A Study on Learning English Collocations Among the 2nd Year Students of English Department, ULIS, VNUH

Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study

When native speakers learn their own language in a natural setting, they can quickly pick up common word patterns through being immersed in the language and by relying on their intuitions. This type of implicit knowledge is acquired unconsciously through frequent exposure to the strings of words and set phrases encountered in everyday communicative

interaction

(Kirsner, 1994).

In the case of non-native learners,

however, exposure to the target language is not so readily available and opportunities for implicit learning are greatly reduced. They therefore do not have access to the significant store of core words and collocations that form the basis of native speaker fluency. In particular, they lack the ability for native-like selection (Pawley & Syder, 1983) in that they are less able to choose the preferred linguistic sequence from a number of grammatically acceptable alternatives. They therefore do not have the same level of fluency and pragmatic competence that they possess in their first language. (Brian & Ohtake, 2003)

When someone learns English as a second language, the situation is the same. Hence, as English learners, we decide to carry out this paper “A study on learning English collocations among the 2nd year students of Faculty of English Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH”. Firstly, we know that it is very difficult to learn English collocations because of a great number of English collocations without any rules to learn. After this study, we hope to bring readers some effective ways to learn English collocations.

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Another reason for this present study is due to the importance of English collocations in learning English. English collocations are used in many situations such as speaking (formal and informal), writing (formal and informal). Besides, they also play an important role in making our speech and writing more natural and beautiful.

Moreover, we find that there are not many researches on learning English collocation among students. For example, when we found materials for this paper in English Department Library, there were only two studies related to collocations, namely “How to learn collocations with common verbs effectively in writing skill for first-year students” (Loan& Quynh, 2007), and “How to deal with phrasal verbs among secondyear students” (Chi & Giang, 2007). For the big problem as collocation, it is not enough. Hence, we decided to carry out this study to bring out more information about collocation. We think both lecturers and students have to be aware of the importance of English collocations and the situation of learning them among students as well so that they can work out the methods to teach and to learn English collocation effectively.

1.2.

Aims of the study

First of all, we want to raise awareness in students and lecturers about the importance of English collocations and learning English collocations.

Secondly, we will provide readers with the ways of learning English collocations among 2nd year students of Faculty of English Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH.

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Thirdly, we want to suggest some tips to help the 2nd year students to learn English collocations more effectively.

In brief, these objectives could be summarized into three research questions as follows:

1. What is the attitude of the 2nd students of Faculty of English Teacher Education,

ULIS, VNUH to collocations and learning English collocations? 2. What are the common ways the 2nd students of Faculty of English Teacher

Education, ULIS, VNUH often use to learn English collocations? 3. Which is the most effective way to learn English collocations according to the

2nd students?

1.3. Scope of the study

Due to the small scope of a student research paper and to serve the practical purpose of the student researchers, this paper only focuses on the overview of learning collocations among the 2nd year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH. Specifically, the paper looks at how the 2 nd year students deal with collocations when they learn English and the common and effective ways they often use to learn English collocations. Consequently, suggestions to help English learners in general and the 2nd year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH in particular improve in learning English collocations can be pointed out. This will give the researchers focused aims, which may be conducive to bringing about the desired outcomes.

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With collocations, we will focus on finding the effective ways to learn them and try our best to give some more suggestions to help second-year students overcome difficult collocation exercises.

1.4. Methods of the study 1.4.1. Data collection methods In order to carry out this study, firstly, a questionnaire was used for 100 second-year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH so that data about collocations and learning English collocations could be gathered from different viewpoints. In addition, a set of interview schedule was applied to exploit further information from 80 students out of 100 students above right after they had completed the questionnaires. 1.4.2. Data analysis methods To begin with, the collected data would be classified to answer the three research questions. Specifically, all of the data gathered for the first three questions in the questionnaire are used to answer the first research question. The second research question is expected to be solved by analyzing the data collected from the 4th and 6th questions in questionnaire, while the 7th and 8th questions would help to solve the last research question of the study. Then, for each research question, data would be displayed into pie charts to facilitate the synthesis, comparison and generalization of the data. Graphs are principally used to analyze and compare figures, while tables are preferably applied when further details are required.

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Finally, the data from interviews are frequently used to combine with results from questionnaire to illustrate the analysis of data. 1.5. An overview of the rest of the paper The rest of the paper includes four chapters as follows: Chapter 2 – Literature review – provides the background of the study, including definition of key concept (collocation), types of collocations, the importance of collocations and some other related studies. Chapter 3 – Methodology – describes the participants and instruments of the study, as well as the procedure employed to carry out the research. Chapter 4 – Results and Discussion - presents, analyzes, discusses the findings that the researchers found out from the data collected according to the three research questions, gives implications and recommendations as well. Chapter 5 – Conclusion – summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper. Following this chapter are References and Appendices.

Summary In this chapter, the researchers have elaborated on these following points: (1) Statement and rationale for the study (2) Aims of the study

(3) Scope of the study (4) Methods of the study (5) An overview of the rest of the paper

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Generally speaking, these elaborations have not only justified the major contents and structure of the study but will also work as the guidelines for the rest of the paper.

Chapter 2: Literature Review 2.1. Key concepts 2.1.1. Collocation 2.1.1.1. Definition of collocation Collocation constitutes a very important and complicated part in English. Particularly interesting are the subtle and not- easily- explainable patterns of word usage that native speakers all know: why we say “a stiff breeze” but not “a stiff wind” (while either “a strong breeze” or “a strong wind” is okay), or why we speak of “broad daylight” but not “bright daylight” or “narrow darkness”. (Christopher Manning & Hinrich Schutze, 1999) The reason is collocation. It is not easy to find the easiest- tounderstand definition of collocation because how to define it still differs from authors to authors.

A collocation is an expression consisting of two or more words that correspond to some conventional way of saying things. Or in the words of Firth (1957: 181): “Collocations of a given word are statements of the habitual or customary places of that word.”

Collocation can be defined as the restrictions on how words can be used together, for example, which prepositions and verbs are used together, or which nouns appear with particular verbs (Richards, Platt and Platt, 1992). As Sinclair (1991) points out, it is

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obvious that words do not appear at random in texts, and people could not produce natural sentences simply by operating on the principle of grammar. Rather, words seem to be selected in pairs or groups and language users are considered to have available to them “a large number of semi- preconstructed phrases that constitute single choices” (Sinclair, 1991, cited in Kasuya, 2008) Another definition is: “Collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing.” (Margaret et al., 2002). According to C. Fernando in “Idioms and Idiomacity” (1996), there is the shortest way to define collocation: “Collocation is defined as the company words keep”. From the viewpoint of H. Jackson in “Grammar and Vocabulary” (2002), “collocation is a lexical relationship of mutual expectancy, the presence of particular lexical item gives rise to the greatest chance likelihood that other lexical items belonging to the same area of meaning will also occur”. This definition focuses on the lexical aspect of collocation. From the corpus linguistics perspective, collocation is defined as “a sequence of words or terms which co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. They form a syntactic and semantic unit whose meaning cannot be derived compositionally” (Wikipedia, 2010). According to the researchers, collocations are groups of words going together in typical cases. To sum up, though there are many different definitions of collocation, all of them share a common feature that collocations are collections of words that “fit together” or, in a figurative way, collocation is said “to be a marriage contract between words, and some

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words are more firmly married to each other than others”. (Mc Carthy). This research paper adopts the viewpoint of C. Fernando, Firth, H. Jackson, Margaret et al, Sinclair, and Wikipedia. 2.1.1.2. Types of collocations According to Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English, in general, collocations can be divided into 10 types: Type Adj+ Noun Quantifier+Noun Verb + Noun Noun + Verb Noun + Noun Prep + Noun Verb + Prep Verb + Adv Adv + Adj Adj + Prep

Example Beautiful girl Little sugar Have a look The situation arises A surge of anger In astonishment Look into Wave frantically Extremely beautiful Interested in

(Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English, 2002) Another way to classify collocations is based on the principle: how the words in collocations are fixed. In “Teaching Collocation” (2000), Jimmie Hill offers the following schema for pointing out collocations to students:

Type

Example

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Unique collocations Strong collocations Medium- strength collocations Weak collocation

See the point See a doctor See a film (Hill, 2000)

In our paper, we will focus on the first classification because of three main reasons. Firstly, the classification of Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English is very popular with English learners. Moreover, most of the collocation exercises are based on this classification. And at last, our focused aims are to give some more suggestions to help the 2nd year students to learn English collocations more effectively, in other words, help them overcome difficulties when learning the 10-type-listed collocations. So, to the end of this paper, these types of collocations are examined. 2.1.1.3. The importance of collocations and learning collocations

In “Corpus Evidence on English Collocational Patterns in Scientific WritingImplications for Effective Writing Development”, Brian Morren & Hiroshi Ohtake wrote:

Knowledge of vocabulary is an essential component in written production in that quality of writing is closely related to vocabulary proficiency (Astika, 1993). However, rather than the number of words a reader knows, it is the depth of word knowledge that is critical in the production of text (Liu & Shaw, 2001). If readers have only a partial knowledge of a particular word, this may not be sufficient to grasp the full range of meanings of the word as it is used in various contexts (Hunston & Francis, 1998). It is also important to know which particular patterns are common in a given register and which are not. Such information would certainly be useful to learners (Biber & Conrad, 2001). In the absence of such knowledge, learners of all levels of proficiency are likely to remain insensitive to the range of potential meanings expressed by a given word and experience difficulties in producing the appropriate sense of a word in their academic writing. (Brian & Ohtake,2003)

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In this study, two researchers focused on using vocabulary in general, English collocational patterns in particular in scientific writing. The researchers also pointed out the importance of using vocabulary proficiently even when someone knew about meanings of words. In other words, the researchers emphasized the importance of understanding the ways in which patterns of words went together.

Michiko Kasuya, in Teaching Collocation in Japanese Classrooms, stresses the importance of learning and teaching collocation among teachers and students in Japan: Languages are full of strong collocational pairs and, therefore, the study of collocation is fundamental in the study of vocabulary. Collocation is “an important organizing principle in the vocabulary of any language” (McCarthy, 1990, p.12). (…) Collocational knowledge is part of native speakers’ competence, and can be problems for learners in cases where collocability is language-specific and is not solely determined by universal semantic restrictions (McCarthy, 1990). The argument that collocation is an important level of language selection is persuasive when we observe foreign-learner texts containing deviant collocations. There is surely need for an understanding of and a concern with collocation by teachers and students (Carter and McCarthy, 1988). (Kasuya, 2008)

In this case, Michiko Kasuya reemphasized the vital play of collocations as well as learning collocations. The author also agreed that collocations are really challenging to non- native learners because of the greatly reduced implicit learning. So, as we can see, collocation is really important to many fields of language using, especially to writing. It makes speech and writing sound natural and alive. English learners often create very long and wordy ways of defining and discussing the issues because they do not know much about collocation. It is collocation that helps to bring language production closer to native speakers’ norms.

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Collocation also saves us a lot of time and effort when we are trying to express ourselves. Learning collocation leads to an increase in written and spoken fluency. It is also the thoughts of Kasuya: Learning collocation can be considered an essential part of acquiring language, because the meaning of a word has a great deal to do with the words with which it usually associates. “Not only do these associations assist the learner in committing these words to memory, they also aid in defining the semantic area of a word”, and also “permit people to know what kind of words they can expect to find together” (Nattinger, 1988, p.69-70). Aitchison (1994) notes that when we observe the human word-web, that is the way in which people connect words together in their mind, words appear to be organized in semantic fields, and there, collocational linking seems to be particularly. (Kasuya, 2008)

Moreover, collocation provides “chunks” of English that are ready to use. Our brain tends to store languages in chunks rather than individual words. Therefore, when we speak or write, it is more efficient for us to remember and use phrases as chunks than constructing one word at a time. Native English speakers will unconsciously predict what is going to be said or written based on their own use of these phrases while nonnative speakers often combine some words into phrasing patterns in their ways. This makes them harder to be understood by the native speakers.

In general, collocation is a complicated part but indispensable one in English. For students who have the desire to master this language, it is extremely essential to look through the background knowledge of collocation as well as to be aware of its importance. (Loan& Quynh, 2007). 2.1.2. Learning collocations 2.1.2.1. Learning strategy

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Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values or preferences; involving processing different types of information; and occurring as a result of habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. Human learning may occur as part of education or personal development. It may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy. (Wikipedia, 2010) Learning strategies refer to methods that students use to learn. This ranges from techniques for improved memory to better studying or test-taking strategies. For example, the method of loci is a classic memory improvement technique; it involves making associations between facts to be remembered and particular locations. In order to remember something, you simply visualize places and the associated facts. (Learning Strategies, 2010). While searching for the materials, we found that there were many different learning strategies from many authors. However, because of the limitation of scope and time, we only listed several learning strategies. Some learning strategies involve changes to the design of instruction. For example, the use of questions before, during or after instruction has been shown to increase the degree of learning according to Ausubel's theory. It is concerned with how individuals learn large amounts of meaningful material from verbal/textual presentations in a school setting (in contrast to theories developed in the context of laboratory experiments). In Ausubel’s opinion, learning is based upon the kinds of superordinate, representational, and combinatorial processes that occur during the reception of information. A primary process in learning is subsumption in which new material is related to relevant ideas in the existing cognitive structure on a substantive, non-

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verbatim basis. Cognitive structures represent the residue of all learning experiences; forgetting occurs because certain details get integrated and lose their individual identity. A major instructional mechanism proposed by Ausubel is the use of advance organizers: "These organizers are introduced in advance of learning itself, and are also presented at a higher level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness; and since the substantive content of a given organizer or series of organizers is selected on the basis of its suitability for explaining, integrating, and interrelating the material they precede, this strategy simultaneously satisfies the substantive as well as the programming criteria for enhancing the organization strength of cognitive structure." (1963 , p. 81).

Ausubel emphasizes that advance organizers are different from overviews and summaries which simply emphasize key ideas and are presented at the same level of abstraction and generality as the rest of the material. Organizers act as a subsuming bridge between new learning material and existing related ideas. (Learning Strategies, 2010). Methods that attempt to increase the degree of learning that occurs have been called "mathemagenic" (Ropthkopf, 1970). In the mid-1960's, Rothkopf (1965, 1966), investigating the effects of questions placed into text passages, coined the term mathemagenic, meaning "to give birth to learning." His intention was to highlight the fact that it is something that learners do in processing (thinking about) learning material that causes learning and long-term retention of the learning material.

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When learners are faced with learning materials, their attention to that learning material deteriorates with time. However, as Rothkopf (1982) illustrated, when the learning material is interspersed with questions on the material (even without answers), learners can maintain their attention at a relatively high level for long periods of time. The interspersed questions prompt learners to process the material in a manner that is more likely to give birth to learning. The adjunct- question research showed us that test-like events are useful in helping learners to bolster memory for the information targeted by the question and to stay attentive to the most important aspects of the learning material. The concept of mathemagenic behavior is very much a central component in the way we think about learning. (Thalheimer, 2006). A typical study skill program is SQ3R which suggests 5 steps: (1) survey the material to be learned, (2) develop questions about the material, (3) read the material, (4) recall the key ideas, and (5) review the material. To sum up, there are many types of learning strategies with their own characteristics as well as helpfulness. So make use of them to have a good way of learning. 2.1.2.2. Learning collocations strategy There have been numerous documents discussing collocation learning strategies. The following highlights some of the most common strategies that may be helpful for Vietnamese learners, especially second year students at ULIS, VNUH. Be aware of collocations, and try to recognize them when see or hear them. Treat collocations as single blocks of language. Think of them as individual blocks or chunks, and learn strongly support, not strongly + support.

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When learning a new word, write down other words that collocate with it (remember rightly, remember distinctly, remember vaguely, remember vividly). Read as much as possible. Reading is an excellent way to learn vocabulary and collocations in context and naturally. Revise what you learn regularly. Practice using new collocations in context as soon as possible after learning them. Learn collocations in groups that work for you. You could learn them by topic (time, number, weather, money, family) or by a particular word (take action, take a chance, take an exam). You can find information on collocations in any good learner's dictionary. And you can also find specialized dictionaries of collocations. (EnglishClub, 2010). 2.1.3. Attitude Attitude is the way someone thinks or feels about something or the behaviours towards something. In the research “Do English learners know English collocations?”, Małgorzata Martyńska aimed to present the level of collocational competence among intermediate learners of the English language in general and to answer the question to what degree they know English collocations. In the research “The importance of raising collocational awareness in the vocabulary development of intermediate level learners of English”, Adrienn Karoly wrote that “vocabulary is central to communication”. Besides, he also stated that “learners lacking collocational competence often express their ideas in longer, wordier sentences…”

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In our opinion, we must raise the awareness of students about the importance of English collocations, and encourage their positive attitudes towards learning English collocations.

2.2. Related studies The significance of collocation has been commonly justified, however, how is collocation taken care of? In fact, this question has been a matter of great concern for a number of teachers, students and researchers in Vietnam as well as in the world.

Hiroshi Ohtake, Department of Foreign Languages, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine and Brian Morren, Center for Languages, Arts, and Sciences, Fukui Prefectural University had a research on collocation with topic “Corpus Evidence on English Collocational Patterns in Scientific Writing- Implications for Effective Writing Development”. In this paper, they focused on applying collocation effectively in academic writing with the corpus analysis.

There are regularities underlying the way in which words co-occur. Words tend to be subject to certain constraints or preferences which affect language choice in discourse in a systematic way. Furthermore, Stubbs (2001) notes that “native speakers’ unconscious knowledge of collocations is an essential component of their idiomatic and fluent language use and an important part of their communicative competence” (p. 73). A knowledge of collocations is exactly what distinguishes native speakers from foreign learners and evidence derived from corpus analysis may contribute to narrowing the gap between the two. (Brian & Ohtake, 2003)

They also showed corpus evidence, “which are found in Japanese scientific research writing that has been published and is also available via the Internet”.

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This type of error is known to be one of the most difficult to identify by non-native writers but is also one that is likely to be most detrimental to their efforts to express themselves adequately in English. We intend to show how certain words are used in a given context by taking advantage of corpus analysis, concordance, collocation, and statistical data. In particular, we illustrate what kinds of patterns are the norm among native speakers and then provide examples of faulty expressions found in Japanese scientific papers so as to draw attention to certain stylistic infelicities that appear repeatedly in such writing and that need to be avoided”. (Brian & Otake, 2003)

It is because that “advances in corpus linguistics have allowed us to gather useful language data and provided insights into recurring lexical patterns that have hitherto gone undetected (Sinclair, 1991; Willis, 1990)”.

Through the study, readers can be aware of the importance of collocation using, learners should be encouraged to explore their various functions and usages and learn how to manipulate the patterns they find if they wish to achieve greater flexibility and balance in their writing.

At the end of the paper, they gave the implications that learners need to have opportunities to encounter lexical items in multiple contexts in order to engage in deeper processing and thereby derive a fuller understanding of their various meaning senses (Laufer, 1990; Schmitt, 1997). Besides, “learners should be made aware of how such words are bound together with other words so that they may learn to express their ideas with greater clarity and fluency. In this regard, care must be taken to ensure that awkward, non-native expressions are eliminated. Care should also be taken to focus on the particular collocations that are relevant to learners’ needs and that may be of some benefit to them. Learners should be encouraged to

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explore their various functions and uses and adopt those patterns that are relevant to their own particular communicative purpose in writing”. (Brian& Otake, 2003)

In another study on collocations, the author, Michiko Kasuya, concentrated on “Teaching Collocation in Japanese Classrooms”. Kasuya wanted to clarify clarifies the importance of teaching collocation in classrooms. She also considered the relationship between collocation and grammar. Then the paper reflected on the extent to which collocation was really problematic for Japanese students, and why Japanese classrooms were having these problems. She gave some discussions about the ways which teachers should use to encourage their students to use collocation.

Besides, when we found materials in the library, we came across the research on the topic “How to learn collocations with common verbs effectively in Writing skill for First- year students” (Loan, N.T.T & Quynh, V.T.N, 2007). In this paper, they showed the problems which students often encountered with collocation, especially collocation with common verbs and gave some suggestions to solve these.

Actually, collocations really play a vital role in using languages. Two first related studies all emphasized it both in teaching and in learning English. However, these studies were carried out by foreign researchers, not Vietnamese ones. When doing this paper, we had a strong desire to collect as much information, especially about Vietnamese related pieces of research as possible. Nevertheless, because of the scope of the research and the time limitation as well, we only found out one research related to our topic. For this related scientific research, the researchers only focused on one aspect of collocations (phrasal verbs and using them in writing skill). Despite the helpful findings, collocations should be taken care of more by English learners in

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Vietnam in general, English majors in our university in particular. Therefore, we decided to carry out this paper so that all of us will have the overview of learning collocations among the 2nd year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH, and then we all together find out the effective ways to learn collocations. In other words, the researchers want to give some more suggestions in order to help the 2nd year students improve on learning English collocations.

Chapter 3: Methodology 3.1. Participants Because our topic is “A study on learning English collocations among the 2nd year students of Faculty of English Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH” so the 2nd year students play a vital role for our paper. There are 100 second-year students chosen

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randomly, 19 out of 100 students have been studying in Fast-track program and the last are from mainstream classes.

3.2. Data collection instruments We have used two types of data collecting methods: questionnaire and interview.

3.2.1. Questionnaire First, we provided our 100 participants with 9 questions of two types. Specifically, the first 8 questions were organized in multiple choice form and the 9th question was a mini exercise for the participants. For the first 8 questions, we aimed to survey their concern about English collocations in order to add data to four parts focused in this research:

Research question 1

 •

The attitude of the 2nd students of E.D, ULIS, VNUH to English collocation (Using the result of the 1st question in questionnaire)

•

The importance of E. collocations and learning E. collocations (Using the result of the 2nd and 3rd questions in questionnaire). 

Research question 2 (Using the results of the 4th & 6th questions in

questionnaire).



Research question 3 (Using the results of the 7th & 8th questions in

questionnaire)

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Besides, we want to check their knowledge on English collocations by designing the 9 th question as a mini exercise. In this one, we included 8 sentences focusing on 5 types of the word combination in English collocations: verb and noun, verb and preposition, preposition and noun, adjective and noun, adverb and adjective.

3.2.2. Interview Unlike the questionnaires, only open-ended questions were included in the interview schedule. We have made a short interview with 80 out of 100 participants to find out the most challenging type of English collocations for them. We had two questions for the interview:

• Which sentence in this exercise do you find most difficult to finish? • In your experience, which type of English collocations is the most challenging to learn?

The information collected from interview will be combined with one from questionnaire to analyze.

3.3. Data analysis Broadly speaking, the process of data collection could be put into three major phases as follows.

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• Phase 1 The first phase was the preparation for the data collection process, which included the designing the interview schedule and the questionnaire. Whatever forms the data collection instruments took, personal information of all participants was ensured to be kept confidential and anonymous for ethical reasons.

•

Phase 2 The second phase was delivering the questionnaires to participants. Following the time for questionnaire was the interview. It was only the short and informal talk but significant.

•

Phase 3 Throughout the questionnaire completion and the interview, the results from both the questionnaires and interviews were quickly synthesized. In fact, the data from interviews gave us some unexpected outcomes.

Chapter 4: Results and Discussion 4.1. Research question 1: What is the attitude of the 2nd students of Faculty of English Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH to collocations and learning English collocations?

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In our opinion, before teaching students about a new issue, we must truly understand their attitudes to that one. That is the reason why we put ‘attitude’ as the key term for our first research question.

We aim to find out their levels of concern about English collocations in four language skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening). To clarify this matter, we divided their concern into five levels: never, seldom, sometimes, frequently and always.

Figure 1 After doing a survey among 100 participants, we found that their levels of concern were distributed differently among four language skills. First, looking at Figure 1, we noticed that our participants paid most attention to the appearance of English collocations in writing due to the fact that the number of participants choosing option ‘never’ for this skill was the lowest. In contrast, they paid least attention to English

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collocations in listening as the number of people choosing option ‘never’ for this skill was the highest.

The reason for this situation base on the requirements for each skill and the methods 2 nd year students use to learn these four skills. Specifically, writing strictly requires the agreement in word combination so the students are involved in selecting words and phrases. Moreover, students have time to consider the word choice in their papers, especially in at-home papers, which makes them somehow be aware of the necessity of collocations. However, for 1st year and 2nd year students, listening skill does not require too much attention in the appearance of collocations. Besides, when listening, students often focus more on key words that relate to the questions in their exercises rather than catching all speakers’ words including their collocations.

From the attitudes of our participants on learning English collocations, we decided to clarify, according to their opinion, how important English collocations were. 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Not important at all Important somewhat

Important

Figure 2

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Veryimportant

We were pleased to know that all 100 participants found English collocations important. Thanks to their attitudes towards English collocations, we had a stronger motivation to continue this research. 45% of people questioned thought English collocations were important and 41% said they were very important.

After asking them about the importance of learning English collocations, we had the 3rd question focusing collocation using in four situations: in everyday spoken language in everyday written language, in classroom spoken communication and in classroom written communication.

Figure 3

The figure shown in Figure 3 agrees with the one in Figure 1 in terms of using English collocations in written form (both in everyday written language and in classroom written communication). This result reflects the situation of collocation using among

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2nd year students, that is, they thought of written language and paid attention to writing first when being asked about collocation using. On the contrary, the number of participants choosing ‘in classroom spoken language’ was the least (25%), from which we inferred that 2nd students did not pay much attention to English collocations when speaking in classroom.

4.2. Research question 2: What are the common ways the 2nd students of Faculty of English Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH often use to learn English collocations?

Figure 4

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We listed out four ways of learning English collocations to find out which ways were mostly used by 2nd year students. The result was: among all the answers, 34.4% was ‘reading books, articles, fictions, etc.’; 21% was ‘using dictionary’; 20.96% was ‘watching movies, listening to music; 11.83% was ‘through other people in everyday communication and 1.6% was ‘others’. The last group pointed out other ways used to learn English collocations: from lectures, when doing exercises on collocations with a collocations dictionary. We think that the result shown in Figure 4 matches the real situation in studying among 2nd year students of English Department, HULIS, VNUH. Most of us have been using books and articles as the main materials for studying English in general, and English collocations in particular. Ranking after books and articles in this query is dictionary, another printed materials that we can more easy find in the market than other materials such as movies and clips in authentic English. There were quite few participants choosing the option ‘through other people in everyday communication’. Again, this figure showed that they did not pay much attention to everyday communication, which resulted from their lack of communication skills in terms of using English as a second language, their hesitation to use English collocations (because they found it hard to make other people understand the meaning of collocations they used, or to understand the meaning of collocations the others used). The lowest number of our participants answered that 2 nd year students learned English collocations from other resources such as lectures and exercises, which partly reflected an inactive method in their studying.

100% participants answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you learn English collocations when you learn English?’. So it was easier for us to collect more specific ideas from them.

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Next step, we focused on finding their own ways to learn English collocations among many ways they had chosen in the previous question.

Figure 5 The result was: among all the answers, 36% was ‘using dictionary, especially English collocations one’; 20.48% was ‘reading books, articles, fictions, etc.’; 19.5% was ‘watching movies, listening to music’; 14.02% was ‘through other people in everyday communication’ and no answer was ‘others’. In comparison with the result of the previous question, there was an exchange of the two options ‘reading books, articles, fictions, etc.’ and ‘using dictionary, especially English collocations one’ in their queries. Therefore, we made an inference that the ways each student used were not very different from the ways the major used. The minor difference showed that they often chose the common ways to ensure the success in learning English collocations, which matched the general method in studying among Vietnamese students.

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Afterwards, we worked on the most effective ways they used to learn English collocations.

4.3. Research question 3: Which is the most effective way to learn English collocations according to the 2nd students?

Reading books, articles, fictions, etc. Using dictionary, especially English collocations one Watching movies, listening to music Through other people in everydaycommunication Others

Figure 6

The result was: 45% chose ‘reading books, articles, fictions, etc.’; 33% chose ‘using dictionary, especially English collocations one’; 12% chose ‘watching movies, listening to music’; 9% chose ‘through other people in everyday communication’ and 1% chose ‘others’ (and pointed out that he or she often flicked through some collocations books, which was quite the same as the option ‘reading books, articles, fictions, etc.’. Again, we found that the most effective ways they chose were similar to the common ways many people chose.

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In the next question in our questionnaire, we aimed to found out the reasons for their choice in the previous question.

Figure 7

Among all the answers, 44.74% was ‘it helps they learn a variety of English collocations’; 36.84% was ‘it helps them remember English collocations much more easily than other ways’; 17.54% was ‘it helps them learn a lot of English collocations’ and 1% was ‘others’ (and pointed out ‘it helps to follow and review English collocations easily’. The result showed that most of the participants preferred learning collocations in many topics, which meant quantity, rather than focusing on remembering them. And this is also the reason for their result in our exercise of which the result will be performed in the next chart.

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4.4. Implications

Figure 8 We designed the 9th question as a mini exercise. In this one, we included 8 sentences focusing on 5 types of the word combination in English collocations: verb and noun, verb and preposition, preposition and noun, adjective and noun, adverb and adjective.

The result was: 74% of the participants were true in adverb and adjective combination sentence; 69% were true in noun and verb combination sentence, 68% were true in

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preposition and noun combination sentence; 53% were true in adjective and noun combination sentence.

After collecting data from an exercise, we applied a set of interview schedule to exploit further information from 80 students out of 100 students above after they had completed the questionnaires.

Figure 9 There were three types of collocations that they found difficulty in learning: adverb and adjective combination, adjective and noun combination, verb and preposition combination. The result was: 57.5% referred the first type, 25% referred the second one and 17.5% referred the third one among the three types of collocations above. This figure somehow matched the result found out after our exercise.

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From the data analysis of Figure 8 and Figure 9, we have realized that there are two most troublesome types of English collocations for 2nd year students: adverb and adjective combination, adjective and noun combination. Although the type of collocation “adverb and adjective combination” has many correct answers (74%) according to Figure 8, it is still a difficult type of collocation as shown in Figure 9. In fact, when we had the interview, many second year students said that they always felt confused to choose an appropriate adverb going with an adjective. In many cases, they really did not know which adverbs were more exact for adjective. To learn more about two types: adverb and adjective combination & adjective and noun combination, the researchers suggest that the second year students and English learners also should visit this website: http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/easy/colloc.htm. In this page, the researchers have found out a lot of information and exercises. It may be very helpful and interesting for English learners.

Besides, we also want to suggest some tips to improve 2nd year students’ collocation learning according to our own experience. The 2nd students maybe can consider for reference.

Firstly, collocations can be found in authentic texts, so the 2nd year students can learn collocation by topics, arrange collocations by groups of sorts logically. They can choose the book “English Collocations in Use Intermediate” by Michael McCarthy & Felicity O'Dell. This book presents and practices hundreds of collocations in typical contexts, a view full components listing for English Collocations in Use Intermediate for intermediate level students and above who want to take their English to the next level. There are five main topics in this book such as Travel & The environment, People & Relationships, Leisure & Lifestyle, Work & Study, and Society &

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Institutions with variable and easily- remembered examples. Besides, a lot of information about other aspects is provided. This is the link the students can visit to find more helpful books for themselves http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521603782 Another way is learning with your friends by doing small tests or games, take small notes and revise them regularly. This link can be used for reference of more ideas about collocation games such as Card Game with collocations: http://www.teflmagic.com/material/exp/col.htm. The students can download and print the materials for self-study or group work. Plus, when speaking, learn the ways other people use collocation and then imitate and remember. All in all, there are some common and effective ways to learn English collocations shown. In general, the materials are not the most important thing to learn collocations. The most essential is whether learners’ methods are scientific and suitable with their levels or not. So, try to choose to have your own ways to learn collocation.

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4.5. Recommendations Learning collocations is considered to be the most important part of acquiring English. So, both of the teachers and students should pay more attention to learning collocations. The teachers should point out the essential role of collocations for their students, introduce kinds of collocations. Next, they can conduct variable activities to help students remember collocations thoroughly. They should encourage students to look for and learn collocation more often. We also need to have access to a good dictionary. The researchers strongly recommend the Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary or the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary as both of these give exactly the kind of information that English learners need to have about collocations. They do this both through the examples provided for each word entry and through their special collocations boxes or mini- panels. Another book is Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English, (2002), University Press, Oxford. It is also a reliable source to learn English collocations. There are some links listed as follows so that the students can use for reference: http://esl.about.com/library/vocabulary/blcollocation_1.htm http://www.esl-galaxy.com/collocation.html http://www.englishforums.com/English/Collocations/bnmbb/post.htm http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/easy/colloc.htm

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http://www.better-english.com/strongcoll.htm

Last but not least, students should be more active in learning, especially learning collocation. Remember that in a figurative way, collocation is said “to be a marriage contract between words, and some words are more firmly married to each other than others”. (Mc Carthy). Make use of it to have more beautiful writing and speech.

Chapter 5: Conclusion

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On the whole, this research paper performs as a fairly comprehensive study on learning collocation among 2nd year students of Faculty English Teacher Education, ULIS, VNUH. Through exhaustive analysis and discussion of data collected from questionnaires and interview, significant findings concerning the research questions were revealed as follows: Initially, we found that participants paid the most attention to the appearance of English collocations in writing (both in everyday written languages and in classroom written communication), the least in listening. However, all the participants agreed that collocation in general and learning collocation in particular was important. Secondly, the data showed that reading books, articles, fictions, etc and using dictionary, especially collocation dictionary were the common ways 2nd year students often used to learn English collocation. But using dictionary was said to be the most effective way to learn English collocation. Besides, we tried to list out some appropriate ways to help 2nd year students improve in learning English collocation and give some recommendations for both students and teachers as well. With regard to researchers, those who happen to develop an interest in this topic on collocation could rely on this research paper to find useful information for their related studies in the future. Despite considerable efforts of the researchers, certain limitations could be detected in this paper due to time constraint and other unexpected factors. Firstly, this study was only for giving the readers an overview on English collocations learning; therefore, there was a shortage of implications. If we have a chance to develop this paper, we will

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focus on more effective solutions to help 2nd year students improve their collocations learning. Secondly, our mini exercise was just for comparing with the results of other questions in our questionnaire; so it was not specific enough to make readers understand clearly. We want number of questions in our exercise to be larger, the types of collocations provided to be more typical, and the types of exercises to be more various. Thirdly, the data of each Figure should have been demonstrated in a more obvious way. At last, we greatly appreciate the feedbacks from readers. We have some suggestions for the next studies (if there is any) on this topic. Firstly, the next researchers can expand the scope of this study. For example, they can focus more on finding the solutions to help students overcome difficulties in learning English collocations. Next, they can clarify the groups of participants (for example, fast-track students and mainstream students) to present clearer and more reliable results. Besides, they should pay attention to make use of the data collecting methods. Specifically, they can balance the using of questionnaire, interview and observation.

References

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Adrienn Karoly, The importance of raising collocational awareness in the vocabulary development of intermediate level learners of English. 2005. Retrieved from http://anglisztika.ektf.hu/new/content/tudomany/ejes/ejesdokumentumok/2005/Kar oly_2005.pdf Brian Morren & Hiroshi Ohtake. (2003). Corpus Evidence on English Collocational Patterns in Scientific Writing- Implications for Effective Writing Development. Retrieved from http://lsd-project.org/en/document/archive/humana_2003.pdf Christopher Manning & Hinrich Schutze (1999). Collocations. p141 Fernando. C. (1996). Idioms and Idiomacity Jackson. H. (2002). Grammar and Vocabulary Jimmie Hill. (2000). Teaching Collocation. Loan, N.T.T & Quynh, V.T.N. (2007). How to learn collocations with common verbs effectively in Writing skill for First- year students.

Małgorzata Martyńska, Do English learners know English collocations?.2004. Retrieved from http://www.inveling.amu.edu.pl/pdf/malgorzata_martynska_inve11.pdf Margaret, D., James, G., Joseph, N., and Janet, P. (2002). Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English (pp. vii). New York: Oxford University Press

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Michiko Kasuya. (2008). Teaching Collocation in Japanese Classroom Retrieved from www.cels.bham.ac.uk/.../Kasuya_Lexis__MichikoKasuya_.pdf Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English. (2002). University Press, Oxford http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collocation http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/easy/colloc.htm

APPENDICES Scientific Research Questionnaire

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We are Dao Thi Thu Ha and Nguyen Phuong Thao from group 08.1.E1, ULIS, VNUH. Our topic is “A study on learning English collocations among the 2nd year students of English Department, ULIS, VNUH”. Your doing this questionnaire will help us find out the common and effective ways to learn English collocations. We greatly appreciate your effort to finish this questionnaire. Definition: Collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce naturalsounding speech and writing. For example, in English you say “strong wind” and “heavy rain”. It would not be normal to say “heavy wind” or “ strong rain”. (Margaret, D., James, G., Joseph, N., and Janet, P. (2002). Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English (pp. vii). New York: Oxford University Press.

Put a ‘×’ in the box according to your choice: 1. 1. Never

Do you pay attention to English collocations? 2. Seldom

3. Sometimes

1

2

4. Frequently

3

4

5. Always

5

In reading In writing In speaking In listening

2.

How important is English collocations in successful English

learning? Not important at all Important somewhat Important

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Very important Questions 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8, you can choose more than one option. 3.

In which situation(s) do you think English collocations are

used? In everyday spoken language In writing In class communication Others (please write down your choice(s)): …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………. 4.

In your opinion, what are the ways the 2nd year students use to

learn English collocations? Using dictionary, especially English collocations one Watching movies, listening to music Reading books / articles / fictions, etc. Through other people in everyday communication Others (please write down your choice(s)): …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………

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5.

Do you learn English collocations when you learn English? If

yes, please proceed to questions 6, 7, 8, and 9. If no, please specify your reason(s). …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………

6.

Which ways do you yourself use to learn English collocations?

Using dictionary, especially English collocations one Watching movies, listening to music Reading books / articles / fictions, etc. Through other people in everyday communication Others (please write down your choice(s)): …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………

7.

Among the ways you use to learn English collocations, which is

the most effective way? Using dictionary, especially English collocations one Watching movies, listening to music Reading books / articles / fictions, etc. Through other people in everyday communication

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Others (please write down your choice(s)): …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………

8.

In your opinion, the way you choose in question 7 is the most

effective way to learn English collocations because it helps you: Learn a lot of English collocations Learn a variety of English collocations (English collocation of many topics) Remember English collocations much more easily than other ways Others (please write down your choice (s)): …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………… 9.

For each sentence, please circle the correct answer:

a. She struggled to get / have/ offer the necessary finance for her training. b. We will deal with that if the situation rises / arises / goes. c. Their attempts had not been extremely / completely / entirely successful. d. She gazed at him for / with / in astonishment. e. The quick / rapid / fast train to London only takes 45 minutes. f. Someone who smokes a lot is a strong / heavy / hard smoker. g. I need a sturdy / strong / powerful computer to play this game. h. This investigation was carried on / out / off last year.

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Thanks for your effort!

INTERVIEW SCHEDULE Thanks for your effort to finish the questionnaire. And now, we want to ask you two questions as follows: • Which sentence in this exercise do you find most difficult to finish? • In your experience, which type of English collocations is the most challenging to learn? Thanks again!

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