How much collocation knowledge do L2 learners have?: the effects of frequency and amount of exposure

Gonz�lez Fern�ndez, Beatriz; Schmitt, Norbert

Abstract

Many scholars believe that collocations are difficult to learn and use by L2 learners. However, some research suggests that learners often know more collocations than commonly thought. This study tested 108 Spanish learners of English to measure their productive knowledge of 50 collocations, which varied according to corpus frequency, t-score, and MI score. The participants produced a mean score of 56.6% correct, suggesting that our learners knew a substantial number of collocations. Knowledge of the collocations correlated moderately with corpus frequency (.45), but also with everyday engagement with English outside the classroom, in activities like reading, watching movies/TV, and social networking (composite correlation = .56). Everyday engagement also had a stronger relationship with collocation knowledge than years of English study (.45).

Citation

González Fernández, B., & Schmitt, N. (2015). How much collocation knowledge do L2 learners have?: the effects of frequency and amount of exposure. ITL, 166(1), https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.166.1.03fer

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Mar 14, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 14, 2016
• Journal: ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics
• Print ISSN: 0019-0829
• Electronic ISSN: 1783-1490
• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 166
• Issue: 1
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.166.1.03fer
• Keywords: Collocations, Productive Knowledge, Frequency, Exposure, Acquisition
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/988347
• Publisher URL: https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/itl.166.1.03fer/details
• Additional Information: c. John Benjamins Publishing. Published: González Fernandez, Beatriz and Schmitt, Norbert. "How much collocation knowledge do L2 learners have?: the effects of frequency and amount of exposure". ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics 166.1 (2015): 94-126.