Language Proficiency and Knowledge in Adjective-Noun Collocations: A Case Study of Vietnamese Learners of English

Abstract

Collocational development is of great significance to second language acquisition. Among different types of collocations, adjective-noun collocations are notoriously difficult to EFL learners, but there has been limited research, especially in Vietnam, on this type of collocations in the field of teaching and learning English. To address this issue, the current study, employing the quantitative approach, investigates Vietnamese university students’ receptive and productive knowledge of adjective-noun collocations and the relationship between their language proficiency and their collocational knowledge. Results reveal that the difference between the students’ receptive and productive knowledge was more significant when they reached higher levels of English, and even those at an advanced level had great difficulties in identifying erroneous collocations and using them correctly. The number of collocational errors appeared to increase with rising proficiency. Results also indicate a close relationship between language ability and collocational knowledge, thereby emphasizing the importance of teaching collocations explicitly in English classrooms.

The Impact of Explicit Teaching of Verb Collocations on Improving Upper-Intermediate Efl Learners’ Writing Skill

“…In a study of Iranian EFL learners, Keshavarz and Taherian (2018) carried out a study to examine the effect of explicit instruction of collocations on EFL learners' language proficiency and found out that raising students' awareness of collocations through explicit method resulted in improvement in language proficiency. According to Pham (2022), EFL students, even those at an advanced level, tend to make the most errors in verb-noun collocations in comparison with other types. Moreover, to investigate the frequency of unacceptable collocations of Persian EFL learners, the study by Saliminejad and Karimkhanlooei (2018) unveiled that the most common errors in collocation belonged to verb collocations.…”