On the Effectiveness of Scaffolding Strategies and Task orientation on Receptive and Productive Knowledge of Lexical Collocations

The present study aimed at investigating the effects of scaffolding strategies using input and output-oriented tasks on Iranian EFL learners' receptive and productive knowledge of lexical collocations. For this purpose, 540 adult intermediate-level EFL learners- both male and female- were selected and divided into six experimental groups; three input-oriented and three output-oriented tasks. Each experimental group received treatment under one of the three scaffolding strategies of direct corrective feedback, cooperative group technique, and visual cues. After the treatment period, a 40-item multiple-choice test and a 40-item fill-in-the-blanks test were administered to assess the participants' receptive and productive collocations knowledge. To analyze the data, two separate two-way ANOVA procedures were used. The results indicated that visual cues were the most effective scaffolding strategy in teaching lexical collocations. Moreover, the cooperative group technique had a significant positive impact on learning collocations compared to direct corrective feedback. The results also showed that the participants in the output-oriented tasks group significantly outperformed those in the input-oriented tasks group. These findings can have practical implications for language learners, teachers, and materials developers, and theoretical implications for researchers.

Learners’ Collocation Use in Writing: Do Proficiency Levels Matter?

Knowledge of collocation is important in enabling learners to use a language fluently. When learners can demonstrate a good command of collocation use as they write, this results in greater fluency and proficiency. The present study is a case study that investigated the collocational knowledge of ESL learners across different proficiency levels. Specifically, the extent to which the learners produce lexical collocation in writing is examined in the study. To this end, a writing task (an essay) was administered to elicit the written output of the learners. The procedure involved a total of n=120 undergraduate ESL learners (limited, modest, and proficient learners) studying at a public university in Malaysia. The essays collected in the study were analysed and compared in terms of the lexical collocation frequencies and categories. The results first revealed that the higher proficient students wrote slightly higher lexical collocations than their counterparts. The second finding, however, indicated that there is no significant difference in the proportion of lexical collocation (.05) written by the students, regardless of their proficiency levels. Thirdly, the results demonstrated that students of higher proficiency levels were able to write their essays with slightly more lexical collocation categories in comparison to lower proficiency level learners. Nonetheless, the students did not tap into all six lexical collocation categories in their writing. The findings of the study provide insights into the lexical collocation knowledge of Malaysian ESL undergraduates across various proficiency levels.

THE USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS IN SOME ARTICLES OF SEVENTEEN.COM WEBSITE

Collocations are one of the problems faced by EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners when learning English language. This study is intended to help the EFL Learners and non-native English speakers to add knowledge about collocations. Therefore, this study is aimed to find the use of lexical collocations and their meaning. This study used a descriptive qualitative research technique. The source of the data is eleven articles from eight sections in seventeen.com. om the research, there were 79 lexical collocations and they were classified as six out of seven types that Benson et al. (2010) proposed. The data showed that the most used type is L3 (adjective + noun) and the least used is L4 (noun + verb). The meaning of the lexical collocations was defined from the contexts.

The Comparison of Lexical Collocations in English Textbooks Used in Indonesia

Teaching collocations becomes very important for ESL/EFL students to achieve language fluency since the students spend a great amount of time interacting with their textbooks. This study aims to investigate the comparison of lexical collocations used in two textbooks used regularly in senior high school level in Semarang namely Aim High Student’s Book 1 and Bahasa Inggris Kelas X. This study applied descriptive qualitative method. The documentary method was used in collecting the data. The data were analyzed based on collocation theories proposed by Benson, et al. (1997) and Lea (2002). The result showed that there were three similarities found regarding the lexical collocation occurrence in all parts of the textbooks, the highest frequency of the lexical collocations occurrence in the exercise part of the textbooks, and the highest frequency of the types of lexical collocations in the textbooks. Meanwhile, there are three differences found regarding the number of lexical collocation frequency in each textbook, the order in using lexical collocations from the highest to the lowest frequency, and the way the authors of the textbooks in introducing and teaching lexical collocations to the students. Furthermore, it was also found that Bahasa Inggris Kelas X produced some inaccurate lexical collocations.

Usage Patterns and Meanings of High-Frequency English Verbs: A Multi-Word Expression Approach to Japanese High School EFL Textbook Analysis

This article aims to classify the overall uses of high-frequency English verbs in a novel methodology from both a pattern and meaning perspective, which has not be done in previous studies, with special reference to TAKE and MAKE. In the pattern-based analysis, all occurrences of these two verbs were collected from Japanese EFL textbook corpus, and the usage patterns of the extracted two target verbs were categorized into three major multi-word expression types: phrasal verbs, grammatical collocations, and lexical collocations. To further investigate the patterns of uses, some multi-word units consisting of three to seven words were identified as either semi-fixed expressions or fixed expressions. After the pattern-based classification, all the multi-word expressions identified were analyzed from a semantic perspective. This analysis revealed the new finding that all uses of TAKE (352) and MAKE (374) obtained from the corpus could be successfully classified into the three major multi-word expression categories. With respect to the pattern, the proportion of major multi-word expression categories showed similar results; lexical collocations were the most frequent, and phrasal verbs were the least frequent in both target verbs’ usage. In terms of meanings, the uses of TAKE were classified in a larger number of semantic categories (42) than MAKE (25). The obtained results have an implication that the novel methodology employed in this study is a valid way to the further investigation of the usage of high-frequency English verbs.

Revisiting The Theory Of Translation: Investigating The Translation Divan-e Hafiz

Translation theory offers a complex phenomenon when source language (SL) is transported and communicated in the target language (TL). Therefore, it is a grave concern for a translator to utilize equivalent ideas in another language. The current investigation tried to analyze lexical collocations in Arabic literature poems from Divan-e Hafiz and compare interpretations made by A J. Arberry (1905–1969) and H. W. Clarke (1840-1905) in request to find the most widely recognized methods the two interpreters utilized and to uncover the benefits and imperfections relating to each technique. This paper investigated that strict, social, and semantic collocations are separately the most troublesome word mixes for interpreters to achieve the cycle. It further delineated that the most incessant methodology taken by the two interpreters was in the interpretation of the same word and, in a few cases, a decrease of the lexical relationship to limit contorting the structure, complex and semantic examples highlighted in poems while making a similar impact in the TL. This phenomenon provides an overview of how to teach Arabic literature translation well.

Collocational choices in the discourse activities of select paramilitary formations in Nigeria

This paper investigated the collocational choices used among three Nigerian paramilitary formations in their official discourse activities with a view to ascertaining the contextual meanings of the lexical choices. Data for the study were collected by means of participant observation and key informant interview (KII) of randomly selected segments of members in the office environment, patrol duties and muster parades. The findings showed that personnel of the formations used peculiar collocational choices in their formal discourse engagements with a high level of competence that enhanced in-group mutual intelligibility and solidarity. Categorically, the collocational choices occurred in eight different combinations: noun-noun, adjective-noun, verb-noun, adverb-adjective, adverb-verb, adverb-noun, noun-adjective and verb-adverb lexically compatible to advance institutionally modelled meanings. The lexical collocations are prominently two content words in the open class system consciously devised to communicate professional orientation for the discharge of their security and safety-related statutory duties.

The Use of English Collocations in Written Translation – A Case of University English-Majored Students

The current study attempted to investigate English collocations used in written translation among fourth-year English majors at a university. The participants included forty-one fourth-year English-majored students and three translation teachers who are teaching English – Vietnamese translation courses in the university. To gather data, the researchers used two instruments: a test of English collocations including five types of collocations: an adjective going with a noun, a verb going with a noun, a noun going with a verb, a noun going with a noun and a verb going with an adverb. After data analysis, it revealed that just slightly over half of the student participants were able to find the correct collocations in written translation. Furthermore, a noun going with a verb and a noun going with a noun are the two main lexical errors made by most of the students. The interview was also used to seek translation teachers’ perspectives on students’ ability to translate texts in general and strategies of translation in particular. They perceived that most of their students were not aware of collocations in written translation and still had difficulties in both grammatical and lexical collocations. Finally, some recommendations on improving English collocations in written translation were also made based on these findings.

Collocation Analysis of Variants of Intensifiers in Classical Malay Texts

In this paper, the authors discuss the findings of a study carried out to examine good lexical collocation in classical Malay texts. For the study, two corpora were used, namely Petua Membina Rumah and Korpus Rujukan Berita Harian. The former had 14,644 tokens and 2,080 types while the latter had 1,058,722 tokens and 39,632 types. Only 100 distributions of lexical collocations of the word ‘baik’ were chosen, given that such a word was most widely used in adjectival sentences. Collocation analysis was carried out using MI (Mutual Information), T score, and logDice. The findings showed such lexical collocations had metaphorical meanings based on two main categories of intensifiers, namely amplifier and downtoner. The former was made up of booster and maximizer while the latter consisted of approximator, compromisers, diminisher, and minimizer. Such findings indicate that the Malay society has a unique linguistic identity in that they converse with a good lexicon of intensifying words or intensifiers whose function is to amplify the meanings of sentences. Each variant of intensifiers of the Malay language occurs in various adverbial characters. Such a phenomenon shows that the unique adverbial intensifier of the Malay language plays an important role as an indicator to identify metaphors.