An investigation on CTU second year EFL students’ misuse of collocations categorized by parts of speech and implications for teaching and learning

An Investigation on CTU Second-Year EFL Students’ Misuse of Collocations Categorized by Parts of Speech and Implications for Teaching and Learning B.A Thesis Nguyen Thi Ha Student ID:

An Investigation on CTU Second-Year EFL Students’ Misuse of Collocations Categorized by Parts of Speech and Implications for Teaching and

Learning

B.A Thesis

Nguyen Thi Ha Student ID: 7075845 Class: NN0752A1 Course: 33

Can Tho, April 2011

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I owe my deepest gratitude and highest appreciation to my supervisor, Ms Tran Thi Chau Pha for the continuous support of my thesis, for her patience, motivation, enthusiasm and immense knowledge She gave me much more encouragement and advice than I expected Her guidance helped me all the time of research and writing of this paper My thesis would not have been possible without her wholehearted instructions

Secondly, I would also like to express my gratitude to all teachers of the English Department for their encouragement They supported me useful materials and precious advice during the time I did my research

Thirdly, my sincere thanks are sent to fifty-nine students of English education from course 35 for their participation in my investigation Besides, many profound thanks

go to all of my friends for their support and assistance during the completion of my research

Last but not the least, I remain indebted to my family for their love, warmth, support and encouragement in driving me to achieve my academic goal

Nguyen Thi Ha

ABSTRACT

The issues of collocation mistakes and influential factors have been revealed in several recent studies in diverse contexts However, little research on this subject has been investigated in Can Tho University (CTU) Therefore, a descriptive study was conducted to explore some common collocation mistakes in writing among sophomores in English Teaching at Can Tho University and discover vital factors affecting the misuse of collocations with some implications for EFL teaching and learning Significant data based on collocation tests and questionnaires were collected with the participation of fifty-nine second-year English education majors of the English Teaching Department at Can Tho University The results indicated that

Adv+Adj and Noun+Noun were the two most difficult collocation types for informants

with the rate of 75.3 % for the former and 74.1% for the latter It was also found that semantic field and culture competence were the two crucial aspects affecting EFL students’ use of collocations with the mean score of 3.95 and 3.9 correspondingly

TÓM LƯỢC

Những bài nghiên cứu gần ñây ñã chỉ ra nhiều lỗi về collocations (sự kết hợp từ tự nhiên) cũng như những yếu tố ảnh hưởng ñến vấn ñề này trong nhiều ngữ cảnh khác nhau Tuy nhiên, cho ñến nay trường Đại học Cần Thơ có rất ít nghiên cứu xoáy sâu vào mảng ñề tài này Chính vì thế, tác giả ñã thực hiện một bài nghiên cứu mang tính chất miêu tả nhằm mục ñích khảo sát một số lỗi về collocations trong môn viết mà sinh viên chuyên ngành Sư phạm Anh văn năm thứ hai thường mắc phải và dồng thời tìm ra nguyên nhân cùng với một số gợi ý cho việc dạy và học tiếng Anh Thông qua bảng câu hỏi và bài kiểm tra về collocations, dữ liệu liên quan ñến nghiên cứu ñược thu thập nhờ vào sự giúp ñỡ năm mươi chín sinh viên năm thứ hai thuộc Bộ môn Sư

phạm tiếng Anh của trường Đại học Cần Thơ Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy Trạng từ + Tính từ và Danh từ + Danh từ là hai loại mà sinh viên mắc lỗi nhiều nhất với tỉ lệ

lần lượt là 75.3 % và 74.1 % Song song ñó, tác giả cũng nhận ra rằng ngữ nghĩa và văn hóa là hai yếu tố chủ yếu ảnh hưởng ñến việc sử dụng collocations của sinh viên chuyên ngành Anh văn với chỉ số trung bình lần lượt là 3.95 và 3.9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements i

Abstract ii

Tóm lược iii

Table of contents iv

List of tables vii

List of figures vii

Acronyms and abbreviations viii

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

I Rationale 1

II Research aims 2

III Research questions 2

IV Research significance 2

V Organization 3

Chapter 2: Literature review 4

I Introduction to collocations 4

1 Definition of collocation 4

2 Properties of collocations 4

2.1 Being arbitrary 5

2.2 Being language-specific 5

2.3 Being recurrent in context 5

2.4 Being common in technical language 5

3 Types of collocations 5

3.1 Collocations categorized by their strength 5

3.1.1 Strong collocations 6

3.1.2 Weak collocations 6

3.1.3 Medium- strength collocations 6

3.1.4 Unique collocations 6

3.2 Collocations classified by their structure 6

3.2.1 Lexical collocations 6

3.2.2 Grammatical collocations 6

3.3 Collocations categorized by frequency of words 7

3.3.1 Downward collocations 7

3.3.2 Upward collocations 7

3.4 Collocations categorized by parts of speech 7

4 The importance of collocations 8

II Related literature and studies about collocation mistakes 9

1 Some previous studies related to common collocation mistakes 9

2 Factors causing collocation mistakes 11

2.1 Native language interference 11

2.2 Culture competence 11

2.3 Semantic field 12

2.4 Teaching strategies 12

2.5 Learning strategies 12

Chapter 3: Research methodology 14

I Research design 14

II Participants 14

III Research instruments 14

1 Test 14

2 Questionnaire for students 15

IV Procedure: 15

Chapter 4: Results and discussions 16

I Results 16

1 Collocation test analysis 16

2 Questionnaire analysis 18

II Discussions 19

1 Common collocation mistakes that CTU second-year English Teaching majors make 2 Factors on the misuse of English collocations in writing among CTU English – majored sophomores 20

Chapter 5: Implications, limitations, suggestions for further research and conclusions 21

I Pedagogical implications 21

II Limitations 22

III Suggestions for further research 23

IV Conclusion 23

References ix Appendix xi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Clusters of the questionnaire for students 15 Table 3 The total and mean score of correct answers 16 Table 4 Seven categories in the questionnaire for students 18

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

1 CTU: Can Tho University

2 EFL: English as a Foreign Language

3 ESL: English as a Second Language

4 SPSS: Statistical Package the Social Sciences

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, rationale (I), research aims (II), research questions (III), research significance (IV) and organization (V) of the thesis are introduced

I Rationale

Being aware of collocations and using them appropriately assist English learners in expressing their ideas accurately and naturally in the target language Indeed, Runcie ("Oxford Collocations: Dictionary for Students of English," 2002) states that collocation runs through the whole of English language No piece of natural spoken or written English is totally free of collocation With respect to students, choosing the right collocation will enable them to produce natural speech and writing and more native-speaker-like

However, learning and using collocations in English appropriately is a big challenge

to English learners Several recent studies have shown that students still commit several different collocation mistakes (Dao & Nguyen, 2010; Duong & Lai, 2010; Mongkolchai, 2008; Nguyen, 2010) The findings have indicated that students often

make collocation mistakes in the patterns of: (1) Verb + Adv, (1) Adv +Adj (Mongkolchai, 2008; Dao & Nguyen, 2010), (3) Verb + Preposition (Duong &Lai, 2010), and (4) Adj + Noun (Dao & Nguyen, 2010) In terms of factors influencing on

students’ use of collocations, a number of them have been discovered such as semantic fields (Huang, 2001), learners’ native language (Boonyasaquan, 2005; Duong & Lai, 2010; Huang, 2001), learners’ collocational and cultural competence (Huang, 2001), teaching and learning strategies (Nguyen, 2010)

Still, it is a fact that these studies took place in different language learning contexts

As a result, the outcomes came out differently Although the topic of collocation mistakes in EFL teaching and learning has widely been investigated, there have been few studies focused on violation of collocations in Vietnam, especially at Can Tho University so far For that reason, this study was conducted to explore more deeply that issue in the context of Vietnam in general and at Can Tho University in particular

in order to add more literature to the field of EFL teaching and learning

In a word, the current research was carried out to investigate common collocation mistakes in writing that sophomores in English Teaching at Can Tho University make and find out key factors causing those mistakes with some implications for teaching and learning collocations

II Research aims

This research firstly aims to investigate some common collocation mistakes in writing that CTU second -year English teaching students make Secondly, key factors influencing on the use of collocations in writing will be shown Finally, to help students reduce the misuse of English collocations in writing, some implications for EFL teaching and learning will be discussed in the later chapters of this research paper

III Research questions

This study aims to seek answers for the following questions:

1 What are some common collocation mistakes that CTU second-year English Teaching majors make when they do writing assignments?

2 According to the students, what are the key factors that cause their misuse of English collocations in writing?

IV Research significance

The results of the current research will significantly contribute to EFL teaching and learning at Can Tho University for two reasons Firstly, it reviews the common collocation mistakes that current English- teaching sophomores at CTU make in their writing assignments Secondly, factors affecting the poor performance of collocations with some implications for teaching and learning are presented On the basis of these two sources of input from this research, teachers can have a clear idea about what types of collocations should be paid more attention to In addition, they can minimize the negative effects of the factors which impact on students’ correct use of collocations in their teaching More significantly, they can review and improve their teaching methods in a way that helps learners master collocations to the best

V Organization

This paper consists of five chapters Chapter 1 is about the introduction which includes rationale, research aims, research questions and organizations The literature review is presented in chapter 2 Research design, participants, research instruments, and procedures of the study are shown in chapter 3, research methodology Chapter 4 presents the results and discussions of the study Finally, in chapter 5, the pedagogical implications, limitations, suggestions for further research and conclusion will be stated

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter consists of two main sections Section one presents the introduction to collocations including definition, properties, classification and the importance of collocations Section two discusses relevant literature and studies about collocation mistakes

I Introduction to collocations

1 Definition of collocation

Collocations mean the ways words combine in a language to produce sounding speech and writing ("Oxford Collocations: Dictionary for Students of English," 2002) In other words, a collocation is considered a natural combination of words (McCarthy & O'Dell, 2005) That means the way English words are closely

natural-associated with each other For example, do and homework go together, as do make and mistakes; tall goes with man/woman and high with mountain Similarly, Nation

(2000, cited in Nguyen, 2010, p 3) states that “The term collocation is used to refer to

a group of words that come together, either because they commonly occur together

like take a chance, or because the meaning of the group is not obvious from the meaning of the parts, as by the way or to take someone in”

According to Macmillan Collocations Dictionary ("Macmillan Collocations Dictionaty for Learners of English," 2010), collocations are considered the most typical ways in which common English words combine with one another Furthermore, collocation is the property of language whereby two or more words seem to appear frequently in each other’s company ("Macmillan Collocations Dictionaty for Learners of English," 2010) In short, collocations are chunks of words that can go together so that they sound natural to native speakers

2 Properties of collocations

According to McKeown and Radev (1997), collocations possess four main properties They are arbitrary, language-specific, recurrent in context and common in technical language

2.1 Being arbitrary

Although a word may have a variety of synonyms, we cannot replace a word in a

combination by its synonyms For example, it is acceptable to say make an effort, but make an exertion is not Similarly, we cannot say a running discussion, hot greetings instead of a running commentary and warm greetings

2.2 Being language-specific

Every language has its own way to combine words together For example, an

American says set the table and make a decision while a British one uses the phrases lay the table and take a decision to express the same meaning Similarly, we know that in English, the word eat means ăn, but the native speakers never say eat a breakfast, instead they say have breakfast to indicate ăn sáng

2.3 Being recurrent in context

Collocations are combinations that occur frequently together in the same environment

or given context Several words such as go, know can combine with any other words;

they are therefore used more recurrently than others

2.4 Being common in technical language

Words that rarely contribute to a collocation in everyday language often take part in a

collocation in technical language For instant, when discussing computers, file can be collocated with create, save, delete, and so on

3 Types of collocations

There are four different ways to categorize collocations Specifically, they are classified by (1) their strength, (2) their structure, (3) frequency of words and (4) parts

of speech

3.1 Collocations categorized by their strength

Collocations can be classified into four types: strong, weak, medium-strength and unique collocations (Hill, 2000; Lewis, 2000, cited in Mongkolchai, 2008)

3.1.1 Strong collocations

Strong collocations are collocations that have a very limited number of words very

closely associated with one another For example, rancid only goes with butter or oil, and mitigating almost always collocates with circumstance or factor

3.1.2 Weak collocations

Weak collocations refer to collocations that have a wide variety of collocates For

example, many things can be long or short, cheap or expensive, good or bad

3.1.3 Medium- strength collocations

Medium- strength collocations are words that always go together more frequently than

weak collocations Some examples are hold a meeting, carry out a study, and so on

3.1.4 Unique collocations

Unique collocations are collocations that are fixed and cannot be replaced by any

other words For example, to foot the bill, to foot the invoice, or to foot the coffee is

obviously wrong

3.2 Collocations classified by their structure

According to their structure, collocations are divided into two categories: grammatical and lexical collocations (Baker, 1997, cited in Boonyasaquan, 2005)

3.2.1 Lexical collocations

Lexical collocations are those that do not involve prepositions or infinitives but only content words (Benson, 1985, cited in Nguyen, 2010) In other words, they consist of diverse combinations of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs Some examples are

strong coffee (Adj + Noun), highly controversial (Adv + Adj) and smile proudly (Verb

fond of (Adj + Pre) are examples for these types In other words, grammatical

collocations are combinations of words that consist of grammatical structure

3.3 Collocations categorized by frequency of words

There are two types of collocations classified by the frequency of words namely downward and upward collocations (Sinclair, 1991)

3.3.1 Downward collocations

Downward collocations are words which habitually collocate with words that are less

frequent than they are, e.g words arrive, bring are less frequently occurring collocates

of back For example, arrive and bring are less combined with other words than back,

so the combinations consisting of these two words belong to downward category (Martyńska, 2004)

3.4 Collocations categorized by parts of speech

In Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (2002), collocations are

categorized into thirteen types as follow:

1 Adjective + Noun: bright/ harsh/ intense/ strong light

2 Quantifier + Noun: a beam/ray of light

3 Verb + Noun: cast/emit/ give/ provide/ shed light

4 Noun + Verb: light gleams/ glows/ shines

5 Noun + Noun: a light source

6 Preposition + Noun: by the light of the moon

7 Noun + Preposition: the light from the window

8 Adverb + Verb: choose carefully

9 Verb + Verb: be free to choose

10 Verb + Preposition: choose between two things

11 Verb + Adjective: make/ keep/ declare s.th safe

12 Adverb + Adjective: perfectly/ not entirely/ environmentally safe

13 Adjective + Preposition: safe from attack

In connection with the main aim of this study which centers on common collocation mistakes of second-year English Teaching sophomores, seven types of collocations have been chosen as the main focus They were selected on the basis of relevant previous studies in the context of Can Tho University (Pham, 2006; Nguyen, 2010) These seven types are detailed below

1 Adverb + Adjective: deeply impressive

2 Verb+ Expression with preposition: carry out

3 Verb + Noun: give s.o a call

4 Adjective + Noun: low wage

5 Noun + Noun: a bar of chocolate

6 Verb+ Adverb: smile proudly

7 Adjective + Preposition: be annoyed with s.o

4 The importance of collocations

According to Rundell ("Macmillan Collocations Dictionaty for Learners of English," 2010), there are two main reasons why collocations are important The first reason is that collocation is a key characteristic of language Although getting the grammar right is essential, selecting appropriate collocations is much more significant in producing natural and fluent sounds in language The second reason is related to semantic field In fact, most common words in English have more than one meaning, and collocations help language learners use the surrounding context to indicate which meaning is intended

In addition, collocations not only help learners express themselves much more clearly, but they are also able to convey the meanings quite precise ("Oxford Collocations: Dictionary for Students of English," 2002) For instance, let’s consider two following sentences:

(1) This is a good book and contains a lot of interesting details

(2) This is a fascinating book and contains a wealth of historical detail

It is obvious that the two sentences are correct in terms of grammar and vocabulary; but the second one is more specific

Similarly, McCarthy and O’Dell (2005) indicated two other reasons for learning collocations First, they help learners speak and write English in a more natural and

accurate way For example, it is unnatural and confused to say a high man instead of a tall man Second, learning collocations assists learners in choosing the appropriate

word for the context Particularly, this is useful when they take a written exam because those word combinations make their work more impressive on the examiners

Additionally, Nesselhauf (1996) pointed out that prefabricated units, i.e collocations, are essential for fluency in spoken and written language This is because our brain has

a tendency to memorize words in chunks Accordingly, the memorization of available combinations in a language contributes to the fluency Besides, the awareness of collocations supports the comprehension In fact, learners can understand the meaning

of the whole passage or text without paying attention to each single word in it if they can achieve collocations

II Related literature and studies about collocation mistakes

1 Some previous studies related to common collocation mistakes

In relation to university students’ ability in using English collocations, there have been three main studies conducted These are the ones by Duong and Lai (2010), Mongkolchai (2008) and Nguyen (2010) The first study conducted by Mongkolchai (2008) took place

at the Faculty of Humanities, Srinakharinwirot University with the participation of 57 third year English majors The instrument was a well-designed test with two main parts The first part was in a sentence completion form and the second a multiple

choice form The findings revealed that students’ ability in Noun + Noun collocation was at the highest level (68.64%), followed by Adjective + Noun (67.32%), Verb + Noun (55.26%), Adjective + Preposition (51.10%), Phrasal verb (46.05%), Verb +

Adverb (41.67%) and Adverb + Adjective (36.18%) Therefore, Verb + Adverb and Adverb + Adjective were two collocation types that trouble English majors the most

The second study was carried out by Nguyen (2010) The participants were 76 third- year English majors at Can Tho University The data were collected by using a collocation test and questionnaires for students The test was adapted from Mongkolchai’s (2008) study, and the questionnaire consisted of 20 statements The findings demonstrated that the advanced Vietnamese students faced a problem on learning and using English collocations Based on the score of the correct answers, the researcher concluded that the two highest levels of the informants’ ability in using

English collocations were 52.63% (Verb + Adverb) and 52.3% (Verb + Noun), and the two lowest levels were 48.8% (Noun + Noun) and 44.08% (Adverb + Adjective)

So, this result indicates that the most typical collocation mistakes were Noun + Noun and Adverb + Adjective

The third study was conducted by Duong and Lai (2010) The subjects were 25 second-year English majors and two lecturers of English at The University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Writing assignments and interview were used as instruments of the study The result showed

that three highest proportions of collocation mistakes included Adjective+ Noun (16.1%), Preposition + Noun (16.9%) and Verb + Preposition (16.9%)

In short, previous studies have revealed different collocation mistakes Mongkolchai

(2008) found Verb + Adverb and Adverb + Adjective the most difficult to learners Nguyen (2010), however, realized that Noun + Noun and Adverb + Adjective were

common collocation mistakes among students although Mongkolchai concluded that students’ abilities in using the former was at the highest level Yet, according to

Nguyen and Lai (2010) Verb + Preposition was one of the most common mistakes

Notwithstanding these studies demonstrated that the use of collocations is problematic

to EFL learners, the findings were diverse in connection with different situations This research was thus carried out with the intention of contribute more literature about learning and using collocations in writing of second-year students of English education in the context of Can Tho University in Vietnam

2 Factors causing collocation mistakes

There are five key factors affecting on the use of collocations They are: (1) native language interference, (2) culture competence, (3) semantic field, (4) teaching strategies, and (5) learning strategies (Duong & Lai, 2010; Huang, 2001; Nguyen, 2010; Yan, 2010)

2.1 Native language interference

The mother-tongue interference influences on EFL learners’ understanding and production of collocations (Boonyasaquan, 2005) In fact, most lexical collocation mistakes are related with the native language since learners tend to compare the target language with their first language although the unequal associations between the two languages do exist (Yan, 2010) They even translate word by word from Vietnamese

into English For example, students may translate gửi nó cho tôi into send it for me instead of send it to me (Duong & Lai, 2010) Additionally, learners may mostly refer

English to their first language equivalent without considering the context of the target language (Ying, 2009) Furthermore, it is believed that when learners lack collocation knowledge, they entirely depend on the first language as the only source (Huang,

2001)

2.2 Culture competence

Culture also contributes to collocation mistakes among learners of English In fact, some kinds of collocations are highly connected with cultural connotations and discourse stereotypes, especially unique collocations such as idioms These collocations are perceived to be more appropriate by native speakers in specific

contexts Particularly, the horse appears much in English idioms because has long been part of life in Britain (H.U.K., 2011) For instance, straight from the horse’s mouth is used to imply that the information comes directly from the original source

This idiom comes from the practice of measuring a horse’s age by observing the condition of its teeth (H.U.K., 2011). In brief, if learners are short of cultural competence, they will fail to acquire such culturally-marked collocations (Huang, 2001)

2.3 Semantic field

Certain collocations are very difficult for learners, particularly, unique collocations or

idiomatic expressions They are confusing for learners such as a withering glance, It rains cats and dogs, etc (Ying and Hendricks, 2004, Boonyasaquan, 2005) Moreover,

a word has many synonyms, but each word only fits to one context or situation Both

ride and drive, for example, mean control something, but it is wrong to say ride a car (Ying, 2009; Yang, 2010) In the same way, Huang (2001, p.4) approves that the more

synonyms an item had, the more difficulties learners encountered in producing a restricted collocation

2.4 Teaching strategies

Unlike the previous researchers, Nguyen (2010) believes that teaching is one of the most important parts affecting greatly the use of collocations as they are arbitrary and unpredictable (Lewis, 1997, cited in Nguyen, 2010) For example, it is true to say

make the bed but not do the bed Apparently, it is difficult for EFL students to handle

collocations successfully if those word combinations are not focused and practised (Boonyasaquan, 2005) Actually, basing on the result of her study, Nguyen (2010) concluded that teaching collocation has not been paid a proper attention to in EFL classroom Accordingly, the correct uses of collocations should be reminded and the efficient collocation learning strategies should be suggested by the teachers

2.5 Learning strategies

Learning strategies also have effects on the collocation use because each student has his own way of learning which may be effective such as contextual learning, dictionary and note- taking (Nguyen, 2010) As a matter of fact, successful learners are more aware of what they could learn about new words, become more conscious of textual learning and pay more attention to collocations in context Meanwhile, less successful learners are so passive in learning; they have a tendency to ignore the context and become less conscious of textual learning (Ahmed, 1980, cited in Nguyen, 2010)