L2 Learners’ Knowledge of Verb-Noun Collocations: Congruency, L2 Proficiency and Learning Strategies

Abstract

Realizing that learning of single words is the norm in vocabulary learning among Korean EFL high school learners, the purpose of the study was to examine the learners’ collocational proficiency with reference to the relative transparency of collocations (i.e., congruent vs. incongruent). To develop a receptive collocation test, 36 items were counterbalanced for incongruent and congruent collocations by matching normalized frequencies of the collocation items from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The test was conducted on 149 high school learners, and we examined the relationships between collocational proficiency and the learners’ second language proficiency, experience abroad, and learning strategies. Recalling incongruent collocations was seen to be more difficult than the congruent collocations at a significant level. However, our data revealed that the task of finding the appropriate collocate for the congruent collocations was not necessarily simple either. Also our analysis showed that higher second language proficiency was more critical for the recall of incongruent collocations. Also, experience abroad of more than 2 years, and daily study time of 2-3 hours for English were the prerequisite thresholds for improved collocational proficiency. Our findings are provided in the light of improving learning of collocations.