Effects of Combining Bilingual and Collocational Information on
Verb + noun collocational competence of multilingual ...
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VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONAL COMPETENCE OF
MULTILINGUAL PROGRAM STUDENTS AT
PRASATWITTAYAKARN SCHOOL, SURIN
BY
MISS PITCHAYANIN THANIMKARN
AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING ENGLISH
AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
LANGUAGE INSTITUTE, THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
ACADEMIC YEAR 2017
COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
Ref. code: 25605621032241QLP
VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONAL COMPETENCE OF
MULTILINGUAL PROGRAM STUDENTS AT
PRASATWITTAYAKARN SCHOOL, SURIN
BY
MISS PITCHAYANIN THANIMKARN
AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING ENGLISH
AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
LANGUAGE INSTITUTE, THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
ACADEMIC YEAR 2017
COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
Ref. code: 25605621032241QLP
1
Independent Study Paper Title VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONAL
COMPETENCE OF MULTILINGUAL
PROGRAM STUDENTS AT
PRASATWITTAYAKRN SCHOOL, SURIN
Author Miss Pitchayanin Thanimkarn
Degree Master of Arts
Major Field/Faculty/University Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Language Institute, Thammasat University
Independent Study Paper Advisor Dr. Rangsiya Chaengchenkit, Ph.D.
Academic Year 2017
ABSTRACT
This study aimed to investigate the use of English verb + noun collocations
by multilingual program students at Prasatwittayakarn School, Surin Province. The
participants were 18 students from a multilingual program where mathematics and
science classes are conducted in English. The instrument employed in this study was a
20-item translation test of ‘make’ and ‘take’ collocations which are the most common
among language learners. The findings showed that the students’ ability to use English
verb + noun collocations was fairly good, with 60.55% correct responses. Language
transfer and lack of collocational knowledge were major contributors to unnatural
collocations.
Keywords: collocation, language transfer, multilingual program, collocational
competence, verb + noun collocations
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr.
Rangsiya Chaengchenkit, for her patient guidance during the development of this study
and most importantly, for pushing me through the hardest times in my student life. I
also would like to thank Dr. Pimsiri Taylor, the chairman, and all the instructors at
Language Institute, Thammasat University for useful suggestions.
This study would not have been completed without the help from the director,
the manager, and the cooperation from students from a multilingual program at
Prasatwittayakarn School, where I work as a teacher.
I also owe a sincere gratitude to Miss Jiraporn Petchthong who has done a
perfect job in keeping my study on schedule, my TEFL friends who encouraged me to
achieve my academic goals, and my Silpakorn friends who always believe in me.
Without these people, I would not come this far.
Finally, I would like to thank my lovely family for supporting me throughout
this academic journey, both mentally and financially.
Miss Pitchayanin Thanimkarn
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT (1)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (2)
LIST OF TABLES (6)
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Background of the study 6
1.2 Objective of the study 7
1.3 Research question 7
1.4 Significances of the study 8
1.5 Scope of the study 8
1.6 Definition of terms 8
1.7 Organization of the study 9
CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 10
2.1 Theories of collocation 10
2.1.1 Definitions of collocation 10
2.1.2 Classifications of collocation 11
2.1.2.1 Grammatical collocation 11
2.1.2.2 Lexical collocation 12
2.2 Delexical verbs 12
2.3 Importance of collocation 13
2.4 Strategies in producing collocations 16
2.3.1 Language transfer 16
2.3.2 Synonymy 17
2.3.3 Repetition 18
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2.3.4 Overgeneralization 19
2.3.5 Other strategies 20
2.5 Error analysis 20
2.6 Previous studies related to collocation 21
CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 25
3.1 Participants 25
3.2 Data collection instrument 25
3.3 Administrative procedure 26
3.4 Data analysis 26
CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 27
4.1 Overall test results 27
4.2 Students’ collocational violations and plausible explanations 29
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 35
5.1 Conclusion of the study 35
5.2 Pedagogical implications 35
5.3 Limitations of the study 36
5.4 Recommendations for further study 36
REFERENCES 37
APPENDIX
APPENDIX A 39
BIOGRAPHY 42
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LIST OF TABLES
Tables Page
4.1 The mean, percentage and standard deviation of the test scores 27
4.2 A summary of the results of the ‘translation test of English 28
verb + noun collocations’
4.3 Examples of verb + noun collocational violations 29
4.4 A summary of collocational violations reflected in percentages 30
4.5 A summary of the verbs the students used instead of ‘take’ in 33
the translation test
4.6 A summary of the verbs the students used instead of ‘make’ in 34
the translation test
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Technological advancements, adoption of the internet and cooperation in
ASEAN countries has contributed to a major transition in terms of business, education,
science and technology, all of which demand a high proficiency of English
(Wiriyachitra, 2002). Therefore, most countries around the world are working actively
to equip their people to use English effectively.
In Thailand, where English is not an official language, there have been
considerable challenges to overcome in order to improve the ability to communicate in
English among the general populace. Even though there have been attempts to make
English an official language along with Thai, it has never succeeded probably due to
national stability and an anti-colonialism feeling that has thrived among Thais for
generations (Punthumasen, 2007). Thus, English has remained a foreign language and
relatively attention is paid to it. What probably impedes higher proficiency levels of
English in Thailand is its education system which does not appear to enable students to
deal with the world that is changing every day. Consequently, English proficiency level
of Thais is rather low, compared with other countries in Southeast Asia (e.g. Malaysia,
Philippines and Singapore). A survey in 2000 revealed that the average TOEFL scores
among Thais, Japanese and Mongolians were about the same.
By realizing the country’s education lagged far behind other countries in the
same region, the National Education Act was implemented in 1 9 9 7 to reform the
educational system in Thailand. One of the most important aspects mentioned in the
reform was a higher demand for English programs that enable students to keep pace
with the globalized world. OBEC (the Office of the Basic Education Commission)
implemented its flagship multilingual program as a result of these educational reforms.
OBEC’s multilingual program requires that most classes, except Thai, are conducted in
English. Multilingual program students are also encouraged to learn the languages of
neighboring countries which will be advantageous for them if they wish to enter the
labor market or do business in any of the other ASEAN countries in future.
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Therefore, this study aims to investigate students’ knowledge of English in
terms of collocational competence as it is a crucial part of competence in English
(Fontenelle, 1994; Herbst, 1996; Lennon, 1996; Moon, 1992). This idea was proposed
by Sadeghi (2009) who stated “without knowledge of proper collocation in context, a
learner is not considered to have mastery of words even though the learner knows how
to use words.” The collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’ are the main focus in this study
as they are two of the four most frequently used verbs (all of which are ‘take’, ‘make’,
‘give’ and ‘have’) suggested by Sinclair (1 9 9 0) . In addition, these verbs are also
considered ‘delexical verbs’, common verbs that have little meaning of their own unless
combined with specific nouns. A recent study by Kittigosin (2015) revealed that Thai
EFL learners struggled to produce acceptable collocations with delexical verbs as they
are not common in Thai.
This study has adopted from Benson, Benson and Ilson’s (1997) classification
of collocations’ framework, which includes grammatical collocations and lexical
collocations.
1.2 Objective of the study
The objective of the study is:
- To investigate how multilingual program students at Prasatwittayakarn
School use English verb + noun collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’.
1.3 Research question
This study attempts to answer the following question:
- How do multilingual program students at Prasatwittayakarn School use
English verb + noun collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’?
1.4 Significances of this study
1.4.1 While a number of studies have been conducted on English program
students and non-English program students, this research provides a new perspective
towards a multilingual program.
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1.4.2 The results from this study can be used to determine the way of teaching
vocabulary in classrooms and how to minimize collocational errors.
1.5 Scope of the study
1.5.1 The study is limited to multilingual program students at Prasatwittayakarn
School, Surin, Thailand.
1.5.2 Only English verb + noun collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’ will be
focused upon in this study.
1.5.3 Violations on spellings will not be counted in the present study.
1.6 Definition of terms
1.6.1 Collocation is “the way in which words co-occur in a natural text in
statistically significant ways” (Lewis, 2000). The co-occurrence of words and phrases
are highly frequent and they sound very neutral for native speakers. for example, submit
a report.
1.6.2 Collocate is a word or words that often occurs with a particular word. For
example, commit a crime, ‘commit’ collocates with ‘crime’.
1.6.3 L2 leaner refers to those who are learning a second language.
1.6.4 EFL learner refers to those who are studying English as a foreign
language.
1.6.5 Language transfer refers to speakers or writers who are influenced by
their native language when speaking or writing in a second language. Such knowledge
tends to ‘transfer’ or influence language production, often in a way that resembles the
native language.
1.6.6 Synonymy refers to the strategy speakers or writers use to substitute
synonym for a word in L2.
1.6.7 Overgeneralization is a strategy used when speakers or writers’
knowledge is limited and they tend to overgeneralize their knowledge of their native
language to the second language. Overgeneralization strategy frequently used among
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learners whose L2 knowledge is very limited and may manifest in terms of a repeated
number of collocations.
1.6.8 Error analysis is the study of types or causes of language errors.
1.7 Organization of this study
This study is arranged into five chapters. Chapter 1 is an introductory part which
consists of the background and rationale of the study, research question, objective of
this study, definition of terms, significance of the study, scope of the study, and
organization of the study.
Chapter 2 provides a more detailed overview of the relevant theory and studies
that are central to the present study. This chapter contains section on theories of
collocations, the importance of collocations, strategies in producing collocations, error
analysis, and previous research studies.
Chapter 3 describes the methodology. This includes background information on
the participants, the data collection instrument, administrative procedures, and data
analysis.
Chapter 4 discusses about the findings of the study and provides some
explanations regarding the collocational errors made by the participants in the study.
Finally, Chapter 5 provides a summary of the results, a discussion of the results,
the pedagogical implications, limitations of the study, and suggestions for further
studies.
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CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
This chapter attempts to trace collocation by reviewing the literature associated
with five areas: (1) theories of collocation, (2) delexical verbs, (3) importance of
collocation, (4) strategies used in producing collocations, (5) error analysis and (6)
previous studies related to collocation.
2.1 Theories of collocation
2.1.1 Definitions of collocation
The word ‘collocation’ has been discussed over decades (Bahns &
Eldaw, 1993; Benson, Benson, & Ilson, 1997; Lewis, 2000; McCarthy & O'Dell, 2005;
Nation, 1990; Sinclair, Jones, & Daley, 2004). John Firth was the first scholar to
introduce the term ‘collocation’ to his prosodic and meaning analysis (Firth, 1957). He
defined the word ‘collocation’ as ‘the meaning of a word is as much a matter of how it
combines with other words in actual use as it is of the meaning it possesses in itself’.
In general, collocation is a combination of words that collocate with each other.
Regarding Firth’s perspective, the aspects of collocation are not
deterministic but probabilistic. For example, we prefer using bitterly disappointed than
sourly disappointed (the latter collocation having been invented by a poet in literature;
a technique called ‘poetic license’).
The concept of collocation proposed by Firth has drawn attention from
many scholars. Benson, Benson and Ilson (1986a) defined the term ‘collocation’ and
categorized it into fixed, identifiable and non-idiomatic collocation.
Further studies of collocations were also conducted by Halliday (1966)
and Sinclair (1991). They summarized the term ‘collocation’ as items that co-occur or
tend to be together in discourse.
According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), characteristics of collocations
have also been studied as an aspect of cohesive lexis, which exhibits a strong
relationship between lexical items that regularly co-occur. Lewis (2000) also defined
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collocations as the observable phenomenon of certain words that co-occur in text with
greater than random frequency.
After discussing the definitions provided by the scholars above, it can
be concluded that there is a fair bit of overlap with the term ‘collocation’. It seems it
shares quite the same concept, which is a word or words that occur together.
2.1.2 Classifications of collocation
Even though the basic notion of collocation is quite similar among
linguists and researchers, there are the differences to how collocations are viewed.
These differences are noticed in the variety of classifications that have been made thus
far. Some scholars prefer using ‘free combinations’, ‘poly-words’, ‘fixed phrases’,
‘phrasal constraints’, ‘sentence builders’, ‘prefabricated routines’, ‘clichés’, ‘idioms’,
‘lexical phrases’, and ‘multi-word units’.
The first classification was proposed by Benson, Benson, and Illson
(1997). This classification includes two types of collocations, based on their syntactic
features: grammatical collocations and lexical collocations. Grammatical collocations
are defined as a combination of a lexical word and a grammatical word such as
preposition or grammatical structure, while lexical collocations are a combination of
content words (e.g., noun, verb, adverb, and adjective).
2.1.2.1 Grammatical collocation
Grammatical collocations consist of a dominant word, such as a noun,
a verb, or an adjective, and a preposition. The grammatical structures are as illustrated
below:
e.g. noun + preposition an increase in
verb + preposition elaborate on
adjective + preposition familiar with
preposition + noun on probation
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2.1.2.2 Lexical collocation
There are two types of lexical collocations which are content words or
open class words. These include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Lewis has
classified lexical collocations into six types, as illustrated below:
e.g. adjective + noun a big difference
verb + noun make a mistake
noun + verb dust accumulates
noun + noun radio station
verb + adverb or examine thoroughly
adverb + verb proudly present
2.2 Delexical verbs
Since verb + noun collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’ are the main
focus here, it is necessary to give details about ‘delexical verbs’ because ‘make’ and
‘take’ are included in the list of it. The term ‘delexical verb’ was introduced by Sinclair
(1990) and delexical verbs are also known as ‘light verbs’. Delexical verbs refer to
common verbs that are semantically empty, which means that the meaning is carried by
the deverbal nouns — nouns that play a major role in determining the meaning of verb
+ noun collocation, and usually come after these verbs. Based on a corpus of academic
writing, the verbs have, take, make, and give are the most common and common
productive in the corpus (Alan, 1994). The examples are as below:
e.g. make a mistake make a decision
have breakfast have a look
take a trip take a shower
give a speech give advice
Besides the verbs mentioned above, other delexicalized verbs also
found in the writing corpus are do, keep, go, cast, pay, get set, cast, put, and bear .
These verbs are similar in that they adopt the same structure as the four verbs
mentioned above.
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2.3 Importance of collocation
It can be said that there is no language free from collocation. Since the
middle of the 20th century, the power of syntactic rules has been widely recognized by
many scholars, especially those following the Chomskyan approach. It has been argued
that one of the most important tasks for the the language learner is the acquisition of
structures that form a set of sentences in the language, in addition to being able to see
the differences between those sentences and ungrammatical structures (Pawley &
Syder, 1983).
Recently, a number of scholars have agreed that teaching vocabulary is
as important as teaching grammatical structures (Hill, 2000; Lewis, 1993, 1997; Pawley
& Syder, 1983). Many scholars have pointed out that some traditional ways of teaching
vocabulary, such as teaching single words and memorizing bilingual vocabulary lists is
not as effective as teaching words in phrases and chunks (Nation, 2001; Woolard, 2000;
Howarth, 1998; Lewis, 1993, 1997, 2000; Conzett, 2000; Hill, 2000).
The importance of learning by chunks in language to-be-learned has
attracted considerable attention from teachers and those engaged in the language
learning sphere. As a result, their priority in teaching grammatical structures has shifted
somewhat to collocations. The necessity of studying English collocations as an integral
part of language learning has been proposed by scholars in the field of second language
acquisition, lexicographers, material and curriculum designers, and pedagogists (Bahns
& Eldaw, 1993; Howarth, 1998; McCarthy, 1990); Coady&Huckin, 1997; Richards &
Rogers, 2001; Ellis, 2001; Nation, 2001; Benson, Benson & Ilson,1997).
More prominently, this has raised awareness among teaching material
developers to take this phenomenon into consideration when designing language
teaching/learning materials. Howarth (1998) has suggested that modern EFL course
books illustrate that content writers are aware that collocational knowledge is important
to language learners (e.g. Teaching collocations by Lewis (Ed.), 2000 and English
Collocations in Use by McCarthy & O’Dell, 2005).
A number of researchers have claimed that prefabricated units or
chunks, including collocations, play an important part in language learning and
language fluency (Nation, 2001; Nattinger & De Carrico, 1992; Wray, 1999; as cited
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in Nesselhauf, 2004). Brown (1974), for example, suggested that we should incorporate
the teaching of collocations into EFL/ESL classrooms. She viewed collocations as a
tool to enhance EFL/ESL learners’ collocational competence and help them speak
fluently. Furthermore, in knowing collocations learners should also improve their
listening comprehension and reading speed. It has also been suggested that one of the
basic reasons that EFL learners often find difficulties in listening and reading is because
of the density of collocations in the material (Hill, 2000).
According to Pawley and Syder (1983), one of the reasons why native
speakers are fluent is the ready-made prefabricated units in their minds. Lewis (1997)
also supported this idea by stating that “fluency is based on the acquisition of a large
store of fixed or semi-fixed prefabricated items”. Moreover, “fixed or semi-fixed
prefabricated items” which include collocation, are the basis for the foundation of any
linguistic novelty and creativity. In other words, collocations are essential for fluency
in both oral and written competency.
Kjellmer (1990) also pointed out the difference between native speakers
and language learners in terms of automatic retrieval of collocations. According to
Kjellmer, native speakers are readily equipped with collocations that they have
accumulated across their lifetime exposure to the language. When they produce
utterances, native speakers make use of those ready-made prefabricated units rather
effortlessly and easily. Language learners, on the other hand, possess little knowledge
of collocations in their mental lexicon. As a result, language learners tend to use
unnecessarily long sentences or inappropriate phrases to express their ideas and thus
sound much less fluent and natural.
Carter and McCarthy (1988) also stressed the importance of
collocations. They stated that by knowing collocations, students do not necessarily have
to reconstruct the language every time they want to express something. They can
employ these collocations as “pre-packaged building blocks”. Many learners who lack
sufficient collocational knowledge are likely to stop in the middle of conversation
because they cannot find phrases which are suitable for conveying their messages. This
Such a point is also supported by Hill (2000), who claimed that collocations allow the
learner to think easier, because they help us “identify and produce complex ideas
without using all our brain space to focus on the form of the words”.
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Moreover, Hill (1999) advocated the idea that second language learners
who are not familiarized with the four or five most important collocations, even when
their ideas are otherwise good, do not often get good grades in writing and speaking
because they cannot find suitable phrases to convey their ideas. To sum up, collocations
are useful learning tools that can be used as ready-made phrases for expressing various
ideas.
The knowledge of collocations and the capacity to use them are
important for language learners and for natural-sounding language production.
However, there are considerable challenges in using collocations properly even for
advanced learners, who are otherwise at a high level of language proficiency and usage.
Smadja (1989) pointed out that one of the difficulties that language learners encounter
is that they “often stumble acroshes co-occurrence relations”. This phenomenon is also
advocated by Hill’s work (2000). He conducted research by collecting students’ speech
and writing and the results revealed that students lack collocational competence. The
problem is also highlighted in a study by Wray (1999). He stated that non-native
learners, even the most proficient ones, also face challenges in using ‘grammatically
possible utterances’ which are commonly used by native speakers.
Learners who lack the knowledge of collocation or do not have ready-
made chunks in their mental lexicon, which allow them to express their ideas precisely,
tend to produce utterances on the basis of grammatical rules which often that leads to
numerous collocational errors.
From the problems stated above, collocations are obviously needed for
language teaching (Nation, 2001; McCarthy, 1990; Hill, 2000). We can clearly see their
necessity by examining error types that EFL/ESL students make, since many of the
errors occur with collocations (Meara, 1984). Yet, many types of prefabricated units or
chunks, including collocations are still not considered adequately in English language
teaching curriculum today (Nesselhauf, 2004). Many teachers and researchers (e.g.
Boonyasaquan, 2006; Lewis, 2000; Conzett, 2000) suggested that collocations should
be taught in every single stage of a learner’s academic path, and should be highlighted
in any English language classes, such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and
translating because “one of the most essential phenomena to improve students’ fluency
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and accuracy is to enhance their mental lexicon by providing quality collocational
input.”
2.4 Strategies in producing collocations
2.4.1 Language transfer
‘Language transfer’ was termed by Selinker (1972) and proposed for use
instead of ‘interference’. The notion of language transfer is widely recognized by
theoreticians and language teachers. Development of lexical skills and grammar
competence in second language are linked with the first language. When attempting to
communicate in a second language, because of insufficient knowledge of collocations,
learners may ‘adopt’ or ‘transfer’ some elements of their native language onto the target
language and thus create certain errors when using utterances. Brown (1984)
emphasized that the interference of the first language with the second language is the
biggest threat for second language teachers and for second language learning – It is a
burden for the learner to acquire second language. However, Brown also revealed the
difficulty in learning a second language is the differences between two linguistic
systems. The complication in second language learning are caused by these differences.
In an EFL context, the acquisition of lexis is a fundamental aspect of second
language acquisition (Lewis, 1993). Mastery of vocabulary is thought to be a robust
indicator of a learner’s language proficiency.
However, many scholars have agreed that the congruence of a learner’s first
and second language contribute to the acquisition of collocations (Bahns & Eldaw,
1993; Granger, 1998; Murao, 2004; Nesselhauf, 2003, 2005; Pooncharoensil, 2011). It
was found that learners have difficulties in producing acceptable collocations because
lexical structures in their first language are not equivalent to the target language.
Therefore, they tend to resort to their first language and thus produce unnatural
collocations (Phoocharoensil, 2011).
The idea of language transfer in the acquisition of collocation is also
supported by Nakata’s work (2007) on Japanese EFL learners. The study examined the
acquisition of English collocations among Japanese learners. The findings indicated
that incongruence of L1 and L2 (Japanese and English) results in collocational errors.
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Mongkolchai’s study (2008) also showed that language transfer was a major factor
determining collocational errors made by Thai EFL university students.
2.4.2 Synonymy
There have been discussions among scholars that learning synonyms of
known words may be easier than learning non-synonymous words (Nation, 2001). This
may be a possible reason why many L2 learners prefer using synonymy strategies when
learning vocabulary because they would be able to transfer their syntactic and
collocational knowledge from known synonyms to less frequent synonyms (Webb,
2007). In addition, with limited knowledge regarding the second language, language
learners sometimes rely heavily on a strategy referred to as a synonymy strategy
(Phoocharoensil, 2011). In other words, L2 learners are likely to substitute a synonym
for a word in L2, not knowing that they are violating the rules of collocations. In fact,
a very limited number of synonyms in English can be found in the same grammatical
pattern (Nation, 2001). To put it simply, words that are very close in meaning do not
always share the same grammatical collocation. Take the study of Phoocharoensil
(2010) as an example: even though the verbs ask and plead are semantically similar,
the grammatical patterns which co-occur with these two verbs are different. That is the
verb ask is frequently used in the pattern ask someone + infinitive with to, while plead
collocates with the preposition with, as in plead with someone + infinitive with to. If
plead is substituted for ask in the grammatical pattern of the latter verb, i.e. without
with, causes grammatical errors in English.
According to a number of studies on the acquisition of English collocation
by L2 learners, a strategy of synonymy has been commonly used. A study of Farghal
and Obiedat (1995) reported how Arabic EFL learners selected words to make
collocations. The findings revealed that the participants relied heavily on the principle
of replacing a word with its synonym. As a result, ungrammaticality occurred. This use
of strategy was also supported by Howarth (1996, 1998). His study showed that, when
producing collocations, L2 learners seemed to use words that have similar meaning, to
produce collocations. This frequently causes errors in the target language. For
instance, the participants thought that ‘way’ and ‘approach’ are similar in meaning.
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Therefore, they adopted a synonymy strategy by replacing ‘approaches’ with ‘ways’ in
adopt approaches, which was a deviant (Howarth, 1998).
Zughol and Abdul-Fattah (2001) researched assumed synonymy in the use
of English collocations by Arabic speakers. The results showed that the learners’ relied
on a synonymy strategy to produce collocation. An evidence of synonymy strategy was
the use of the verb ‘failed’ in the sentence ‘The enemy was failed in the battle’ which
should be replaced with the verb‘defeated’ (Zughol & Abdul-Fattah, 2001).
Synonyms are often used by learners when it comes to paraphrasing.
Learners may choose a synonym to express the target collocations they are not familiar
with. For example, Biskup (1992) examined the use of synonyms by German and Polish
learners. The findings revealed that German learners adopted more creative strategies
than Polish learners. For example, instead of using crack a nut open, they used *break
a nut open which was considered a deviant in English. This means German learners
preferred using the words they are familiar with rather than words they are not exposed
to.
2.4.3 Repetition
Repetition is another strategy EFL learners employ to deal with language
difficulties. With limited knowledge of collocations, learners resort to use words they
are familiar with repeatedly. Recent studies suggest that a repetition also results from
learners’ lack of collocational knowledge in creating L2 collocations (Howarth, 1998).
Put it simply, learners prefer using collocations they already know and do not want to
risk using collocations unfamiliar to them. There have been a number of studies on the
acquisition of second language about problems stem from the use of repetition
strategies.
Granger (1998) investigated the use of English adverb + adjective among
French learners and found that they tended to use the intensifier ‘very’ repeatedly.
Moreover, the results also revealed that EFL learners seemed to overuse a limited group
of collocations because they do not want to risk making errors.
A corpus-study by Shih (2000) on overused collocations in a Taiwanese
EFL learners. This study focused upon a set of synonyms: big, large and great. The
results from the comparative study of the Taiwanese Learner Corpus of English and the
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British National Corpus (NBC) showed that Taiwanese learners tended to overuse the
collocations with big. To be precise, they used big to describe abstract ideas more than
native speakers normally do, while the native speakers use the word ‘big’ to describe
concrete objects. It is clearly seen that Taiwanese learners apply the strategy of
repetition when faced with collocational problems.
2.4.4 Overgeneralization
Linguistically, overgeneralization refers to the process of extending the
application of a morphological rule from one particular language and applying it to
another. The obvious example lies in the use of -ed ending in the past form verbs by a
child learner who has observed that every past form verb ends with -ed. Consequently,
he or she ends up adding -ed to every verb when she wants to report actions in the past,
for instance; ‘I goed* to the zoo yesterday’ instead of ‘I went to the zoo yesterday.’
In the acquisition of collocations, overgeneralization is used to tackle with
unknown words. Zughol and Abdul-Fattah’s (2001) study indicated that
overgeneralization was found as a major source of incorrect collocations and this
strategy is perceived as a characteristic of learner language. In the study of factors
influencing English collocational performance of Taiwanese university students by
Chen (2011), the results revealed that, apart from language transfer, overgeneralization
was the second strategy students used to deal with unknown collocations. A study of
English collocation usage in essay writing by Shitu (2015) also revealed the use of
overgeneralization in compound words, e.g. every- day*, Head-student*, resulting in
erroneous collocation combination.
2.4.5 Other strategies
Besides the strategies mentioned above, there are other strategies L2
learners use to overcome language learning difficulties. For example, learners may form
a new collocation that they think can be replaced with the target one (Bahns & Eldaw,
1993; Granger, 1998). In the study of Granger (1998), he observed the use of
collocations by looking into a corpus of French essays. The results showed that learners
produced collocations they considered to be acceptable such as ferociously menacing
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and shamelessly exploited, which are incorrect. It appears that learners' creative
invention often results in unnatural word combinations.
Limited knowledge also greatly contributed to incorrect combinations of
collocations (Howarth, 1998; Nation, 1992). Many studies revealed that L2 learners fail
to produce acceptable collocations not only because of the factors mentioned above,
but because of their limited knowledge of collocations. In the study by Mongkolchai
(2008), she investigated the use of English collocations among 23 Thai EFL university
students. A sentence completion test and a multiple choice test were administered to
students. These tests consisted of seven patterns of collocations as categorized by Lewis
(2000). The results showed that students’ ability to produce acceptable collocations was
fair (52.32%) and a lack of collocational knowledge was a major contribution to errors
made by students.
2.5 Error analysis
Error Analysis (EA) is an alternative to contrastive analysis. It was
established in 1960s by Stephen Pit Corder and colleagues. It was developed to deal
with some of the weaknesses of Contrastive Analysis when it came to predicting the
majority of errors. Error Analysis showed that “many learner errors are produced by
learners making faulty inferences about the rules of the new language.” Differentiation
between errors and mistakes is the main focus of Error Analysis. Basically, errors can
be classified as omissive, additive, substitutive or related to word order. Errors can be
classified as overt and covert as well, based on how apparent they are. Overt errors are
errors that are obviously seen. For example, I happy. On the other hand, covert errors
are seen only in the context such as the word domain and extent. Errors may be
classified by the level of language such as phonological errors, vocabulary or lexical
errors and syntactic errors.
However, Error Analysis still has some weaknesses as it fails to determine
what kind of errors learners are making. Moreover, error analysis can be effective only
with learner production (speaking and writing) and not with learner reception (listening
and reading). Furthermore, there is no concrete explanation for communication
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strategies learners resort to such as avoidance. For these reasons, Corder and others
tried to form the new method which is widely known as Inter-language.
2.6 Previous studies related to collocations
There are numerous studies on L2 acquisition which aim to investigate
collocational ability of students at different levels of proficiency and the plausible
explanations to major sources of errors produced by language learners.
One piece of pioneering research conducted on collocation was by Bahns
and Eldaw (1993). In their study, German learners’ use of English collocations was
observed with the purpose to find out how German EFL learners produced English
collocations. A translation test and a 15-item cloze test were implemented in the study,
with concentration in verb + noun collocations. The German collocations were also
included in the translation test equivalents to the English collocations. In the cloze test,
there were sentences containing verb + noun collocations – the students were required
to fill in the missing verbs. The results indicated that the German students produced
errors twice in their translations of the verb + noun collocations compared to their
translation of general lexical words. For the cloze test, nearly 52% of the responses
were not natural to a native speaker of English. The results also suggest that for
advanced ESL students, a problem in the production of correct English stems from a
lack of collocational knowledge. Although the learners could use general lexical items,
their collocational knowledge did not expand much with their knowledge of general
vocabulary. In addition, the fact that the students failed to produce acceptable
collocational phrases has emphasized the essential element of communicative mastery
of English. The authors were also concerned over the fact that collocations are not
taught explicitly in the classroom and therefore learners do not pay any special attention
to learning them.
Fayez-Hussein (1990) conducted research on 200 Jordanian undergraduates
who were majoring in English. The aim of this research was to test the students' ability
to produce acceptable collocations in English. The 40-item multiple choice test was
administered to the students and they were required to complete collocations such as
idioms, fixed expressions, and restricted collocations. The collocations tested were
mainly noun + noun, adjective + noun, and verb + noun phrases. It was found that these
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students did poorly in a multiple choice test, with only 48.4% of the collocations
answered correctly. Negative language transfer was the main cause of incorrect
responses.
Zhang (1993) observed the use of collocations in the writings of native and
non-native college freshmen. Written essays and a gap-filling test consisting of 50 items
were used to elicit collocational answers from the students. The findings indicated that,
interestingly, collocational knowledge was the indicator of the students’ actual
collocational competency in writing.
In Huang’s study (2001), Taiwanese EFL students’ knowledge of English
collocations and the collocational errors committed by them were investigated. The
participants were 60 college students in Taiwan. A Simple Completion Test designed
to test the students’ knowledge of lexical collocations was the main instrument in this
study. The collocations were divided into four parts, which were free combinations,
restricted collocations, figurative idioms, and pure idioms. The results illustrated that
the students were able to produce free combination collocations at ease, while
difficulties lay in using pure idioms. For restricted collocations and figurative idioms,
it was shown that they did equally well. The researcher reached the conclusion that
errors submitted by the students resulted from native language transfer and insufficient
knowledge of collocations.
Granger (2001) also published a corpus-based study on the use of the high
frequency verb ‘make’ by native and non-native learners (Swedish and French
learners). The results showed that native speakers, even when their language
proficiency was at an advanced level, had difficulties in producing collocations with
‘make’, while the non-natives’ errors were explained as a result of native language
transfer. His study also suggested that learners of English language should practice
collocations by using concordance-based exercises to raise awareness of high frequency
verbs.
Mahmoud (2005) examined lexical errors produced by Arab students
majoring in English. The students’ essays were used to as a tool to investigate the
students’ knowledge of collocations. He found that 420 collocational patterns were used
in 42 essays and two thirds of them were incorrect. The results also revealed that,
surprisingly, intermediate and advanced students, who presumably had more
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knowledge of collocations, were likely to rely on native language transfer as it was the
convenient strategy to use when dealing with collocational problem. This study
suggested that English language teaching should put emphasize bilingual glossaries in
EFL textbooks, and bilingual collocation dictionaries should also be designed to
improve learners’ knowledge of collocations.
In a more local context, Pongpairoj and Mallikamas (2005) examined Thai
learners’ use of English collocations, both receptively and productively. They
investigated learners’ problems by observing three types of collocations, which are
lexical, grammatical and bound collocations. A multiple choice test, error recognition
test and gap-fill test were employed as the instruments in this study. To identify whether
the learners had difficulties in specific collocations over others, a quantitative analysis
was also conducted in this study. The results indicate wide-ranging problems in Thai
learners’ collocational knowledge. Difficulties were observed in both reception and
production of all three types of collocations. The findings showed that Thai learners
showed different orders of difficulty in the multiple choice and gap-fill tasks. While
grammatical collocations posed a problem for learners in both tasks, lexical and bound
collocations caused more problems in reception than in production. In the error
recognition task, a further interesting finding was the difference in correlation between
students’ ability to recognize and correct a collocational error. While the learners were
more likely to be able to identify and correct false lexical and bound collocations, they
were less able to correct a false grammatical collocation even if they could actually
recognize them.
The study of collocation use of Thai EFL learners by Boonyasaquan (2006)
also provides support that Thai EFL learners struggle with collocations. In her effort to
identify the collocation knowledge of Thai EFL learners, she analyzed collocational
violations in translation among Thai university students at Srinakharinwirot University
in Bangkok. The data were drawn from the final translation examination on the
Business Translation course. In the exam, the students were asked to translate a business
news article into English. The data, the Thai into English translated text, was parsed
into 30 parts based on the Thai version. Each Thai parsed part was meaningful in itself.
The researched showed that, by looking at the analysis of collocational violations, the
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adjective + noun pattern of collocational violations were found at the highest level by
21.31%, followed by the patterns of verb + noun (18.03%) and noun + verb (14.75%).
Phoocharoensil (2011) examined the errors in the collocation acquisition
made by Thai EFL learners. The participants were Thai EFL learners and they were
divided into two groups which differed in their English proficiency levels. Essays were
the tool for eliciting the data. The study revealed that Thai students violated some
collocation restrictions because they usually relied on first language transfer strategy
(or L1 transfer). The second source which was frequently used was synonymy and
generalization. Phoocharoensil also added that the verb + noun pattern was seen to be
the most problematic issue for Thai EFL learners.
Meechai (2015) explored the collocational competence of Thai EFL
Learners at Saint John’s University in Thailand to see if there was any difference
between third-year students in an English program and third-year students in a regular
program. A collocation test, a translation test and an in-depth interview were employed
in this study. Both tests focused on two verbs: make and take. The results revealed that
students in the English program did better than those in the regular program.
Another study on the use of delexical verbs of Thai EFL learners was
conducted by Kittigosin (2015). In his study, learners were divided into two groups:
low and high proficiency. Each group was asked to complete a 20-item translation test.
Moreover, an interview was also used as a tool to investigate problems regarding
delexical verbs. After analyzing the data, it was found that native language transfer,
synonymy, and overgeneralization were the three important factors causing the learners
to produce incorrect collocations.
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CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Participants
Participants were 18 Thai students studying in a multilingual program during
the academic year 2017, at Prasatwittayakarn School in Prasat District, Surin Province,
Thailand. The program currently offers students two subjects in English (mathematics
and science) as well as an English language course. The age of students was around 16-
17 years old and they have been exposed to English since they were in primary school.
Sixteen students have been studying in this program since they were in grade 7 and 2
of them decided to join the multilingual program two years ago.
3.2 Data collection instrument
A translation test adopted from Meechai (2015) was assigned to students to
examine their productive knowledge of English verb + noun collocations. The test
consisted of 20 items. Each collocation was selected from the highest frequency rate
wordlist of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) with the focus on
the verbs ‘make’ and ‘take’ as these are the most common verbs found in the corpus
(Sinclair, 1990). Each item provides a sample sentence and a gap for students to fill in
the most appropriate verb that collocate with the noun (see Appendix A).
Examples: จอห์นถ่ายภาพ (picture) กบัครอบครัวในวนัเกิดของเขา
ถ่ายภาพ = __________________ a picture
ชาวโซมาลีจะเดือดร้อนแน่นอนถา้เรามีความคืบหน้า (progress) ในงานน้ี
มีความคืบหนา้ = __________________ progress
From the first example, students are required to fill in the verb ‘take’ which
collocates with the noun ‘picture’ while ‘make’ is the appropriate verb for progress in
the second example.
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To prove validity and reliability of the test, 10 students were asked to take the
test and give comments if the test was too easy or difficult.
Finally, an interview was also conducted to find the causes of collocational
violations in the students’ test. After finishing the scoring, the researcher asked two
students whose scores were lowest to explain why they chose the verb that they did to
make that particular collocation. Student answers are reported in Chapter 4.
3.3 Administrative procedure
First, the researcher contacted the Director of Prasatwittayakarn School and was
given permission to conduct this study. The researcher then visited a class on another
occasion for approximately 15 minutes, and explained to the students the purpose of
the study. After explaining to the students the task they would be asked to perform, the
researcher asked for volunteers to participate in the study, assuring them that if they did
any personal information collected would be kept in the strictest confidence. Each
student was given a translation test of English verb + noun collocations, administered
by the researcher herself. The students were given 30 minutes to finish the test.
3.4 Data analysis
Descriptive analysis was used in the study. The researcher marked the test and
calculated the total scores in a form of percentage using this formula:
S x 100
N
S = Score of the correct answer
N = Total number of test items
Finally, the processed data was presented in the form of tables and figures.
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CHAPTER 4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter is divided into two parts: students’ ability to use English verb +
noun collocations and students’ collocational violations and plausible explanations.
To answer the question ‘How do multilingual students perform in an English
verb + noun collocation test?’ a translation test was assigned to 18 students of the
program. They were asked to translate the bold phrases which are considered
‘collocations’ in English. Misspelling was not counted as ‘deviance’ when scoring.
After scoring was complete, percentages were computed for each item.
4.1 Overall test results
As mentioned earlier, the aim of the translation test was to examine students’
knowledge of English verb + noun collocations. The analysis was based on judging
whether the respondents provided acceptable collocations or not. In addition to the
Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the researcher also consulted
dictionaries such as Oxford Collocation Dictionary of English and Macmillan
Collocations Dictionary to double check if students’ responses were correct.
When the researcher marked the ‘translation test of verb + noun collocation’,
the names of participants and other biodata were omitted to maintain anonymity. Their
answers were counted as correct if they provided a verb that matched a noun mentioned
in one of the references. Spelling mistakes were not counted as incorrect answers.
Basic descriptive statistics (i.e., means and standard deviations) were computed
to summarize the findings on students’ collocational ability. These are presented in
Table 4.1 below.
Table 4.1: The mean, percentage and standard deviation of the test scores
Total number
of students
Total score Mean Percentage Standard
deviation
18 20 12.05 60.25 1.73
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Table 4.1 shows that the students’ ability to use English verb + noun
collocations was fairly good with a mean of 12.05 while the total score was 20. The
standard deviation, however, was at 1.73 indicating that the whole group’s collocation
ability was close to each other. It was possible that the test was quite difficult for the
students.
Table 4.2: A summary of the results of the ‘translation test of English verb + noun
collocations’
Item no. Acceptable collocation Unacceptable collocation
1 16/18 88% 2/18 12%
2 17/18 95% 1/18 5%
3 13/18 72% 5/18 28%
4 12/18 66% 6/18 34%
5 9/18 50% 9/18 50%
6 17/18 95% 1/18 5%
7 14/18 77% 4/18 23%
8 10/18 55% 8/18 45%
9 6/18 33% 12/18 67%
10 4/18 23% 14/18 77%
11 13/18 72% 5/18 28%
12 11/18 61% 7/18 39%
13 6/18 33% 12/18 67%
14 8/18 45% 10/18 55%
15 10/18 55% 8/18 45%
16 14/18 77% 4/18 23%
17 10/18 55% 8/18 45%
18 13/18 72% 5/18 28%
19 6/18 33% 12/18 67%
20 9/18 50% 9/18 50%
Total 218/360 60.55% 142/360 39.45%
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The results in Table 4.2 showed how the students performed in the translation
test of English verb + noun collocations. Overall, 60.55% of participants’ responses
were correct while 39.45% of their responses were incorrect.
Investigating the data in Table 4.2 more closely reveals that more than 88% of
the students did well on item 1 (take a picture), 2 (make friend) and 6 (make fun) which
are ‘take a picture’, ‘make friend’ and ‘make fun’, while most of them failed to form
acceptable collocation on item number 9 (take charge), 10 (take measures), 13 (make
judgement), and 14 (make a lot of noise) with correct percentages of 23%, 33%, 45%
and 33% respectively.
4.2 Students’ collocational violations and plausible explanations
The results shown above indicated that the students’ knowledge of English verb
+ noun collocations was fairly good. However, we cannot overlook the errors made by
the students and plausible explanations are sought to answer why such errors existed.
Table 4.3: Examples of verb + noun collocational violations
Item no. The expected answer The students’ answers
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
take a picture
make friend
take a walk
take an important role
make contact
make fun
make progress
make an official contribution
take a test
take charge
take measures
make peace
take effect
make/have* a picture
have* friend
have/get/make* a walk
get/have/play* an important role
get/do/find/have/take* contact
do* fun
have/do/get/increase* progress
take/have/give* an official
contribution
do/make/have/get/start* a test
make/do/work* charge
use/make/order* measures
stop/do/have/talk* peace
make/have/get /force* effect
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14
15
16
17
18
19
20
make judgment
make a lot of noise
make a profit
take turns
make a very good argument
take credit
take note
take/do/decide* judgment
take/have/send/shout* a lot of
noise
have/get/create/do* a profit
make/have/switch* turns
do/find/discuss/have* a very good
argument
receive/get/have/praise/make*
credit
make/get/receive/know/have* note
In Table 4.3, the variety of collocational violations committed by the students
are displayed. Only one deviation committed on item 2 (make friend) and 6 (make fun).
Interestingly, when observing items 5 (make contact), 9 (take a test), 19 (take credit),
and 20 (take note), the students came up with more than 4 answers for the nouns given.
It can be assumed that the students could produce verb + noun collocations in item 2
and 6 at ease, while coming up with the correct answers for item 5, 9, 19, and 20 was a
more difficult task for them.
From the examples above, it can be assumed that the students used the following
strategies in dealing with collocations they were not familiar with:
(1) Language transfer
Language transfer was seen here as the strategy the students mostly relied on
when dealing with the translation test, as shown on item 9 (take a test), 10 (take charge),
11 (take measures), 13 (take effect) and 17 (take turns). It seems that the students did
not know how to form a correct collocation and simply used a verb that was equivalent
to the Thai meaning, as illustrated in the examples below.
*do a test tham-kho-sob
*do charge tham-na-tee
*have effect mii-phon-bang-khab
*use measures chai-mad-tra-garn
*switch turns sa-lab-gan
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Therefore, errors probably occurred because the students experienced native
language interference. These findings are consistent with the results of Phoocharoensilp
(2011) and Meechai (2015), which indicated that language transfer was the major factor
contributing to collocational errors. Language transfer strategies were also found in the
work of Kittigosin (2015), who reported that many Thai EFL learners facing challenges
in producing the correct collocations.
(2) Other strategies
Besides language transfer, it was also found that the students employed other
strategies they thought suitable for some of the words. After investigating the errors,
students appeared to use a creative use of language when dealing with collocations that
they did not know. As result, they produced some unnatural collocations as shown in
the examples below:
*talk peace yud-ti-song-kram
*discuss a very good argument ha-khor-toh-yang
From the examples above, the students invented their own collocations based
on their understanding and their limited exposure to English collocations. Therefore,
students used ‘talk peace’ instead of ‘make peace’ which is actually the correct
collocation. The results of the current study are supported by the work of Granger
(1998) in that the findings illustrated deviations from creating collocations that French
learners think acceptable.
From the interview, the students gave reasons such as ‘peace’ could be related
to negotiation to end war with another party. As a consequence, the verb ‘talk’ was
invented in order to serve the understanding of the student. Same in ‘discuss a very
good argument’, where ‘discuss’ is a deviation, the interviewed student explained that
‘argument’ could be related to discussion or debate to reach the conclusion. However,
with limited knowledge of some collocations, she failed to make the acceptable
collocation of ‘make a very good argument’. This student wrote ‘discuss’ instead to
convey her understanding of the meaning of argument.
When interviewing two of the students about the collocations ‘take a picture’,
‘make friend’ and ‘make fun’, they said these collocations are frequently used in social
networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. However, item number 4
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(take measures), 8 (make an official contribution), 10 (take charge), 13 (take effect), 14
(make judgement), 16 (make a profit), 18 (make a very good argument), 19 (take credit)
and 20 (take note) are taken from newspaper or academic journals that they do not read
in daily lives.
Table 4.4: A summary of collocational violations reflected in percentages
Item no. Percentage of errors
1 make (50%), have (50%)
2 have (100%)
3 have (60%), get (20%), make (20%)
4 get (50%), have (33%), play (27%)
5 get (22%), do (33%), find (11.5%), have (22%), take (11.5)
6 do fun (100%)
7 have (25%), do (25%), get (25%), increase (25%)
8 take (25%), have (25%), give (50%)
9 do (50%), make (17%), have (17%), get (8%), start (8%)
10 make (72%), do (72%), work (14%)
11 use (60%), make (20%), order (20%)
12 stop (14%), do (14%), have (58%), talk (14%)
13 make (33%), have (42%), get (17%), force (8%)
14 take (50%), do (20%), decide (30%)
15 take (13%), have (37%), send (25%), shout (25%)
16 have (25%), get (25%), create (25%), do(25%)
18 do (13%), find (61%), discuss (13%), have (13%)
19 receive (17%), get (42%), have (25%), praise (8%), make (8%)
20 make (45%), get (11%), receive (11%), know (11%), have (11%),
accept (11%)
Table 4.4 illustrates the variety of verbs used by the students. The results
showed that ‘have’ was frequently chosen by the students at 75%. The verbs ‘get’ and
‘do’ were ranked the second by 45%. Other verbs were counted by 1% in the translation
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test by the students. As seen in the Table 4.5 below, it is obvious that the first four verbs
used by the students are common verbs.
Table 4.5: A summary of the verbs the students used instead of ‘take’ in the translation
test
Verbs Frequency of use Percentage
have 8 40%
make 7 35%
get 6 30%
do 2 10%
play 1 5%
start 1 5%
work 1 5%
use 1 5%
order 1 5%
force 1 5%
switch 1 5%
receive 1 5%
know 1 5%
From Table 4.5, it was seen that the students used ‘have’ to substitute the verb
‘take’ the most, with a 40% frequency. There was a slight difference between the use
of ‘make’ and ‘get’ by 35% and 30%, respectively. The verb ‘do’ was used as a
substitute by 10% of the sample. The rest were the verbs that had been used in the test
with frequencies of just 10% each.
Table 4.6: A summary of the verbs the students used instead of ‘make’ in the translation
test
Verbs Frequency of use Percentage
have 8 40%
do 6 30%
take 4 20%
get 3 15%
find 2 10%
increase 1 5%
give 1 5%
stop 1 5%
talk 1 5%
decide 1 5%
send 1 5%
shout 1 5%
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create 1 5%
discuss 1 5%
As seen in Table 4.6, the students used ‘have’ to substitute the verb ‘take’ the
most frequently (40%). There was a slight difference between the use of ‘make’ and
‘get’ by 35% and 30%, respectively. The verb ‘do’ was used just by 10% of the sample,
while the remaining verbs used in the test were substituted at just 5%.
By looking at Table 4.5 and Table 4.6 above, we see that the first four verbs the
students used in the translation test are the most common words claimed by Sinclair
(1990). It was found that the percentage of use of these verbs were not significantly
different from each other. Based on the study of Chi, Wong and Wong (1994) which
showed that students had difficulty in producing acceptable collocations because of
confusions between delexical verbs, the students were confused to use delexical verbs
to form collocations.
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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter will present three parts: conclusion of the study, limitations and
suggestions for further study.
5.1 Conclusion
The aim of this study was to investigate how multilingual program students at
Prasatwittayakarn School perform in a verb + noun collocation test.
In this study, the researcher adopted Benson, Benson and Ilson’s classification
of collocations which are grammatical collocations and lexical collocations. The
students’ answers were calculated into percentages, accumulated and categorized. The
students’ violations on English collocations were explained as the effects of language
transfer, creative invention and lack of collocational knowledge (Farghal & Obiedat,
1995; Huang, 2001; James, 1998).
A 20-item verb + noun collocational test administered to a group of 18 students
in multilingual program revealed that their collocational performance was fairly good
with the percentage of 60.25% and the mean of 12.05%. The findings also revealed that
the students’ limited knowledge of collocations and their native language transfer
played an important role in producing acceptable collocations.
5.2 Pedagogical implications
This study revealed that the major sources of errors came from language
transfer, creative invention and lack of collocational knowledge. Therefore, the
pedagogical implications arises as follows:
5.2.1 Language transfer is still one of the most important factors underlying
unacceptable production of collocations in language learners. It is recommended that
bilingual dictionaries should be used in English language classes in order that learners
can compare between their native language and English collocations.
5.2.2 The students’ creative invention of collocations, especially in writing,
suggest that feedback in writing will be important for learners to improve their
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collocational knowledge. Feedback about incorrect collocations help learners become
aware of future collocational use, so they do not rely solely on their creativity.
5.2.3 For the lack of collocational knowledge, exercise drills are required to
improve learners’ collocation usage. Exercises should be created from authentic
sources such as news, magazines or articles.
5.3 Limitations of the study
5.2.1 The data from this study were from only 18 multilingual program students.
The results might be different if the test was conducted with a larger group or different
group of students such as regular program students.
5.2.2 The study focused only on Benson, Benson and Ilson’s classification of
collocations. Others approaches to testing collocations might be used in future studies
such as Lewis’s classification of collocation.
5.2.3 The study only focused on verb + noun collocations. Testing other types
of collocations, e.g. adjective + noun, adverb + verb, noun + noun, might yield different
and equally interesting results.
5.4 Suggestions for further study
5.4.1 A study of collocational knowledge of students can be conducted at other
levels such as at the undergraduate or graduate level.
5.4.2 A comparative study could be conducted in order to see the differences
between particular groups of students such as English program and regular program
students.
5.4.3 Since this deals with L2 acquisition, it is worthwhile to conduct a study of
collocational violations in writing or speaking which result from many factors, e.g.,
language transfer, overgeneralization, repetition, synonymy and so on.
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APPENDIX
A TRANSLATION TEST
Instruction: Translate the Thai expressions in bold into English by putting the best verbs in the blanks to make correct verb + noun collocations.
1. จอห์นถ่ายภาพ (picture) กับครอบครัวในวันเกิดของเขา
ถ่ายภาพ = __________________ a picture
2. คุณต้องพยายามผูกมิตร (friend) ให้มากหากต้องการชนะการโหวตคร้ังน้ี
ผูกมิตร = __________________ friend
3. ฉันอาจจะไปเดินเล่น (walk) รอบ ๆ เมือง
เดินเล่น = __________________ walk
4. เจนสนับสนุนให้ลินดาได้รับบทบาท (role) ส าคัญในละครเร่ืองน้ี
ได้รับบทบาท = __________________ role
5. พวกเรายังคงติดต่อ (contact) กัน แม้จะเรียนจบกันไปแล้ว
ติดต่อ = __________________ contact
6. ถ้าคุณหัวเราะเยาะ (fun) ฉัน ฉันจะไม่บอกอะไรคุณเลย
หัวเราะเยาะ = __________________ fun
7. ชาวโซมาลีจะเดือดร้อนแน่นอนถ้าเรามีความคืบหน้า (progress) ในงานน้ี
มีความคืบหน้า = __________________ progress
8. เขาสนับสนุน (contribution) งานวิจัยเร่ืองโรคมะเร็งอย่างเป็นทางการ
สนับสนุน = __________________ contribution
9. ฉันควรจะไปถึงที่น่ันในตอนบ่ายหลังจากท าข้อสอบ (test) เสร็จแล้ว
ข้อสอบ = __________________ test
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10. ฉันเฝ้ารอบางคนที่จะเข้ามาท าหน้าท่ี (charge) และสร้างความเปลี่ยนแปลง
ท าหน้าที่ = __________________ charge
11. คุณจะใช้มาตรการ (measures) ขั้นเด็ดขาดเลยหรือเปล่า
ใช้มาตรการ = __________________ measures
12. รัฐบาลซีเรียไม่เข้มแข็งพอที่จะยุติสงคราม (peace) กับอิสราเอล
ยุติสงคราม = __________________ peace
13. กฎหมายฉบับน้ีมีผลบังคับ (effect) ใช้ในเดือนมิถุนายน
มีผลบังคับ = __________________ effect
14. ทั้งคนขาวและคนผิวสีในอเมริกาตัดสินใจ (judgment) เร่ืองชาวแอฟริกัน-อเมริกัน
ตัดสินใจ = __________________ judgment
15. พวกเขาส่งเสียงดัง (noise) ตอนที่เราเล่นได้ดี
ส่งเสียงดัง = __________________ noise
16. วัตถุประสงค์หลักของการท าธุรกิจคือการสร้างผลก าไร (profit)
สร้างผลก าไร = __________________ profit
17. ตอนที่มีผู้โดยสารหนาแน่น พวกเขาสลับกัน (turns) ลุกและน่ัง เพื่อให้ต่างฝ่ายได้สบายกันบ้าง
สลับกัน = __________________ turns
18. ฉันคิดว่าคุณสามารถหาข้อโต้แย้ง (argument) ที่ดีต่อรูสเวลได้
หาข้อโต้แย้ง = __________________ argument
19. ฉันไม่แน่ใจว่าเธอสมควรได้รับการยกย่อง (credit) ในเร่ืองน้ีหรือไม่
ได้รับการยกย่อง = __________________ credit
20. เราหวังว่าผู้มีอ านาจในสถาบันน้ีจะรับทราบ (note) และจัดเตรียมการสอนที่เหมาะสมต่อไป
รับทราบ = __________________ note
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BIOGRAPHY
Name Miss Pitchayanin Thanimkarn
Date of Birth October 5, 1990
Educational Attainment 2013: Bachelor of Arts in English
Work Position English and mathematics teacher
Prasatwittayakarn School, Prasat District,
Surin Province
Scholarship 2015: Teacher Assistant (TA), Thammasat
University
Work Experiences 22017 - Present: English and Mathematics teacher,
Prasatwittayakarn School.
2015 - 2017: Academic officer of English, Aksorn
Charoen Tat ACT, Co., Ltd.
2013 - 2014: Product development officer,
WisdomWide Company.
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