Thai EFL Learners' Collocational Competence and Their Perceptions of Collocational Difficulty

Abstract

The collocational competence of undergraduate students of English at a university in northeastern Thailand and their perceptions of collocational difficulty were investigated in this study. The participants were 153 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-year students of English selected through a convenient sampling method and via their consents to take part in the study. The participants who were enrolled in the second term of academic year 2017 were administered a collocational competence test which comprised 35 fill-in-the-blank items with optional alternatives. They were to answer a Likert's type questionnaire of 5 rating scales (Reliability co-efficient = 0.96) probing their perceptions of the difficulty of collocations in parallel with each test item. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and One-Way ANOVA was computed to test the hypothesis. The results indicated that on the whole the participants had a 'moderate level' of collocational competence. They were not significantly different in terms of their collocational competence when it comes to their different years of studies. The participants perceived collocations as fairly difficult with the idiomatic collocations reported as being the most difficult category. The findings were discussed in relation to the theoretical difficulty of collocations and suggestions for pedagogy and further research were offered.

Collocational Competence as a measure of ESL / EFL Competency: A Scoping Review

“…Having collocational competence is especially important for second and foreign language learners as acknowledged by Dukali (2018). Dokchandra (2019) revealed that language and collocational knowledge are simultaneously important, thereby highlighting the importance of collocational competence. Collocation is necessary for one to understand how to combine words and use language.…”

“…For instance, McCarthy (1995) defined collocation as 'a marriage contract between words' (p. 12), whereas Lewis (2000) defined such concept as 'the way in which words co-occur in natural text in statistically significant ways' (p. 132). Dokchandra (2019) defined collocations as the way one word seems to automatically appear with another word in a recurring manner. The arbitrariness of words is an important feature of collocations.…”

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

“…To date, various research studies have been conducted to understand the collocational knowledge of English language learners (Abdullah et al, 2015;Chang, 2018;Dokchandra, 2019;Harida & Hamka, 2019;Hong et al, 2011;Kamarudin et al, 2020;Mirsalari et al, 2019;Wongkhan & Thienthong, 2020). In this regard, high attention is observed to be directed to adult learners as compared to young learners.…”

Exploring Thai EFL Students’ Knowledge of English Binomials

“…Almashikhi, 2018;Tran, 2013) and collocations in particular (e.g. Dokchandra, 2015Dokchandra, , 2019Mongkolchai, 2009;, but the studies on EFL learners' knowledge or competence in the English expressions focusing on binomials as one type of collocations are scant. In the context of Thailand where English has been taught as a foreign language in almost every educational settings and at nearly all levels, research on English binomials is even more difficult to find.…”

“…Most research has been conducted to explore Thai EFL tertiary learners' holistic knowledge of collocations (Maneewan, 2017;Pisitsenaku, 2019;Wasuntarasophit, 2015) and the learners' knowledge of collocations at the receptive and productive levels (e.g. Detdamrongpreecha, 2014;Dokchandra, 2019). Despite the fact that binomials are one essential part of English idiomatic expressions, they are under-researched.…”