Effectiveness of a Proposed Program Based on the Lexical Approach in Fostering EFL Faculty of Management Sciences Students’ Business Collocational Knowledge and Competence

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to develop first year EFL Faculty of Management Sciences students' business collocational knowledge and competence through a proposed program based on the Lexical Approach. It focused on developing the experimental group students' receptive and productive knowledge of 'verb + noun', 'noun + noun' and 'adjective+ noun' business collocations. Furthermore, the study program aimed to promote the experimental group students' ability to use these collocations in business writing to foster their collocational competence. The study followed the quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group/ experimental group design where two intact groups were randomly assigned to the control and experimental groups. While the control group students received regular instruction, the experimental group was taught by the researcher throughout the fall semester of the academic year 2020-2021 according to the proposed program. The study tools included a pre-/post-collocational knowledge test and a pre-/post-collocational competence business writing test. Results indicated that the experimental group students outperformed the control group students on the collocational knowledge and competence post-tests. Also, there were statistically significant differences between the experimental group students' pre-tests and post-tests scores in favour of the post-tests scores. Therefore, it was concluded that the proposed program was effective in developing the experimental group students' lexical business collocational knowledge and competence.