Acquisition of English Collocations through Productive Skills—Analysis of Translation Errors

Abstract

Even though the number of studies focused on English collocations has proliferated in the past twenty years, there is still considerable disagreement over a single unitary definition of collocations (Leśniewska, 2006, p. 1; Barfield & Gyllstad, 2009, p. 23), which is why the distinction between collocations, idioms and free word combinations is relatively blurry. Collocations play a major role in foreign language acquisition as they increase the language proficiency of the speaker. This paper is a continuation of the research on acquisition of English collocations as a part of an LSP course, conducted among the native speakers of Croatian in June 2013. The conducted analysis was intended to determine to what extent the general English language proficiency affects the knowledge of collocations in the LSP and how and to which extent the congruence of collocations affects the types of errors in translation tasks. Since the previous research showed that productive (translation) tasks pose a bigger challenge for language acquirers than receptive skills (Mustapić & Malenica, 2013), this paper has provided a detailed analysis of translation errors. The results show a need for didactic improvements in terms of new teaching materials and exercises that would develop productive skills and facilitate acquisition of collocations, both in general language and language for specific purposes.