Effects of english collocation instruction on the writing skill of first year english major students at hanoi university of science and technology

List of TablesTable 1: Lexical collocations Benson et al, 1986...12 Table 2: Grammatical collocations Benson et al, 1986...12 Table 3: Grammatical collocation type G8 Benson et al, 1986.

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL

STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN THỊ HUỆ

EFFECTS OF ENGLISH COLLOCATION INSTRUCTION ON THE WRITING SKILL OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA VIỆC DẠY KẾT HỢP TỪ TIẾNG ANH ĐẾN KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM

THỨ NHẤT CHUYÊN NGÀNH TIẾNG ANH Ở ĐH BÁCH KHOA HÀ NỘI

SUMMARY OF M.A COMBINED PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Supervisor: Dr TÔ THỊ THU HƯƠNG

HANOI – 2012

Table of Contents

Candidate‟s statement i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

List of Abbreviations vii

List of Tables viii

List of Figures viii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Statement of the problem 1

1.2 Scope and objectives of the study 3

1.3 Significance of the study 3

1.4 Organization of the study 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Overview of collocation 5

2.1.1 Definition of collocations 5

2.1.2 Characteristics of collocations 6

2.1.3 Types of collocations 10

2.2 Pedagogical issues on collocations 14

2.2.1 The benefits of collocations 14

2.2.2 Choosing which collocations to teach 17

2.2.3 Directions for teaching collocations 17

2.2.4 Teacher‟s role in collocation instruction 21

2.2.5 Materials for teaching collocations 22

2.3 Collocations in ESL writing 24

2.3.1 The need for collocation instruction in L2 writing process 24 2.3.2 How to incorporate collocation instruction in teaching writing skills25

2.3.3 Studies on the correlation between collocations and L2 writing

proficiency 26

2.3.4 Studies on the effects of collocation instruction on L2 writing 28

Conclusion CHAPTER 3: THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 30

3.1 Type of research: Action research 30

3.2 Research design 32

3.3 Setting of the study 34

3.4 Selection of participants 35

3.5 Description of intervention 35

3.6 Data collection instruments 44

3.6.1 Tests 44

3.6.2 Semi-structured interviews 44

3.7 Data analysis procedures 45

3.7.1 Scoring 45

3.7.2 Examining the use of collocations in the test papers 45

3.7.3 Statistical techniques 46

3.7.4 Analyzing data from semi-structured interviews 47

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 48

4.1 The effects of the current HUST English collocation instruction on the English writing scores of first year non-native English-major students at HUST 48

4.2 The effects of the current English collocation instruction on the use of language in English writing of first year students at HUST 49

4.3 Correlation between non-native English-major students‟ use of collocation and their writing score 54

4.4 HUST first year non-native English-major students‟ reflections on collocation instruction 56

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS 67

5.1 Research questions revisited 67

5.2 Pedagogical implications 69

5.3 Limitations of the study 70

5.4 Suggestions for further research 72

REFERENCES 73 APPENDIX

Appendix 1: Examples of students‟ texts produced in the pre-test and post-test Appendix 2: Rubric for assessment of an essay (currently used at the research site) Appendix 3: Suggested interview questions

Appendix 4: Participation information statement & Participant consent form

List of Abbreviations

EFL: English as a foreign language

ESL: English as a second language

HUST: Hanoi University of Science and Technology L1: First language/Mother tongue

L2: Second language

List of Tables

Table 1: Lexical collocations (Benson et al, 1986) 12

Table 2: Grammatical collocations (Benson et al, 1986) 12

Table 3: Grammatical collocation type G8 (Benson et al, 1986) 13

Table 4: The writing syllabus with collocation instruction 42

Table 5: Descriptive statistics of the pre-test and post-test writing scores 48

Table 6: Paired samples t-test for writing scores 49

Table 7: Descriptive statistics of the pre-test and post-test language use scores 50 Table 8: Paired samples t-test for language use scores 50

Table 9: The number of correct collocations and collocational errors in the pre-test and post-test 51

Table 10: Correlation coefficients between the use of collocations and the writing score in the pre-test 54

Table 11: Correlation coefficients between the use of collocations and the writing quality in the post-test 56

Table 12: The students‟ preferences of collocation instruction activities 61

List of Figures Figure 1: Levels of collocational complexity 8

Figure 2: Howarth‟scollocational continuum 9

Figure 3: Conzett‟scollocational continuum 9

Figure 4: Conzett‟s model for recording collocations 21

Figure 5: Simple action research model 31

Figure 6: Gerald Susman‟s action research cycle with five phases 31

Figure 7: Differences between the pre-test and post-test in the quantity of correct collocations 52

Figure 8: Differences between the pre-test and post-test in the quantity of collocational errors 53

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Statement of the problem

Since Firth (1951, p.194) introduced the idea of collocation, there has been

an increasing awareness of the importance of using words naturally andappropriately In second language teaching and learning, many researchers haveperceived the crucial role of collocations in developing vocabulary, communicativecompetence and being toward native-like writing style (Brown, 1974; Channell,1981; Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Howarth, 1998a, Gitsaki, 1999; Lewis, 1997, 2000;Nation, 2001; Nesselhauf, 2003; Hsu & Chiu, 2008)

On discussing the relationship between L2 learners‟ collocational knowledgeand their writing proficiency, there have been two studies by Zhang (1993) and Hsu(2007) In his study, Zhang (1993) compared the participants‟ knowledge ofcollocations and their writing quality, and the use of collocations in the participants‟essays and their writing quality He concluded that “collocational knowledge wasshown to be positively correlated with writing quality” and “effective use ofcollocational knowledge may help improve writing quality” (p 165) In a later study

by Hsu (2007), the finding was consistent with Zhang‟s study (1993) in the aspectthat “there seems to be a significant correlation between Taiwanese college EFLlearners‟ frequency of lexical collocations and their online writing scores” (p.192).From the findings of the two studies, it can be said that the knowledge and use ofcollocations is an indicator of good and poor writing Thus, it is absolutely essentialfor ESL learners to be aware of English collocations and to learn how to usecollocations effectively in writing

Learning collocations; however, is a challenging job for ESL learners.Wolter (2006) notices that in second language learning, collocational knowledge ismore difficult to learn than grammatical rules Even advanced language learners

have great difficulties in the production of collocations (Nesselhauf, 2003; Laufer &Waldman, 2011).

There has been a great concern among researchers about the reasons why ESLlearners make collocational errors Recent studies have pointed out that the causes

of collocational errors are mainly related to:

(1) The lack of collocational concept, i.e ESL learners are not aware of collocation

as a potential problem in language learning (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993, p 108)

(2) The shortage of collocational knowledge, i.e students do not understand thepotential collocational properties of the words they have already known For example, itcan be assumed that most students know the collocation “a good boy”, but few studentscan generate “a good knowledge” (Ooi and Kim-Seoh, 1996, p 55)

(3) Interlingual transfer (the interference of mother tongue/L1), i.e somecollocational errors are caused by direct translation (e.g for some Vietnamese

ESL students, they write “learn knowledge” instead of “gain knowledge” or

“absorb knowledge”) (Bahns, 1993, p 61; Nesselhauf, 2003, p 234; Laufer andWaldman, 2011, p 665)

The first and second causes of collocational errors may imply thatcollocation teaching and learning could be neglected in ESL classes and therefore,learners are not aware that collocations may pose potential problems in theirlanguage learning

The use of collocation is more problematic on productive language skills,especially in writing because written contexts require precision in the use of words.Having taught English writing skill to first year English-major students for manyyears, the researcher notices that collocational errors account for a relatively highpercentage among the types of errors her students make in writing English Whenthey write a paragraph or an essay, it is no easy task for them to find the rightcollocates of a word, which affects their writing fluency In addition, the

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inappropriate combination of words makes their writing sound odd to nativespeakers of English It is, therefore, essential for teachers to raise students‟awareness of collocations and to teach students how to use collocationsappropriately and accurately in their writing.

To date, there have been few published papers about collocation instruction

in relation to writing skill Due to this lack of studies, this study was conducted toexplore the effects of English collocation instruction on English writing skill as well

as students‟ attitudes toward the teaching of collocation and its effect on theirwriting

1.2 Scope and objectives of the study

Within the scope of an MA thesis, this study only aimed at investigating theeffects of English collocation instruction on the writing skill of first year non-nativeEnglish-major students at a university in Hanoi, Vietnam More specifically, thestudy was designed to address the following research question:

Could English collocation instruction help improve the writing skill of first year non-native English-major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST)?

This research question was broken down into 3 sub-questions:

1 What are the effects of the current English collocation instruction on the English essay writing scores of first year non-native English-major students at HUST?

2 What are the effects of the current English collocation instruction on the use of language in their English essay writing?

3 Is there any relationship between the students‟ use of collocation and their essaywriting scores?

1.3 Significance of the study

The contribution of the study is pedagogical Although the study was carriedout on a small scale, focusing on a particular group of Vietnamese English-majorfirst year students, its results will (1) help teachers have a better understanding ofEnglish collocation instruction in relation to writing skill; (2) obtain students‟opinions on ways to further enhance collocation instruction for better writing; and(3) provide recommendations for teachers who are interested in using collocation instruction to improve writing skill of students in their own teaching context.

1.4 Organization of the study

This research report is divided into five main parts Chapter 1 presents a briefoverview of the study The second chapter reviews previous studies whose focusand findings are relevant and beneficial to this one The third part discusses themethodology of this study, including the research type, the study site, the selection

of participants, the description of the intervention and the methods of data collectionand data analysis The fourth chapter reports the findings and their discussions.Finally, the report ends with the conclusion part which summarizes the research insome main remarkable points, gives some recommendations for those who want toteach collocations to improve students‟ writing skill in their own contexts andpresents essential aspects relating to the study for future research

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents an overview of collocation, different aspects ofcollocation instruction and collocations in ESL writing

2.1 Overview of collocation

2.1.1 Definition of collocations

Firth R.J is considered the first scholar to introduce the term “collocation”

He claims that a “collocation” is a “mode of meaning” in his book “Papers inLinguistics” published in 1951 He proposes that words obtain their meaning fromtheir co-occurrence in the same context and collocations of a word help usunderstand its meaning better Firth then gives the example of the two words “dark”

and “night”: “One of the meanings of night is its collocability with dark, and of

dark, of course, collocation with night.” (p.196).

Since Firth‟s introduction of collocation, there have been various definitions

of this term Benson, Benson and Ilson (1986) clarify collocations as “fixed,identifiable, non-idiomatic phrases and constructions” (p.1)

McCarthy (1990) understands the term collocation as “the likelihood of

co-occurrence between words It is very likely that blond will occur with hair, but unlikely that it will occur with wallpaper; blond and hair are said to collocate” (p.

158; cited in Schmitt, 1998) Schmitt claims that McCarthy‟s definition provides ageneral understanding of collocations for students However, this definition fails todetermine “what the necessary degree of likelihood is before words are said tocollocate” (p.29)

A leading author in studying collocations, Lewis (1997) defines collocation

as “those combinations of words which occur naturally with greater than randomfrequency” (p 25) He also notes that “not all words which co-occur arecollocations” (p.25) The characteristics of collocations will be further discussed inthe later parts of this chapter

Another scholar, Nation (2001) points out that collocations are “closelystructured groups whose parts frequently or uniquely occur together We would alsoexpect collocations to contain some elements of grammatical or lexicalunpredictability or inflexibility” (p 324)

In this study, the researcher follows Laufer and Waldman‟s (2011) definitionthat collocations are “habitually occurring lexical combinations that arecharacterized by restricted co-occurrence of elements and relative transparency ofmeaning” (p 648) It is because their definition has pointed out “the necessarydegree of likelihood” of “co-occurrence between words”, that is restrictedness andmeaning transparency

2.1.2 Characteristics of collocations

Prefabrication

According to many researchers, one of the main characteristics ofcollocations is that collocations are pre-fabricated phrases (Howarth, 1998a, p 25;Hill, 2000, p 47; Pawley & Syder, 1993 as cited in Seretan, 2011, p 9 & p 16).Seretan (2011) claims that collocations are memorized as pre-fabricated chunks,therefore, collocations are available to native speakers as ready-made It meanscollocations are stored, retrieved and produced automatically by native speakers andthis contributes to “conferring fluency and naturalness to their utterances” (p 16)

Arbitrariness

Another characteristic of collocations is that they are arbitrary (Cowie, 1998,

p 162; Lewis, 1997, p 26) In other words, the individual words in a collocationcannot easily be substituted by their synonyms For example, “a tall man” cannot besubstituted by “a high man”, or you can “make a mistake” but not “commit amistake”

Idiomaticity and non-idiomaticity

The matter whether collocations are idiomatic or non-idiomatic has beenextensively discussed among researchers; however, the issue remains controversial

Idioms, according to McCathy and O‟Dell (2010), are “fixed combinations

of words whose meaning is often difficult to guess from the meaning of eachindividual word… It has a non-literal or idiomatic meaning.” (p 6) Spears (2005)indicates that “all languages have phrases or sentences that cannot be understoodliterally… They are opaque or unpredictable because they don‟t have expected,literal meaning… A phrase or sentence of this type is said to be idiomatic” (p v),

for example, a flash in the pan (meaning “something that happens only once”), a

storm in a tea cup (meaning “a lot of worry or anger about something that is not

important”), etc

In studying collocations, some researchers tend to distinguish collocationsfrom idioms Semantic transparency seems to be the most important criterion todiscriminate collocations from idioms According to Laufer and Waldman (2011),the meaning of collocations is relatively transparent; however, the meaning ofidioms is much less transparent and often opaque The meaning of idioms can never

be predicted from the meaning of the individual parts that compose them (p 649)

Additionally, in The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English, Benson et al (1986) defines collocations as “fixed, identifiable, non-idiomatic phrases and

constructions” (p.1)

Cowie and Howarth (1995, as cited in Schmitt, 2000, p.79) proposes aframework for the levels of collocational complexity:

LEAST COMPLEXITY AND VARIATION

bite the dust, shoot the breeze

3 COLLOCATION WITH LIMITED CHOICE AT ONE POINT

take/have/be given precedence [over noun phrase] give/allow/permit access to [noun phrase]

4 COLLOCATION WITH LIMITED CHOICE AT TWO POINTS

as dark/black as night/coal/ink get/have/receive a lesson/tuition/instruction [in noun phrase]

MOST COMPLEXITY AND VARIATION

Figure 1: Levels of collocational complexity

According to this framework, idioms have the least complexity and variation.Idioms do not permit any change in their constituents If there is any change in theconstituents of an idiom, it ceases to exist as a unit Schmitt (2000) gives anexample of the idiom “kick the bucket” meaning “to die” If this idiom is changedinto “kick the pail”, “boot the bucket” or “kick a bucket”, they all lose the idiom‟s

meaning In Schmitt‟s words, idioms are called frozen collocations (p 78) In

comparison to idioms, collocations are relatively fixed and the meaning is muchmore transparent because it is composed from the meaning of all the components

Howarth (1998a) also makes an effort to categorize collocations, freecombinations and idioms His criteria for categorization include “restrictedcollocability, semantic specialization and idiomaticity” (p 28), which are allgradable

Free Restricted Figurative Pure idioms combination collocations idioms

Lexical composites blow a

blow a fuse blow your own blow the

Grammatical

preposition + noun

Figure 2: Howarth’s collocational continuum

Howarth indicates that free combinations consist of freely substitutablecomponents and can be understood literally Restricted collocations have onecomponent in a non-literal sense while the other is in its normal meaning Figurativeidioms have both a current literal interpretation and metaphorical meanings in terms

of the whole, while pure idioms have a unitary meaning that cannot be derived fromthe meanings of the components Howarth also thinks that free combinations should

be included in collocation category He calls free combinations “open collocations”

(p 28)

In a later study, Conzett (2000) distinguishes collocations from idioms andfree combinations and suggests a collocation continuum (p 74)

Figure 3: Conzett’s collocational continuum

The free combinations like friendly dog or old car as well as the fixed expressions like throw in the towel or Stars and Stripes are not regarded as

collocations The combinations which fall in the middle of the two extremes on thecontinuum are counted as collocations Strong collocations mean that when you see

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a word, you strongly expect the presence of another Weak collocations mean thecollocates can vary a great deal.

Some other researchers, on the other hand, see collocations and idioms assimilar, even overlapping terms Hill (2000) asserts that “all collocations areidiomatic and all phrasal verbs and idioms are collocations or contain collocations.”(p 51) Lewis (2000) shares the same view with Hill when indicating that

“collocations are idiomatic” (p 134) and “very few collocations are truly evident or literal; there is a partially non-literal, metaphorical or idiomatic element

self-to most collocations” (p 135) According self-to Lewis, collocations, like other idioms,are not fully predictable from their component words Lewis then gives an example

of the meaning of the expressions strong opinions, wind, coffee, cheese The meaning of the word “strong” would be different in each expression, and when we

translate these expressions into another language, we would need a differentadjective in each expression Another scholar, Carter (2001) defines idioms as “non-subsitutable or fixed collocations, usually more than single word units andsemantically opaque” (p 66) In this definition, idioms are considered a sub-class ofcollocations, or in other words, restricted collocations

From the reviewed literature, there seems to be no exact accord in thecriterion to discriminate collocations from free combinations and idioms Somescholars believe that collocations include both fixed and open collocations whilesome do not Some scholars assert that collocations are idiomatic, but others saycollocations are transparent in meaning In this study, collocations, freecombinations and idioms are treated differently Collocations can be understoodliterally through the meaning of their constituents while idioms are opaque.Collocations are pre-fabricated while free combinations are not ready-made

2.1.3 Types of collocations

Collocation has been classified in many different ways Hill (2000) suggests

four kinds of collocations (pp 63-64) Unique collocations refer to collocations

which are fixed and cannot be replaced by any other words, e.g “shrug ourshoulders” or “foot the bill” We cannot replace the word “shoulders” with any part

of the body like “arms” or “legs”, nor can we replace “bill” with “invoice” Strong

collocations are not unique, but strong collocations usually have few possible

collocates “Trenchant criticism” or “rancid butter” are two of the examples

“Rancid butter” is a strong collocation because “rancid” collocates with a verylimited number of nouns (only “butter”, “meat”, “oil” and “smell”) Hill indicatesthat any knowledge of the words “trenchant” or “rancid” would be seriouslyincomplete without some knowledge of these strong collocates Strong collocations

are not unique , e.g “moved to tears” or “reduced to tears” Weak collocations refer

to collocations that have a wide variety of collocates; for example, many things can

be “long” or “short”, “cheap” or “expensive” Examples of weak collocations are

“an expensive car”, “a white shirt” Students can easily make these combinations;however, it does not mean that weak collocations deserve no attention Parts ofweak collocations may also be components of many fixed or semi-fixedexpressions For example, the word “good” is not interesting from a teacher‟sviewpoint because it can be used with many words, but it can be a component ofsome fixed expressions such as “It‟ll take you a good hour” or “Oh, he‟s a good

age” Medium-strength collocations are in the middle of the collocational

continuum and they make up a large part of what is said and written “Hold aconversation”, and “make a mistake” are examples of this type Medium-strengthcollocations cause much difficulty to EFL learners EFL learners may know theword “make” and “mistake”, but because they often do not store the collocation

“make a mistake” in their mental lexicon as a single item, they cannot retrieve itwhen they need it

Hill‟s classification of collocations is of great concern to EFL teachers Itimplies that when considering which collocations to teach, medium-strengthcollocations should be paid more attention as they make up a large part of what we

say and write In other words, medium strength collocation should be the mainlearning load for language users.

There is, also, another categorization that there are two basic kinds ofcollocations: lexical collocations and grammatical collocations (Benson et al, 1986;Bahns, 1993) Lexical collocations are those that involve content words (nouns,verbs, adjectives and adverbs), e.g “blonde hair”, and grammatical collocations

involve grammatical structures, e.g “He was a fool to do it” Lexical collocations

are further divided by Benson et al (1986) into seven types and grammatical arethen divided into eight types

Table 1: Lexical collocations (Benson et al, 1986)

Table 2: Grammatical collocations (Benson et al, 1986)

G2 Noun + to + infinitive It was a pleasure to do it.

We reached an agreement that she

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G4 Preposition + Noun in advance, by accident

G6 Adjective + to + infinitive It was necessary to do it.

G7 Adjective + that + clause She was afraid that she would fail the

examination.

G8 19 verb patterns, e.g Verb + He decided to go to the party.

to + infinitive

Table 3: Grammatical collocation type G8 (Benson et al, 1986)

G8 (A) V + Od + to + Oi He sent the book to his brother.

= V + Oi + Od = He sent his brother the book

V + Od + to + Oi

G8 (B) (do not allow the dative They returned the book to her

movement transformation)

G8 (C) V+ Od + for + Oi She bought a shirt for her husband.

= V+ Oi + Od = She bought her husband a shirt

V+ Prep +O We will adhere to the plan.

V+ O+ Prep+ O

available facts

G8 (F) Modals+ bare Inf We had better go./ We must work

G8 (H) V+ O + to Inf We forced them to leave

G8 (I) V+ O + bare Inf She heard them leave

G8 (K) V+ Possessive Adj + V-ing We noticed his leaving early.

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G8 (L) V+ that clause They admitted that they were wrong.

G8 (M) V+ O + to be+ C We considered her to be a competent

engineer

G8 (O) V+ O1+ O2 The teacher asked the pupil a question

G8 (P) V (+O)+ Adverbial The meeting will last two hours.

Tuesday comes after Monday

G8 (Q) V+ (O)+ wh-clause/ wh- He asks me how to do it

phrase

It surprised me that our offer wasG8 (R) It+ V+ O+ to Inf/that clause rejected

It surprised me to learn of her decision

G8 (S) V+ C (Adj or N) She became an engineer.

The flower smells nice

2.2 Pedagogical issues on collocations

2.2.1 The benefits of collocations

Enhancing language competence

There is a general agreement that collocations play an important part in thedevelopment of L2 language competence (Brown, 1974; Channell, 1981; Bahns &Eldaw 1993; Zhang, 1993; Howarth, 1998a; Gitsaki, 1999; Lewis, 1997, 2000;Nesselhauf, 2003; Hsu & Chiu, 2008)

In his research in 1974, Brown underscores that the improvement in listeningand reading can be helped by increasing students‟ knowledge of collocations (p 1).Channell (1981) claims that learners may fail to realize the potential of words theyknow well because they only use them in a limited number of collocations of which

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since teaching collocations can help promote vocabulary expansion Bahns andEldaw (1993), furthermore, affirms that “a knowledge of collocations is actuallynecessary to communicative competence in English as one cannot always easilyparaphrase one‟s way around collocations” (p 109) In another study, Zhang (1993)also finds a significant correlation between learner‟s collocational knowledge andthe quality of their written communication.

In recent years, more and more researchers and language teachers haveemphasized the importance of collocations in language development According toLewis (2000):

The reason so many students are not making any perceived progress is simply because they have not been trained to notice which words go with which They may know quite a lot of individual words which they struggle to use, along with their grammatical knowledge, but they lack the ability to use those words in a range of collocations which pack more meaning into what they say or write (Lewis, 2000, p 14)

Morgan Lewis argues that collocations help learners to get beyond theintermediate level He suggests that instead of trying to perfect their grammar andlearn new, rare words, intermediate students should learn to use the words theyalready know in the huge number of collocations of which these words are parts Bydoing this, most intermediate students would increase their language competencedramatically

Nesselhauf (2003) also states the importance of collocations: “Collocationsare of particular importance for learners striving for a high degree of competence inthe second language” (p 223)

Being toward native-speaker fluency

In communication, the main factors to decide whether a speech is native-like

or not involve the native-like selection of lexical items and native-like fluency

According to Pawley and Syder (1983), native-like selection is selecting “asentence that is natural and idiomatic from among the range of grammatically

correct paraphrases, many of which are non-native like” (p 191) Pawley andSyder; moreover, claim that to the native ears, most of non-natives‟ productions areunidiomatic The sentences that non-natives produce may be strictly grammaticalbut “the trouble is that native speakers just do not say things that way” (p 195).Conklin & Schmitt (2008) supports Pawley and Syder‟s statement and affirms thatthe control of formulaic sequences is an important factor to distinguish betweennatives and even relatively advanced non-natives (p 84).

Native-like fluency, as Pawley and Syder (1983) claim, is “the nativespeaker‟s ability to produce fluent stretches of spontaneous connected discourse”(p 191) Hill (2000) indicates that native speakers can speak at a much faster ratebecause they are “calling on a vast repertoire of ready-made language, immediatelyavailable from their mental lexicons” (p 54) In other words, native speakers canspeak at the speed that they do because they can predict unconsciously what isgoing to be said based on their own use of pre-fabricated phrases

It can be inferred from the above reviewed literature that if a non-nativespeaker or writer uses uncommon phrasing patterns, a native English speaker mayfind him or her harder to understand As it is generally agreed that collocationsmake up a significant part of a typical native speaker‟s communication in bothspeech and writing (Howarth, 1998b; Nesselhauf, 2003), it is inevitable that themastery of collocations will enable English language learners to communicate moreaccurately and fluently, or in other words, more native-like Howarth (1998b)emphasizes the use of collocations as a sign of being toward native-like:

“Conforming to the native stylistic norms for a particular register entails not only making appropriate grammatical and lexical choices but also selecting conventional collocations to

an appropriate extent… they are essential for effective communication, and their use by non-native writers is a clear sign that these learners have make an essential adjustment to the academic culture they are entering.” (Howarth, 1998b, p 186)

To summarize the role of collocations in helping L2 learners‟ language become more native-like, the researcher would like to refer to Nation‟s viewpoint

(2001): “all fluent and appropriate language requires collocational knowledge” (p.318).

2.2.2 Choosing which collocations to teach

The importance of teaching collocations has been emphasized for decades.However, the unlimited number of English collocations has cause great trouble forteachers to decide which collocations to teach Researchers and teachers havedifferent positions about choosing which collocations to teach, and which ones toignore

According to Bahns (1993), collocations which have no direct translationalequivalents in English and in the learners‟ mother tongue deserve more attention (p.56) Hill (2000) suggests that teachers should concentrate on medium-strengthcollocations which is “the main learning load for language users” and not only newcollocations but the extension of learned words (p 64)

2.2.3 Directions for teaching collocations

Over the decades, there have been numerous suggestions andrecommendations about how to teach collocations to L2 learners In this part, theresearcher only attempts to review the most common strategies and activities forcollocation instruction

Raising learners‟ awareness of collocations

The importance of making students aware of collocations has beenemphasized by a number of teachers and researchers In fact, raising students‟awareness of collocations plays a crucial role in collocation instruction as well aslanguage learning (Woolard, 2000; Hill, 2000; Conzett, 2000; Ying & O‟Neill,2009)

It is noted that the concept “consciousness” is commonly equated with

“awareness” (Battista, 1978 & Rotner, 1987; as cited in Schmidt, 1990, p 131) In

this research, the two terms are used interchangeably According to Ellis (1993),consciousness-raising refers to “a deliberate attempt on the part of the teacher tomake the learners‟ aware of specific features of the L2” (pp 108-109) Manylinguists and teachers share the view that consciousness-raising is clearly essential

in language teaching and learning because learners need conscious understanding ofthe target language system to produce correct forms and use them appropriately(Schmidt, 1990, p 129)

In teaching collocations, Woolard (2000), Hill (2000) and Conzett (2000)propose some activities to raise students‟ awareness of collocations According toWoolard (2000), one of the best ways to make students aware of collocations is topoint out their mis-collocations in writing He suggests that teachers should keep arecord of students‟ mis-collocations and bring them into the classroom atappropriate times to extend vocabulary teaching (p 30) Another activity thatWoolard advocates is highlighting collocations in a reading text and asking students

to make sentences with the highlighted collocations or asking students to find outcollocations in the text themselves He adds that Verb-Noun, Adjective-Noun,Verb-Adverb collocations should receive more attention (pp 31-32)

Hill (2000) mentions two activities to raise students‟ awareness ofcollocations The first activity is, similar to Woolard, to ask students to underlinecollocations in a text The second activity is to take a common word and askstudents to find as many collocates as they can For example, students will not be

considered as “really know the verb speak” if they do not know at least the

following collocations: speak a foreign language, speaker your mind, speak inpublic, speak (French), speak clearly, speak openly, speak fluently, speak with a(Welsh) accent, speak volumes

Conzett (2000) gives a long list of activities to teach collocations amongwhich the researcher finds two activities useful for raising students‟ awareness.Conzett shares the same view with Woolard and Hill in maintaining that training

students to observe and note collocations in reading is an essential activity to raisetheir awareness However, she suggests another follow-up activity to reinforce thecollocations that students have identified in the reading text The activity is to askstudents to complete a writing assignment in which they have to use the collocationsthat they have found in the reading text Another thing is to teach students the word

“collocation” Conzett believes that collocations exist in students‟ L1, thus, it is notdifficult for them to understand this concept and this saves a great deal of time byusing the term in class In the researcher‟s point of view, teaching students theconcept “collocation” is vital in order to make them aware of collocations.Obviously, students can still learn and use collocations without knowing thisconcept However, if they know what collocation is, they will be more aware of theexistence of collocation and its significance

Ying and O‟Neill, in their research in 2009, develop the AWARE approach

to teach collocations AWARE stands for the following steps:

A: Awareness-raising of important language features, in particular collocations (helping learners notice collocation in the weekly theme-based readings or any other sources of input)

W: Why should we learn collocations? (helping learners see the rationale for/meaning of learning what they learn)

A: Acquiring noticed collocations using various strategies (learners making selective use

of a repertoire of learning strategies that suit their individual learning style to promote effective learning

(Ying & O‟Neill, 2009, p 183)

Encouraging independent collocation learning

Language teachers concur with the necessity to equip learners with skills forthem to develop their knowledge of collocations independently (Woolard, 2000;

19

Ying & O‟Neill, 2009) Woolard (2000) asserts that the amount of languagecovered in the classroom will almost always be less than students‟ need Thus, it iscrucial that teachers should help students acquire the skills to discover significantcollocations for their own learning, both in and outside the classroom Teachers mayencourage independent learners by teaching them techniques for searchingcollocations in a dictionary, corpus or computer concordance When students knowhow to search for the collocations they need, they will expand their mental lexiconwithout the presence of a teacher (p 28).

Ying and O‟Neill (2009) find that, with the adoption of the AWAREapproach, the majority of the students were able to manage their collocationlearning independently They sought the strategies that suited themselves, mademeaningful reflection on the learning content and process and made adjustments totheir learning Ying and O‟Neill believe if teachers use the AWARE approachappropriately, they may help their students learn collocations more independentlyand effectively

Teaching collocations through exercises

Teachers may use a variety of exercises in the classroom to help students

learn collocations In the book Teaching collocations: Further developments in the

lexical approach, language teachers (Conzett, 2000; Hill, 2000; Lewis, 2000;

Woolard, 2000) introduce 30 types of exercises to teach collocations and teacherscan vary the exercises according to their students‟ needs

Recording collocations in lexical notebooks

Storing collocations for future use and revision should be an indispensiblepart of the collocation learning process (Woolard, 2000; Hill, 2000; Conzett, 2000).Woolard (2000) insists that students should not only notice common collocations inthe texts they meet but also select and record the collocations that are crucial to theirparticular needs (p 35) Hill (2000) supports Woolard and states that all students

need an organized lexical notebook where they write items down and rehearse them

so that they can memorize those collocations more easily This is the constantrevisiting step in the process of learning a language (p 62) Conzett (2000),moreover, adds that teachers should model how to record collocations to helpstudents know how to organize their own notebook She suggests a model forrecording collocations as follows: (pp 76-77)

Figure 4: Conzett’s model for recording collocations

2.2.4 Teacher’s role in collocation instruction

Woolard (2000) underscores that in language development the learning ofcollocations is “ideally suited to independent language learning” (p 35) It can beinferred from Woolard‟s statement that teachers, in this case, shift from teaching tobuilding autonomy in learning so that learners can develop collocationalcompetence themselves Teachers should train learners the skills to recognizecollocations in texts, select and store the collocations to their specific needs Theyalso need to support learners with the skills to use a collocation dictionary to searchfor collocations so that learners can maximize their learning of collocations outsidethe classroom (p 28)

According to Conzett (2000), teachers are responsible for directing learners‟attention to the most useful collocations instead of recording all the collocations

they meet Teachers, in this case, should select, incorporate and recycle priority vocabulary into classroom materials and activities (pp 74-75).

high-Lewis (2000) highly recommends that the most important task of teachers incollocation instruction is to ensure that learners notice collocations in the inputlanguage The reason is noticing is a crucial factor for input being retained as long-term intake (pp 116-117)

2.2.5 Materials for teaching collocations

Authentic materials

Using authentic materials is essential in a language classroom Authenticmaterials, as Nunan (2004) puts it, refer to spoken and written materials that havebeen produced for the purposes of communication, not for the purposes of languageteaching Examples of authentic texts include articles from newspapers, magazines,stories or newsletters, and so on The reason for exposing learners to authentic input

is to prepare them for the challenge of coping with the language they hear and read

in the real world outside the classroom Nunan advocates that teachers should selectauthentic texts to the needs, interests and proficiency levels of their students (pp.48-51)

In teaching collocations, choosing authentic materials plays an important role(Lewis, 1993, p 186; Coxhead, 2008, p 156; Michiko, 2008, p 7; Alsakran, 2011,

p 49; Farrokh, 2012, p 68) Authentic materials give students more chances to beexposed to naturally occurring language; therefore, students will learn collocationswhich are used in the real world Lewis (2000) remarks that “when choosing textsfor learner-input, it is important to choose not from an interest point of view, butalso for linguistics, and specifically collocational reasons” (p 187)

Dictionaries

Dictionaries are always an important and beneficial resource for languagelearners In teaching and learning collocations, various types of dictionaries may be

used Traditional dictionaries tend to focus on helping learners find the meaning ofunknown words They give relatively little information about collocations.However, nowadays, in most updated and standard EFL dictionaries, collocationssometimes appear as part of the definition, and more frequently, as part of theexamples (Lewis, 2000, p 200) Teachers can utilize these examples to demonstratethe use of a word and explore collocations though only a few and most frequentcollocates are given.

Collocation dictionaries are a valuable source of input Today there havebeen various collocation dictionaries for language teachers and learners to choose

Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English, Macmillan Collocations Dictionary for Students of English and The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English:

A Guide to Word Combinations are among the examples Language teachers

generally agree that if learners are equipped with the skills to use collocationdictionaries effectively, they will be able to explore collocations and develop theircollocational knowledge independently outside the classroom (Woolard, 2000;Farrokh, 2012)

Corpora and Concordancers

With the recent development in the field of information technology, anextremely large amount of texts are stored on computers and the internet Woolard(2000) affirms that most of the major English Language Teaching publishing housesand universities have established extensive English corpora These corpora are largecollections of both written and spoken texts (newspapers, magazines, transcribedspeech, etc.), produced by native speakers of English, which are storedelectronically and can be accessed using search software The corpora are used as abasis for modern dictionaries as well as research into the use of English Some ofthe corpora can be accessed by individuals such as the British National Corpus(BNC) (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/) or the COBUILD Concordance andCollocations Sampler (http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx)

To make use of a corpus, it is suggested that a concordancer should beemployed A concordancer, as defined by Woolard (2000), is “a relatively simplepiece of computer software which allows a constructive search of large amounts oftext for examples of a particular word or phrase” (p 39) When a word needs to beexamined, the program will scan the stored texts and display the word within itscontexts on the screen in the form of a list of examples This list of examples iscalled a concordance A concordance can be utilized to find instances of authenticusage to demonstrate features of vocabulary, collocations, grammar points or thestructure of a text (Johns, 1990, as cited in Çelik, 2011, p 274)

Many researchers and language teachers advocate the use of corpora andconcordancers in teaching collocations (Woolard, 2000; Conzett, 2000; Lewis,2000; Hoey, 2000; Çelik, 2011, Farrokh, 2012) According to Farrokh (2012),concordances would be extremely helpful for students to recognize the collocation

in different contexts and realize how it is used by native speakers Willis (1998, ascited in Farrokh, 2012) adds that concordances help students to speak and writefluently and naturally especially these days when most students have access to theelectronic database (p 68)

2.3 Collocations in ESL writing

2.3.1 The need for collocation instruction in L2 writing process

It is generally agreed that collocations are more problematic in L2 productivelanguage than receptive language (Hill, 1999; Ozaki, 2011) Because of theirrelatively transparency in meaning, collocations do not cause much comprehensionproblems in reading or listening However, when they are used in productive skillssuch as writing and speaking, L2 learners may not be able to use them properly inreproducing the language Hill (1999) further explains the problem of collocations

in writing:

Students with good ideas often lose marks because they don‟t know the four or five most important collocates of a key word that is central to what they are writing about When

students do not know the collocations which express precisely what they want to say, they create longer utterances which increase the likelihood of further errors (Hill, 1999, p 5)

Conzett (2000) expresses her frustration about the fact that her students oftenuse their new vocabulary incorrectly when they move from receptive to productivelanguage despite her careful and contextualized vocabulary instruction (pp 70-71)

It is, therefore, necessary for teachers to raise students‟ awareness of collocationsand teach them how to use collocations correctly in L2 writing so that they canproduce language with near-native accuracy

2.3.2 How to incorporate collocation instruction in teaching writing skills

Language teachers have proposed some ways to incorporate collocationinstruction in teaching writing skills In essay preparation, the first activity to teachcollocation is that teachers may brainstorm the words connected with the topic inclass before they give their students home writing assignment and then usefulcollocates should be added to the words (Lewis, 2000; Conzett, 2000) Lewis (2000)suggests that the nouns which will be central to the content of the essay need to beintroduced After that verbs and adverbs which collocate with the nouns should beadded, and finally adverbs which collocate with the verbs For example, with an

“education” topic, nouns like school, education, qualification, teacher, etc may be introduced and for the word school, it may go with drop out of, leave, skip, go to,

single-sex, mixed, state or private This activity helps learners to generate more

ideas, increase vocabulary gain as well as enhance collocational competence.Another activity to help learners improve their use of collocations in writing is tofind a text on the topic of the essay and use it to introduce useful collocations(Lewis, 2000; Conzett, 2000) Teachers may download a text from the internet andcreate a cloze-type exercise by deleting Verb-Noun collocations and ask learners tothink as many words as they can to fill in the gaps The purpose of this activity isnot to recreate the original text, but to encourage learners to acquire newcombinations of words and to introduce lexis which they may need for their ownessays

In the post-writing stage, Lewis (2000, p 95) proposes a process to giveessay feedback with an emphasis on collocations The process can be summarized

as follows:

Step 1: The teacher read students‟ first draft, focusing on meaning alone If

there is a collocation to replace the learners‟ clumsy phrase and the teacherthinks the learners know that collocation, he may add a symbol meaning “Doyou know a collocation to replace the underlined words?” For a moredifficult collocation, he may add another symbol which means “Simplifywith collocations including…” and gives the stronger member of thecollocation

Step 2: The teacher returns the first draft and students reformulate it.

Step 3: The teacher reads the reformulated version for meaning and textual

coherence The teacher should provide in full any collocations whichstudents are unable to produce correctly

Step 4: Students get the second version with correction and write the third

and final version

Lewis (2000) claims that with this process of giving essay feedback, studentsbecome more aware of collocation as an essential carrier of meaning and improvetheir ability to recognize chunks in reading

2.3.3 Studies on the correlation between collocations and L2 writing

proficiency

To date there have been limited empirical studies on the use of collocations

in L2 writing Zhang (1993) is the first researcher on this topic Zhang (1993) tested

60 college freshmen (30 native and 30 non-native speakers of English) in a publicuniversity in Pennsylvania in the U.S by using a collocation test and a writing test.The collocation test was used to measure the participants‟ collocational knowledgeand the writing test was administered to collect data on their use of collocations andwriting proficiency Based on the results of the writing test, Zhang divided each

group into two sub-groups: good writers and poor writers He then compared thecorrelation between the subjects‟ knowledge of collocations and their writingquality; the use of collocations in the subjects‟ essays and the writing quality Withthe collocational test results, he found that native speakers performed significantlybetter than non-native speakers and good writers within each group performedsignificantly better than poor writers With regard to the use of collocations in thewriting test, native speakers surpassed non-native speakers and good writers withineach group surpassed poor writers in the quality of collocations For the non-nativegroup, the quantity of collocations of good writers outnumbered that of poor writers.Based on the findings, Zhang draw two major conclusions: (1) collocationalknowledge is a source of fluency in written communication among collegefreshmen and (2) quality of collocations in terms of variety and accuracy isindicative of the quality of college freshmen writing.

In a later study, Hsu (2007) investigated the use of English lexicalcollocations and their relation to the online writing of English-major and non-English major college students in Taiwan Participants were 41 English majors and

21 non-English majors at a national university Hsu used a web-based writingprogram Criterion Version 7.1 to administer the 45-minute online writing test Thetest was used to elicit information on the participants‟ use of lexical collocationsand to measure writing fluency of the two groups Hsu came to two conclusions: (1)there seemed to be a positive correlation between Taiwanese college EFL learners‟frequency of lexical collocations use and their online writing scores; and (2) thereseemed to be a significantly positive correlation between the subjects‟ variety oflexical collocations and their online writing scores

In summary, both Zhang (1993) and Hsu (2007) came to the consensus thatlearners‟ knowledge and use of collocations correlated with L2 writing proficiency

2.3.4 Studies on the effects of collocation instruction on L2 writing

As can be inferred from the previous studies, it is necessary for Englishteachers to incorporate English collocation instruction in teaching writing skills toESL learners and the effects of collocation instruction on ESL writing need to beexamined However, to date, there have been few published articles about this issue.Ying & Hendricks (2004) are the pioneers in this area

In 2004, Ying and Hendricks carried out a classroom-based study thatinvestigated the effects of the CAR (Collocation Awareness Raising) process on thewriting of 46 Chinese postgraduate students in the National University ofSingapore The CAR process consisted of six steps as summarized below:

Step 1: Students were introduced to a variety of collocation resources

including dictionaries, relevant readings and concordances

Step 2: Students were assigned the writing task: a summary-analysis essay in

Step 5: Students were encouraged to search for key words and collocations in

the online concordance and collocation dictionary and recorded what theyfound

Step 6: Students started writing in the provided worksheet until the class

finished Their summary analysis essays were completed outside the class Intheir essays, students were told to highlight the collocations they used fromwhat they found

The data for analysis were the worksheets (recorded collocations and essays)and a questionnaire administered one month after the writing session Ying andHendricks found that (1) the process did raise learners‟ collocation awareness

throughout and after the writing process; (2) the quality of student work increasedwith the use of collocation tokens; (3) the process often produced “islands” oflanguage sophistication in student writing; and (4) students naturally found and useappropriate collocations in their writing without being directed to do so.

Conclusion

The above literature review shows that collocations deserve the attention oflanguage researchers and teachers The importance and methods of teachingcollocations have been discussed extensively Several studies have been carried outfocusing on the relationship between collocations and L2 productive languageskills, especially writing Although the relationship between collocation instructionand L2 writing proficiency has caught attention of language educators to someextent, to the best of the researcher‟s knowledge, there has been only one studyexamining the effects of the process of collocation awareness-raising on ESLwriting It can be inferred from the reviewed literature that English collocationinstruction needs to be incorporated in the writing program to help learners developtheir writing skills which is the very aim of the current study

In the next chapters, details of the practical work, including the setting,design, participants and findings of the study will be presented

CHAPTER 3: THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The present research was carried out with its own special features in aspecific context and filled certain gaps that exist in the literature to date, that is:

Could English collocation instruction help improve the writing skill of first year non-native English-major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST)?

This chapter will now report the details of this implementation including abrief presentation of the research type, the setting of the study, the selection of theparticipants, the description of the intervention, the data collection instruments andthe data analysis procedures

3.1 Type of research: Action research

According to Nunan (1992) an action research “is initiated by thepractitioner and is derived from a real problem in the classroom which needs to beconfronted” (p 18) Field (1997) asserts that:

“Action research is envisaged as conferring two important benefits Firstly, it encourages teachers to reflect on their practice, and therefore leads to potential change It plays an important part in reflective teaching, where personal and professional development occurs when teachers review their experience in a systematic way Secondly, it is said to empower teachers, releasing them from dependence upon precepts handed down by trainers and inspectors By testing for themselves the methods and materials they use in the classroom, they can establish which are the most effective for them.” (Field, 1997, p 192)

It is essential for a teacher-researcher to know that action research is an going cycle for improvements An action research should consist of a cycle ofphases beginning from identifying a problem, planning an action, taking action,observation and evaluation The given phases are illustrated in the followingdiagrams: