur, but which are nonetheless fully transparent in the sense that each lexical constituent is also a semantic constituent” (Cruse, 1986:40) Although there are a variety of views on the concept of collocation, variously defining it as a lexical, grammatical or research phenomenon, all contain a focus on the co-occurrence of words According to Micheal Mc Carthy and Felicity O‟Dell (2005:4)

“a collocation is a pair or group of words that are often used together These combinations sound natural to native speakers, but students of English have to make a special effort to learn them because they are often difficult to guess Some combinations just sound 'wrong to native speakers of English For example, the adjective fast collocates with cars, but not with a glance.”

Cambridge Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (CALD, 2005) defines collocation as

„a word or phrase which is frequently used with another word or phrase, in a way that sounds correct to people who have spoken the language all their lives, but might not be expected from the meaning In the phrase 'a hard

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frost', 'hard' is a collocation of 'frost' and 'strong' would not sound natural‟

or „the combination of words formed when two or more words are frequently used together in a way that sounds correct but difficult to guess.‟

Here are some different definitions given by Oxford Collocations Dictionary (2009) (OCD)

“- The habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with frequency greater than chance

- A pair or group of words that are juxtaposed in such a way

- the action of placing things side by side or in position”

- A grouping of words in a sentence

- Juxtaposition: the act of positioning close together (or side by side); "it is the result of the juxtaposition of contrasting colors"

- (Collocate) have a strong tendency to occur side by side; "The words 'new' and 'world' collocate"

- (Collocate) group or chunk together in a certain order or place side by side

- Within the area of corpus linguistics, collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance

- Collocation is a procedure used in remote sensing to match measurements from two or more different instruments

- The grouping or juxtaposition of things especially words or sounds

- The tendency for words to occur regularly with others: sit/chair, house/garage

- The phenomenon of words/lexical items tending to co-occur in close proximity to one another in spoken/written discourse (i.e habitual or greater-than-chance co-selection of words)

- The likelihood that a particular word will occur in the neighborhood of another word

- The action of setting in place, especially arranging in relation to others

- Group of words associated together as an expression in the lexicon Our

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class has decided "in this particular case" is a collocation in McGowan's idiolect

- A collocation consists of two or more words that are commonly associated

in a particular language, such as „read about‟ or „white lies‟ A word may take on a specific meaning when collocated with certain other words

- Refers to how words occur together regularly and in a restricted way – e.g blonde hair, lean meat, etc

Although there are different ways to define what collocation is, these definitions share a common view that a collocation is a word or phrase used frequently in a combination but it is not easy for learners to guess

be considered as lexical collocation and 29 grammatical (she thus largely accepts the structural view of collocation) A lexical collocation is a type of construction where a verb, noun, adjective or adverb forms a predictable connection with another word, as in:

Adverb + Adjective: e.g completely satisfied (NOT downright satisfied) Adjective + Noun: e.g excruciating pain (NOT excruciating joy)

Noun + Verb: e.g lions roar (NOT lions shout) Verb + Noun: e.g commit suicide (NOT undertake suicide)

 Grammatical collocations

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A grammatical collocation is a type of construction where, for example, a verb or an adjective must be followed by a particular preposition, or a noun must be followed

by a particular form of the verb, as in:

Verb + Preposition: e.g depend on (NOT depend of) Adjective + Preposition: e.g afraid of (NOT afraid at) Noun + Particular form of verb: e.g strength to lift it (not strength lifting it)

By Michael Mc Carthy and Felicity O‟Dell (2005: 9-12), collocations are classified

as following;

- Adjectives and nouns

Some adjectives are typically used with particular nouns

“Jean always wears red or yellow or some other bright colour.”

“We had a brief chat about the exams but didn't have time to discuss them properly.”

- Nouns and verbs

Some nouns and verbs often go together The following examples are all to do with economics and business

“The economy boomed in the 1990s.” [the economy was very strong]

“The company has grown and now employs 50 more people than last year.”

“The company has expanded and now has branches in most major cities.”

“The two companies merged in 2003 and now form one very large corporation.”

“The company launched the product in 2002 [introduced the product]”

“The price increase poses a problem for us [is a problem]”

“The Internet has created opportunities for our business, [brought new opportunities]” Mc Carthy, M & Felicity O‟Dell, F (2005:12)

- Noun + noun

There are a lot of collocations with the pattern a of

“As Sam read the lies about him, he felt a surge of anger, [literary: a sudden angry feeling]”

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