VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONAL COMPETENCE OF

MULTILINGUAL PROGRAM STUDENTS AT

PRASATWITTAYAKARN SCHOOL, SURIN

BY

MISS PITCHAYANIN THANIMKARN

AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING ENGLISH

AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE INSTITUTE, THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC YEAR 2017

COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

Ref. code: 25605621032241QLP

VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONAL COMPETENCE OF

MULTILINGUAL PROGRAM STUDENTS AT

PRASATWITTAYAKARN SCHOOL, SURIN

BY

MISS PITCHAYANIN THANIMKARN

AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING ENGLISH

AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE INSTITUTE, THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC YEAR 2017

COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

Ref. code: 25605621032241QLP

1

Independent Study Paper Title VERB + NOUN COLLOCATIONAL

COMPETENCE OF MULTILINGUAL

PROGRAM STUDENTS AT

PRASATWITTAYAKRN SCHOOL, SURIN

Author Miss Pitchayanin Thanimkarn

Degree Master of Arts

Major Field/Faculty/University Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Language Institute, Thammasat University

Independent Study Paper Advisor Dr. Rangsiya Chaengchenkit, Ph.D.

Academic Year 2017

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to investigate the use of English verb + noun collocations

by multilingual program students at Prasatwittayakarn School, Surin Province. The

participants were 18 students from a multilingual program where mathematics and

science classes are conducted in English. The instrument employed in this study was a

20-item translation test of ‘make’ and ‘take’ collocations which are the most common

among language learners. The findings showed that the students’ ability to use English

verb + noun collocations was fairly good, with 60.55% correct responses. Language

transfer and lack of collocational knowledge were major contributors to unnatural

collocations.

Keywords: collocation, language transfer, multilingual program, collocational

competence, verb + noun collocations

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr.

Rangsiya Chaengchenkit, for her patient guidance during the development of this study

and most importantly, for pushing me through the hardest times in my student life. I

also would like to thank Dr. Pimsiri Taylor, the chairman, and all the instructors at

Language Institute, Thammasat University for useful suggestions.

This study would not have been completed without the help from the director,

the manager, and the cooperation from students from a multilingual program at

Prasatwittayakarn School, where I work as a teacher.

I also owe a sincere gratitude to Miss Jiraporn Petchthong who has done a

perfect job in keeping my study on schedule, my TEFL friends who encouraged me to

achieve my academic goals, and my Silpakorn friends who always believe in me.

Without these people, I would not come this far.

Finally, I would like to thank my lovely family for supporting me throughout

this academic journey, both mentally and financially.

Miss Pitchayanin Thanimkarn

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT (1)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (2)

LIST OF TABLES (6)

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background of the study 6

1.2 Objective of the study 7

1.3 Research question 7

1.4 Significances of the study 8

1.5 Scope of the study 8

1.6 Definition of terms 8

1.7 Organization of the study 9

CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 10

2.1 Theories of collocation 10

2.1.1 Definitions of collocation 10

2.1.2 Classifications of collocation 11

2.1.2.1 Grammatical collocation 11

2.1.2.2 Lexical collocation 12

2.2 Delexical verbs 12

2.3 Importance of collocation 13

2.4 Strategies in producing collocations 16

2.3.1 Language transfer 16

2.3.2 Synonymy 17

2.3.3 Repetition 18

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2.3.4 Overgeneralization 19

2.3.5 Other strategies 20

2.5 Error analysis 20

2.6 Previous studies related to collocation 21

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 25

3.1 Participants 25

3.2 Data collection instrument 25

3.3 Administrative procedure 26

3.4 Data analysis 26

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 27

4.1 Overall test results 27

4.2 Students’ collocational violations and plausible explanations 29

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 35

5.1 Conclusion of the study 35

5.2 Pedagogical implications 35

5.3 Limitations of the study 36

5.4 Recommendations for further study 36

REFERENCES 37

APPENDIX

APPENDIX A 39

BIOGRAPHY 42

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LIST OF TABLES

Tables Page

4.1 The mean, percentage and standard deviation of the test scores 27

4.2 A summary of the results of the ‘translation test of English 28

verb + noun collocations’

4.3 Examples of verb + noun collocational violations 29

4.4 A summary of collocational violations reflected in percentages 30

4.5 A summary of the verbs the students used instead of ‘take’ in 33

the translation test

4.6 A summary of the verbs the students used instead of ‘make’ in 34

the translation test

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

Technological advancements, adoption of the internet and cooperation in

ASEAN countries has contributed to a major transition in terms of business, education,

science and technology, all of which demand a high proficiency of English

(Wiriyachitra, 2002). Therefore, most countries around the world are working actively

to equip their people to use English effectively.

In Thailand, where English is not an official language, there have been

considerable challenges to overcome in order to improve the ability to communicate in

English among the general populace. Even though there have been attempts to make

English an official language along with Thai, it has never succeeded probably due to

national stability and an anti-colonialism feeling that has thrived among Thais for

generations (Punthumasen, 2007). Thus, English has remained a foreign language and

relatively attention is paid to it. What probably impedes higher proficiency levels of

English in Thailand is its education system which does not appear to enable students to

deal with the world that is changing every day. Consequently, English proficiency level

of Thais is rather low, compared with other countries in Southeast Asia (e.g. Malaysia,

Philippines and Singapore). A survey in 2000 revealed that the average TOEFL scores

among Thais, Japanese and Mongolians were about the same.

By realizing the country’s education lagged far behind other countries in the

same region, the National Education Act was implemented in 1 9 9 7 to reform the

educational system in Thailand. One of the most important aspects mentioned in the

reform was a higher demand for English programs that enable students to keep pace

with the globalized world. OBEC (the Office of the Basic Education Commission)

implemented its flagship multilingual program as a result of these educational reforms.

OBEC’s multilingual program requires that most classes, except Thai, are conducted in

English. Multilingual program students are also encouraged to learn the languages of

neighboring countries which will be advantageous for them if they wish to enter the

labor market or do business in any of the other ASEAN countries in future.

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Therefore, this study aims to investigate students’ knowledge of English in

terms of collocational competence as it is a crucial part of competence in English

(Fontenelle, 1994; Herbst, 1996; Lennon, 1996; Moon, 1992). This idea was proposed

by Sadeghi (2009) who stated “without knowledge of proper collocation in context, a

learner is not considered to have mastery of words even though the learner knows how

to use words.” The collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’ are the main focus in this study

as they are two of the four most frequently used verbs (all of which are ‘take’, ‘make’,

‘give’ and ‘have’) suggested by Sinclair (1 9 9 0) . In addition, these verbs are also

considered ‘delexical verbs’, common verbs that have little meaning of their own unless

combined with specific nouns. A recent study by Kittigosin (2015) revealed that Thai

EFL learners struggled to produce acceptable collocations with delexical verbs as they

are not common in Thai.

This study has adopted from Benson, Benson and Ilson’s (1997) classification

of collocations’ framework, which includes grammatical collocations and lexical

collocations.

1.2 Objective of the study

The objective of the study is:

- To investigate how multilingual program students at Prasatwittayakarn

School use English verb + noun collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’.

1.3 Research question

This study attempts to answer the following question:

- How do multilingual program students at Prasatwittayakarn School use

English verb + noun collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’?

1.4 Significances of this study

1.4.1 While a number of studies have been conducted on English program

students and non-English program students, this research provides a new perspective

towards a multilingual program.

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1.4.2 The results from this study can be used to determine the way of teaching

vocabulary in classrooms and how to minimize collocational errors.

1.5 Scope of the study

1.5.1 The study is limited to multilingual program students at Prasatwittayakarn

School, Surin, Thailand.

1.5.2 Only English verb + noun collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’ will be

focused upon in this study.

1.5.3 Violations on spellings will not be counted in the present study.

1.6 Definition of terms

1.6.1 Collocation is “the way in which words co-occur in a natural text in

statistically significant ways” (Lewis, 2000). The co-occurrence of words and phrases

are highly frequent and they sound very neutral for native speakers. for example, submit

a report.

1.6.2 Collocate is a word or words that often occurs with a particular word. For

example, commit a crime, ‘commit’ collocates with ‘crime’.

1.6.3 L2 leaner refers to those who are learning a second language.

1.6.4 EFL learner refers to those who are studying English as a foreign

language.

1.6.5 Language transfer refers to speakers or writers who are influenced by

their native language when speaking or writing in a second language. Such knowledge

tends to ‘transfer’ or influence language production, often in a way that resembles the

native language.

1.6.6 Synonymy refers to the strategy speakers or writers use to substitute

synonym for a word in L2.

1.6.7 Overgeneralization is a strategy used when speakers or writers’

knowledge is limited and they tend to overgeneralize their knowledge of their native

language to the second language. Overgeneralization strategy frequently used among

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learners whose L2 knowledge is very limited and may manifest in terms of a repeated

number of collocations.

1.6.8 Error analysis is the study of types or causes of language errors.

1.7 Organization of this study

This study is arranged into five chapters. Chapter 1 is an introductory part which

consists of the background and rationale of the study, research question, objective of

this study, definition of terms, significance of the study, scope of the study, and

organization of the study.

Chapter 2 provides a more detailed overview of the relevant theory and studies

that are central to the present study. This chapter contains section on theories of

collocations, the importance of collocations, strategies in producing collocations, error

analysis, and previous research studies.

Chapter 3 describes the methodology. This includes background information on

the participants, the data collection instrument, administrative procedures, and data

analysis.

Chapter 4 discusses about the findings of the study and provides some

explanations regarding the collocational errors made by the participants in the study.

Finally, Chapter 5 provides a summary of the results, a discussion of the results,

the pedagogical implications, limitations of the study, and suggestions for further

studies.

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CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter attempts to trace collocation by reviewing the literature associated

with five areas: (1) theories of collocation, (2) delexical verbs, (3) importance of

collocation, (4) strategies used in producing collocations, (5) error analysis and (6)

previous studies related to collocation.

2.1 Theories of collocation

2.1.1 Definitions of collocation

The word ‘collocation’ has been discussed over decades (Bahns &

Eldaw, 1993; Benson, Benson, & Ilson, 1997; Lewis, 2000; McCarthy & O'Dell, 2005;

Nation, 1990; Sinclair, Jones, & Daley, 2004). John Firth was the first scholar to

introduce the term ‘collocation’ to his prosodic and meaning analysis (Firth, 1957). He

defined the word ‘collocation’ as ‘the meaning of a word is as much a matter of how it

combines with other words in actual use as it is of the meaning it possesses in itself’.

In general, collocation is a combination of words that collocate with each other.

Regarding Firth’s perspective, the aspects of collocation are not

deterministic but probabilistic. For example, we prefer using bitterly disappointed than

sourly disappointed (the latter collocation having been invented by a poet in literature;

a technique called ‘poetic license’).

The concept of collocation proposed by Firth has drawn attention from

many scholars. Benson, Benson and Ilson (1986a) defined the term ‘collocation’ and

categorized it into fixed, identifiable and non-idiomatic collocation.

Further studies of collocations were also conducted by Halliday (1966)

and Sinclair (1991). They summarized the term ‘collocation’ as items that co-occur or

tend to be together in discourse.

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), characteristics of collocations

have also been studied as an aspect of cohesive lexis, which exhibits a strong

relationship between lexical items that regularly co-occur. Lewis (2000) also defined

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collocations as the observable phenomenon of certain words that co-occur in text with

greater than random frequency.

After discussing the definitions provided by the scholars above, it can

be concluded that there is a fair bit of overlap with the term ‘collocation’. It seems it

shares quite the same concept, which is a word or words that occur together.

2.1.2 Classifications of collocation

Even though the basic notion of collocation is quite similar among

linguists and researchers, there are the differences to how collocations are viewed.

These differences are noticed in the variety of classifications that have been made thus

far. Some scholars prefer using ‘free combinations’, ‘poly-words’, ‘fixed phrases’,

‘phrasal constraints’, ‘sentence builders’, ‘prefabricated routines’, ‘clichés’, ‘idioms’,

‘lexical phrases’, and ‘multi-word units’.

The first classification was proposed by Benson, Benson, and Illson

(1997). This classification includes two types of collocations, based on their syntactic

features: grammatical collocations and lexical collocations. Grammatical collocations

are defined as a combination of a lexical word and a grammatical word such as

preposition or grammatical structure, while lexical collocations are a combination of

content words (e.g., noun, verb, adverb, and adjective).

2.1.2.1 Grammatical collocation

Grammatical collocations consist of a dominant word, such as a noun,

a verb, or an adjective, and a preposition. The grammatical structures are as illustrated

below:

e.g. noun + preposition an increase in

verb + preposition elaborate on

adjective + preposition familiar with

preposition + noun on probation

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2.1.2.2 Lexical collocation

There are two types of lexical collocations which are content words or

open class words. These include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Lewis has

classified lexical collocations into six types, as illustrated below:

e.g. adjective + noun a big difference

verb + noun make a mistake

noun + verb dust accumulates

noun + noun radio station

verb + adverb or examine thoroughly

adverb + verb proudly present

2.2 Delexical verbs

Since verb + noun collocations with ‘make’ and ‘take’ are the main

focus here, it is necessary to give details about ‘delexical verbs’ because ‘make’ and

‘take’ are included in the list of it. The term ‘delexical verb’ was introduced by Sinclair

(1990) and delexical verbs are also known as ‘light verbs’. Delexical verbs refer to

common verbs that are semantically empty, which means that the meaning is carried by

the deverbal nouns — nouns that play a major role in determining the meaning of verb

+ noun collocation, and usually come after these verbs. Based on a corpus of academic

writing, the verbs have, take, make, and give are the most common and common

productive in the corpus (Alan, 1994). The examples are as below:

e.g. make a mistake make a decision

have breakfast have a look

take a trip take a shower

give a speech give advice

Besides the verbs mentioned above, other delexicalized verbs also

found in the writing corpus are do, keep, go, cast, pay, get set, cast, put, and bear .

These verbs are similar in that they adopt the same structure as the four verbs

mentioned above.

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2.3 Importance of collocation

It can be said that there is no language free from collocation. Since the

middle of the 20th century, the power of syntactic rules has been widely recognized by

many scholars, especially those following the Chomskyan approach. It has been argued

that one of the most important tasks for the the language learner is the acquisition of

structures that form a set of sentences in the language, in addition to being able to see

the differences between those sentences and ungrammatical structures (Pawley &

Syder, 1983).

Recently, a number of scholars have agreed that teaching vocabulary is

as important as teaching grammatical structures (Hill, 2000; Lewis, 1993, 1997; Pawley

& Syder, 1983). Many scholars have pointed out that some traditional ways of teaching

vocabulary, such as teaching single words and memorizing bilingual vocabulary lists is

not as effective as teaching words in phrases and chunks (Nation, 2001; Woolard, 2000;

Howarth, 1998; Lewis, 1993, 1997, 2000; Conzett, 2000; Hill, 2000).

The importance of learning by chunks in language to-be-learned has

attracted considerable attention from teachers and those engaged in the language

learning sphere. As a result, their priority in teaching grammatical structures has shifted

somewhat to collocations. The necessity of studying English collocations as an integral

part of language learning has been proposed by scholars in the field of second language

acquisition, lexicographers, material and curriculum designers, and pedagogists (Bahns

& Eldaw, 1993; Howarth, 1998; McCarthy, 1990); Coady&Huckin, 1997; Richards &

Rogers, 2001; Ellis, 2001; Nation, 2001; Benson, Benson & Ilson,1997).

More prominently, this has raised awareness among teaching material

developers to take this phenomenon into consideration when designing language

teaching/learning materials. Howarth (1998) has suggested that modern EFL course

books illustrate that content writers are aware that collocational knowledge is important

to language learners (e.g. Teaching collocations by Lewis (Ed.), 2000 and English

Collocations in Use by McCarthy & O’Dell, 2005).

A number of researchers have claimed that prefabricated units or

chunks, including collocations, play an important part in language learning and

language fluency (Nation, 2001; Nattinger & De Carrico, 1992; Wray, 1999; as cited

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in Nesselhauf, 2004). Brown (1974), for example, suggested that we should incorporate

the teaching of collocations into EFL/ESL classrooms. She viewed collocations as a

tool to enhance EFL/ESL learners’ collocational competence and help them speak

fluently. Furthermore, in knowing collocations learners should also improve their

listening comprehension and reading speed. It has also been suggested that one of the

basic reasons that EFL learners often find difficulties in listening and reading is because

of the density of collocations in the material (Hill, 2000).

According to Pawley and Syder (1983), one of the reasons why native

speakers are fluent is the ready-made prefabricated units in their minds. Lewis (1997)

also supported this idea by stating that “fluency is based on the acquisition of a large

store of fixed or semi-fixed prefabricated items”. Moreover, “fixed or semi-fixed

prefabricated items” which include collocation, are the basis for the foundation of any

linguistic novelty and creativity. In other words, collocations are essential for fluency

in both oral and written competency.

Kjellmer (1990) also pointed out the difference between native speakers

and language learners in terms of automatic retrieval of collocations. According to

Kjellmer, native speakers are readily equipped with collocations that they have

accumulated across their lifetime exposure to the language. When they produce

utterances, native speakers make use of those ready-made prefabricated units rather

effortlessly and easily. Language learners, on the other hand, possess little knowledge

of collocations in their mental lexicon. As a result, language learners tend to use

unnecessarily long sentences or inappropriate phrases to express their ideas and thus

sound much less fluent and natural.

Carter and McCarthy (1988) also stressed the importance of

collocations. They stated that by knowing collocations, students do not necessarily have

to reconstruct the language every time they want to express something. They can

employ these collocations as “pre-packaged building blocks”. Many learners who lack

sufficient collocational knowledge are likely to stop in the middle of conversation

because they cannot find phrases which are suitable for conveying their messages. This

Such a point is also supported by Hill (2000), who claimed that collocations allow the

learner to think easier, because they help us “identify and produce complex ideas

without using all our brain space to focus on the form of the words”.

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Moreover, Hill (1999) advocated the idea that second language learners

who are not familiarized with the four or five most important collocations, even when

their ideas are otherwise good, do not often get good grades in writing and speaking

because they cannot find suitable phrases to convey their ideas. To sum up, collocations

are useful learning tools that can be used as ready-made phrases for expressing various

ideas.

The knowledge of collocations and the capacity to use them are

important for language learners and for natural-sounding language production.

However, there are considerable challenges in using collocations properly even for

advanced learners, who are otherwise at a high level of language proficiency and usage.

Smadja (1989) pointed out that one of the difficulties that language learners encounter

is that they “often stumble acroshes co-occurrence relations”. This phenomenon is also

advocated by Hill’s work (2000). He conducted research by collecting students’ speech

and writing and the results revealed that students lack collocational competence. The

problem is also highlighted in a study by Wray (1999). He stated that non-native

learners, even the most proficient ones, also face challenges in using ‘grammatically

possible utterances’ which are commonly used by native speakers.

Learners who lack the knowledge of collocation or do not have ready-

made chunks in their mental lexicon, which allow them to express their ideas precisely,

tend to produce utterances on the basis of grammatical rules which often that leads to

numerous collocational errors.

From the problems stated above, collocations are obviously needed for

language teaching (Nation, 2001; McCarthy, 1990; Hill, 2000). We can clearly see their

necessity by examining error types that EFL/ESL students make, since many of the

errors occur with collocations (Meara, 1984). Yet, many types of prefabricated units or

chunks, including collocations are still not considered adequately in English language

teaching curriculum today (Nesselhauf, 2004). Many teachers and researchers (e.g.

Boonyasaquan, 2006; Lewis, 2000; Conzett, 2000) suggested that collocations should

be taught in every single stage of a learner’s academic path, and should be highlighted

in any English language classes, such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and

translating because “one of the most essential phenomena to improve students’ fluency

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and accuracy is to enhance their mental lexicon by providing quality collocational

input.”

2.4 Strategies in producing collocations

2.4.1 Language transfer

‘Language transfer’ was termed by Selinker (1972) and proposed for use

instead of ‘interference’. The notion of language transfer is widely recognized by

theoreticians and language teachers. Development of lexical skills and grammar

competence in second language are linked with the first language. When attempting to

communicate in a second language, because of insufficient knowledge of collocations,

learners may ‘adopt’ or ‘transfer’ some elements of their native language onto the target

language and thus create certain errors when using utterances. Brown (1984)

emphasized that the interference of the first language with the second language is the

biggest threat for second language teachers and for second language learning – It is a

burden for the learner to acquire second language. However, Brown also revealed the

difficulty in learning a second language is the differences between two linguistic

systems. The complication in second language learning are caused by these differences.

In an EFL context, the acquisition of lexis is a fundamental aspect of second

language acquisition (Lewis, 1993). Mastery of vocabulary is thought to be a robust

indicator of a learner’s language proficiency.

However, many scholars have agreed that the congruence of a learner’s first

and second language contribute to the acquisition of collocations (Bahns & Eldaw,

1993; Granger, 1998; Murao, 2004; Nesselhauf, 2003, 2005; Pooncharoensil, 2011). It

was found that learners have difficulties in producing acceptable collocations because

lexical structures in their first language are not equivalent to the target language.

Therefore, they tend to resort to their first language and thus produce unnatural

collocations (Phoocharoensil, 2011).

The idea of language transfer in the acquisition of collocation is also

supported by Nakata’s work (2007) on Japanese EFL learners. The study examined the

acquisition of English collocations among Japanese learners. The findings indicated

that incongruence of L1 and L2 (Japanese and English) results in collocational errors.

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Mongkolchai’s study (2008) also showed that language transfer was a major factor

determining collocational errors made by Thai EFL university students.

2.4.2 Synonymy

There have been discussions among scholars that learning synonyms of

known words may be easier than learning non-synonymous words (Nation, 2001). This

may be a possible reason why many L2 learners prefer using synonymy strategies when

learning vocabulary because they would be able to transfer their syntactic and

collocational knowledge from known synonyms to less frequent synonyms (Webb,

2007). In addition, with limited knowledge regarding the second language, language

learners sometimes rely heavily on a strategy referred to as a synonymy strategy

(Phoocharoensil, 2011). In other words, L2 learners are likely to substitute a synonym

for a word in L2, not knowing that they are violating the rules of collocations. In fact,

a very limited number of synonyms in English can be found in the same grammatical

pattern (Nation, 2001). To put it simply, words that are very close in meaning do not

always share the same grammatical collocation. Take the study of Phoocharoensil

(2010) as an example: even though the verbs ask and plead are semantically similar,

the grammatical patterns which co-occur with these two verbs are different. That is the

verb ask is frequently used in the pattern ask someone + infinitive with to, while plead

collocates with the preposition with, as in plead with someone + infinitive with to. If

plead is substituted for ask in the grammatical pattern of the latter verb, i.e. without

with, causes grammatical errors in English.

According to a number of studies on the acquisition of English collocation

by L2 learners, a strategy of synonymy has been commonly used. A study of Farghal

and Obiedat (1995) reported how Arabic EFL learners selected words to make

collocations. The findings revealed that the participants relied heavily on the principle

of replacing a word with its synonym. As a result, ungrammaticality occurred. This use

of strategy was also supported by Howarth (1996, 1998). His study showed that, when

producing collocations, L2 learners seemed to use words that have similar meaning, to

produce collocations. This frequently causes errors in the target language. For

instance, the participants thought that ‘way’ and ‘approach’ are similar in meaning.

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Therefore, they adopted a synonymy strategy by replacing ‘approaches’ with ‘ways’ in

adopt approaches, which was a deviant (Howarth, 1998).

Zughol and Abdul-Fattah (2001) researched assumed synonymy in the use

of English collocations by Arabic speakers. The results showed that the learners’ relied

on a synonymy strategy to produce collocation. An evidence of synonymy strategy was

the use of the verb ‘failed’ in the sentence ‘The enemy was failed in the battle’ which

should be replaced with the verb‘defeated’ (Zughol & Abdul-Fattah, 2001).

Synonyms are often used by learners when it comes to paraphrasing.

Learners may choose a synonym to express the target collocations they are not familiar

with. For example, Biskup (1992) examined the use of synonyms by German and Polish

learners. The findings revealed that German learners adopted more creative strategies

than Polish learners. For example, instead of using crack a nut open, they used *break

a nut open which was considered a deviant in English. This means German learners

preferred using the words they are familiar with rather than words they are not exposed

to.

2.4.3 Repetition

Repetition is another strategy EFL learners employ to deal with language

difficulties. With limited knowledge of collocations, learners resort to use words they

are familiar with repeatedly. Recent studies suggest that a repetition also results from

learners’ lack of collocational knowledge in creating L2 collocations (Howarth, 1998).

Put it simply, learners prefer using collocations they already know and do not want to

risk using collocations unfamiliar to them. There have been a number of studies on the

acquisition of second language about problems stem from the use of repetition

strategies.

Granger (1998) investigated the use of English adverb + adjective among

French learners and found that they tended to use the intensifier ‘very’ repeatedly.

Moreover, the results also revealed that EFL learners seemed to overuse a limited group

of collocations because they do not want to risk making errors.

A corpus-study by Shih (2000) on overused collocations in a Taiwanese

EFL learners. This study focused upon a set of synonyms: big, large and great. The

results from the comparative study of the Taiwanese Learner Corpus of English and the

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British National Corpus (NBC) showed that Taiwanese learners tended to overuse the

collocations with big. To be precise, they used big to describe abstract ideas more than

native speakers normally do, while the native speakers use the word ‘big’ to describe

concrete objects. It is clearly seen that Taiwanese learners apply the strategy of

repetition when faced with collocational problems.

2.4.4 Overgeneralization

Linguistically, overgeneralization refers to the process of extending the

application of a morphological rule from one particular language and applying it to

another. The obvious example lies in the use of -ed ending in the past form verbs by a

child learner who has observed that every past form verb ends with -ed. Consequently,

he or she ends up adding -ed to every verb when she wants to report actions in the past,

for instance; ‘I goed* to the zoo yesterday’ instead of ‘I went to the zoo yesterday.’

In the acquisition of collocations, overgeneralization is used to tackle with

unknown words. Zughol and Abdul-Fattah’s (2001) study indicated that

overgeneralization was found as a major source of incorrect collocations and this

strategy is perceived as a characteristic of learner language. In the study of factors

influencing English collocational performance of Taiwanese university students by

Chen (2011), the results revealed that, apart from language transfer, overgeneralization

was the second strategy students used to deal with unknown collocations. A study of

English collocation usage in essay writing by Shitu (2015) also revealed the use of

overgeneralization in compound words, e.g. every- day*, Head-student*, resulting in

erroneous collocation combination.

2.4.5 Other strategies

Besides the strategies mentioned above, there are other strategies L2

learners use to overcome language learning difficulties. For example, learners may form

a new collocation that they think can be replaced with the target one (Bahns & Eldaw,

1993; Granger, 1998). In the study of Granger (1998), he observed the use of

collocations by looking into a corpus of French essays. The results showed that learners

produced collocations they considered to be acceptable such as ferociously menacing

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and shamelessly exploited, which are incorrect. It appears that learners' creative

invention often results in unnatural word combinations.

Limited knowledge also greatly contributed to incorrect combinations of

collocations (Howarth, 1998; Nation, 1992). Many studies revealed that L2 learners fail

to produce acceptable collocations not only because of the factors mentioned above,

but because of their limited knowledge of collocations. In the study by Mongkolchai

(2008), she investigated the use of English collocations among 23 Thai EFL university

students. A sentence completion test and a multiple choice test were administered to

students. These tests consisted of seven patterns of collocations as categorized by Lewis

(2000). The results showed that students’ ability to produce acceptable collocations was

fair (52.32%) and a lack of collocational knowledge was a major contribution to errors

made by students.

2.5 Error analysis

Error Analysis (EA) is an alternative to contrastive analysis. It was

established in 1960s by Stephen Pit Corder and colleagues. It was developed to deal

with some of the weaknesses of Contrastive Analysis when it came to predicting the

majority of errors. Error Analysis showed that “many learner errors are produced by

learners making faulty inferences about the rules of the new language.” Differentiation

between errors and mistakes is the main focus of Error Analysis. Basically, errors can

be classified as omissive, additive, substitutive or related to word order. Errors can be

classified as overt and covert as well, based on how apparent they are. Overt errors are

errors that are obviously seen. For example, I happy. On the other hand, covert errors

are seen only in the context such as the word domain and extent. Errors may be

classified by the level of language such as phonological errors, vocabulary or lexical

errors and syntactic errors.

However, Error Analysis still has some weaknesses as it fails to determine

what kind of errors learners are making. Moreover, error analysis can be effective only

with learner production (speaking and writing) and not with learner reception (listening

and reading). Furthermore, there is no concrete explanation for communication

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strategies learners resort to such as avoidance. For these reasons, Corder and others

tried to form the new method which is widely known as Inter-language.

2.6 Previous studies related to collocations

There are numerous studies on L2 acquisition which aim to investigate

collocational ability of students at different levels of proficiency and the plausible

explanations to major sources of errors produced by language learners.

One piece of pioneering research conducted on collocation was by Bahns

and Eldaw (1993). In their study, German learners’ use of English collocations was

observed with the purpose to find out how German EFL learners produced English

collocations. A translation test and a 15-item cloze test were implemented in the study,

with concentration in verb + noun collocations. The German collocations were also

included in the translation test equivalents to the English collocations. In the cloze test,

there were sentences containing verb + noun collocations – the students were required

to fill in the missing verbs. The results indicated that the German students produced

errors twice in their translations of the verb + noun collocations compared to their

translation of general lexical words. For the cloze test, nearly 52% of the responses

were not natural to a native speaker of English. The results also suggest that for

advanced ESL students, a problem in the production of correct English stems from a

lack of collocational knowledge. Although the learners could use general lexical items,

their collocational knowledge did not expand much with their knowledge of general

vocabulary. In addition, the fact that the students failed to produce acceptable

collocational phrases has emphasized the essential element of communicative mastery

of English. The authors were also concerned over the fact that collocations are not

taught explicitly in the classroom and therefore learners do not pay any special attention

to learning them.

Fayez-Hussein (1990) conducted research on 200 Jordanian undergraduates

who were majoring in English. The aim of this research was to test the students' ability

to produce acceptable collocations in English. The 40-item multiple choice test was

administered to the students and they were required to complete collocations such as

idioms, fixed expressions, and restricted collocations. The collocations tested were

mainly noun + noun, adjective + noun, and verb + noun phrases. It was found that these

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students did poorly in a multiple choice test, with only 48.4% of the collocations

answered correctly. Negative language transfer was the main cause of incorrect

responses.

Zhang (1993) observed the use of collocations in the writings of native and

non-native college freshmen. Written essays and a gap-filling test consisting of 50 items

were used to elicit collocational answers from the students. The findings indicated that,

interestingly, collocational knowledge was the indicator of the students’ actual

collocational competency in writing.

In Huang’s study (2001), Taiwanese EFL students’ knowledge of English

collocations and the collocational errors committed by them were investigated. The

participants were 60 college students in Taiwan. A Simple Completion Test designed

to test the students’ knowledge of lexical collocations was the main instrument in this

study. The collocations were divided into four parts, which were free combinations,

restricted collocations, figurative idioms, and pure idioms. The results illustrated that

the students were able to produce free combination collocations at ease, while

difficulties lay in using pure idioms. For restricted collocations and figurative idioms,

it was shown that they did equally well. The researcher reached the conclusion that

errors submitted by the students resulted from native language transfer and insufficient

knowledge of collocations.

Granger (2001) also published a corpus-based study on the use of the high

frequency verb ‘make’ by native and non-native learners (Swedish and French

learners). The results showed that native speakers, even when their language

proficiency was at an advanced level, had difficulties in producing collocations with

‘make’, while the non-natives’ errors were explained as a result of native language

transfer. His study also suggested that learners of English language should practice

collocations by using concordance-based exercises to raise awareness of high frequency

verbs.

Mahmoud (2005) examined lexical errors produced by Arab students

majoring in English. The students’ essays were used to as a tool to investigate the

students’ knowledge of collocations. He found that 420 collocational patterns were used

in 42 essays and two thirds of them were incorrect. The results also revealed that,

surprisingly, intermediate and advanced students, who presumably had more

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knowledge of collocations, were likely to rely on native language transfer as it was the

convenient strategy to use when dealing with collocational problem. This study

suggested that English language teaching should put emphasize bilingual glossaries in

EFL textbooks, and bilingual collocation dictionaries should also be designed to

improve learners’ knowledge of collocations.

In a more local context, Pongpairoj and Mallikamas (2005) examined Thai

learners’ use of English collocations, both receptively and productively. They

investigated learners’ problems by observing three types of collocations, which are

lexical, grammatical and bound collocations. A multiple choice test, error recognition

test and gap-fill test were employed as the instruments in this study. To identify whether

the learners had difficulties in specific collocations over others, a quantitative analysis

was also conducted in this study. The results indicate wide-ranging problems in Thai

learners’ collocational knowledge. Difficulties were observed in both reception and

production of all three types of collocations. The findings showed that Thai learners

showed different orders of difficulty in the multiple choice and gap-fill tasks. While

grammatical collocations posed a problem for learners in both tasks, lexical and bound

collocations caused more problems in reception than in production. In the error

recognition task, a further interesting finding was the difference in correlation between

students’ ability to recognize and correct a collocational error. While the learners were

more likely to be able to identify and correct false lexical and bound collocations, they

were less able to correct a false grammatical collocation even if they could actually

recognize them.

The study of collocation use of Thai EFL learners by Boonyasaquan (2006)

also provides support that Thai EFL learners struggle with collocations. In her effort to

identify the collocation knowledge of Thai EFL learners, she analyzed collocational

violations in translation among Thai university students at Srinakharinwirot University

in Bangkok. The data were drawn from the final translation examination on the

Business Translation course. In the exam, the students were asked to translate a business

news article into English. The data, the Thai into English translated text, was parsed

into 30 parts based on the Thai version. Each Thai parsed part was meaningful in itself.

The researched showed that, by looking at the analysis of collocational violations, the

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adjective + noun pattern of collocational violations were found at the highest level by

21.31%, followed by the patterns of verb + noun (18.03%) and noun + verb (14.75%).

Phoocharoensil (2011) examined the errors in the collocation acquisition

made by Thai EFL learners. The participants were Thai EFL learners and they were

divided into two groups which differed in their English proficiency levels. Essays were

the tool for eliciting the data. The study revealed that Thai students violated some

collocation restrictions because they usually relied on first language transfer strategy

(or L1 transfer). The second source which was frequently used was synonymy and

generalization. Phoocharoensil also added that the verb + noun pattern was seen to be

the most problematic issue for Thai EFL learners.

Meechai (2015) explored the collocational competence of Thai EFL

Learners at Saint John’s University in Thailand to see if there was any difference

between third-year students in an English program and third-year students in a regular

program. A collocation test, a translation test and an in-depth interview were employed

in this study. Both tests focused on two verbs: make and take. The results revealed that

students in the English program did better than those in the regular program.

Another study on the use of delexical verbs of Thai EFL learners was

conducted by Kittigosin (2015). In his study, learners were divided into two groups:

low and high proficiency. Each group was asked to complete a 20-item translation test.

Moreover, an interview was also used as a tool to investigate problems regarding

delexical verbs. After analyzing the data, it was found that native language transfer,

synonymy, and overgeneralization were the three important factors causing the learners

to produce incorrect collocations.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Participants

Participants were 18 Thai students studying in a multilingual program during

the academic year 2017, at Prasatwittayakarn School in Prasat District, Surin Province,

Thailand. The program currently offers students two subjects in English (mathematics

and science) as well as an English language course. The age of students was around 16-

17 years old and they have been exposed to English since they were in primary school.

Sixteen students have been studying in this program since they were in grade 7 and 2

of them decided to join the multilingual program two years ago.

3.2 Data collection instrument

A translation test adopted from Meechai (2015) was assigned to students to

examine their productive knowledge of English verb + noun collocations. The test

consisted of 20 items. Each collocation was selected from the highest frequency rate

wordlist of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) with the focus on

the verbs ‘make’ and ‘take’ as these are the most common verbs found in the corpus

(Sinclair, 1990). Each item provides a sample sentence and a gap for students to fill in

the most appropriate verb that collocate with the noun (see Appendix A).

Examples: จอห์นถ่ายภาพ (picture) กบัครอบครัวในวนัเกิดของเขา

ถ่ายภาพ = __________________ a picture

ชาวโซมาลีจะเดือดร้อนแน่นอนถา้เรามีความคืบหน้า (progress) ในงานน้ี

มีความคืบหนา้ = __________________ progress

From the first example, students are required to fill in the verb ‘take’ which

collocates with the noun ‘picture’ while ‘make’ is the appropriate verb for progress in

the second example.

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To prove validity and reliability of the test, 10 students were asked to take the

test and give comments if the test was too easy or difficult.

Finally, an interview was also conducted to find the causes of collocational

violations in the students’ test. After finishing the scoring, the researcher asked two

students whose scores were lowest to explain why they chose the verb that they did to

make that particular collocation. Student answers are reported in Chapter 4.

3.3 Administrative procedure

First, the researcher contacted the Director of Prasatwittayakarn School and was

given permission to conduct this study. The researcher then visited a class on another

occasion for approximately 15 minutes, and explained to the students the purpose of

the study. After explaining to the students the task they would be asked to perform, the

researcher asked for volunteers to participate in the study, assuring them that if they did

any personal information collected would be kept in the strictest confidence. Each

student was given a translation test of English verb + noun collocations, administered

by the researcher herself. The students were given 30 minutes to finish the test.

3.4 Data analysis

Descriptive analysis was used in the study. The researcher marked the test and

calculated the total scores in a form of percentage using this formula:

S x 100

N

S = Score of the correct answer

N = Total number of test items

Finally, the processed data was presented in the form of tables and figures.

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CHAPTER 4

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter is divided into two parts: students’ ability to use English verb +

noun collocations and students’ collocational violations and plausible explanations.

To answer the question ‘How do multilingual students perform in an English

verb + noun collocation test?’ a translation test was assigned to 18 students of the

program. They were asked to translate the bold phrases which are considered

‘collocations’ in English. Misspelling was not counted as ‘deviance’ when scoring.

After scoring was complete, percentages were computed for each item.

4.1 Overall test results

As mentioned earlier, the aim of the translation test was to examine students’

knowledge of English verb + noun collocations. The analysis was based on judging

whether the respondents provided acceptable collocations or not. In addition to the

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the researcher also consulted

dictionaries such as Oxford Collocation Dictionary of English and Macmillan

Collocations Dictionary to double check if students’ responses were correct.

When the researcher marked the ‘translation test of verb + noun collocation’,

the names of participants and other biodata were omitted to maintain anonymity. Their

answers were counted as correct if they provided a verb that matched a noun mentioned

in one of the references. Spelling mistakes were not counted as incorrect answers.

Basic descriptive statistics (i.e., means and standard deviations) were computed

to summarize the findings on students’ collocational ability. These are presented in

Table 4.1 below.

Table 4.1: The mean, percentage and standard deviation of the test scores

Total number

of students

Total score Mean Percentage Standard

deviation

18 20 12.05 60.25 1.73

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Table 4.1 shows that the students’ ability to use English verb + noun

collocations was fairly good with a mean of 12.05 while the total score was 20. The

standard deviation, however, was at 1.73 indicating that the whole group’s collocation

ability was close to each other. It was possible that the test was quite difficult for the

students.

Table 4.2: A summary of the results of the ‘translation test of English verb + noun

collocations’

Item no. Acceptable collocation Unacceptable collocation

1 16/18 88% 2/18 12%

2 17/18 95% 1/18 5%

3 13/18 72% 5/18 28%

4 12/18 66% 6/18 34%

5 9/18 50% 9/18 50%

6 17/18 95% 1/18 5%

7 14/18 77% 4/18 23%

8 10/18 55% 8/18 45%

9 6/18 33% 12/18 67%

10 4/18 23% 14/18 77%

11 13/18 72% 5/18 28%

12 11/18 61% 7/18 39%

13 6/18 33% 12/18 67%

14 8/18 45% 10/18 55%

15 10/18 55% 8/18 45%

16 14/18 77% 4/18 23%

17 10/18 55% 8/18 45%

18 13/18 72% 5/18 28%

19 6/18 33% 12/18 67%

20 9/18 50% 9/18 50%

Total 218/360 60.55% 142/360 39.45%

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The results in Table 4.2 showed how the students performed in the translation

test of English verb + noun collocations. Overall, 60.55% of participants’ responses

were correct while 39.45% of their responses were incorrect.

Investigating the data in Table 4.2 more closely reveals that more than 88% of

the students did well on item 1 (take a picture), 2 (make friend) and 6 (make fun) which

are ‘take a picture’, ‘make friend’ and ‘make fun’, while most of them failed to form

acceptable collocation on item number 9 (take charge), 10 (take measures), 13 (make

judgement), and 14 (make a lot of noise) with correct percentages of 23%, 33%, 45%

and 33% respectively.

4.2 Students’ collocational violations and plausible explanations

The results shown above indicated that the students’ knowledge of English verb

+ noun collocations was fairly good. However, we cannot overlook the errors made by

the students and plausible explanations are sought to answer why such errors existed.

Table 4.3: Examples of verb + noun collocational violations

Item no. The expected answer The students’ answers

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

take a picture

make friend

take a walk

take an important role

make contact

make fun

make progress

make an official contribution

take a test

take charge

take measures

make peace

take effect

make/have* a picture

have* friend

have/get/make* a walk

get/have/play* an important role

get/do/find/have/take* contact

do* fun

have/do/get/increase* progress

take/have/give* an official

contribution

do/make/have/get/start* a test

make/do/work* charge

use/make/order* measures

stop/do/have/talk* peace

make/have/get /force* effect

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14

15

16

17

18

19

20

make judgment

make a lot of noise

make a profit

take turns

make a very good argument

take credit

take note

take/do/decide* judgment

take/have/send/shout* a lot of

noise

have/get/create/do* a profit

make/have/switch* turns

do/find/discuss/have* a very good

argument

receive/get/have/praise/make*

credit

make/get/receive/know/have* note

In Table 4.3, the variety of collocational violations committed by the students

are displayed. Only one deviation committed on item 2 (make friend) and 6 (make fun).

Interestingly, when observing items 5 (make contact), 9 (take a test), 19 (take credit),

and 20 (take note), the students came up with more than 4 answers for the nouns given.

It can be assumed that the students could produce verb + noun collocations in item 2

and 6 at ease, while coming up with the correct answers for item 5, 9, 19, and 20 was a

more difficult task for them.

From the examples above, it can be assumed that the students used the following

strategies in dealing with collocations they were not familiar with:

(1) Language transfer

Language transfer was seen here as the strategy the students mostly relied on

when dealing with the translation test, as shown on item 9 (take a test), 10 (take charge),

11 (take measures), 13 (take effect) and 17 (take turns). It seems that the students did

not know how to form a correct collocation and simply used a verb that was equivalent

to the Thai meaning, as illustrated in the examples below.

*do a test tham-kho-sob

*do charge tham-na-tee

*have effect mii-phon-bang-khab

*use measures chai-mad-tra-garn

*switch turns sa-lab-gan

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Therefore, errors probably occurred because the students experienced native

language interference. These findings are consistent with the results of Phoocharoensilp

(2011) and Meechai (2015), which indicated that language transfer was the major factor

contributing to collocational errors. Language transfer strategies were also found in the

work of Kittigosin (2015), who reported that many Thai EFL learners facing challenges

in producing the correct collocations.

(2) Other strategies

Besides language transfer, it was also found that the students employed other

strategies they thought suitable for some of the words. After investigating the errors,

students appeared to use a creative use of language when dealing with collocations that

they did not know. As result, they produced some unnatural collocations as shown in

the examples below:

*talk peace yud-ti-song-kram

*discuss a very good argument ha-khor-toh-yang

From the examples above, the students invented their own collocations based

on their understanding and their limited exposure to English collocations. Therefore,

students used ‘talk peace’ instead of ‘make peace’ which is actually the correct

collocation. The results of the current study are supported by the work of Granger

(1998) in that the findings illustrated deviations from creating collocations that French

learners think acceptable.

From the interview, the students gave reasons such as ‘peace’ could be related

to negotiation to end war with another party. As a consequence, the verb ‘talk’ was

invented in order to serve the understanding of the student. Same in ‘discuss a very

good argument’, where ‘discuss’ is a deviation, the interviewed student explained that

‘argument’ could be related to discussion or debate to reach the conclusion. However,

with limited knowledge of some collocations, she failed to make the acceptable

collocation of ‘make a very good argument’. This student wrote ‘discuss’ instead to

convey her understanding of the meaning of argument.

When interviewing two of the students about the collocations ‘take a picture’,

‘make friend’ and ‘make fun’, they said these collocations are frequently used in social

networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. However, item number 4

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(take measures), 8 (make an official contribution), 10 (take charge), 13 (take effect), 14

(make judgement), 16 (make a profit), 18 (make a very good argument), 19 (take credit)

and 20 (take note) are taken from newspaper or academic journals that they do not read

in daily lives.

Table 4.4: A summary of collocational violations reflected in percentages

Item no. Percentage of errors

1 make (50%), have (50%)

2 have (100%)

3 have (60%), get (20%), make (20%)

4 get (50%), have (33%), play (27%)

5 get (22%), do (33%), find (11.5%), have (22%), take (11.5)

6 do fun (100%)

7 have (25%), do (25%), get (25%), increase (25%)

8 take (25%), have (25%), give (50%)

9 do (50%), make (17%), have (17%), get (8%), start (8%)

10 make (72%), do (72%), work (14%)

11 use (60%), make (20%), order (20%)

12 stop (14%), do (14%), have (58%), talk (14%)

13 make (33%), have (42%), get (17%), force (8%)

14 take (50%), do (20%), decide (30%)

15 take (13%), have (37%), send (25%), shout (25%)

16 have (25%), get (25%), create (25%), do(25%)

18 do (13%), find (61%), discuss (13%), have (13%)

19 receive (17%), get (42%), have (25%), praise (8%), make (8%)

20 make (45%), get (11%), receive (11%), know (11%), have (11%),

accept (11%)

Table 4.4 illustrates the variety of verbs used by the students. The results

showed that ‘have’ was frequently chosen by the students at 75%. The verbs ‘get’ and

‘do’ were ranked the second by 45%. Other verbs were counted by 1% in the translation

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test by the students. As seen in the Table 4.5 below, it is obvious that the first four verbs

used by the students are common verbs.

Table 4.5: A summary of the verbs the students used instead of ‘take’ in the translation

test

Verbs Frequency of use Percentage

have 8 40%

make 7 35%

get 6 30%

do 2 10%

play 1 5%

start 1 5%

work 1 5%

use 1 5%

order 1 5%

force 1 5%

switch 1 5%

receive 1 5%

know 1 5%

From Table 4.5, it was seen that the students used ‘have’ to substitute the verb

‘take’ the most, with a 40% frequency. There was a slight difference between the use

of ‘make’ and ‘get’ by 35% and 30%, respectively. The verb ‘do’ was used as a

substitute by 10% of the sample. The rest were the verbs that had been used in the test

with frequencies of just 10% each.

Table 4.6: A summary of the verbs the students used instead of ‘make’ in the translation

test

Verbs Frequency of use Percentage

have 8 40%

do 6 30%

take 4 20%

get 3 15%

find 2 10%

increase 1 5%

give 1 5%

stop 1 5%

talk 1 5%

decide 1 5%

send 1 5%

shout 1 5%

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create 1 5%

discuss 1 5%

As seen in Table 4.6, the students used ‘have’ to substitute the verb ‘take’ the

most frequently (40%). There was a slight difference between the use of ‘make’ and

‘get’ by 35% and 30%, respectively. The verb ‘do’ was used just by 10% of the sample,

while the remaining verbs used in the test were substituted at just 5%.

By looking at Table 4.5 and Table 4.6 above, we see that the first four verbs the

students used in the translation test are the most common words claimed by Sinclair

(1990). It was found that the percentage of use of these verbs were not significantly

different from each other. Based on the study of Chi, Wong and Wong (1994) which

showed that students had difficulty in producing acceptable collocations because of

confusions between delexical verbs, the students were confused to use delexical verbs

to form collocations.

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This chapter will present three parts: conclusion of the study, limitations and

suggestions for further study.

5.1 Conclusion

The aim of this study was to investigate how multilingual program students at

Prasatwittayakarn School perform in a verb + noun collocation test.

In this study, the researcher adopted Benson, Benson and Ilson’s classification

of collocations which are grammatical collocations and lexical collocations. The

students’ answers were calculated into percentages, accumulated and categorized. The

students’ violations on English collocations were explained as the effects of language

transfer, creative invention and lack of collocational knowledge (Farghal & Obiedat,

1995; Huang, 2001; James, 1998).

A 20-item verb + noun collocational test administered to a group of 18 students

in multilingual program revealed that their collocational performance was fairly good

with the percentage of 60.25% and the mean of 12.05%. The findings also revealed that

the students’ limited knowledge of collocations and their native language transfer

played an important role in producing acceptable collocations.

5.2 Pedagogical implications

This study revealed that the major sources of errors came from language

transfer, creative invention and lack of collocational knowledge. Therefore, the

pedagogical implications arises as follows:

5.2.1 Language transfer is still one of the most important factors underlying

unacceptable production of collocations in language learners. It is recommended that

bilingual dictionaries should be used in English language classes in order that learners

can compare between their native language and English collocations.

5.2.2 The students’ creative invention of collocations, especially in writing,

suggest that feedback in writing will be important for learners to improve their

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collocational knowledge. Feedback about incorrect collocations help learners become

aware of future collocational use, so they do not rely solely on their creativity.

5.2.3 For the lack of collocational knowledge, exercise drills are required to

improve learners’ collocation usage. Exercises should be created from authentic

sources such as news, magazines or articles.

5.3 Limitations of the study

5.2.1 The data from this study were from only 18 multilingual program students.

The results might be different if the test was conducted with a larger group or different

group of students such as regular program students.

5.2.2 The study focused only on Benson, Benson and Ilson’s classification of

collocations. Others approaches to testing collocations might be used in future studies

such as Lewis’s classification of collocation.

5.2.3 The study only focused on verb + noun collocations. Testing other types

of collocations, e.g. adjective + noun, adverb + verb, noun + noun, might yield different

and equally interesting results.

5.4 Suggestions for further study

5.4.1 A study of collocational knowledge of students can be conducted at other

levels such as at the undergraduate or graduate level.

5.4.2 A comparative study could be conducted in order to see the differences

between particular groups of students such as English program and regular program

students.

5.4.3 Since this deals with L2 acquisition, it is worthwhile to conduct a study of

collocational violations in writing or speaking which result from many factors, e.g.,

language transfer, overgeneralization, repetition, synonymy and so on.

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APPENDIX

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APPENDIX

A TRANSLATION TEST

Instruction: Translate the Thai expressions in bold into English by putting the best verbs in the blanks to make correct verb + noun collocations.

1. จอห์นถ่ายภาพ (picture) กับครอบครัวในวันเกิดของเขา

ถ่ายภาพ = __________________ a picture

2. คุณต้องพยายามผูกมิตร (friend) ให้มากหากต้องการชนะการโหวตคร้ังน้ี

ผูกมิตร = __________________ friend

3. ฉันอาจจะไปเดินเล่น (walk) รอบ ๆ เมือง

เดินเล่น = __________________ walk

4. เจนสนับสนุนให้ลินดาได้รับบทบาท (role) ส าคัญในละครเร่ืองน้ี

ได้รับบทบาท = __________________ role

5. พวกเรายังคงติดต่อ (contact) กัน แม้จะเรียนจบกันไปแล้ว

ติดต่อ = __________________ contact

6. ถ้าคุณหัวเราะเยาะ (fun) ฉัน ฉันจะไม่บอกอะไรคุณเลย

หัวเราะเยาะ = __________________ fun

7. ชาวโซมาลีจะเดือดร้อนแน่นอนถ้าเรามีความคืบหน้า (progress) ในงานน้ี

มีความคืบหน้า = __________________ progress

8. เขาสนับสนุน (contribution) งานวิจัยเร่ืองโรคมะเร็งอย่างเป็นทางการ

สนับสนุน = __________________ contribution

9. ฉันควรจะไปถึงที่น่ันในตอนบ่ายหลังจากท าข้อสอบ (test) เสร็จแล้ว

ข้อสอบ = __________________ test

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10. ฉันเฝ้ารอบางคนที่จะเข้ามาท าหน้าท่ี (charge) และสร้างความเปลี่ยนแปลง

ท าหน้าที่ = __________________ charge

11. คุณจะใช้มาตรการ (measures) ขั้นเด็ดขาดเลยหรือเปล่า

ใช้มาตรการ = __________________ measures

12. รัฐบาลซีเรียไม่เข้มแข็งพอที่จะยุติสงคราม (peace) กับอิสราเอล

ยุติสงคราม = __________________ peace

13. กฎหมายฉบับน้ีมีผลบังคับ (effect) ใช้ในเดือนมิถุนายน

มีผลบังคับ = __________________ effect

14. ทั้งคนขาวและคนผิวสีในอเมริกาตัดสินใจ (judgment) เร่ืองชาวแอฟริกัน-อเมริกัน

ตัดสินใจ = __________________ judgment

15. พวกเขาส่งเสียงดัง (noise) ตอนที่เราเล่นได้ดี

ส่งเสียงดัง = __________________ noise

16. วัตถุประสงค์หลักของการท าธุรกิจคือการสร้างผลก าไร (profit)

สร้างผลก าไร = __________________ profit

17. ตอนที่มีผู้โดยสารหนาแน่น พวกเขาสลับกัน (turns) ลุกและน่ัง เพื่อให้ต่างฝ่ายได้สบายกันบ้าง

สลับกัน = __________________ turns

18. ฉันคิดว่าคุณสามารถหาข้อโต้แย้ง (argument) ที่ดีต่อรูสเวลได้

หาข้อโต้แย้ง = __________________ argument

19. ฉันไม่แน่ใจว่าเธอสมควรได้รับการยกย่อง (credit) ในเร่ืองน้ีหรือไม่

ได้รับการยกย่อง = __________________ credit

20. เราหวังว่าผู้มีอ านาจในสถาบันน้ีจะรับทราบ (note) และจัดเตรียมการสอนที่เหมาะสมต่อไป

รับทราบ = __________________ note

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BIOGRAPHY

Name Miss Pitchayanin Thanimkarn

Date of Birth October 5, 1990

Educational Attainment 2013: Bachelor of Arts in English

Work Position English and mathematics teacher

Prasatwittayakarn School, Prasat District,

Surin Province

Scholarship 2015: Teacher Assistant (TA), Thammasat

University

Work Experiences 22017 - Present: English and Mathematics teacher,

Prasatwittayakarn School.

2015 - 2017: Academic officer of English, Aksorn

Charoen Tat ACT, Co., Ltd.

2013 - 2014: Product development officer,

WisdomWide Company.

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