Collocation Instruction And The Impact On Chinese EFL Learners' Writing Development

Vocabulary is the core of language.Only with a large stock of vocabulary can learners master a second language.It is universally acknowledged that language acquisition share a common paradigm,that is,learners need to learn a large quantity of unanalyzed chunks in a predictable social context.Collocational knowledge and skills are considered important components of language competence in second language acquisition.Mastery and correct use of collocation is directly related to the quality of writing production,in that it prevents awkward expression and the idiomatic wording facilitates smooth communication.However,prefabricated collocations follows no regular rule,making it particularly important and difficult for L2 learners to master collocations in the target language.Few studies have investigated the development of L2 collocational knowledge longitudinally.Fewer still have employed more than a handful of participants.Additionally,almost all studies to this day have investigated advanced learners of English.Other L2 proficiencies and backgrounds have long been neglected.Moreover,most current studies have targeted in English as a second language(ESL)classrooms and little has been done under English as a foreign language(EFL)learning context,especially under the Chinese situation where,compared to ESL context,learners are provided with less L2 exposure,which is a crucial factor to collocational development.The lacuna left by this paucity motivated the present study.This thesis will analyze the efficacy of incorporating collocations to teaching English writing to Chinese EFL learners and seeks to offer some pedagogical implications to authentic classroom teaching writing practice.This study employed a 7-week quasi-experiment with a pretest-treatment-posttest model.There were two groups,the group(N=19)and the control group(N=17).They received different treatment,the experiment group,apart from basic writing instruction,followed an extra interactional collocation syllabus to raise the awareness of and practice collocation knowledge;while the control group were designed neither access nor avoidance to extra collocation instruction but adopted conventional paradigm to teach writing.During their respective experiment sessions,two tests(i.e.a topic argumentative writing)were administered to figure out learners' collocational frequency as well as writing proficiency.The results showed that the experiment group far surpassed control group in both collocation frequency and writing proficiency,which are strongly and positively correlated to each other.It can thus be interpreted that incorporating collocation instruction does have positive effect in improving students' collocation competence as well as writing proficiency.Based on the current study,interaction as well as a great deal of exposure to English collocation,both classroom exposure and extra-curricular,is believed to facilitate the development of language.Students should be introduced and encouraged to become aware of collocation in the early stages of learning so as to improve their L2 proficiency.