(LUẬN văn THẠC sĩ) collocations in new headway pre intermediate and common errors in english collocations by non english major students at hanoi university of science and technology

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** Collocations in “New Headway Pre - Intermediate” and common errors in English collocations by non English major students at Hanoi Un

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

Collocations in “New Headway Pre - Intermediate” and common errors in English collocations by non English major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology

(Khảo sát kết hợp từ trong giáo trình New Headway Pre – Intermediate

và những lỗi sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại trường Đại học Bách Khoa Hà Nội thường mắc khi kết hợp từ tiếng Anh)

Major Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 601410 Student: ĐỖ THU PHƯƠNG

Hanoi - 2011

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

Collocations in “New Headway Pre - Intermediate” and common errors in English collocations by non English major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology

(Khảo sát kết hợp từ trong giáo trình New Headway Pre – Intermediate

và những lỗi sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh tại trường Đại học Bách Khoa Hà Nội thường mắc khi kết hợp từ tiếng Anh)

Major Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 601410 Student: ĐỖ THU PHƯƠNG Supervisor : HOÀNG THỊ XUÂN HOA

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

FoFL: Faculty of Foreign Languages

HUST: Hanoi University of Science and Technology

Chart 1 The percentage of lexical collocations in the course book 30 Chart 2 The percentage of grammatical collocations in the course book 32 Chart 3 A comparison of lexical, grammatical and long collocations in the

Table 2 The result of collocation identification and error correction task 41

Chart 5 A comparison of the wrong lexical, grammatical and long collocations

Table 10 The language skills involved in teaching collocation 57

Table 12 The methods to improve students‟s knowledge of collocation 59 Table 13 The types of supplementary exercises to improve students‟ knowledge

of collocation

61

Submission of the final thesis

4 The research questions

5 Method of the study

1.2.1 In terms of the structure

1.2.2 In terms of the strength

1.3 Properties of collocation

1.3.1 Collocations are arbitrary

1.3.2 Collocations are language specific

1.3.3 Collocations are not nescessarily adjacent

1.3.4 Collocations are non-reciprocal

1.4 The distinction among free word combination, idiomatic expression and

2.4 The sources or possible causes of errors

2.5 Collocational errors and their possible causes

CHAPTER THREE: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 30

1 Course book analysis 30

1.3.1.4 A comparison of the number of lexical, grammatical and long collocations

1.3.2 In terms of the strength

2.3 Description of the test 39 2.4 Test result analysis

2.4.1 An analysis of the results of each task

2.4.2 A comparison of the percentage of wrong answers among different types of

collocations

2.4.2.1 In terms of the structure

2.4.2.2 In terms of the strength

3 Survey questionnaire analysis 51

CHAPTER FOUR: SUGGESTIONS 63

1 Teaching collocations

1.1 What to teach

1.2 When to teach

1.3 How to teach

1.3.1 Teaching collocations of new individual words

1.3.2 Presenting the meaning of a collocation

1.3.3 Integrating teaching collocations in teaching language skills

1.3.4 Giving exercises on collocations

2.2 Using a good dictionary to look up collocational information

2.3 Doing exercise on collocations

2.4 Keep a record of common collocations

2.5 Making comparison between English collocations and their Vietnamese

I and the strength

Appendix B: Test for students

Appendix E: Survey questionnaire VII

Appendix F: List of collocations in the course book

X

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Vocabulary plays an important role in learning a foreign language It is an element that links the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing together Indeed, many researchers argue that vocabulary is one of the most important, if not the most important, components in learning a foreign language (Keith S Folse: 2004) Learning, as a language based activity, is fundamentally and profoundly dependent on vocabulary knowledge According to McCathy (1990), the single, biggest component of any language course is vocabulary In vocabulary knowledge, there is a dimension that should be considered, which is how far a learner knows the possible combinations of words As a matter of fact, words are never used alone but they go with each other and depend on each other No matter how well the learners master the grammar, how many words they can acquire, their communication cannot be in a meaningful way without the knowledge on the possible combinations of words or the collocation competence For example, in terms of meaning, it

is actually possible for non-native speakers to use the combination weak listening skill but the native speakers are much more likely to say poor listening skill Furthermore, if the

students do not know the collocation that expresses precisely what they want to convey,

they may resort to wordy or unnatural ways of expressions like He took a course in which

he was trained for three years to become a pilot instead of saying He took a three-year training course for a pilot Obviously, apart from grammar and lexical meaning, a right

sentence must have the agreement between words; otherwise, it sounds unnatural or even makes no sense

The importance of the agreement between words or collocation in language learning has been stated by a number of linguists According to Hammer (1992), collocation belongs to vocabulary and is an essential aspect of vocabulary Nunan (1991) also considers collocation an aspect of word use In assessing the position of collocations

in vocabulary, McCathy (1990:12) states that “Collocation is an important organizing principle in vocabulary”

Collocation can be explored by applying corpus-based approach, which is analyzing collocation in a collection of given material and the material chosen for the study is “New Headway Pre-Intermediate, the third edition” by John and Liz Soars (2007)

It has been chosen the main course book for non English major students at several universities in Vietnam, including Ha Noi University of Science and Technology The book is comprised of 12 units that cover the four skills, reading, listening, speaking and writing as well as separate sections for grammar, vocabulary, and everyday English All these skills have been combined together so they represent the real way language is used Like many other course books, the knowledge of collocation in New Headway Pre-Intermediate is vast and confusing because English words are collocated almost arbitrarily and the collocations are so diverse and even mistaken from idioms and multiword units

Due to the vast knowledge of collocation, several teachers find it rather confusing and difficult to introduce it to the non English major students at Hanoi University of Science Technology, who are used to learning separate words but not in combination with others Therefore, they are confused and even embarrassed when they do not understand the meaning of a sentence of very simple words or fail to choose the right words to express their ideas and feelings To overcome these problems, it is essential to conduct a research

on English collocations in “New Headway pre-Intermediate” the third edition by John and Liz Soars (2007) Based on the result analysis of the study, it is possible to suggest valuable solutions for learning and teaching collocations to non English major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at :

 Identifying the types and frequency of collocations in “New Headway Pre-Intermediate” the third editionby John and Liz Soars (2007) in terms of their structure and strength;

 Finding out common errors in collocations by non English major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology;

 Identifying possible causes of the collocational errors made by non English major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology;

3 Scope of the study

Due to the limitation of time, knowledge and resources, the research only deals with

an aspect of vocabulary, which is the collocation in the course book “New Headway Intermediate” the third edition by John and Liz Soars (2007) It is conducted within Hanoi University of Science and Technology and the participants are its teachers and non English major students The author will not try to provide all possible ways for learning and teaching collocation but only give out some suggestions based on the findings from the course book analysis, the collocational errors and the questionnaires

Pre-4 The research questions

 What are the different types of collocation and their frequency in “New Headway Pre-Intermediate” the third edition by John and Liz Soars (2007)?

 What are the common errors in collocations made by non English major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology?

 What are the possible causes of the collocational errors by non English major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology?

5 Method of the study

In general, the study uses both quantitative and qualitative approach as the strategic methods to analyze data collected from course book analysis, tests on collocations and questionnaires Inductive reasoning is then applied to draw out the general statements, which are the answers to the research questions

6 Design of the study

PART A INTRODUCTION introduces the background, the

aims, the scope, the method and the organization of the study

PARTB DEVELOPMENT

Chapter one LITERATURE REVIEW gives an overview of the

theoretical background of the research It deals with concept of collocation, errors and a general way in teaching and learning collocations

Chapter two THE METHODOLOGY presents the research method,

the context, and the subjects and data collection instruments

Chapter three FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION presents and analyses

the data collected from three data collection instrument

to answer the three research questions

Chapter four SUGGESTION provides some suggestions for

teaching and learning collocation

PART C CONCLUSION offers the overview of major

findings and gives some suggestions for further research

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW

It is easily seen that words in English are rarely used alone but usually keep their companies to make their own combination In considering the ability of words to combine, Wilkins (1972:26) states that “In everyday English, there are items which co-occur with high frequencies, others which co-occur as the need arises and others whose co-occurence seems impossible” In order to achieve naturalness in speech and writing, we tend to use

common and regular items For example, fast food or fast train are common in English but

it seems to be unnatural to say quick food or quick train although these adjectives have the same meaning The phrase a great deal, meaning a lot can be taken as another example A near equivalent quantifier would be a good deal However, if a big deal is used instead, the meaning changes; and a large deal is extremely unlikely to occur at all If the collocation is with extent, it is meaningful to say to a large extent but we find it inappropriate to say to a big extent There are endless of these kinds of combinations in

English A pair or group of certain words usually fit closely together to form natural expressions If one word in an expression is substituted by a different one of the same meaning, the sense might remain unchanged but the native speakers may find the expression a little unnatural The tendency of words co-occurring to reach the naturalness

in speech and writing is called collocation

Like other languages, English has a great number of collocations and the term

“collocation” has been defined in different ways From an applied linguistic point of view, collocation is defined as “the binding force between the words of a language” or “a marriage contract between words” (McCathy, 1990:158) In line with McCathy, Norberth Schmitt (1997) shares the same idea when he characterizes collocation as the tendency of two or more words to co-occur in the discourse According to Oxford Collocations Dictionary (2002), collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing Richards et al (1992:6) give a more specific definition:

“Collocation is the way in which words are used together regularly Collocation refers to restrictions on how words can be used together, for instance, which prepositions are used with the particular verbs or which verbs and nouns are used together”

Although collocation is a term defined and understood in many different ways, there is still a common core of agreement , which is the consensus on the co-ocurrence of words Thus, while the definitions of collocation have varied, the working one for the study could be generally stated that collocation refers to words that keep company with one another to achieve naturalness in the language process and use

3.2 Classification of collocation From different linguistic views and criteria, there are various types of collocations

As a result, it is difficult to develop an unique classification of English collocations While some types of collocations are recognised by one school of thoughts, they are denied by others; and it is the fact that some researchers restrict the so-called collocation more tightly than others Consequently, the distinction between collocation and other linguistic phenomena is faint and the classification is just relative Basing on what is held by Jackson (2002), Runcie (2002), this study develops the classification of collocation under the two following criteria: the structure and the strength

3.2.1 In terms of the structure Bahns (1993), Hill (1999) share general agreement that collocation can be struturally divided into grammatical, lexical and long collocations Most grammatical and lexical collocations consist of two elements called the base and the collocate in which the base bears most of the meaning of the collocation and triggers the use of the collocate 1.2.1.1 Grammatical colllocations

Grammatical colllocations are paired syntactic combinations of a lexical content word (verb, noun, adjective) followed by a grammatical word, typically a preposition that

is fixed in the collocations There are four systactic patterns as follows:

 Noun + Preposition: solution to, in favor of

 Verb + Preposition: think of, turn down

 Adjective + Preposition: interested in, afraid of

 Preposition + Noun: at home, by mistake

The open class word in grammatical collocation is called the base and it detemines the word or the collocate it can go with

1.2.1.2 Lexical collocations Lexical collocations are described as a pair of lexical content words co-occured Lexical collocations do not contain prepositions; instead, they consist of various combinations of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs Lexical collocations are often in the following patterns:

 Adverb + Adjective: surprisingly modern, fully aware

 Adjective + Noun: regular exercise, maiden voyage

 Noun + Noun: job interview, ceasefire agreement

 Quantifier + Noun: bars of soap, a kilo of sugar

 Noun + Verb: bomb + go off, plane + take off

 Verb + Noun: do homework, make one’s bed

 Verb + Adjective: keep fit, stay healthy

 Verb + Adverb: whispered softly, vaguely remember

1.2.1.3 Long collocations Long collocations are a special type of collocations that consist of more than two

items like get access to, take care of, etc Collocation phrases, including more than just two words, often occur For example a collocation such as by chance in turn collocates with verbs such as find, discover Flexible word pairs include collocations between subject

and verb, or verb and object, any of the intervening words may occur between the words

of the collocations

3.2.2 In terms of the strength Several authors have described collocations in terms of their fixness or strength Jimmie Hill (1999:25) divides collocations into four kinds: unique collocations, strong collocations, medium-sttrength collocations and weak collocations McCathy (1990) believes that the relationship of collocation is “a marriage contract between words” and

“some words are firmly contracted than others” It should be noted that different degrees

of cohesiveness of collocations are observable but they cannot be measured in a precise way As a result, it is difficult to achieve an exact classification For this reason, collocations should be divided into two types in terms of strength, which are more fixed and less fixed collocations

More fixed collocations are those with strong cohesiveness and the replacement of

individual words are not allowed The collocation table of contents can be cited as an

example of a more fixed collocation because there is almost no replacement of the two

elements table and contents

Less fixed collocations are those with weak cohesiveness and individual words can

be replaced by certain other words For example, in the collocation make money, make can

be replaced by another verb such as earn and get All these three possibilities are collocations of the same meaning Therefore, make money should be regarded as a weak

collocation

3.3 Properties of collocation

3.3.1 Collocations are arbitrary

The arbitrariness of English collocations can be seen easily from several examples

in the previous parts In fact, there is no cohesive rule for the formation of collocations Native speakers naturally make the correct collocations based on a lifetime‟s experience of hearing and reading the words in set combinations Although they know collocations well

and use them naturally, they still fail to explain why tell the truth is correct while say the

truth is unacceptable

The arbitrariness also takes place in the substitution of the elements of a

collocation From time to time, the substitution is restricted For example, it sounds natural

to say highly sophisticated and extremely happy; both adverbs have the same lexical

function, which is adding the degree, or magnifying the impact of the adjectives (sophisticated, happy) However, they are not interchangeable Still, other adverbs, such as

very can replace both highly and extremely

The fact that collocations are arbitrary has been studied by many linguists According to Gairns, R and Redman, S (1999), the formation of collocations follows certain habitual conventions, which cannot be described by rules and which native speakers are usually unaware of There are numerous examples that can show the illogical

and random relationship between components in a collocation The adjective blond, for example, is often found only with the word hair or few nouns like woman or lady, but it never goes with paint or paper even though there is no reason semantically why they

should not go together Michael Swans (1997) also claims that it is just so happen because the native speaker chooses one word to combine with others That means collocation patterns are randomly made by natives‟ habitual word choices, accumulated naturally for generations through natives‟ communication activities and then gradually become a stock

of ready-made combination At first, collocations are totally free word combinations, but when those words strings are used repeatedly among natives, they become more fixed and semi-fixed patterns which do not allow any alternative

Due to arbitrariness, substituting a synonym for one of the word in some

collocations may result in inappropriate lexical combinations For example, a phrase such

as warm greetings is a true collocation but hot greeting is not acceptable Similarly, it is acceptable to use high/tall building, tall boy but not high boy

To sum up, as there is no absolute rule of collocation, only a native speaker can intuitively judge whether a collocation is acceptable or not For non native speakers, it is almost impossible to make up any rules about how words are collocated Therefore, learning collocations is learning what words are most likely to occur together without any

rules

3.3.2 Collocations are language specific This is an interesting feature of collocations and might be the causes of collocational errors among non native speakers It is not certain to say that collocation is

an universal phenomena but it is absolute to say collocations are obviously varied across languages and dialects It is true for Larson (1984:14) to state that “ combinations of words will differ from language to language A perfectly acceptable collocation in one language may be unacceptable in another” Therefore, learners of English are likely to make collocational errors because they combine words that go together in their first language but not go together in English This can be seen from the following examples In

English, we say He has trouble or he suffers from trouble but in other languages, we may say He sees trouble or he drinks trouble Similarly, wear a hat and fly a plane are common

in English combinations However, their Vietnamese equivalents are not mặc mũ or bay

máy bay but đội mũ and đi máy bay It can be seen that different words are combined to

indicate the same meaning

3.3.3 Collocations are not nescessarily adjacent

As collocations need not to be continuous, they can either occur next to each other

or be separated by several words or phrases For instance, the expression the difficulties

that we tried our best to overcome still contains the collocation overcome the difficulties

In another case, knock and door is a collocation in the sense that the word knock and door

seldom occur next to each other, but rather they are separated with a couple of words like

he knocked on the front door As McCathy (1990:13) believes, the collocational

relationship still applies even though several words may separate the collocational items

3.3.4 Collocations are often non-reciprocal One of the characteristics of the way words collocate is that a word in frequent use may often combine with a much less widely used word According to Jackson (2002),

“one of the pair may exercise stronger attraction than the other” For example, wine is more likely to co-occur with red than red is with wine because red can co-occur with many nouns while wine occurs with only a small number of adjectives Another example

is the unequal strength of collocation between blond and hair Blond will collocate with a very limited number of words such as hair (or words that in some extend relate back to

hair, e.g girl, woman), but hair will collocate with numerous words, eg: long, short, curly,

etc From these examples, it is clear that the strength of the bond between words in a collocation is not equal

3.4 The distinction among free word combination, idiomatic expression and collocations

As stated above, collocations are not easily defined The broad spectrum of collocations make them inevitably overlap to other adjacent language phenonmena such as idioms, multiwordunits, phrases, free word combinations, etc McKeown and Radev (2000) point that collocations fall somewhere along a continuum between free word combinations and idioms As a result, in the linguistic and lexicographical literature, collocations are often discussed in contrast with free word combinations at one extreme and idiomatic expressions at the other

1.4.1 Free word combinations Free word combinations have the properties that each of the words can be replaced by

another without seriously modifying the overall meaning of the composite unit and if one

of the words is omitted, a reader can not easily infer it from the remaining ones To put it simply, a free word combination can be described as a combination with alternative For

example: old people is a free word combination because the word old can be replaced by any other expressions conveying the idea of old without the danger of sounding unnatural

So words such as old-aged or elderly are possible, among others

1.4.2 Idiomatic expressions

According to Cruse (l986:37), an idiom is an expression whose meaning can not

be inferred from the meanings of its parts and frequently involves metaphorical meaning

In other words, the meaning of the overall expression is often different from the separate parts To be more precise, according to Moon (1997), a neutral collocation and a typical idiom can be dishtinguished by the fact that the former reasonably observe grammatical rules, has relative fixedness and is considerably non-idiomatic; whereas the latter has irregular grammatical regulations, is absolutely fixed and its meaning can not be derived

on the word-on-word basis An important point about idiom is that the sequence of words that form the idiom would not make any sense if used together outside the context of the idiom that they share Therefore, without knowing the idiom, it is often almost impossible

to understand it For example: to kick the bucket, to rain cats and dogs

1.4.3 Collocation versus free word combination and idiom

As stated above, collocation is described to occur somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of free word combinations and idiomatic expressions Collocation falls between these extremes and it can be difficult to draw the line between categories At one extreme,

a word combination failed to be classified as free but is termed collocation when the number of words occurring in a syntactic relation with a given headword decreases to the point where it is not possible to describe the set using semantic regularities

For example: learn + a subject is a free word combination because the words that

can occur as a subject are virtually open-ended In this case,the semantic constraint on the subject is relatively open-ended and thus the range of words that can occur is relatively

unrestricted In contrast, reach an agreement illustrates a much more restricted collocational range Possible substitutions are limited to words such as consensus,

decision

At the other extreme, phrases such as red tape functions as a composite, where no

words can be interchanged and variation in usage is not generally allowed Moreover, the meaning of the individual words is totally different from the meaning of the whole idiom

Thus, red tape is considered an idiom in English

3.5 The importance of collocation for learners of English The importance of collocations for learners of language has been proved by recent researchers Hill (1999:5) goes so far to suggest:“We are familiar with the concept of communicative competence, but perhaps we should add the concept of collocational competence to out thinking” According to him, non-native speakers have problems “not because of faulty grammar but a lack of collocations” Therefore, collocations play a significant role in the language learning process of every learner

 Knowledge of collocations will help increase language accuracy and naturalness McCathy (1990:13) indicates that "knowledge of collocation appropriacy is part of native speakers' competence” In his opinion, intuitive knowledge of collocations helps them know which words frequently combine and which do not They would rather use combinations that sound natural to them, even though a different combination of similar

words can express the same meaning For example, powerful and strong have the same meaning But we always say strong coffee but never powerful coffee Then, if you do not

choose the right collocations, you will still be understood but you will not sound natural Moreover, non-native learners of English are likely to combine words that can go together

in their first language but do not go together in English The word mất thời gian in Vietnamese can be cited as a typical example in this case In English, the verb lose can not

collocate with time So it is deadly wrong to say lose time To be precise, the verb take usually collocates with time and the phrase should be take time instead of lose time As a

result, only by learning words in collocations, can learners get accuracy and naturalness in English

 Knowledge of collocations will help learners to increase their language fluency According to Nattinger and Decarrio (1992), it is the ability to use lexical phrases that help to speak with fluency Sharing the view with Nattinger and Decarrio, Lewis (1997:15) believes "fluency is based on the acquisition of a large language store of fixed and semi-fixed prefabricated items, which are available as the foundation for any linguistic novelty or creativity” In his opinion, by storing multi-word chunks in the brain, learners can recall and use them without having to construct phrases from individual words each time they want to use such phrases When these separate words are already in place in the forms of collocation of varying strength, the brain has more time to focus on its message It is in this way that collocational competence promotes language fluency

 Learning collocation makes the process of vocabulary acquisition easier

It is obvious that human beings have limited memory, so they can not memorize all the generally-used vocabulary Instead, some linguists believe that the human brains tend

to store language in chunks or a large number of collocated words rather than individual

terms That is why it is easy for native speakers to give an example with interview, but when asked to define the word interview, hardly anyone could do this accurately That

means the native speakers routinely used chunks without analyzing the constituent parts Thus, when you speak or write, it is more efficient to remember and use phrases as chunks rather than construct them one word at a time If you learn words in their combinations, you can remember more of them in an easier way because then, you learn the whole combination as one item

 The frequency of use of collocation is high

As mentioned in the previous part, idioms and collocations share some common features but while idioms are difficult on the perception level and they do not appear too

frequently in every situation, collocations, however, occur practically in everyday utterances or sentences In fact, collocations are integral parts of our everyday language Therefore, learners cannot do effectively without them in their performance

From the above discussion, it is obvious that collocations are important to language learners When learners use collocations, they will be better understood as native speakers unconsciously predict what is going to be said based on the use of phrases If a non-native speaker uses frequently-used patterns (collocations), it will be easier for native speakers to guess what the non-native speaker is saying and may help compensate for other language issues, such as pronunciation When learners write and speak, if they use collocations central to their topic, their readers are more likely to understand their message In one word, knowledge of collocation can help learners of English increase their accuracy, naturalness, as well as fluency and thus make them better understood

1.6 Teaching and learning collocations 1.6.1 Teaching collocations

There is a common assumption in teaching vocabulary that the more words a learner knows, the larger the learner's vocabulary knowledge is However, the mere number of the words the students know does not indicate a good knowledge of vocabulary because the matter is not with the breath but the depth of the words, i.e how far they know the combinatory possibilities of these words Therefore, there is an absolute necessity of teaching collocations to the students Hill (1999) asserts that when teaching collocation, teachers need to pay close attention to the following issues The first thing to take into consideration in teaching collocations is to raise the awareness of collocations among them Teachers can raise the students‟ awareness of collocations by the two following techniques On the simplest level, teachers should encourage students to always look for the two or three word expression For example, asking students to underline all V+N collocations in the text will be a typical exercise Besides, taking a common word and

asking students to as find as many collocates as they can will be another typical activity in awareness-raising Moreover, when teaching collocations, teachers also encourage students to be involved in extensive reading in English This will not only expose them to

a massive amount of vocabulary, but will also help them to discover and acquire new collocations According to Taiwo (2001), chances that ESL learners cannot combine

words correctly without having previously read them are very high

According to Wei Yong (1999), another important point is that teachers should not run seriously into the problem of proliferation in collocation To put it simply, the knowledge of collocations in English is so vast that it is almost impossible to teach all collocations One way of limiting proliferation is by taking note of distinction between the possible and typical collocations Therefore, teachers need to make sure that the collocations they teach are typical of the language To do so, teachers should decide what collocations to teach in the classroom by considering the frequency of words Learner‟s dictionaries are excellent sources of common used collocations After selecting the words,

it might be necessary to select the meaning For example, with the word manage, the meaning succeed in has much higher occurrence than the meaning be in charge of The

two have their own distinct collocations: the former mostly occurs with the structure

manage to do something whereas the latter often collocates with a noun that refers to a

business such as a shop, a company, a restaurant, etc For this word, it is advisable to put

more focus on the meaning of higher frequency

One can easily resort to teaching collocations in isolation as well However, this kind of teaching is no better than teaching single words in isolation Unless students are taught in context-based classes, collocations will not make sense to learners, and meaningful learning will probably not take place In other words, rather than wait for students to meet common collocations, we need to present them in the context just as we

present individual words, for example, take medicine, miss the bus, fall in love When

teaching a new word, do not forget to teach the most common at the same time If the

word is coffee, we should teach: a cup of coffee, have some coffee, make a cup of coffee or

strong coffee Lewis (2001:60) states that “it is definitely worth emphasizing to students

that they do not really “know” or “own” the word unless they know how that word is used, which means knowing something about its collocational field

Extending students‟ collocational competence with words they already know is considered an effective way to improve their knowledge of collocations (Lewis 2001) A student with a vocabulary of 2000 words will only function in a fairly limited way A different student with 2000 words, but collocationally competent with those words, will also be far more communicatively competent

Last but not least, in order to prevent students from making collocational errors, teachers should emphasize areas of differences in the collocational patterns of the mother tongue (MT) and the target language (TL) Studies of collocational errors reveal that collocations in the MT are often translated directly into English Mother tongue‟

interference can be a great source of collocational errors For example, the sentence Đồng

hồ chết sounds natural in Vietnamese but it must be the watch stopped in English, not the watch died

with it For example: sincere thanks, grateful to If a word is a verb, the learner needs to

write down nouns and prepositions that often go with it In other words, learning vocabulary in collocations is learning words at work Besides, at higher levels, when students learn less common vocabulary items, they need to be made aware that some words are used in a restricted number of collocations Students also need to know how to use new vocabulary items, which makes it necessary to know about their collocational field and contexts in which they are used

According to Hill (1999), storing collocation is important in both teaching and learning collocations Students need to have an organized vocabulary journal to record collocations They can organize their journals in different ways: grammatically, by common key word, by topic, etc They can also make use of tables or spider-grams, which work well with visual learners For example, students can record certain collocations

under headings such as have/take/do or make Lewis (2001:63) is in favor of Hill‟s idea by

stating: “Storing lexis in an organized way in a notebook so that it can be revised and retrieved quickly must be better than not storing it or simply listing new items without organizing them, One of the advantages of this is that this makes learning less “materials-dependent”

In addition, learners need to be aware the areas of differences in the collocational patterns of MT and TL For instance, Vietnamese learners of English produced such expressions as drink medicine instead of take medicine or house money instead of rent Therefore, a deep understanding of the differences in the collocational patterns between

MT and the target language can help learners avoid collocational errors

What is more, according to Hammer (1992), students need to know that the meaning of a word can be changed, stretched or limited by how it is used He believes that

a word meaning can be governed by collocations For example, the word miss in miss my

family has different meaning from that in miss an interesting film Besides, there many

pairs of words in which the difference between them is only clear from the knowledge

collocations such as date/ appointment or broad/ wide As a result, students need to learn

words in different context or the word use in combination with others instead of learning words in individual

4 An overview of errors and error analysis

4.1.The concept of errors in English Language Teaching

The term “error” is used in a variety of ways in linguistics and language teaching theory, in error analysis research, in English language teaching (ELT) including Teaching

English as a Second Language (TESL) In ELT, the term refers to the pedagogical notion

of “error” in the context of language learning and it is defined in a variety of ways

Corder (1967) defines error as “being an instance of language that is unintentionally deviant and is not self-corrigible by its author” In the early 1970s, research into “error” (Corder 1967, Selinker 1972, Nemser 1971, Richards 1973, Dulay and Burt 1974) has demonstrated that learner errors are indicative of both the state of the learner's knowledge and of the ways in which the second language is being learned Dulay, Burt & Krashen (1982) claimed the term “error” can be used to “refer to any deviation from a selected norm of the language performance, no matter what the characteristics or causes of the deviation might be” Corder (1967) also claims that “error”

in ELT is a mark of learner‟s transitional competence as distinct from “mistake” or performance error He associates “error” with failures in competence and “mistake” with failures in performance He points out that while error would be characterized by deviation from the norm in the language system relating to the L2 learner‟s competence, “mistakes” are more closely connected to performance errors in spontaneous speech or writing According Richards et al (1992), a learner makes a mistake when writing or speaking because of their lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness, or some other aspects of performance Mistakes can be self-corrected or self-monitored when attention is called However, an error is the use of linguistic item in a way that a native speaker regards it as showing faulty or incomplete learning In other words, it occurs because of the learner‟s knowledge in question, and thus it cannot be self-corrected

4.2 The significance of errors and error analysis Errors play a crucial role in learners‟ process of acquisition The forerunner of Error Analysis, Corder (1987) who has contributed enormously to error analysis, explains the significance of learners‟ errors in three different ways The first to the teacher, errors provide feedback, they tell the teacher something about the effectiveness of his teaching materials and his teaching techniques, and show him what parts of the syllabus he has

been following have been inadequately learned or taught and need further attention They also tell him, if he undertakes a systematic analysis, how far towards the goal the learner has progressed, and consequently what remains for him to teach Secondly, errors provide

to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in his discovery of the language Thirdly, they are indispensable to the learner himself, because we can regard the making of errors as a device the learner uses in order to learn In fact, learners do make errors in their learning process and these errors can be observed, analyzed and classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learner, which leads to a surge of study of learners‟ errors, called „error analysis‟ In other words, error analysis is the examination of those errors committed by students in both the spoken and written language

As it is seen in the explanation given above, error analysis can be a very useful device of a foreign-language teaching program Teaching time and effort can be allocated accordingly for optimal results

From the above quotation and discussion, it can be concluded that through error analysis, we could design remedial exercises and focus more attention on the trouble spot

so that it will serve the best for the students‟ acquisition of English

4.3 Classification of errors Errors may be classified along a number of dimensions According to the influence level of errors, Burt and Kiparsky (1972) distinguish between global errors and local errors A global error involves “the overall structure of a sentence and prevents the message from being comprehended” Global errors may have a more serious effect on

communication with regard to overall meaning as shown in the example I like bus but my

mother said no so that we must be late for school Whereas, a local error is the one which

affects “ a particular constituent” and does not prevent the message from being understood because there is usually a minor violation of one segment of a sentence that allows the

hearer to guess the intended as in the example He may be catch by the police

Using the source as the standard for categorizing, errors can be grouped into interlingual errors and intralingual errors (Richards, 1971) Errors founded to be traceable

to first language interference are termed interlingual while those which are committed by second language learners regardless of their first language are termed intralingual errors

At linguistic level, errors can be distinguished into four main categories including grammatical, discourse, phonologically-induced and lexical errors As a matter of fact, lexical errors are errors which are habitually corrected by teachers On the whole it is easy for teachers to correct lexical errors as one only needs to pinpoint the change in meaning and provide the correct word For the purpose of this study, lexical errors should be paid much attention to as they cover the collocational errors which are under investigation Lexical errors are classified from two perspectives: formal errors and semantic errors Formal errors of lexis include formal mis-selection, mis-formations and distortions Semantic errors in lexis refer to confusion of sense relations and collocational errors

4.4 The sources or possible causes of errors Several factors may influence learners‟ making errors during their process of learning English and according to Erdogan (2005) these factors can be categorized within two domains: interlingual transfer and intralingual transfer

Interlingual transfer is a significant cause of making errors for language learners Richards et al (1992) defines interlingual errors as being the result of language transfer, which is caused by the learner‟s first language Interlingual errors may occur at different levels such as transfer of phonological, morphological, grammatical and lexica-semantic elements of the native language into the target language These different levels can be explained with some possible errors made by Vietnamese students

At phonological level, the sounds that do not occur in Vietnamese cause the students to mispronounce some sounds They attempt to pronounce „th‟ of „thank you‟ as

„t‟ of „tea‟; or „th‟ of „they‟ as „d‟ of „dean‟ At morphological level, Vietnamese students tend to omit the plural suffix at the end of the word as their language does not put “s”

indicating numbers as in the following examples: three book, many student It is also

possible that students transfer some lexical items to the target language For instance, the verb „hút thuốc lá‟ can be expressed in one word in English: „smoke‟ That is why students

tend to say smoke cigarettes The phrase uống thuốc should be take medicine instead of

He is comes here, it is because the singularity of the third person requires “is” in present

continuous, and “-s” at the end of a verb in simple present tense In short, intralingual errors occur as a result of learners‟ attempt to build up concepts and hypotheses about the target language from their limited experience with it Learners may commit errors due to

this reason in many ways as in the following examples: He made me to smile; I want

learning English; The meat smells freshly; I don’t know why did he go

2.5 Collocational errors and their possible causes 2.5.1 Types of collocational errors

Several studies (Biskup 1992; Bahns 1993; Al-Zahrani 1998; Howarth 1998; Liu 1999b; Chen 2002; Nesselhauf 2004) showed that certain collocations are difficult for non-native learners to produce in collocation tests and pointed out what types of collocational errors may occur frequently Biskup (1992) conducted a comparative study

of 28 German and 34 Polish students of English to investigate the difficulty EFL learners had with lexical collocations in general and verb-noun collocations in particular He made conclusions that learners have difficulties in the types of verbs A different finding was found in Hill‟s (2000) study He analyzed students‟ essay writing and found that students were seriously lack of collocational competence, especially in „de-lexicalised‟ verbs such

as get, put, make, do, bring, and take For instance, learners wrote I make exercise every

morning in the gym The major reason of making this error was that learners did not know

the most important collocates of a key word

Nesselhauf (2004) conducted an exploratory study to analyze verb-noun collocations of advanced German-speaking learners in free written production One kind

of errors occurring most frequently is the wrong choice of verb, such as make one’s

homework, give a solution to, take one’s task The wrong choice of nouns ranks the next in

making of a completely wrong combination, followed by prepositional mistakes

Recently, several researchers, including Liu (1999b), Huang (2001), Chen (2002), Liu (2002), and Tong (2004), investigated Taiwanese EFL learners‟ difficulty in producing collocations Among these errors, it was found that the V+N pattern and V+Prep+N pattern were noticeable errors

Huang (2001) conducted an experimental study to investigate Taiwanese EFL students‟ knowledge of English collocations and collocational errors The results indicated that free combinations appear to be the easiest to deal with, while pure idioms are the most challenging It was also found that Adj+N, and V+N were the most frequent lexical collocational error types Prep+N and V+Prep were the most frequent types of grammatical collocational errors In addition, more grammatical collocational errors (147: 54.04%) than lexical ones (125: 49.96%) were found, and more collocational errors were found in the low achievers‟ writings

In sum, several previous studies (Liu, 1999b; Chen, 2002), clearly pointed out collocational errors occurred frequently in learners‟ productions Liu‟s study pointed out that V+N pattern and V+Prep+N pattern were noticeable errors Chen‟s study showed

that Adj+N and V+N were the most frequent types of lexical collocational errors, and Prep+N and V+Prep collocations were the most frequent types of grammatical collocational errors

2.5.2 Sources of Making Collocational Errors Recent experimental studies have pointed out several factors that may influence EFL learners‟ performance in making correct collocations The researchers discovered that the causes of collocational errors are related to analogy, overgeneralization, paraphrase, the mother tongue‟ interference, interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer, and shortage of collocational knowledge (Channell, 1981; Bahns, 1993; Bahns & Eldaws, 1993; Farghal

& Obiedat, 1995; Liu, 1999a, 1999b) In terms of the mother tongue‟ interference, Bahns (1993) investigated Polish and German learners‟ performance in English collocations The conclusion of this study was that the majority of collocational errors can be traced to the

influence of the first language and a number of subjects provided drive a bookshop, make

attention at, win money, and finish a conflict for the target collocation run a bookshop, pay attention to, make money, and resolve a conflict According to Liu (1999b),

collocational errors are due to seven main factors as follows:

 Overgeneralization: Learners used overgeneralization when the item did not carry any obvious contrast to them In other words, overgeneralization is the creation of

a deviant structure in place of two regular structures on the basis of students‟ experience of the target language

 Ignorance of rule restrictions: Errors of ignorance of rule restrictions were the result of analog and failure to observe the restrictions of existing structures

(Richards, 1973) For instance, ask you a favor is a false analogy of the

construction of verb+ object+ object

 False concepts hypothesized: False concepts hypothesized errors result from learners‟ faulty comprehension of distinctions in the target language Liu (1999b)

stated that some students may think that words such as make, do, and take are

de-lexicalized verbs so they can replace one another freely

 The use of synonym: The use of a synonym for a lexical item in a collocation is seen as “straightforward application of the open choice principle” (Farghal &

Obiedat, 1995) Students might use broaden your eyesight instead of broaden your

vision

 Interlingual transfer: learners‟ first language influenced their production on

collocations and was the common source of errors For instance, listen some

classical music, compliment my pictures, and arrive school are understandable in

Vietnamese but they are not acceptable English collocations Since these verbs,

listen, compliment, and arrive are intransitive verbs, these cannot be directly

followed by a noun

 Word coinage: Word coinage means that students make up a new word to

communicate the desired concept The examples was see sun-up instead of see the

sunrise

 Approximation: Approximation means that learners use an incorrect vocabulary item or structure, which “shares enough semantic features in common with the desire item to satisfy the speaker” (Tarone, 1981, as cited in Liu, 1999b, p 491)

For instance, the word middle in middle exam was used to mean mid-term in

midterm exam

In conclusion, students make collocational errors in their learning process because

of the interference of their mother tongue, lack of the collocational concept, the interlingual or intralingual transfers and shortage of collocational knowledge These can

be the possible reasons for explaining why students frequently make unacceptable collocations in their production of English

CHAPTER TWO: THE METHODOLOGY

1 Research method

The strategic methods of the thesis is qualitative and quantitative The tackling methods are statistic (analyzing the collocations in 12 units of the course book, finding the collocational errors through the test, finding the teachers' attitudes to collocation and students‟ awareness of collocation), analytical (examining in details the statistics obtained from the analysis of the course book, collocational errors and survey questionnaires) and synthetical (drawing outstanding features from analysis of the course book, the test and the survey questionnaires)

2 Context of the research

The Department of English, Faculty of Foreign Languages (FoFL), Hanoi University

of Science and Technology (HUST) is in charge of delivering TOEIC, ESP and General English courses to non English major students (technical students) at HUST Since 2009-

2010, the university has introduced TOEIC (Test of English for international communication) into the training curriculum for all technical students of the official training program TOEIC is an English language test designed specifically to measure the everyday English skills of people working in an international environment It is a two-hour multiple-choice test that consists of 200 questions that are divided into two parts: 100 questions in listening comprehension, and 100 questions in reading comprehension Each candidate receives independent marks for written and oral comprehension on a scale from 5 to 495 points The total score adds up to a scale from 10 and 990 points

Once entering the university, all non English major students have to take part in a placement TOEIC test If their TOEIC scores are fewer than 250, they are not allowed to attend the English course offered in the curriculum If their scores range from 250 to 300, students can take part in Pre-TOEIC classes Those whose scores are from 300 to 350 can enroll in TOEIC 1 classes which last 15 weeks During the first 12 weeks of the classes, students develop their basic English skills with the course book “New Headway Pre-Intermediate” the third editionby John and Liz Soars (2007); in the last three weeks, they

start to practise TOEIC with some units selected from the book “Developing Skills for the TOEIC test” by Edmunds and Taylor (2007) Any students who get more than 350 scores in the placement test can either take part in the main course provided by the Department of English or self study provided that they must get 450 TOEIC scores upon their graduation

3 Subjects of the research

The subjects of the research include the course book “New Headway Intermediate” the third edition by John and Liz Soars (2007), the non English major students whose TOEIC scores range from 300 to 350 and several teachers at the FoFL-HUST

Pre-The course book under study is roughly on pre-intermediate level and it covers a wide variety of collocations in English for communication The participants of the

collocational test and questionnaires are 96 students from four TOEIC 1 classes at HUST

These non English-major students were selected as subjects for the test because they have spent ten weeks developing their English skills with the course book under study Moreover, they can represent 1452 students who were arranged into 24 TOEIC 1 classes in the school year 2010-2011 as those grouped in these four classes are chosen based on their TOEIC scores All teachers (35) at the English Department, FoFL, HUST, who have taught the course book, are invited to do the survey questionnaires

4 Data collection method

The research methods that are used to achieve the aims of the thesis include course book analysis, tests on collocations and survey questionnaires The combination of these methods could provide more realistic, comprehensive and trustworthy data than only one technique, which may bring about unilateral or one-sided comments

4.1 Course book analysis

Collocations in the course book were observed, counted and analyzed to identify

their different types and frequency of use They were grouped under two criteria: the structure and the strength and then they should be further classified structurally and bound strongly From these classifications, different types of collocations could be identified Besides, a statistical tool was considered and then employed to identify the occurrence frequency of each pattern Tables and charts of all types were used to illustrate the statistics from which the main findings about collocations would be deduced

4.2 Collocational test

A test with 40 collocations of different types was carried out to assess students‟ knowledge on collocationn and identify the common collocational errors among 96 non English major students at TOEIC 1 level at HUST The test was designed with a view to testing the collocations that students had learned in the course book It includes both close and open questions and it was delivered at the end of the 15-week term In the data analysis, the percentage of wrong answers to both open and close questions were calculated and classified according to their structure and strength; there was also a comparison of the percentage of wrong answers among different types of collocations The statistic figures were then displayed with tables and charts

CHAPTER THREE: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

4 Course book analysis

4.1 Aims of the analysis

The course book analysis aims at answering the first research question: “What are the

different types of collocation and their frequency in “New Headway Pre-Intermediate, the third edition” by John and Liz Soars (2007) In other words, observing and analyzing the collocations occurring in all parts of the course book help identify different types of collocation and their frequency of use in the book

4.2.The course book under study

The couse book used for this study is “New Headway Pre-Intermediate”, the third editionby John and Liz Soars (2007) The book has been chosen as the main book for non English major students at several universities in Vietnam, including Ha Noi University of Science and Technology It is comprised of 12 units, each of which covers four basic language skills as well as separate parts devoted for grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation Five out of twelve vocabulary parts deal with word collocations, which are of great significance for students to acquire an appropriate selection of words used to express their own ideas precisely

1.3 Data analysis

The totals of 609 collocations of all kinds are identified and grouped in terms of the structure and fixedness with data in details displayed in Appendix A To have a thorough understanding of the collocation in the course book, the main findings will be interpreted and presented in the following parts

1.3.1 In terms of the structure 1.3.1.1 Lexical collocations

Lexical collocations account for the largest proportion of all collocations As mentioned

in the theoretical background, there are eight patterns of lexical collocations in total, based on the parts of speech of its constituents: N+N, Adj+N V+N, Quant+N, V+Adj, V+Adv

Adv+Adj and N+V A total number of 371 lexical collocations, accounting for 60.92% of the total, are analyzed and their occurrence frequency are illustrated in the chart below:

Chart 1: The percentage of lexical collocations in the course book

As can be seen from the chart, the following lexical patterns of collocations V+N, N+N, Adj+N prove to be the major collocations in the course book

The most striking feature in chart 1 is that V+N pattern is the highest frequency item in the book with about nearly half of the total number of lexical collocations (40.16%) A large number of V+N patterns can be explained by the language features themselves as the use of V+N is often frequent in general English Nouns and Verbs are the basic components that constitute the brief but meaningful sentence in English for communication

The N+N pattern ranks second in frequency after V+N pattern, but with only about half

of percentage of V+N pattern (17.52%) This comparatively high proportion can be understood

as the use of noun in the attributional sense (one noun modified another) is common in the vocabulary section of the course book

Third comes the Adj+N pattern (16.71%), which is slightly less than the percentage of N+N pattern Normally, the choice and frequency of adjectives is highly dependent on the use

V+N N+N Adj+N Adv+Adj V+Adv Quant+N V+Adj N+V

of nouns The noun is used at quite high frequency in all fields The higher the frequency of a noun, the higher the frequency of an adjective collocated with it That is why the Adj+N pattern ranks the third in the book

In comparison with the three dominant patterns of V+N, N+N, Adj+N as presented above, the remaining patterns account for a very small percentage of collocations in the book, ranging from 1.89% to 8.09%

Adv+Adj pattern accounts for the highest of five remaining patterns with 8.09% We can see from the list (appendix F) that some adverbs are repeatedly used For example, among

thirty Adv+Adj collocations, a bit is used up to13 times, really is used 5 times and extremely is

used 3 times

What is clearly shown in the bar chart is that although nouns are widely used, the Quant+N pattern is quite uncommon, only 4.85 % of all the items It is because the number of quantifiers in English is quite limited and their combination with nouns as also restricted by grammatical rules

It is surprising to see that the rest of 3 patterns are collocations with verb: V+Adv (6.47%), V+Adj (4.31%), N+V (1.89%) Although verbs are of high frequency in the book, most of them do collocate with noun to make V+N pattern, which can be taken as the explanation for the low percentage of collocations of verbs with others

From the analysis of chart 1, it can be seen that some collocation patterns are used more frequently than the others For example, the V+N pattern presents 40.16% of' all the items, the N+N pattern accounts for 17.5 2% whereas N+V pattern makes up only 1.89% The unequal distribution of collocation patterns in the course book are supposed to be due to the features of language and the dependence of different parts of speech that constitute the collocation patterns

1.3.1.1 Grammatical collocations

Compared to lexical collocations, grammatical collocations occur less frequently Because of their strict rules of combination, grammatical collocations only have four patterns:

V+Prep, Prep+N N+Prep and Adj+Prep As a result, there are totally 196 grammatical collocations (32.18%) in the course book Chart 2 illustrates the occurrence frequency of these

four patterns in twelve units from the course book For thorough understanding, see Appendix

A

Chart 2 The percentage of grammatical collocations in the course book

As can be seen from chart 2, the V+Prep pattern accounts for the highest frequency among four types of grammatical patterns (up to 40.31 %) The high occurrence of this pattern can be easily explained by the feature of the language In English, a lot of verbs cannot function without the preposition after them To have a full meaning, the base verb must be followed by a preposition as a collocate It is this feature of English that gives support to the fact that V+Prep pattern occurs most frequently in the book This finding is consistent with what stated by Michael Swan (1997:492): "There is a very large number of combinations of Verb+Preposition in English" According to the frequency list, we can sec that even though this pattern is high in frequency, only some certain collocations are used repeatedly For example,

among 67 items of V+Prep combinations, think of is used 6 times; talk to 4 times, speak to 4

times These collocations are used frequently in the course book probably because they are the common collocations used in English for communication