Education English | Collocation | Collocation is "the readily observable phenomenon whereby certain words co-occur in natural text with greater than random frequency"Lewis, M (1997:8). Furthermore, collocation is not determined by logic or frequency, but is arbitrary, decided only by linguistic convention. Some collocations are fully fixed, such as "to catch a cold," "rancid butter," and "drug addict," while others are more or less fixed and can be completed in a relatively small number of ways, as in the following
examples: blood / close / distant / near(est) relative, learn by doing / by heart / by observation / by rote / from experience, badly / bitterly / deeply / seriously / severely hurt.
Collocation is word partnership that occurs next to each others, Thornburry, S (2002) defines collocation as words that couple up to form compounds or shape multiword units. Warring, R (2001) explains words are almost never found isolation; they nearly always have partners that together form meanings in certain ways. It means that, collocation is word which has any relates to others to form multiword units which have meanings.
Yarowsky, D (1994) defines collocation is the co-occurrence of the words in some defined relationship, we look at several such relationship, including direct adjective and first word to the left or right having a certain part of speech. Furthermore, Costas (1994) opinions collocation is a relation of probable co-occurrence of items and sets are open-ended.
Collocation is a recurrent combination of words that co-occurs more than expected by chance and corresponds to arbitrary word usages (smith,R:1994).Most of the researchers who define collocation agree that it is a lexical unit consisting of a cluster of two or three words from different parts of speech, (Baker: 1992. Benson, Benson and Elson: 1997, Williams: 2002).
According to Paraphrases of Firth's (1957:183) definition that collocations are "words in habitual company". we define collocations as
two words belonging to different grammatical categories to exclude binomials where the two words are from the same category and are connected implicitly or explicitly by a conjunction (e.g. and, or) or a preposition such as "in" or "by" (e.g. push and shove, sick and tired, here and there, in and out, life and death, hand in hand, dead or alive).
An understanding of collocation is vital for all learners, and for those on advanced level courses, it is essential that they are not only aware of the variety and sheer density of this feature of the language but that they actively acquire more and more collocations both within and outside the formal teaching situation. It is only by doing this through increased exposure that they can be assured of leaving the intermediate plateau behind (Moon, R;1997: 42).
The importance of learning collocations for EFL learners is apart from increasing the mental lexicon, leads to an increase in written and spoken fluency (the brain has more time to focus on its message if many of the nuts and bolts are already in place in the form of collocations of varying length). Moreover, stress and intonation also improve if language is met, learnt and acquired in chunks.
Koosha, M and Jafarpour,A (2005) have determined the collocation knowledge of Iranian EFL adult learners as the participants in their study to present through data-driven learning (DDL), the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP) was given to the participants to determine their levels of proficiency a completion test on collocations of
prepositions was given to the students as the pre-test. This test comprised 60 items, and its reliability was estimated to be 0.86 using Kr-21 formula. This test was given to 200 participants who had been selected through cluster random sampling. Having received fifteen two-hour sessions instructions on collocation of prepositions with specific treatment for each group, a completion test on collocation of prepositions was administered as the post-test in order to determine the impact of specific instructions the participants received. This test also contains 60 items, and its reliability was estimated to be .82. A translation task that deliberately included problems of Iranian students with prepositions and their collocations was assigned to the students in order to determine the possible effects that students' first language might create in their development of collocation knowledge of prepositions. Materials on the prepositions were selected from different grammar books such as ‘The Comprehensive English Grammar by Quirk et. al (1998), Modern English Part (I) written by Frank,M (1993) and English Idioms by Seidl and McMordie (1987). All the teaching materials in the conventional and DDL groups were at the same level of difficulty for the participants. Six general patterns of collocation of prepositions are recognized and investigated by the researchers. (These patterns are as follows: 1. Adjective + preposition collocation: good at, bored with, superior to, tired of 2. Preposition + noun collocation: in astonishment, with embezzlement, on credit, with distress, by car 3. Noun + preposition collocation: motivation in, admiration for,
argument about 4. Verb + preposition collocation: consist of, insist on, indulge in, resist in 5. Preposition + preposition collocation: out of, next to, in front of, in lieu of 6. Idiomatic expressions: to be at best, to be in the air). The results of their analysis showed that there was a significant difference between the performance of the participants in the DDL group and conventional group. Then the total numbers of errors were calculated. Altogether, 4365 errors were extracted from the learners' productions. Then, based on the percentage of errors, it was concluded that first language interference in the production of collocation of prepositions was statistically significant. 2987 (68.4 %) in inter-lingual errors and 1378 (31.6 %) in intra-lingual errors. This finding showed that DDL seemed to have a greater explanatory power and led to highly significant results in the use of collocation of prepositions. Thus, the researchers concluded that it is possible to develop a new approach (such as DDL) towards the teaching of collocations, and specifically collocation of prepositions using concordance materials.
Mahmoud, A (2003) Analyze Arab students' errors in the use of English collocations. The data for this study consisted of 42 essays written by male and female third-year Arabic speaking university students majoring in English. Regarding their proficiency in EFL and judging from their grades in the language skills courses, most of these students were post-intermediate and a few were advanced level. They were given a list of topics to choose from (e.g. Euthanasia, Mobile Phones, Arranged
Marriage, Customs and Traditions, etc.). In addition, they were given the freedom to write on any social issue of their choice. The essays were written as a homework assignment and ranged from one and half to two single-spaced pages in length. The students were not told that their use of collocations would be studied. As the essays were written as part of their weekly writing exercise, the language they produced was linguistically natural. A total of 420 grammatical and lexical collocations were found in 42 essays written by Arabic-speaking university students majoring in English. These were listed and given to three native-speaking university teachers of English to check whether they were correct. Most of the collocations produced by the 42 students were lexical (336-80%) and most of the grammatical and lexical collocations detected were incorrect 269-64%). The incorrect grammatical collocations amounted to 45 (10.71%) and the incorrect lexical ones were 224 (53.33%). The students produced 151 (36%) correct collocation, 39 (9.28%) of which were grammatical and 112 (26.67%) were lexical. Some correctly produced collocations such as: reach an agreement, save marriage, critical moment, a white lie, an old custom and lose contact... A total of 269 (64%) collocations were incorrect; 224 (83%) of these were lexical and 45 (17%) were grammatical. In all of the incorrect grammatical collocations, the errors were cases of selection or addition of an incorrect preposition and most of them seem to be due to negative Interlingua transfer from Arabic. These findings suggest the necessity of direct teaching of collocation, inclusion
of bilingual glossaries in the EFL course books, and designing bilingual collocation dictionaries.
From the describe above, the researcher concludes that is word partnership that occurs close to each others or couple up of word to form compounds or shape which has meaning in multiword units.
examples: blood / close / distant / near(est) relative, learn by doing / by heart / by observation / by rote / from experience, badly / bitterly / deeply / seriously / severely hurt.
Collocation is word partnership that occurs next to each others, Thornburry, S (2002) defines collocation as words that couple up to form compounds or shape multiword units. Warring, R (2001) explains words are almost never found isolation; they nearly always have partners that together form meanings in certain ways. It means that, collocation is word which has any relates to others to form multiword units which have meanings.
Yarowsky, D (1994) defines collocation is the co-occurrence of the words in some defined relationship, we look at several such relationship, including direct adjective and first word to the left or right having a certain part of speech. Furthermore, Costas (1994) opinions collocation is a relation of probable co-occurrence of items and sets are open-ended.
Collocation is a recurrent combination of words that co-occurs more than expected by chance and corresponds to arbitrary word usages (smith,R:1994).Most of the researchers who define collocation agree that it is a lexical unit consisting of a cluster of two or three words from different parts of speech, (Baker: 1992. Benson, Benson and Elson: 1997, Williams: 2002).
According to Paraphrases of Firth's (1957:183) definition that collocations are "words in habitual company". we define collocations as
two words belonging to different grammatical categories to exclude binomials where the two words are from the same category and are connected implicitly or explicitly by a conjunction (e.g. and, or) or a preposition such as "in" or "by" (e.g. push and shove, sick and tired, here and there, in and out, life and death, hand in hand, dead or alive).
An understanding of collocation is vital for all learners, and for those on advanced level courses, it is essential that they are not only aware of the variety and sheer density of this feature of the language but that they actively acquire more and more collocations both within and outside the formal teaching situation. It is only by doing this through increased exposure that they can be assured of leaving the intermediate plateau behind (Moon, R;1997: 42).
The importance of learning collocations for EFL learners is apart from increasing the mental lexicon, leads to an increase in written and spoken fluency (the brain has more time to focus on its message if many of the nuts and bolts are already in place in the form of collocations of varying length). Moreover, stress and intonation also improve if language is met, learnt and acquired in chunks.
Koosha, M and Jafarpour,A (2005) have determined the collocation knowledge of Iranian EFL adult learners as the participants in their study to present through data-driven learning (DDL), the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP) was given to the participants to determine their levels of proficiency a completion test on collocations of
prepositions was given to the students as the pre-test. This test comprised 60 items, and its reliability was estimated to be 0.86 using Kr-21 formula. This test was given to 200 participants who had been selected through cluster random sampling. Having received fifteen two-hour sessions instructions on collocation of prepositions with specific treatment for each group, a completion test on collocation of prepositions was administered as the post-test in order to determine the impact of specific instructions the participants received. This test also contains 60 items, and its reliability was estimated to be .82. A translation task that deliberately included problems of Iranian students with prepositions and their collocations was assigned to the students in order to determine the possible effects that students' first language might create in their development of collocation knowledge of prepositions. Materials on the prepositions were selected from different grammar books such as ‘The Comprehensive English Grammar by Quirk et. al (1998), Modern English Part (I) written by Frank,M (1993) and English Idioms by Seidl and McMordie (1987). All the teaching materials in the conventional and DDL groups were at the same level of difficulty for the participants. Six general patterns of collocation of prepositions are recognized and investigated by the researchers. (These patterns are as follows: 1. Adjective + preposition collocation: good at, bored with, superior to, tired of 2. Preposition + noun collocation: in astonishment, with embezzlement, on credit, with distress, by car 3. Noun + preposition collocation: motivation in, admiration for,
argument about 4. Verb + preposition collocation: consist of, insist on, indulge in, resist in 5. Preposition + preposition collocation: out of, next to, in front of, in lieu of 6. Idiomatic expressions: to be at best, to be in the air). The results of their analysis showed that there was a significant difference between the performance of the participants in the DDL group and conventional group. Then the total numbers of errors were calculated. Altogether, 4365 errors were extracted from the learners' productions. Then, based on the percentage of errors, it was concluded that first language interference in the production of collocation of prepositions was statistically significant. 2987 (68.4 %) in inter-lingual errors and 1378 (31.6 %) in intra-lingual errors. This finding showed that DDL seemed to have a greater explanatory power and led to highly significant results in the use of collocation of prepositions. Thus, the researchers concluded that it is possible to develop a new approach (such as DDL) towards the teaching of collocations, and specifically collocation of prepositions using concordance materials.
Mahmoud, A (2003) Analyze Arab students' errors in the use of English collocations. The data for this study consisted of 42 essays written by male and female third-year Arabic speaking university students majoring in English. Regarding their proficiency in EFL and judging from their grades in the language skills courses, most of these students were post-intermediate and a few were advanced level. They were given a list of topics to choose from (e.g. Euthanasia, Mobile Phones, Arranged
Marriage, Customs and Traditions, etc.). In addition, they were given the freedom to write on any social issue of their choice. The essays were written as a homework assignment and ranged from one and half to two single-spaced pages in length. The students were not told that their use of collocations would be studied. As the essays were written as part of their weekly writing exercise, the language they produced was linguistically natural. A total of 420 grammatical and lexical collocations were found in 42 essays written by Arabic-speaking university students majoring in English. These were listed and given to three native-speaking university teachers of English to check whether they were correct. Most of the collocations produced by the 42 students were lexical (336-80%) and most of the grammatical and lexical collocations detected were incorrect 269-64%). The incorrect grammatical collocations amounted to 45 (10.71%) and the incorrect lexical ones were 224 (53.33%). The students produced 151 (36%) correct collocation, 39 (9.28%) of which were grammatical and 112 (26.67%) were lexical. Some correctly produced collocations such as: reach an agreement, save marriage, critical moment, a white lie, an old custom and lose contact... A total of 269 (64%) collocations were incorrect; 224 (83%) of these were lexical and 45 (17%) were grammatical. In all of the incorrect grammatical collocations, the errors were cases of selection or addition of an incorrect preposition and most of them seem to be due to negative Interlingua transfer from Arabic. These findings suggest the necessity of direct teaching of collocation, inclusion
of bilingual glossaries in the EFL course books, and designing bilingual collocation dictionaries.
From the describe above, the researcher concludes that is word partnership that occurs close to each others or couple up of word to form compounds or shape which has meaning in multiword units.
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