An analysis of errors related to adjective noun collocations made by 3rd year english majored students at ussh and implications for teaching translation m a

In order to fill some of these gaps, the present study was conducted, which focused on adjective-noun collocational errors in Vietnamese – English translation.. Precisely, the study aims

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE



AN ANALYSIS OF ERRORS RELATED TO

YEAR ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT USSH AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING TRANSLATION

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature

in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

AN ANALYSIS OF ERRORS RELATED TO ADJECTIVE–NOUN

STUDENTS AT USSH AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING TRANSLATION

in terms of the statement of Requirements for the Thesis in Master’s Program issued

by the Higher Degree Committee The thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other situation

Ho Chi Minh City, _ 2017

Nguyễn Lê Bá Tòng

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, Nguyễn Lê Bá Tòng, being the candidate for the degree of Master

in TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use

of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for the purpose of study and research in accordance with the normal conditions established by the library for the care, loan or reproduction of the thesis

Ho Chi Minh City, _ 2017

Nguyễn Lê Bá Tòng

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratefulness to my teacher and supervisor, Dr Lê Hoàng Dũng, for all of his invaluable guidance, encouragement and dedication Without his wholehearted support and valuable advice, the completion of this thesis would have been impossible

I am greatly indebted to all teachers who taught me invaluable knowledge, which was essential for the fulfilment of this thesis Specially, I would like to extend my gratitude

to Assoc Prof Dr Tô Minh Thanh, who inspired me to choose the thesis topic and helped me form the very first ideas to carry out the study

My sincerest thanks also go to the Board of Administrators and other members of the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature, who directly or indirectly contributed to the implementation of this thesis

I am deeply thankful to my colleagues and friends, especially Ms Vân Di, Mr Thiên Lộc, Mr Khôi Nguyên and Ms Bảo Ngọc, whose constant support and valuable experience have led me through times of difficulty

Last but not least, my deepest gratitude goes to my family, my loving mother, my dedicated father, my aunts and uncles, and my beloved one, whose unconditional love and care have been the very reason for every achievement I have had Without them, this thesis would have never been completed

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

LIST OF FIGURES ix

ABSTRACT x

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Rationale for the study 3

1.3 Aim of the study 4

1.4 Research questions 4

1.5 Significance of the study 4

1.6 Scope of the study 5

1.7 Overall structure of the study 6

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Collocation 7

2.1.1 Definition of collocation 7

2.1.2 Categorization of collocations 11

2.1.3 Components of collocations 13

2.2 Collocation and translation 14

2.2.1 The significance of collocations in translation 14

2.2.2 Difficulties in translating collocations 15

2.2.3 Influences of L1 on learners’ use of collocations 17

2.2.3.1 English collocations vs Vietnamese counterparts 17

2.2.3.2 Congruent and incongruent collocations 18

2.2.4 Strategies in translating collocations 20

2.3 Collocation and error analysis 21

2.3.1 Theory of error analysis 21

2.3.2 Types of errors related to adjective-noun collocations 23

2.3.3 Causes of collocational errors 25

2.4 Collocation and language teaching 28

2.5 Methods for testing collocational knowledge 33

2.6 Conceptual framework 35

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 39

3.1 Research questions 39

3.2 Research design 39

3.2.1 Context of the study 39

3.2.2 Participants 40

3.2.2.1 Student participants 41

3.2.2.2 Teacher participants 42

3.2.3 COCA 42

3.2.4 Research instruments 44

3.2.4.1 Students’ midterm exam papers in Basic Translation 44

3.2.4.2 Translation test 45

3.2.4.3 COLLEX test 48

3.2.4.4 Interview 49

3.2.4.5 Questionnaire 50

3.2.5 Pilot study 53

3.3 Data collection procedure 54

3.3.1 Collection of adjective-noun collocational errors 54

3.3.1.1 Collection of errors from students’ midterm exam papers 55

3.3.1.2 Collection of errors from the translation test 57

3.3.2 Collection of additional data 58

3.3.2.1 Questionnaire 58

3.3.2.2 COLLEX test 58

3.3.2.3 Interviews to the teachers 59

3.4 Data analysis procedure 59

3.4.1 Analysis of adjective-noun collocational errors 59

3.4.2 Questionnaire 60

3.4.3 COLLEX test 60

3.4.4 Interview 61

3.5 Summary 61

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 62

4.1 Data analysis and discussion 62

4.1.1 Analysis of collocational errors from students’ exam papers 62

4.1.1.1 Types of errors 64

4.1.1.2 Causes of errors 66

4.1.2 Analysis of collocational errors from the translation test 73

4.1.2.1 Types of errors 75

4.1.2.1 Causes of errors 77

4.1.3 Summary of the error analyses 84

4.1.4 Learners’ receptive knowledge of collocations 86

4.1.5 The teaching and learning of collocations in Basic Translation 89

4.1.5.1 The teaching of collocations 90

4.1.5.2 The learning of collocations 93

4.2 Major findings 100

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 108

5.1 Conclusion 108

5.2 Suggestions and recommendations 110

5.2.1 Suggestions to teachers 110

5.2.2 Suggestions to students 116

5.2.3 Recommendations for future research 118

REFERENCES 119

APPENDIX 1 126

APPENDIX 2 129

APPENDIX 3 130

APPENDIX 4 131

APPENDIX 5 134

APPENDIX 6 135

APPENDIX 7 140

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BNC the British National Corpus

COCA the Corpus of Contemporary American English

EF the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature

EFL/ESL English as a Second/Foreign Language

SVO Subject – Verb – Object

TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Ts’ Teachers’

USSH University of Social Sciences and Humanities – Ho Chi Minh City

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Seven types of lexical collocations (Farrokh, 2012) 12

Table 2.2: The revised six types of lexical collocations 12

Table 2.3: Types of collocational errors (Nesselhauf, 2003) 23

Table 2.4: Useful collocations to teach students (Hodne, 2009) 30

Table 3.1: Description of the questionnaire items 52

Table 3.2: Summary of the research instruments 52

Table 3.3: Reliability statistics of the translation test 53

Table 4.1: Lexical combinations from the midterm-exam papers 63

Table 4.2: Types of collocational errors from the midterm-exam papers 65

Table 4.3: Causes of collocational errors from the midterm-exam papers 66

Table 4.4: Summary of students’ responses to the translation test 74

Table 4.5: Types of collocational errors from the translation test 75

Table 4.6: Causes of collocational errors from the translation test 77

Table 4.7: Comparison between productive test and receptive test 87

Table 4.8: Students’ performance on each item of the two tests 88

Table 4.9: Student’s statement about the teaching of collocations in basic translation 91

Table 4.10: Strategies used by the teachers to teach collocations 92

Table 4.11: Sources of students’ knowledge about collocations 94

Table 4.12: Students’ opinions on the roles of collocations in translation 94

Table 4.13: Students’ strategies to broaden knowledge about collocations 95

Table 4.14: Students’ strategies to deal with difficulties in translating collocations 97

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Conceptual framework of the study 38

Figure 3.1: The COCA search interface 55

Figure 3.2: The COCA result interface 56

Figure 4.1: Summary of types of collocational errors 85

Figure 4.2: Summary of causes of collocational errors 85

Figure 4.3: Students’ responses to Q6, Q7 and Q8 96

Figure 4.4: Summary of the major findings 106

Collocation is an important concept in language teaching Learning and using collocations are believed to boost learners’ communicative competence However, collocations also bring many problems to learners due to their arbitrariness as well as linguistic and cultural differences Although quite a few studies on collocations have been conducted, there are still gaps for further research when certain types of collocations and other influential factors such as translation are taken into account In order to fill some of these gaps, the present study was conducted, which focused on adjective-noun collocational errors in Vietnamese – English translation Multiple research methods and tools, including (1) error analysis, (2) questionnaire and (3) interview, were employed to thoroughly investigate the errors, their possible causes and to find out appropriate solutions to the addressed issue

The study revealed that the student participants, in spite of their high level of proficiency as English-majored juniors, still made a considerable number of collocational errors The majority of the said errors were caused by incorrect choices

of adjectives, which could be explained by the fact that the choices of adjective, as the collocate, in a collocation is restricted by the noun – the node Regarding the causes

of errors, approximation and L1 transfer were the two major ones The study also directed attention to some other causes, which had been usually neglected in previous studies, such as formal confusion and inappropriate use of dictionaries Upon further investigation, it was pointed out that the learners’ lack of knowledge about collocation was the major implying factor accounting for most of the observed errors This was probably resulted from the fact that the teaching of collocations was mostly integrated

in other tasks Such implicit instruction, though useful, may not be effective enough

to attract their attention Based on the findings of the study, recommendations on the teaching and learning of collocations in translation were presented Firstly, it is necessary to raise learners’ awareness of the concept of collocations Secondly, the teaching of collocations in translation should be more explicit to attract their attention Finally, it is advised that students should put more effort in improving their knowledge

of collocations

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter provides an introduction to the study, including (1) background to the study, (2) rationale for the study, (3) aim and objectives of the study, (4) research questions, (5) significance of the study, (6) scope of the study and (7) its overall structure

1.1 Background to the study

Among recently developed approaches to language teaching, the Lexical Approach (LA) is one that lays emphasis on teaching prefabricated chunks instead of separate words LA was built from the belief that acquiring and using lexical units as chunks can effectively improve learners’ communicative competence, an idea which has been supported by a number of scholars Pawley & Syder (1983), for example, have remarked that a large part of human speech is “multiword units” which function as

“chunks” or memorized patterns Harmer (2001), sharing the same view, wrote that oral fluency requires a spontaneous process of language and information, which “is marked by the use of a number of common lexical phrases” (p 269) These ideas were, again, affirmed by Jiang & Nekrasova (2007) who have recently found that formulaic sequences are processed more quickly and more accurately than non-formulaic sequences

One important concept in LA is collocation, which can be understood as the regular co-occurrence of words in a language Since it shows how words in a language work together, or that is to say how formulaic sequences (or chunks) are formed, the use of the aforementioned approach is hardly possible without thorough understanding of the concept Collocation, therefore, “is thought to play a central role in learning and in communication” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p 133)

While collocation is important, it is also problematic for EFL/ESL learners due to several factors Firstly, while native speakers can produce these prefabricated chunks, including collocations, quite effortlessly, most learners cannot acquire them without a great amount of time and effort As a matter of fact, they are not exposed to L2 as

much as native speakers do, and thus the chances for them to practice using these chunks are quite limited As a result, they usually resort to rote-learning, which seems

to be an ineffective method to memorize a huge amount of lexical items Especially with collocations, the memorizing process is even more challenging due to their

arbitrary combination rules One cannot explain, for instance, why tea has to go with

strong as in strong tea but not with powerful – a synonym of strong Being confused

by such rules, learners may find it difficult to remember and use collocations correctly Another factor making the acquisition of collocations even more difficult is the influence of learners’ L1 In many circumstances, learners usually resort to their mother tongue and try to express their ideas through word-for-word translation from their L1 Nevertheless, this strategy does not assure the efficiency and accuracy in communication, since even if two words in a language are collocations of each other, their equivalents in the other language do not necessarily have the same relationship Word-for-word translation may, therefore, lead to the violation of collocational rules

in L2, and thus make the speakers sound awkward, not to mention the negative influence on their fluency caused by such a process

Given the difficulties above, it seems inevitable for learners to make errors in using collocations Indeed, it is a proven fact that even students of high level of English still make collocational errors due to large amount of complicated lexical items they have

to memorize and produce, not to mention the arbitrariness of collocations and differences between languages However, collocational errors, according to researchers such as Bahns & Eldaw (1993), Li (2005), Darvishi (2011), can be reduced

by improving learners’ knowledge of collocations through multiple teaching methods including identification and correction of collocational errors, introduction of certain target collocations, etc Although these methods have proved their effectiveness, it is

an undeniable fact that collocation is still a constant challenge to EFL learners, which emphasizes the necessity to have more research into the issue

Along with the increasing popularity of LA, collocation and teaching of collocations have attracted much attention from scholars and researchers, such as Bahns & Eldaw (1993), Fan (2009), Farrokh (2012) and Lubis (2013), etc Most of these studies have focused either on analyzing learners’ collocational errors to figure out the causes of

and remedies for the errors or on looking for new methods for effectively teaching collocations to learners There were also studies that had both foci, in which the latter was usually done on the basis of the former

1.2 Rationale for the study

Although a great number of studies into collocation have been conducted, most of them focused on one type of collocation, namely verb-noun, since this type collocation occurs very frequently and causes considerable difficulty for learners of English However, among other types of collocation, adjective-noun also has high frequency

of occurrence and high level of difficulty, which have been confirmed in several studies Trinh (2001) conducted a contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese collocations to find out “particular lexico-semantic features which are alien, unfamiliar, or unpredictable, from the point of view of a Vietnamese translator

of English” (p 59) The study revealed that, among the categories, adjective-noun collocation was the broadest one with about 1700 instances, accounting for 56.6 percent of the collected data Other researchers, including Channell (1981), Koya (2005), Shehata (2008) and Kurosaki (2012), have come to the same conclusion that adjective-noun collocation caused great difficulties for learners

In the context of Vietnam, the attention towards collocations has been increased with several studies being conducted in the recent years Nguyen (2006) studied the importance of collocational knowledge in language use In 2008, Mai investigated learners’ use of lexical collocation in Vietnamese – English translation More recently, two studies have been completed by Dang (2014) and Nguyen (2014) The former was

a survey into the teaching of lexical collocations in academic writing, whereas the latter investigated learners’ competence in producing and recognizing verb-noun collocations However, similar to many foreign studies in the field, none of the aforementioned works specifically focused on adjective-noun collocation

Moreover, while most of the studies above aimed to find solutions for problems related

to collocations in language teaching in general, few of them had implication specifically for teaching translation although translation is a context where collocation-related difficulties are likely to arise as it requires good command of

collocations in both source and target languages Given the fact that translation by its nature is complicated and translating collocation is among the biggest challenges to even professional translators let alone learners of English, it is necessary to have more studies that specifically deal with collocations in translation

The aforementioned issues altogether became the research gap that drove the researcher to conduct the present study that aimed at adjective-noun collocations in translation and sought relevant implications for teaching translation at University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH) where translation is a subject being taught to students of the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature (EF)

1.3 Aim of the study

It is apparent that collocational errors are made by even students with high level of proficiency This fact encouraged the researcher to conduct the present study, which mainly focuses on collocational errors made by 3rd year EF students at USSH Precisely, the study aims at analyzing errors related to attributive adjective-noun collocations in the students’ translations in order to have a comprehensive and detailed look into (1) the common types of errors and (2) their possible causes Also, based on the result of the error analysis, some useful and applicable solutions are expected to

be found to help the students overcome difficulties in learning and using collocations and particularly in translating collocations

2 What are the possible causes of adjective-noun collocational errors made by 3rd

year EF students at USSH in their translations?

1.5 Significance of the study

With those aims accomplished by answering the two research questions, the present study has its own significance as follow

Firstly, in terms of theoretical values, the study provided a thorough review of literature on relevant aspects of collocation and collocational errors Especially, the review of literature presented a comprehensive list of error types and hypothetical causes of collocational errors, which was later confirmed through the error analysis

In addition to them, the analysis revealed some other causes of errors which were scarcely mentioned in previous studies Besides, the practical teaching and learning of collocation in translation classes at EF, USSH were also investigated, which revealed possible connections to learners’ deficiency in collocational knowledge

Secondly, the study had some practical contributions to the teaching and learning of collocations, especially in translation With a detailed analysis of types and causes of errors, the study was expected to provide teachers and learners with valuable information on how collocational errors are made and thus would help learners avoid committing such errors Moreover, basing on the findings, the study suggested some recommendations for the teaching and learning of collocation in translation at EF, USSH in order to further improve the students’ collocational knowledge and help them overcome difficulties in translating collocations

1.6 Scope of the study

The present study focused on adjective-noun collocational errors in translation of 3rd

year EF students at USSH The scope of the study, however, still needs clarification First of all, it was mentioned that the present study focused on adjective-noun collocational errors This type of collocation includes combinations in which the adjective may come either before or after the noun However, in the present study, adjective-noun collocation strictly refers to combinations in which the adjective precedes the noun To put it differently, the study took into account only attributive adjective-noun collocations and their related errors

Secondly, the present study was said to deal with collocational errors in translation It

is commonly known that translation involves two directions: either from learners’ L1

to L2 or vice versa To avoid unnecessary complication, the researcher directed his attention only to Vietnamese – English translation since translating from L1 to L2 seems more challenging and thus collocational errors are more likely to occur

To sum up, the present study focused on errors related to attributive adjective-noun collocations found in Vietnamese – English translations of 3rd year EF students at USSH Such limited scope might result in the relatively weak generalizability of the study However, it is expected to have some contributions to translation teaching at

EF, USSH and provide theoretical and practical background for further research

1.7 Overall structure of the study

This thesis consists of five main chapters (1) Introduction, (2) Literature Review, (3) Methodology, (4) Findings and Discussion and (5) Conclusion and Recommendations, apart from the Acknowledgements, Abstract, References and Appendixes

The first chapter, namely Introduction, provides the background information of the

study and gives the rationale for carrying out the research The aims, the significance and the scope of the study are also presented in this chapter

The second chapter, Literature Review, can be divided into two major parts The first

one sets up the theoretical background for the study with a detailed review of theories and concepts relevant to collocation and collocational errors The second one is the review of previous studies in the field Based on this theoretical background, the conceptual framework is established as a guideline for the research design and the collection and analysis of data

The third chapter, Methodology, describes the methods used to conduct the study In

this chapter, the research questions are further elaborated In addition, descriptions of research designs and procedures for collecting and analyzing data are also presented

The next chapter, entitled Findings and Discussion, presents the analysis and

discussion of the collected data, as well as the major findings of the studies This chapter not only gives the answers to the aforementioned research questions but also serves as the basis for the recommendations presented in chapter five

The final chapter entitled Conclusion and Recommendations provides a brief

summary of the study, pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of collocations in translation, as well as recommendations for further research

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents and discusses the major theories and literature necessary for constructing the theoretical and conceptual framework of the study Firstly, the concepts related to collocation, including definition and typology are presented Secondly, the relationship between collocations and translation is discussed Thirdly, the literature related to error analysis is considered Fourthly, as the present study aims

to find out some solutions to the learners’ errors, the literature concerning the teaching

of collocations is reviewed Subsequently, some common types of collocation testing method are presented in order to figure out the most appropriate methods for the present study Finally, based on that theoretical framework, the conceptual framework

is established as the guideline for the research

2.1 Collocation

2.1.1 Definition of collocation

The term collocation, according to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, has two different meanings Collocation, as a countable noun, refers to “a combination of

words in a language that happens very often and more frequently than would happen

by chance” As an uncountable noun, it refers to “the fact of two or more words often being used together, in a way that happens more frequently than would happen by

chance” Therefore, collocation in this study may be used to address either the concept

of collocation or certain combinations

The term was made popular by Firth (1957) who used it to refer to “the habitual or characteristic associations of words in texts” (cited in Ibrahim, 2003, p 3) Firth was

considered the pioneer of the frequency-based approach – one of the two major schools

of thought in studying collocation Following this approach, several definitions of collocation have been provided For example, Jones & Sinclair (1974) viewed a collocation as “the co-occurrence of two items in a text within a specified environment” (cited in Ibrahim, 2003, p 4) Later, Cruse (1986) described collocations

as “sequences of lexical items which habitually co-occur” More recently, Sinclair

defined collocation as “the occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a text” (1991, p 70) In general, most of the definitions based on this school of thought have taken frequency of occurrence as the criterion to define collocation.

However, a group of frequently co-occurred words is not necessarily a collocation This was proven by Kjellmer (1982) who studied Brown Corpus and found the

frequent occurrences of some adjacent two-word sequences such as “of the”,

“although he”, and “but too” (cited in Kurosaki, 2012) Although these words

frequently co-occurred in the corpus, most native speakers would probably not consider them as collocations, since they did not make meaningful lexical sequences

To put it differently, frequency of occurrence alone is not sufficient to define collocation

The phraseology approach is another school of thought regarding collocation Followers of this approach have made efforts to distinguish collocations from other types of formulaic sequence and from free combinations Howarth (1998), for

example, differentiated restricted collocations from free combinations, figurative

idioms, and pure idioms using two criteria (1) the degree of restriction on substitution

and (2) the meaning of words in a combination (literal or figurative) Howart’s idea was based on Cowie’s (1981), one of the pioneers of the phraseological approach, who suggested that collocations were found in the “fuzzy” area on a continuum between free combinations and idioms Cowie also proposed two criteria to distinguish them

from each other, which are: combinability and transparency The former refers not

only to co-occurrence but also to restriction in combination The degree of restriction varies from free substitution, which allows one word to combine with an open set of words, to complete restriction, which allows one word to go with only one specific word (or very few options) in a specific combination The latter refers to the meaning

of the words in combinations, whether they have literal meaning [+transparency] or figurative meaning [-transparency]

The two approaches above have provided important criteria to define collocation However, both of them had their own strengths and weaknesses The frequency-based approach, with its theory about frequency of occurrence, laid the foundation for

defining collocation However, it failed to provide a comprehensive method to distinguish collocations from other formulaic sequences, not to mention meaningless strings of words that frequently co-occurred The phraseological approach, with the two concepts “combinability” and “transparency”, gave a solution to the mentioned problem However, definitions based on this approach would be incomplete without the criterion set by the other one Therefore, Kurosaki (2012) combined the aforementioned ideas and came up with his own definition as follow:

A collocation is a type of word combination in a certain grammatical pattern, and they refer to an abstract unit of language that occurs frequently Collocations are characterized by two criteria: (1) combinability of words within a collocation; and (2) semantic transparency of words in a collocation (p 30)

Kurosaki’s definition embraced the essence of the two major approaches Moreover,

by pointing out that collocations follow certain grammatical patterns he also excluded the cases of adjacent two-word sequences described in Kjellmer (1982) as these meaningless strings of words do not adhere to these grammatical patterns

This definition, nevertheless, had certain limitations Firstly, it did not state the frequency of occurrence, at which a combination could be considered a collocation Secondly, the use of transparency as a criterion proposed by Cowie (1981) was critiqued by Hodne (2009) for not having a clear-cut boundary between the two

extremes literal and figurative Taking two combinations “constitutional monarchy” and “customs agents” as examples, she argued that it was hard to determine whether

they are free combinations or restricted collocations, and to tell which element in each

of the combinations is used with its literal sense if they are restricted collocations Hodne, therefore, proposed a definition of her own:

Collocation are arbitrarily restricted lexeme combinations that are syntactically fixed to a certain degree, are included in the collocation dictionary, present an MI score [Mutual Information] higher than 3.0, and have a raw frequency [or FREQ for short] of more than three tokens in COCA [the Corpus of Contemporary American English] (p 8)

Although the definition above provided reliable criteria for identifying collocations, the use of both corpora and dictionaries was unnecessarily complicated In fact, it is suggested that using corpora alone would suffice as they provide a much larger and more comprehensive database

In addition to the aforementioned issue, there is another point in the definition that need consideration In fact, Hodne was not the first person to use frequency of occurrence in a corpus as a criterion to determine collocations Prior to her, Nesselhauf

(2005) had applied this to his research Later on, it was adopted in Hong et al (2011) Both studies had set the FREQ of at least five tokens in BNC (the British National

Corpus) as the standard threshold for a combination to be considered a collocation

Given the fact that COCA has a much bigger database than BNC, the FREQ of more than three tokens set by Hodne (2009) may not be representative enough Therefore, the present study will adopt the standard FREQ of at least five tokens proposed by Nesselhauf (2005) and Hong et al (2011)

Based on the definition of Hodne (2009) and the aforementioned recommendations,

the operational definition for the present study is formed as follow: Collocations are

arbitrarily restricted lexeme combinations that are syntactically fixed to a certain degree, present a minimum Mutual Information (MI) score of 3.0, and have a raw

frequency (FREQ) of at least five tokens in COCA

According to this definition, the FREQ and the MI score of a combination in COCA are the main criteria to determine whether the combination is a collocation or not Detailed descriptions of FREQ and MI will be given later in Chapter 3 However, it can be briefly explained here that the former shows how frequently the combination

is used by native speakers while the latter indicates how strong the combination is With these criteria taken into account, there are four possibilities to consider

(1) If both criteria are satisfied (FREQ ≥ 5; MI ≥ 3), meaning that the combination is frequently used and has a strong combination between the words, it is considered a collocation

(2) If neither criterion is satisfied (FREQ < 5; MI < 3), the combination is neither frequently used nor strong enough and thus it is considered an erroneous one

(3) If only the FREQ meets the standard requirement (FREQ ≥ 5; MI < 3), which means that the combination is frequently used by native speakers but is not strong enough to be a collocation, it is considered a free combination

The last possibility – (4) only the MI meets the requirement (FREQ < 5; MI ≥ 3) – is

a little complicated In her study, Dang (2014) considered these as free combinations However, there are several issues that need consideration First of all, a low frequency

of occurrence means that the combination is not commonly used In other words, it is possibly not recognized or accepted by the majority of native speakers regardless how high its MI score is Moreover, according to Clear (1995), the MI score is high and unreliable when the frequency of occurrence is low Therefore, in the present study, combinations with only the MI meeting the requirement will be also considered as erroneous ones

This operational definition and the four possibilities resulted from it provide important criteria for the data collection and analysis procedures, which will be discussed later

in Chapter 3

2.1.2 Categorization of collocations

From different perspectives, collocations can be categorized differently However, most scholars agreed with the idea of Benson et al (1986) who categorized collocations into grammatical collocations and lexical ones The former, according to Fontenelle (1994), “involves one element from an open class and an element from a closed class, typically, but not necessarily, a preposition” (p 4) The latter, on the contrary, consists of “two items belonging to open (non-finite) classes, for instance a verb and a noun or an adjective and a noun” (ibid.)

The present study, however, only focuses on the second type: lexical collocations, since they are more challenging and demanding to learners in a way that they require

a more selective and precise use of vocabularies This type of collocation, again, is classified into different subtypes Farrokh (2012), basing on Benson et al (1986), proposed 7 sub types of lexical collocation, which are shown in Table 2.1 below

Table 2.1: Seven types of lexical collocations (Farrokh, 2012, p 59)

1 verb (creation/activation) + noun compose music; make an impression

2 verb (eradication/nullification) + noun revoke a license, demolish a house

5 noun1 (+of) + noun2 pack of dog, a herd of buffalo

6 adjective + adverb/ adverb + adjective sound asleep, hopelessly addictive

However, according to Benson et al (1986), “in English, nouns are often used as adjectives Nouns used attributively may enter into … the category of adjective-noun collocations.” To put it differently, the third category may include combinations consisting of two nouns, the first one of which functions as an adjective modifying the second one This category, therefore, should be renamed: adjective/noun + noun Moreover, it is noticeable that the first and the second categories are similar in terms

of components: verb + noun Since verb-noun collocation is not the focus of the present study, categorizing verbs into different types is unnecessarily complicated The two categories, therefore, will be grouped into one, namely verb + noun, resulted

in six types of lexical collocation shown in Table 2.2 below

Table 2.2: The revised six types of lexical collocations

2 adjective/noun + noun strong tea, jet engine, aptitude test

4 noun1 (+ prep) + noun2 pack of dog, a herd of buffalo

5 adjective + adverb/ adverb + adjective sound asleep, hopelessly addictive

As mentioned in Chapter 1, the present study only focuses on one type of lexical collocation: adjective-noun, due to the difficulties this type of collocation causes for learners and the small number of studies concerning it Although this type of collocation involves both adjective + noun and noun + noun combinations, for the sake

of simplicity and consistency, both of them will be addressed as adjective-noun collocation since the first noun in the combination plays the role of an adjective

2.1.3 Components of collocations

Since the present study involves identifying collocations in texts and checking them using a corpus (COCA), it is necessary to have some basic knowledge about the components of a collocation, among which are three important terms that need

consideration: “node”, “collocate” and “span” (Ibrahim, 2003)

Node was defined by Jones & Sinclair (1974) as “an item whose total pattern of

co-occurrence with other words is under examination” (cited in Ibrahim, 2003, p 20);

while collocate was defined as “any item which appears with the node within a

specified environment” (ibid.) Jones & Sinclair (1947) have also made clear that

“there is no difference in status between node and collocate; if word A is a node and

word B is one of its collocates, when word B is studied as a node, word A will be one

of its collocates” (ibid.)

However, Kurosaki (2012) suggested that for each specific study, node and collocate should be identified at the beginning to ensure accuracy and consistency of the study Stubbs (2001) also stated that “a node predicts that a preceding or following word also occurs” (cited in Kurosaki, 2012, p.28) That is to say, in a collocation, the node is the one that determines the choice of collocates Since the present study deals with English adjective-noun collocations which are basically noun phrases, and since in a noun phrase the head noun is the pivotal element, the noun will be considered as the node and the adjective will be considered as the collocate

The last factor to be considered is span According to Jones & Sinclair (1974), “span

is the amount of text within which collocation between items is said to occur” (cited

in Ibrahim, 2003, p 20) Phillips (1985), sharing the same view, remarked that

“collocation is recognised within an environment of a number of words preceding and/or succeeding the node, for example, the five preceding and the five following words This environment is termed the span” (ibid.) Let us consider the following

examples: “He is telling the truth” and “He is telling only half of the truth.” Both

sentences have tell as the node and truth as the collocate of the collocation; however

their spans are obviously different The span of a collocation, according to Ibrahim, can be even “above phrase level” (2003, p 21) However, with respect to attributive

adjective-noun collocations, by nature the adjective usually adjacently precedes the noun, or sometimes it precedes the noun within a span of three or four words when multiple adjectives/nouns pre-modify the same head noun

To sum up, in this study, the node of an adjective-noun collocation is the noun, the

collocate is the adjective (or the noun functioning as an attributive adjective in the

case of noun + noun) and the span being considered is within five words preceding

the node These components and relevant rules mentioned above play important roles

in the data collection and analysis, which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3

2.2 Collocation and translation

2.2.1 The significance of collocations in translation

This section is dedicated to discussing the relationship between collocations and translation The former, indeed, has considerable influence upon the latter

One factor determining a translator’s performance is his lexical knowledge; the broader it is, the better his performance is likely to be A translator, therefore, must always enrich his vocabulary However, the acquisition and retention of vocabulary prove to be a big challenge for most non-native speakers of any language (McCarten, 2007) Moreover, that learners know a word does not mean that they can use it in communication, let alone in translation The major cause for this is their inability to determine in which contexts and with which words a lexical item may occur To put

it differently, it is their lack of collocational knowledge that accounts for the issue Many authors, including Pawley & Syder (1983) and Harmer (2001), have suggested learning vocabulary as chunks as a solution to the aforementioned problem Instead

of learning separate words, learners should put them in specific contexts where they can be learned together with other words that habitually co-occur with them This learning strategy has certain advantages First of all, it helps learners memorize words more easily since “collocational association can … act as memory aids” (Rahimi & Sahragard., 2008, p 15) Moreover, as Firth claimed that one “shall know a word by the company it keeps” (cited in Gyllstad, 2007, p.7), collocations provide learners with better understanding of vocabularies For example, learners can realize the

differences in meaning between two synonyms (e.g injury and wound) by looking at

the words collocating with them Finally, remembering words as chunks also reduces the processing time in language use since learners do not have to spend much time on choosing words for combinations anymore

With a large and systematic bank of vocabulary, translators can improve their performance in other aspects of language use, including listening, reading, writing, and speaking In other words, knowledge about collocations indirectly facilitates their translation competence as Nation (2001) remarked “all fluent and appropriate language requires collocational knowledge” (p 318) McIntosh et al (2009), sharing the same view, wrote that a learner with knowledge of collocations will be able to express himself clearly Not only does collocational knowledge promote translators’ fluency, but it also helps improve the quality of their translations in both naturalness and accuracy One of the factors distinguish native speakers from non-native ones is the naturalness in their language use, marked by the correct use of collocations and other idiomatic expressions Furthermore, according to Newmark (1988), collocations are an important unit of translation that needs special attention Some words in certain collocations have meanings that differ from their usual meanings when they stand alone Thus, having broad knowledge of collocations will help translator understand and translate texts more accurately and easily

2.2.2 Difficulties in translating collocations

While collocations play an important role in translation, translating them seems to be

a constant challenge to translators In order to shed more light on the issue, the researcher attempts to put the difficulties related to the translation of collocations into two major categories: intralingual difficulties and interlingual ones It is important to note that the types of difficulties are intertwined with each other, and thus it is almost impossible to have a clear cut between them The two categories proposed here are just an ad-hoc solution to discuss the issue more systematically

Intralingual difficulties are those caused by the target language itself Talking about collocation, most researchers have agreed on the fact that its arbitrary nature is a major cause of difficulties for learners and translators Sughair (2011), for example, wrote that “[while] a native speaker of the language can predict … collocations … a learner

of the same language finds it hard to collocate the words” (p 5) The difficulties also come from a universal phenomenon of languages that a word can have different senses

depending on the words in combination with it For example, a big house, a large

house and a great house have the same meaning, but a great man is different from a big man or a large man (Mai, 2010) Another good example is the word dry whose

primary meaning denotes the characteristic of not being wet or moist However, in

expression such as dry cow or dry voice, “the meaning has nothing to do with not wet

or moist” (Meidasari, 2007, p 6) The problem is that translators may not know all the possible senses of a word and even if they do, they may still fail to recognize the exact sense in a certain combination Considering this issue, Meidasari (2007) maintained the importance of context because it is the context in which a word occurs that signals its secondary meaning However, a throughout understanding of a context may also

be another challenge for translators, especially when the context involves specific and culture specific lexical items, which are major factors related to interlingual difficulties

language-Interlingual difficulties are those caused by the differences between the two languages Differences in terms of culture and language are great obstacles for translators And collocations are among the most troublesome language-specific and culture-specific items Dweik & Shakra (2010) pointed out that “rendering Arabic collocations into English constitutes a major linguistic and cultural hindrance due to … the wide linguistic and cultural gap between Arabic and English, which consequently led to the lack of equivalence of specific-culture, bound collocational patterns” Similarly, Shammas (2013), cited Emery (1991), wrote that “collocations are language-specific and hence unpredictable” (p 108) The gaps between cultures and languages are a universal problem for translators and language learners; and thus, are also observable

in the case of English and Vietnamese A Vietnamese translator, for example, may

find it hard to translate culture-specific collocations such as continental breakfast or

tow-away zone (Trinh, 2001, p 68) which do not have equivalents in Vietnamese

Similarly, Vietnamese culture-specific terms such as mặt rồng (dragon’s face, denoting king) or cửu/hoàng tuyền (nine/golden springs, denoting the afterlife) are

difficult to translate into English since translators have to render not only the exact message but also the effect, the mod, etc of the SL text For archaic words such as the

ones above, they need to find appropriate archaic equivalents to convey as closely the spirit of the source text as possible Furthermore, when two languages are taken into consideration, the arbitrariness of collocations is even more obvious For instance, one

cannot explain why black horses, black dogs and black cats are referred to as ngựa ô,

chó mực and mèo mun respectively in Vietnamese As a result, a native speaker of

English may find it very confusing for having three words which express the same

meaning of black and yet cannot be used interchangeably

2.2.3 Influences of L1 on learners’ use of collocations

Differences in terms of culture and language are one of the major causes of difficulties

in translating collocations To have deeper insight into the issue, this section is devoted

to presenting a brief contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese collocations and related factors

2.2.3.1 English collocations vs Vietnamese counterparts

Although English and Vietnamese belong to different language groups – the former

is a member of Indo-European family, the latter belongs to Austroasiatic family – they still share some similarities Firstly, they both have some common sentence structures such as SV or SVO Secondly, both languages use Latin writing system Nonetheless, these similarities are minor compared to the differences This part, however, only focuses on the points relevant to collocation The differences will be categorized into two groups: one related to the linguistic aspect of language, the other related to the cultural one

In terms of linguistics, it is obvious that the structure of attributive adjective-noun collocations in English does not have an identical equivalent in Vietnamese due to differences in words’ order English grammatical rules allow adjectives to precede head nouns in noun phrases On the contrary, in Vietnamese, the adjectives in a noun

phrase always come after the head noun they modify, for example: dense population

vs dân số đông In other words, the equivalent structure of English adjective-noun

collocation in Vietnamese is noun-adjective (Trinh, 2001) However, in English, nouns can have the same attributive function as that of adjectives The similar phenomenon is also observed in Vietnamese where a noun, like an adjective, can work

as a modifier of another noun As a result, certain adjective-noun collocations in

English are translated into Noun-Noun combinations in Vietnamese (e.g golden age and thơ ̀ i vàng son) On the contrary, some noun-adjective combinations in Vietnamese

are translated into Noun-Noun collocations in English (e.g răng khôn and wisdom

tooth) In addition to the differences in structure, the concepts of equivalence between

words and equivalence between collocations do not necessarily coincide between the two languages To put it differently, even if two words in a language form a collocation, their equivalents in another language do not necessarily have the same relationship These differences between the two languages are probably a major cause

of difficulties in translating collocations

With respect to the cultural aspect, language itself is heavily influenced by culture and collocation, as a part of language, is not an exception Trinh (2001) conducted a contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese collocations, in which he gave

a long list of examples of culture specific collocations For example, in English, the

term continental breakfast refers to “a breakfast that consists of a hot roll or croissant

with some sort of spread or filling, served with coffee … used on the wider European continent, and in most tourist hotels throughout the world” (Trinh, 2001, p 68) Its

word-for-word Vietnamese translation bư ̃a sáng lục đi ̣a, however, does not really

make sense Conversely, Vietnamese also has culture specific collocations that do not

exist in English The term Ông Xanh, according to Trinh, refers to God, Heaven, or Creator, and thus a word-for-word English translation such as Mr Blue is not an

accurate one These collocations are also a great challenge for translators as they require not only collocational but also cultural knowledge

In sum, it is clear that linguistic and cultural gaps between the two languages may cause great difficulties for translators These differences also give rise to the concepts

of congruent and incongruent collocations, the factors which possibly affect learners’

acquisition and use of collocations, and thus are discussed in detail in the next section

2.2.3.2 Congruent and incongruent collocations

Simply speaking, congruent collocation (Kurosaki, 2012) refers to equivalent

combinations, of which the components are also equivalents of each other, for

example high fever and sốt cao In contrast, incongruent collocation (ibid.) refers to

equivalent combinations having inequivalent components, that is to say “collocations that do not have [direct] translation equivalents1 in L1” (Nakata, 2007) For instance,

the correct equivalent of the Vietnamese combination giá rẻ is low price rather than its translation equivalent cheap price

The fact that these two types of collocations could confuse learners as they may find

it hard to tell them apart has attracted much attention Maurer-Stroh (2005), for instance, distinguished four types of collocations based on two criteria:

“predictability” and “lexical congruence” The former means that two collocations are

semantically predictable, as are high fever and sốt cao The latter refers to the

similarity in structure which hardly exists between English adjective-noun collocations and their Vietnamese equivalents Among the four types of collocations proposed by Maurer-Stroh, the fourth type, namely “unpredictable and lexically non-congruent”2, according to him, is “the one that needs special attention in the contrastive light” (2005, p 61) These concepts of congruent and incongruent collocations were also addressed by Nakata (2007), who suggested that “collocations, especially non-congruent [incongruent] items, cannot be acquired easily through mere exposure and are amenable to form-focused, intentional learning” (p 154)

In general, most researchers, regarding the issue, have agreed that incongruent collocations tend to cause more difficulties for learners and thus need more attention

in teaching and learning However, that does not mean congruent collocations should

be neglected Since learners find it hard to distinguish between these two types of collocations, it is possible to argue that they may not know when they can resort to translation equivalents and when they should not Congruent collocations are, therefore, not necessarily easy for them More importantly, this type of collocations may lead learners who lack collocational knowledge to a false assumption that collocation equivalence and direct translation equivalence are identical

1 Direct translation equivalent refers to the kind of equivalent attained by translating separately the

components of a combination, or in other words through literal word-for-word translation

2 The term unpredictable used by Maurer-Stroh is similar in meaning to the term incongruent in the present study, while lexically non-congruent can be understood as a kind of structural dissimilarity Therefore, this kind

of collocations proposed by Maurer-Stroh (2005) is, in fact, referring to the kind of incongruent collocations

being mentioned in the present study

2.2.4 Strategies in translating collocations

During the process of translation, translators have to choose from many translation methods the appropriate one to deal with certain text types and purposes Among them, the literal word-for-word translation is one commonly used by translators due

to its simplicity and effectiveness According to Newmark (1981), “in communicative

as in semantic translation, provided that equivalent effect is secured, the literal for-word translation is not only the best, it is the only valid method of translation” (cited in Munday, 2001, p 44) Toury (1995), sharing the same view with Newmark, added that “the translator has to maximize the efficiency of the cognitive processes by concentrating energy on especially difficult problems, devoting less effort to those parts of the text which produce a reasonable translation by the ‘literal’ procedure” (cited in Munday, 2001, p 45)

word-The problem with this translation method is that it is only viable when “equivalent effect is secured” (Newmark, ibid.) However, for idiomatic expressions and particularly collocations, such an effect is not always guaranteed If the combination being considered is a congruent collocation, the use of this translation method is acceptable However, when it comes to incongruent ones, whose collocation equivalence and translation equivalence are not identical, the literal translation of such

a combination cannot produce the desired effect To put it differently, although for-word literal translation is a popular and effective method, inappropriate use of it

word-in translatword-ing collocations only leads to errors

In addition to the aforementioned method, certain translation strategies also have the same problem Dweik & Shakra (2010), for example, found five common strategies adopted by students in translating collocations in religious texts from Arabic to English: (1) synonymy, (2) generalization, (3) paraphrasing, (4) deletion, and (5) literal translation Similarly, Hussein (2011), studying advanced EFL learners’ translations, pointed out several strategies used by the students, including (1) L1 transfer/literal translation, (2) substitution/paraphrase, (3) assumed synonymy, (4) analogy and overgeneralization, (5) formal/semantic association, (6) idiomaticalness, (7) quasi-morphological similarity, and (8) avoidance of the task The problem is that while strategies are usually considered as a means for translators to deal with

difficulties in translation, the use of these strategies in translating collocations, on the contrary, may lead to faulty translations or errors Sughair (2011) commented that

“one of the big mistakes translators tend to make is adopting several strategies while translating collocations such as using simplification, reduction, synonymy, and paraphrasing … The higher the rate of these strategies is, the less effective the translation is” (p 10) Considering culture gaps in translation, Newmark (1988) suggested that the use of these strategies, though effective, may lead to serious problems in case of cultural disparity These ideas are in accordance with the findings

of Dweik & Shakra (2010) and Hussein (2011) The former pointed out that the five strategies above usually led students to faulty translations, while the latter considered

the strategies as “hypothetical causes of errors” (p 216) Among them, synonymy,

paraphrase and literal word-for-word translation were said to be most frequently used and also the major causes of errors

To sum up, wrong choice of translation methods and strategies may be a cause of errors in translating collocations This issue will be taken into account again in the later section which discusses about the hypothetical causes of collocational errors

2.3 Collocation and error analysis

So far, the researcher has presented and discussed basic concepts about collocation This part will be devoted to presenting the theoretical background of error analysis which is a major focus of the present study

2.3.1 Theory of error analysis

When it comes to error analysis, the first issue to be taken into account is the

distinction between error and mistake Corder (1967) distinguished two types of

errors: “errors of performance” and “errors of competence” The former, which he

addressed as mistakes, are unsystematic “slips of the tongue (or pen)” which happen

even with native speakers due to memory lapses, physical states The latter, which

were addressed by the term error, refer to the systematic errors of the learner from

which his knowledge of the language to date can be reconstructed (p 166 – 167) Ellis (2003) maintained that errors “reflect gaps in a learner’s knowledge” and occur due

to the learner’s lack of knowledge, while mistakes refer to “occasional lapses in

performance”, happen when learners are unable to perform what they have known (p

17) Regarding mistake and error, most authors have agreed that the latter plays a

significant role in language teaching and learning According to Corder (1967), errors are important because they show learners’ progress in learning, indicate the process

of language learning, and serve as a learning device for learners themselves Furthermore, “errors cannot be self-corrected until further relevant input has been provided and converted into intake by the learner” (James 1998, p 83)

Because of their significance, errors have received much attention from researchers,

especially those who have interest in error analysis Brown (1980) defined error

analysis as the process to observe, analyze, and classify the deviations of the rules of

the second language and then to reveal the system operated by learner (p 166) Richards & Schmidt (2002) viewed error analysis as “the study and analysis of errors made by second language learners” (p 184) Error analyses are carried out in order to (1) find out strategies which learners use in learning a language, (2) identify the causes

of learner errors and (3) obtain information on common difficulties in language learning, as an aid in teaching or in the preparation of teaching materials It is believed that, by analyzing learners’ errors and identifying sources of errors, one may see the gaps in the learners’ knowledge and find appropriate methods to effectively improve their competence

The process of error analysis involves different procedures suggested by different authors Corder (1974), for instance, proposed a five-step procedure: (1) collection of learner language, (2) identification of errors, (3) classification of errors, (4) explanation of errors, and (5) evaluation of errors seriousness Gass & Selinker (2008) introduced another procedure with six steps: (1) collecting data, (2) identifying errors, (3) classifying errors, (4) quantifying errors, (5) analyzing sources, (6) remediation The two procedures, in fact, share many similarities Even the final steps, despite being addressed by different terms, are similar in nature, as they both focus on the remediation of errors However, the fourth step (quantification of errors) in Gass & Selinker’s procedure is what Corder’s lacks This step, according to Dang (2014) is

“of great importance because it yields more insights into the learning process and also specifies what kind of errors need more pedagogical intervention” (p 37) As a result,

the six-step procedure developed by Gass & Selinker (2008) will be adopted as the framework for conducting the error analysis in the present study

2.3.2 Types of errors related to adjective-noun collocations

With respect to collocational errors, different authors have different classification criteria based on their perspectives and the types of collocation being considered Among them, there was one commonly known classification proposed by Nesselhauf

(2003), including nine types of collocational errors presented in Table 2.3 below This

classification was, later, adapted by Hong et al (2011) and Nguyen (2014), who

omitted several categories (i.e preposition (noun), structure and preposition (verb))

as they refer to grammatical collocations, which were not the focus of their studies

Table 2.3: Types of collocational errors (Nesselhauf, 2003, p 232)

1 Verb: Wrong choice of verb (or non-existent verb) *carry out races (hold races)

2 Noun: Wrong choice of noun (or non-existent noun) *close lacks (close gaps)

3 Usage 1: Combination exists but is not used correctly take notice (to notice)

4 Usage 2: Combination does not exist and cannot be

corrected by exchanging single elements

*hold children within bounds (show children where the boundaries lie)

5 Preposition (verb): Preposition of a prepositional verb

missing, present though unacceptable, or wrong

*fail in one's exams (fail one's exams)

6 Preposition (noun): Preposition of a noun missing,

present though unacceptable, or wrong

*raise the question about (raise the question of)

7 Determiner: Article or pronoun missing, present

though unacceptable, or wrong

*get the permission (get permission)

8 Number: Noun used in singular instead of plural or

vice versa

*pass one's judgments (pass judgment)

9 Structure: Syntactic structure wrong *make sb friends

(make friends with sb)

Although this classification was developed by Nesselhauf for his study on verb-noun collocation, it can be applied to other types Kurosaki (2012) conducted a study on several types of collocation, including adjective-noun, in which he adapted Nesselhauf’s classification for all of the collocation categories The following are the types of adjective-noun collocational errors in Kurosaki (2012)

1 Adjective: The adjective in a collocation is wrong

2 Noun: The noun in a collocation is wrong

3 Determiners: The article or possessive pronoun is missing or added

4 Structure: Syntactic structure is wrong

5 Preposition: Preposition is added through unnecessary or wrong choice

6 Different expression: Translation does not include a collocation and/or

consists of a circumlocution

7 Number: Noun is used in singular instead of plural or vice versa

Since the present study focuses on adjective-noun collocations, this way of classification is really relevant to and appropriate However, it cannot be applied to the present study without some modifications Firstly, for the study focuses on adjective-noun collocations, errors related to determiners, preposition, number and structure may not occur frequently In fact, Kurosaki himself found that learners made

no errors in these categories Moreover, as grammatical ones, they are not really relevant to the aims of the study, which only focus on lexical collocational errors

Therefore, the four categories: determiners, preposition, number and structure should

be omitted Secondly, although Kurosaki’s classification of collocational errors is very comprehensive, the names given to the categories seem not clear enough and thus need clarification The types of adjective-noun collocational errors proposed by Kurosaki (2012), as a result, are revised as follow:

1 Wrong choice of adjective: the adjective in a collocation is incorrectly chosen

2 Wrong choice of noun: the adjective in a collocation is incorrectly chosen

3 Wrong combination: the entire combination is incorrect or circumlocutory.

(Adapted from Kurosaki, 2012)

It is necessary to note that wrong combination, the new name for different expression, includes the two categories usage 1 and usage 2 proposed by Nesselhaulf (2003)

Since these categories refer to erroneous combinations of which both components are incorrectly chosen, it is unnecessarily complicated to distinguish between them in the present study Hence, they are put under the same name as mentioned above The three

aforementioned categories of adjective-noun collocational errors will be used to categorize the collected errors, which is an important step in data analysis

2.3.3 Causes of collocational errors

One of the most important purposes of error analysis is to find out the remedy for learners’ errors; in order to do so, identifying causes of errors is inevitably essential

In this section, the researcher will review the relevant literature so as to identify the hypothetical sources of errors applicable to the present study

The very first reason for learners’ making of collocational errors, according to Howarth (1998) and Darvishi (2011), is their unawareness of the concept This may lead learners to the faulty assumption that words can co-occur without any restrictions, although they obviously have come across the phenomenon of restricted combinability

in their mother tongue This assumption, as a result, makes students unconsciously produce combinations violating collocational rules This issue may be the result of a teaching – learning process in which collocations are not considered as an important factor and thus receive little attention from teachers and students Particularly, in teaching translation, teachers usually focus more on translation skills and strategies, while collocations like other aspects such as culture, idioms, etc are only integrated

in texts for practicing, and sometimes not clearly explained by teachers The teaching – learning process, therefore, may be a cause of errors Hence, the research methods

will also include, besides the tests as the primary tools, an interview (with the teachers)

and a questionnaire (to the students) for deeper insight into the actual teaching situation, so that the research can yield more accurate implication

The lack of collocational concepts also leads to learners’ lack of knowledge, which hinders their performance, especially in translation In order to compensate for the deficiency in knowledge, learners usually resort to certain strategies As previously discussed above, among translation methods and strategies that may lead to

collocational errors, literal translation, paraphrase and synonymy are common ones

However, they are not the only causes of collocational errors Many authors have discussed other noticeable causes of errors

Several studies, including: Farghal & Obiedat (1995), Yamashita & Jaing (2010), and Kurosaki (2012) have concluded that interlingual transfer, which often leads to negative transfer, is known as one major cause of errors It is said that learners tend to

be linguistically and culturally influenced by their mother tongue due to overusing word-for-word translation from L1 to L2, which is what most learners do when they face a difficult expression in the foreign language In addition to interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer is also a factor that should not be overlooked, especially when L2

is much different from L1 and thus would possess many features unfamiliar to learners

Hong et al (2011), adapted from Richards (1974) and Tarone (1981), presented a comprehensive classification of causes of collocational errors that took into account both interlingual and intralingual transfer as follow:

(1) L1 transliteration/L1 literal translation is included in the concept of “negative

transfer” mentioned in Li (2005) which is usually caused by the negative effect of

literal word-for-word translations from L1

(2) Language switch is the use of L1 in the places where L2 should be used

(3) False concepts hypothesized errors are those “derived from faulty comprehension

of distinctions in the target language” (cited in Dang, 2014, p 35)

(4) Overgeneralization refers to the creation of an incorrect structure based on two

structures learners have acquired in L2

(5) Ignorance of rules restrictions “is failure to observe the restrictions of existing structures, that is, the application of rules to contexts where they do not apply” (ibid.)

(6) Approximation happens when learners use an incorrect lexical item or structure sharing semantic features similar to those of the desired item

More recently, Dang (2014) adapted from Li (2005) the classification of causes of collocational errors The list included some elements similar to the ones proposed by

Hong et al (2011) above However, the two causes overgeneralization and ignorance

of rules restrictions were excluded as they accounted for grammatical errors The list

thus consisted of the following elements: (1) false concepts hypothesized, (2) the use

of synonyms, (3) negative transfer, (4) word coinage and (5) approximation The

second cause of errors, namely the use of synonyms, refers to the use of synonymous

words/expressions to replace a desired item The fourth one refers to the act of making new words to express a desired idea

Another comprehensive list of hypothetical causes of collocational errors is the one proposed by Hussein (2011), consisting of eight categories as follow:

(1) L1 transfer/literal translation refers to students’ tendency to manipulate their L1 in their L2 translation when they felt defective in authentic linguistic resources (2) Substitution/paraphrase is used as a compensatory strategy motivated by a substitute option based on some sense relationship, or certain semantic properties

(e.g education job instead of teaching profession)

(3) Assumed synonymity refers to the use a synonym or a near synonym in place of the appropriate word

(4) Analogy and overgeneralization is a psychological tendency of students to extend the meaning of a certain word to other semantic situations where that word does

not reasonably appeal (e.g Students know the collocation thick soup and thus produce a combination like thick tea instead of strong tea)

(5) Formal/semantic association happens when students conceive some sort of formal

or semantic link or affinity between the constituents to be collocated (e.g He

remembered (reminded) them of that)

(6) Idiomaticalness refers to students’ tendency to contrive idiomatic forms in English parallel to those in their L1

(7) Quasi-morphological similarity occurs due to defective learning, students may feel that some linguistic forms resound or echo other words and use those forms instead

of the correct ones (e.g a violation (violent) attack)

(8) Avoidance/abandonment of the task means that students left out the expressions, which may be the result of ignorance, carelessness, failure to recollect/recall from memory, and limited time constraints

Although these classifications are different from each other in components and names,

they in fact share many similarities First of all, literal translation, the translation

method mentioned by several authors including Hong et al (2011) as a major cause of collocational errors, is actually one of the factors accounting for negative interlingual

transfer, and thus can be included in the bigger category of L1 Transfer Assumed

synonymity and use of synonyms are only different names of the same strategy, with

which learners use a lexical item to replace its synonymous word/expression In

addition, false concepts hypothesized, which refers learners’ inability to make

distinction between similar words in the target language, may also account for

learners’ use of synonyms Similarly, approximation, word coinage, formal/semantic

association and quasi-morphological similarity, according to Hong et al (2011) and

Dang (2014), are different forms of paraphrase However, as they involve errors with

different characteristics, it is difficult to put them in one category Among them,

formal/semantic association and quasi-morphological similarity reflect some sorts of

confusions over forms of words and thus will be grouped into one category, namely

formal confusion, the term which was used by Johansson (2008) to address this type

of error In her research, Dang (2014) found several errors resulted from the

misplacement of parts of speech and grouped them in the category of approximation

However, as these errors are also related to form, they will be considered as a type of

formal confusion in the present study Although errors caused by word coinage are

also related to form, this cause of errors is considered as a separate category due to its

nature, which is different from that of formal confusion

To sum up, based on the aforementioned classifications, a list of hypothetical causes

of collocational errors is formulated for the present study, which includes: (1)

approximation, (2) use of synonyms, (3) L1 transfer, (4) word coinage, (5) formal confusion and (6) abandonment of tasks These hypothetical causes of errors are of

great importance in data collection and analysis as they guide the researcher in designing the research tools and identifying the causes of the collected errors

2.4 Collocation and language teaching

The primary purpose of error analysis is to find the remedy for learners’ errors Through the analysis of error, researchers can figure out the appropriate methods for teaching collocations This objective can hardly be achieved without basic knowledge about the teaching of collocations in EFL/ESL This part, therefore, will be dedicated

to reviewing some relevant literature in the field

The very first questions to be asked when it comes to teaching collocations is “should collocations be taught implicitly or explicitly?” What makes the issue controversial is the assumption that learners can figure out the concept of collocation and acquire knowledge by themselves through implicit teaching However, empirical studies have yielded a contradictory result Nakata (2007), for example, found that collocation can hardly be acquired through exposure and thus suggested intentional teaching/learning

of collocations Dang (2014) also proposed similar ideas Arguing that collocation is

a universal phenomenon existing in every language, yet learners usually come across the concept unconsciously without recognizing it, the author suggested that “the concept of collocation should be introduced and explained to learners” (p 25) She

gave the erroneous combination expensive price as an example and explained that to

avoid causing confusion for learner, teachers should draw their awareness to the notion of collocation rather than giving an arbitrary explanation such as “we just do

not usually say so” (ibid.)

If collocations should be taught explicitly, the next question should be “what kinds of collocations should be chosen to teach?” It is commonly seen that some teachers tend

to focus more on grammatical collocations by correcting learners’ grammatical errors such as verb-preposition or preposition-noun compositions, etc while lexical collocations and related errors are usually neglected The issue leads to the suggestion that more attention should be directed to the latter kind of collocations In consideration of lexical collocations, Bahns & Eldaw (1993) have suggested that

“EFL teaching should concentrate on those collocations which cannot readily be paraphrased” (p 101) More recently, Nakata (2007) and Kurosaki (2012) have remarked that it is incongruent collocations that need special attention Hodne (2009), holding a similar point of view, maintained that lexical collocations selected for teaching should be challenging to but at the same time practical and useful for learners

to acquire On this basis, she also suggested a comprehensive list of useful collocations to introduce to students, which is shown in Table 2.4 below The list can indeed be used as a guideline for teachers on choosing appropriate collocations to introduce to students and designing more effective teaching activities