Using Collocations to Enhance Academic Writing: A Survey Study at Van Lang University

Abstract

As a formulaic language, collocations have brought benefits and challenges to EFL learners' academic writing. These chunks' functions in academic writing need examining for a long time. Under certain constraints of the research setting, the current study explored both students' and lecturers' standpoints on using collocations to enhance academic writing. As one of quite a few studies in the Vietnamese context, the research included 47 English-major juniors and 5 English lecturers at Van Lang University, Hochiminh City, in the first semester of 2020-2021 academic year. Two research instruments were employed: the online questionnaire (to students) and the email interview (to lecturers). Thematic analysis and descriptive statistics by SPSS (version 20) were utilized to describe both stakeholders' insights into the research problem. Major findings illustrated that the students' demotivation of extensive reading and collocational practice were additional barriers to the collocational acquisition. Learners' and teachers' perspectives on the benefits of collocations in academic writing are congruent; however, the ignorance of collocations in language instruction and ineffective learning strategies might cause many constraints. The study results might provoke questions of whether using corpus-based tools (instructed or non-instructed) could have any impact on students' collocation use in their academic writing. Thus, the results might draw attention to the need of teachers' and learners' reflection and recommends a few ideas for future research.

An Investigation Into the Use of Collocations in Academic Essays of English-Majored Students of the High-Quality Program at Can Tho University, Vietnam

“…The last and perhaps most salient importance of collocational knowledge and competence lies in the fact that it contributes to lexical development so as to vary the use of vocabulary and avoid lexical repetitions (Dokchandra, 2019;Duong & Nguyen, 2021;McCarthy & O'Dell, 2005). In fact, McCarthy and O'Dell (2008) emphasized that collocations would provide effective alternative ways to express something in the target language, which would make the users' speech and their writing more colorful, expressive and precise.…”

“…As reported in a series of previous studies, students' difficulties in using English collocations mainly resulted from their L1s' negative transfer (Begagić, 2014;Boonraksa & Naisena, 2022;Fan, 2009;Osman & Abdalla, 2019;Phoocharoensil, 2011Phoocharoensil, , 2014Yamashita & Jiang, 2010;Yumanee & Phoocharoensil, 2013). Another leading cause of students' misuse or incorrect choices of English collocations was due to their lack of appropriate collocational knowledge (Boonraksa & Naisena, 2022;Detdamrongpreecha, 2014;Dokchandra's 2019;Duong & Nguyen, 2021;Fan, 2009;Namvar, 2012;Saud, 2018;Yumanee & Phoocharoensil, 2013). In addition, there have been a set of research findings which pointed out that synonymy strategy was one of the underlying factors giving rise to students' inappropriate use of English collocations (Boonyasaquan, 2006;Kuo, 2009;Mongkolchai, 2008;Phoocharoensil, 2011;Zughoul & Abdul-Fattah, 2001).…”

“…In addition, there have been a set of research findings which pointed out that synonymy strategy was one of the underlying factors giving rise to students' inappropriate use of English collocations (Boonyasaquan, 2006;Kuo, 2009;Mongkolchai, 2008;Phoocharoensil, 2011;Zughoul & Abdul-Fattah, 2001). Apart from these fundamental causes, some other elements contributing to students' improper use of English collocations might include limited vocabulary size, paraphrasing strategy, low language proficiency, lack of explicit instruction, overgeneralization, pedagogy, and learning materials (Begagić, 2014;Boonraksa & Naisena, 2022;Detdamrongpreecha, 2014;Dokchandra, 2019;Duong & Nguyen, 2021;Namvar, 2012;Saud, 2018;Yumanee & Phoocharoensil, 2013).…”

“…

One of the main goals of language learners is to master all four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing when it comes to their acquisition of the target language. However, during the process of learning English, learners inevitably face a variety of challenges related to their writing including grammatical errors, word choice, organization, idea development, and most importantly their difficulties in using collocations (Duong & Nguyen, 2021). Therefore, this study has been conducted to investigate the students' use of English collocations in their academic essays associated with their difficulties so that appropriate pedagogical approaches and practices would be taken into consideration in order to help students improve their English collocational competences in academic writing.

…”

Teaching the Narrative Essay: Embedding the Elements of Fiction

“…As many students disregarded the description of the setting, it is possible that they neither have an adequate language of description nor do they have an awareness of doing so. If the first situation is the case, descriptive vocabulary should be taught alongside word denotation and connotation as well as collocation[22] to help them buildstronger vocabulary and have more sensible word choices. For the second case, considerations about curriculum design and development need to be Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 621 emphasizing.…”