LI Influence on the Acquisition of L2 Collocations: Japanese ESL Users and EFL Learners Acquiring English | Collocations |

L1 Influence on the Acquisition of L2 Collocations: Japanese ESL Users and EFL Learners Acquiring English Collocations JUNKO YAMASHITA Nagoya University Nagoya, Japan NAN JIANG University of Maryland College Park, Maryland, United States This study investigated first language (L1) influence on the acquisition of second language (L2) collocations using a framework based on Kroll and Stewart (1994) and Jiang (2000), by comparing the performance on a phrase-acceptability judgment task among native speakers of English, Japanese English as a second language (ESL) users, and Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners The test materials included both congruent collocations, whose lexical components were similar in L1 and L2, and incongruent collocations, whose lexical components differed in the two languages EFL learners made more errors with and reacted more slowly to incongruent collocations than congruent collocations ESL users generally performed better than EFL learners (lower error rate and faster speed), but they still made more errors on incongruent collocations than on congruent collocations Interestingly, however, the L1 effect was not apparent on the ESL users’ reaction time The results suggested that (a) both L1 congruency and L2 exposure affect the acquisition of L2 collocations with the availability of both maximizing this acquisition; (b) it is difficult to acquire incongruent collocations even with a considerable amount of exposure to L2; and (c) once stored in memory, L2 collocations are processed independently of L1 Possible differences in acquiring congruent and incongruent collocations are discussed doi: 10.5054/tq.2010.235998 ultiword units such as formulaic sequences, idioms, and collocations have been considered to be important for both language use and language learning Sinclair’s (1991) idiom principle, for example, recognizes that relatively fixed multiword expressions are M TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 44, No 4, December 2010 647 widespread in language use and serve as an organizing principle of the language Acknowledging the importance of a suitable balance between creative (rule-based) and holistic (chunk-based) processes, Wray and Perkins (2000) also maintain that our baseline strategy in everyday language use is the holistic processing that relies on the expected likelihood of lexical sequences rather than unexpected novelties Furthermore, unanalyzed multiword units create bases for creative language in language acquisition (Wray, 2002) In the second language acquisition literature, the importance of multiword units has also been well recognized (e.g., Krashen & Scarcella, 1978; Weinert, 1995; Wray, 2002) Earlier research, for example, documented widespread formula use by second language (L2) learners (e.g., Fillmore, 1979; Hanania & Gradman, 1977) Multiword units have also received due attention in models of L2 lexical knowledge (e.g., Nation, 2001; Richards, 1976) and models of L2 acquisition In usagebased models of language acquisition, for example, much of language acquisition is considered sequence learning, starting from phonological strings in lexical items and then moving to a probabilistic sequence of word strings or collocations Only later can syntactic and semantic classification emerge from the patterns of lexical co-occurrence (Ellis, 1996) Recently, the field has witnessed the emergence of empirical studies on the representation and processing of multiword units The focus of attention has been on the issue of whether formulaic sequences are stored and retrieved as a whole in language use Holistic representation and processing would be important because, if it is true, multiword units would then contribute to efficiency of language processing both in production and comprehension For instance, L2 learners may be able to speak more fluently and naturally by uttering fixed expressions as one prosodic unit They may also be able to comprehend texts more quickly by expecting upcoming words in a fixed phrase If multiword units are processed quickly without utilizing much of our attention, we can use more of our cognitive resources for higher level language processing (e.g., organizing messages or understanding implied meanings) The findings of recent empirical studies are mostly confirmative L2 researchers have reported that formulaic sequences are processed more quickly (Conklin & Schmitt, 2008; Jiang & Nekrasova, 2007) and more accurately (Jiang & Nekrasova, 2007) than nonformulaic sequences Words in formulaic sequences are read faster than the same words in nonformulaic sequences (Underwood, Schmitt, & Galpin, 2004) Both figurative and literal meanings of idioms are processed more quickly than nonformulaic controls (Conklin & Schmitt, 2008) Thus, emerging evidence supports the processing advantage of formulaic units over nonformulaic strings because of the holistic processing of the former 648 TESOL QUARTERLY These recent studies, however, have mostly focused on formulaic sequences Another important type of multiword unit—collocations— has received little attention Collocations, that is, multiword units that consist primarily of open class items, such as heavy traffic, strong tea, and kill time, may share certain characteristics with formulas For example, both types of multiword units may be stored holistically as single lexical units, at least in the case of highly frequent, and probably short (Schmitt & Carter, 2004), collocations However, collocations are also different from formulaic sequences (e.g., at first, in front of, on the other hand) in some important ways First, collocations are looser combinations of words than formulaic sequences, in the sense that a component word in a collocation may collocate frequently with many other words to form other collocations For example, ‘‘heavy’’ not only collocates with ‘‘traffic’’ but also with ‘‘stone’’ and ‘‘smoker’’, while ‘‘in front of’’ makes a unit in which the constituent words cannot be replaced by another However, such flexibility is limited For instance, ‘‘argument’’ collocates both with ‘‘strong’’ and ‘‘powerful’’ (strong argument, powerful argument), but ‘‘car’’ collocates only with ‘‘powerful’’ (*strong car, powerful car) and ‘‘tea’’ collocates only with ‘‘strong’’ (strong tea, *powerful tea; Carter & McCarthy, 1988, p 34) Second, formulaic sequences are often language specific, in the sense that a formulaic expression in one language may not readily have a counterpart consisting of identical or similar lexical items in another language For instance, the Japanese language does not have multiword expressions corresponding word by word to English formulaic sequences such as look forward to or out of order The same concepts are expressed by different lexical items, and learning a formulaic sequence resembles learning a new lexical item in the L2 In contrast, collocations are often cross-linguistic, in that a collocation in one language usually has a counterpart in another language except when culture-specific concepts are involved Thus it is likely that many languages have a collocation similar to strong wind, although whether it is represented as a single semantic unit may differ across languages However, the specific lexical items used to refer to the concept vary between languages Two languages may share identical lexical items or have different component words For example, both English and Japanese have the identical collocation of hot tea, but what is referred to as strong tea in English is called dark tea in Japanese (other possible translations would be dense tea and thick tea) Similarly, English and Chinese share the collocation green tea, but black tea in English becomes red tea in Chinese Based on this cross-linguistic relationship, a distinction may be made between congruent collocations and incongruent collocations The former share L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 COLLOCATIONS 649 identical lexical elements between two languages, and the latter involve different words These two unique features of collocations, that is, the flexibility of their component words in recombining to form other collocations and their cross-linguistic nature, carry significant consequences for learning The flexibility makes them less salient as multiword units As a result, a learner may treat a collocation as a regular phrase without noticing it and thus without learning its particular combination of lexical components As a result, the learner may combine words too liberally, producing inappropriate collocations More important, their crosslinguistic nature, in combination with their flexibility, makes learning collocations particularly susceptible to first language (L1) influence Such influence may be facilitative at times but inhibitory at other times (Wolter, 2006) When an L2 learner first encounters a new collocation, he or she can understand its meaning immediately in the case of a congruent collocation if the component words are known However, an incongruent collocation may be difficult for learners to understand and thus take much longer to learn The difficulty collocations create for L2 learners are well documented It can be seen in frequent discussions of collocations in pedagogical contexts (e.g., Brown, 1974; Holmes & Brown, 1987; Lewis, 2000a; Richards, 1976; Schmitt, 1999) There is also research evidence showing that even advanced L2 learners often have difficulty with collocations (e.g., Altenberg & Granger, 2001; Dechert & Lennon, 1989; Hyltenstam, 1988; Lennon, 1996; Nesselhauf, 2003, 2005) The purpose of the present study is to examine the acquisition of collocations by L2 learners, with a special focus on the role of L1 influence The dependence of L2 lexical processing on L1 lexicon has been well demonstrated (e.g., Jiang, 2002, 2004; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Sunderman & Kroll, 2006; Talamas, Kroll, & Dufour, 1999) This finding provides good grounds for hypothesizing that L1 collocation patterns may influence the acquisition of L2 collocations However, serious attempts to test L1 influence on the acquisition of L2 collocations are yet very limited Some corpus-based research has emphasized the L1 influence on the production of L2 collocations (e.g., Altenberg & Granger, 2001; Nesselhauf, 2003) The present study adopted a more experimental approach examining the error rate and reaction time, which has some advantages over corpus-based studies First, because linguistic expressions are prepared beforehand according to the theoretical interest in L1–L2 differences, the study may provide a more straightforward ground to test the possibility of L1 influence, whereas in the corpus analysis the causal interpretation is usually post hoc Second, the data are not likely to be affected by learners’ avoidance strategies, which could be the case with respect to corpus-based data Third, we can 650 TESOL QUARTERLY obtain insights not only into the learners’ knowledge representation of collocations but also into how they process collocations Our study was conceived and designed within a conceptual framework based on Kroll and Stewart (1994) and Jiang (2000) The revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) postulates three memory representations (concepts, L1 lexicon, and L2 lexicon) and connections among them There are two levels in the connection: the conceptual level (i.e., the link between concepts and either the L1 or L2 lexicon) and the lexical level (i.e., the link between the L1 and L2 lexicons) The link between the L1 lexicon and concepts is assumed to be strong, whereas the link between the L2 lexicon and concepts is relatively weak The lexical link from L2 to L1 (i.e., the association of L2 words with corresponding L1 words) is hypothesized to be stronger and more reliable than the link from L1 to L2 This is because the L1 lexicon normally contains a larger number of lexical items than the L2 lexicon It is, therefore, relatively simple and quick to find an L1 word that corresponds to an L2 word (Kroll & Tokowicz, 2001) Because of these differences in connections between concepts and independent lexical representations in the L1 and L2, we can hypothesize that, when L2 learners try to understand an L2 word, they first translate it into the L1 and use the strong link from the L1 word to its concept The link between the L2 lexicon and concepts will become stronger with increased exposure to the L2, and gradually L2 learners will be able to access meaning directly from L2 words In his model of the L2 mental lexicon, Jiang (2000) also postulated three memory representations and connections among them, but was more explicit about the role of L1 transfer, which is the central mechanism in the acquisition of L2 vocabulary Lemma and lexeme are distinguished, and L1 lemma (syntax and semantics) is transferred to the L2 lexicon and influences L2 processing in the course of development The model specifies three developmental stages The first stage is word association, where a new L2 word form enters the L2 lexicon but is strongly connected with its L1 translation There is no link between the L2 lexicon and the concept The second stage is L1 lemma mediation, where L1 lemma information is transferred into the L2 lexicon The transferred lemma information links L2 words and concepts, albeit weakly Activation of L1 translation in L2 use may decrease in this stage, but transferred L1 lemma information always mediates L2 use With increased exposure to the L2, the link between the concept and the L2 lexicon develops and L2-specific lemma information emerges in the L2 lexicon The third and final stage is full integration, where L2-specific information replaces transferred L1 information, and the L2 lexicon is linked to the concept as strongly as is the L1 lexicon L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 COLLOCATIONS 651 Applying these models, we assume that the concept referred to by an L2 collocation already exists in a learner’s mind.1 Therefore, the essence of learning an L2 collocation is to store a new collocation in the L2 lexicon and link it to an existing concept This process may entail at least the following three specific steps The first step is the recognition of a word string as a legitimate collocation in the L2, which is typically accompanied by the initial comprehension of the meaning of the new collocation The second is the integration of the collocation in one’s long-term memory or L2 mental lexicon, as a result of repeated exposures During the first two steps, an L2 collocation may be linked primarily to its counterpart in the L1, or to both its L1 counterpart and the existing concept, but with a stronger link to the former than the latter The third step is the establishment of a direct connection between the new collocation and the concept that is strong enough to allow it to function automatically and autonomously This framework helps us to make some specific predictions about the learning of congruent and incongruent collocations in examining the role of the L1 We can reasonably hypothesize that the learning of incongruent collocations will lag behind that of congruent ones Unlike congruent collocations, whose meaning is more readily understandable because of assistance from their L1 counterparts, the meaning of an incongruent collocation has to be obtained through the analysis of the meanings of its component words, often with help from its linguistic or nonlinguistic contexts However, contexts may not provide enough information for the learner to make a successful inference Therefore, much more input or more frequent encounters with an incongruent L2 collocation would be necessary in order for L2 learners to recognize the legitimacy of an incongruent collocation than a congruent one In the same vein, we can also anticipate faster processing of congruent collocations than incongruent ones at early stages of acquisition Assuming that its meaning has to be activated in order for a collocation to be recognized and understood, the recognition of a congruent collocation is much faster because of its link to an existing L1 collocation, which is linked to meaning The processing of an incongruent collocation, however, can be a more deliberate and slower process, in the sense that it involves the rejection of its word-for-word L1 translation and the finding of an L1 collocation that shares the same meaning, before a strong direct connection is established between the L2 collocation and its concept 652 Some collocations may express a concept that is culture or language specific Narrow escape, which does not have a ready counterpart in Chinese, can be said to express a concept that is not present, or at least not lexicalized, in the conceptual system of a Chinese native speaker TESOL QUARTERLY Such involvement of L1 collocations in L2 processing has been powerfully demonstrated by Ueno (2006), who showed that it is not only L1 translation equivalents of single words but also L1 lexical networks that are activated when L2 learners recognize an L2 word It was reported, as a case in point, that the English prime word forgive facilitated the processing of marriage by Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, whereas there was no such facilitation for native speakers of English Forgive marriage is not a legitimate expression in English, but it is in Japanese According to Ueno, when the EFL learners saw forgive, its translation equivalent in Japanese was activated and primed marriage through an L1 collocational link It seems reasonable to hypothesize further that, with increasing input, L2 collocations, both congruent and incongruent, may become multiword units that are no longer dependent on the L1 lexicon and that are directly connected to concepts As a result, advanced learners would show little difference in processing time between the two types of collocations The present study used a phrase-acceptability judgment task examining both accuracy and speed of the performance of native speakers of English and native speakers of Japanese processing English collocations In order to see the L2 developmental change, two groups of Japanese speakers who largely differed with respect to their exposure to English were included In terms of the length or span of collocations, only immediate connections of words (short collocations consisting of basically two words) were targeted This was because our primary focus was L1 influence, and there was no specific need to involve longer word combinations, which would have made the task more difficult for participants In light of the role of L1 congruency in L2 collocation acquisition discussed earlier, several possible scenarios can be expected when we test native speakers of English, EFL learners, and English as a second language (ESL) users on congruent and incongruent collocations First, English native speakers should show no reliable difference between congruent and incongruent collocations in both response time and error rate, because the test materials were matched in length, lexical frequency, and collocation frequency Second, lower-proficiency EFL learners should produce a congruency effect, in that they should make more errors on and respond more slowly to incongruent collocations than congruent ones Third, ESL users of higher proficiency might produce a congruency effect similar to EFL learners if the L1 continues to affect the representation and processing of L2 collocations However, it is also possible, as hypothesized earlier, that, given the increased amount of input, ESL users are able to develop more autonomous representations for L2 collocations and, as a result, both congruent and L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 COLLOCATIONS 653 incongruent collocations can function independently with little influence from their congruency with their L1 counterparts In this case, no congruency effect would be observed on ESL speakers METHODS Participants The participants included 20 native speakers of English, 24 Japanese ESL users, and 23 Japanese EFL learners The native speakers were students at a university in the United States, and the ESL users were students, researchers, or instructors at four universities in the United States Participants in these groups were residing in the United States at the time of testing and were tested in the United States The EFL learners were students at a university in Japan They were residing in Japan at the time of testing and were tested in Japan They had never lived in English-speaking countries, and their exposure to English had been limited largely to language classes where they studied English as a subject All the Japanese EFL and ESL participants were native speakers of Japanese who were born in Japan and who started formal education of English in the seventh grade in Japan A 58-item cloze test was administered to the Japanese participants for the purpose of estimating the difference in their L2 proficiency This cloze test has been used in Yamashita (2007) and Yamashita and Ichikawa (2010) and demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha 0.90) The mean scores were significantly different between the ESL and EFL groups (t(45) 9.19, p , 0.01) Table summarizes the Japanese participants’ English TABLE English Learning Background of Japanese Participants ESL users Cloze Age starting English study Years of formal English education Years of residence in English-speaking countries Age Self-ratingsa Speaking Listening Reading Writing EFL learners Mean SD Mean SD 26.92 12.21 8.42 5.39 31.42 6.62 0.78 1.74 4.62 7.73 12.96 12.00 6.87 0.00 18.91 3.11 1.24 0.92 0.00 0.79 6.08 6.88 6.83 6.21 1.64 1.70 0.92 1.10 2.00 2.33 3.00 2.67 1.14 1.28 1.64 1.56 Note ESL English as a second language; EFL English as a foreign language; SD standard devation aRatings scored on a 10-point scale with minimum proficiency and 10 nearnative proficiency 654 TESOL QUARTERLY learning background obtained in a questionnaire administered either immediately before or after the experiment As shown in the table, the two groups were not very different in the length of formal education of English (approximately vs years), but the exposure to English out of the classroom was considerably different (0 vs approximately years on average) Materials The materials consisted of 24 congruent collocations, 24 incongruent collocations, and 48 implausible word combinations The 24 congruent collocations have counterparts in Japanese (i.e., those collocations can be directly translated word for word between English and Japanese, e.g., make lunch and heavy stone) The incongruent collocations cannot be translated directly word for word from English to Japanese (e.g., kill time and slow learner) In order to express the same meaning of English collocations, the Japanese language has to use different word combinations (e.g., crush/break time for kill time) or paraphrasing (e.g., a person who learns slow for slow learner) The materials were constructed using the following procedures First, a number of potential English collocations were identified by the first author using three English–Japanese dictionaries Then the most typical translation of each component word of the English collocations was checked, because congruency is determined by the translation relationships between the languages All the single words constituting the candidate collocations were listed and given to five native speakers of Japanese with high proficiency in English They were asked to write down as many Japanese words as they could think of as a translation of a given English word The English words remained in the pool of possible items if (a) the meanings were known to at least four of the translators, (b) the translations by at least four translators were equal to the meaning of a critical word in congruent collocations, and (c) the translations by at least four translators were different from the meaning of a critical word in incongruent collocations For example, in the case of kill animals (congruent) and kill time (incongruent), the critical word kill was first translated by all translators into korosu (5 cause the death) as in kill animals, whereas only one added (jikan-o) tsubusu (5 past [time]) as the second translation as in kill time If Japanese speakers go through the L1mediation process when they understand these English collocations including kill, the L1 word corresponding to cause the death (korosu) is most likely to be the one to which they first associate the English word kill If this is true, kill animals may be processed more quickly than kill L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 COLLOCATIONS 655 time, because learners should be able to more easily associate kill with the meaning of cause the death via the L1 word korosu After the translation of each word was sorted out, the translations of collocations were checked A list of collocations made up of the remaining words was given to another group of five native speakers of Japanese with high English proficiency They were asked to translate given English collocations into Japanese so that the resulting Japanese expressions sounded as natural as possible The English collocations remained in the pool of possible items if (a) the meanings of collocations were known to at least four of the translators, (b) the translation by at least four of the translators was a literal word for word rendering in the case of congruent collocations, and (c) the translation by at least four of the translators was a rendering composed of different lexical items in Japanese or paraphrasing in the case of incongruent collocations Both length and frequency of the materials were matched as closely as possible between the lists of congruent and incongruent collocations Lexical and phrasal frequencies were obtained from Shogakukan Corpus Network, British National Corpus, available on the Web When computing phrasal frequencies, no lexical item was allowed between the two words in adjective + noun combinations, but a possible insertion of one word was allowed between two words in verb + noun combinations in order to accommodate possible insertion of an article T-tests confirmed there were no differences between the congruent and incongruent conditions in terms of length; t(46) 20.060, p 0.05, word frequency; t(46) 20.152, p 0.05, or phrasal frequency; t(46) 20.828, p 0.05 Most individual words in the final material were within the most frequent 3,000-word level in the JACET List of 8,000 Basic Words (JACET Committee of Basic Words Revision, 2003).2 This is the level of high-school textbooks in Japan Words belonging to lower frequency levels included three words at the 4,000-word level (the beginning level of university), a derivative of a high-frequency word (learner), and a word that exists in Japanese as a loan word (tempo) Therefore, we assumed that individual words were known to both EFL learners and ESL users Implausible word combinations served as fillers, inducing negative responses from participants These word combinations were semantically implausible, such as abstract fruits and begin a bed The inclusion of the implausible items was for task requirement only, and these items were not analyzed, because their data were not relevant to the purpose of the study 656 This vocabulary list was constructed by a research team from the Japan Association of College English Teachers TESOL QUARTERLY Procedures The participants were tested individually in a quiet room The items were presented one at a time on a computer screen in random order The task was to decide whether a test item was an acceptable English expression The participants responded by pressing one of the two keys on a keyboard, one for YES and the other for NO They were asked to respond as quickly and as accurately as possible Twenty practice items were given prior to the 96 test items The criteria of acceptability were easily mastered by all participants by going through the practice items The experimental session started with instructions, followed by the practice session, and the test session Both the practice and test items began with a fixation point, an asterisk, presented at the center of the monitor for 500 milliseconds The asterisk was followed by an item, to which the participant responded A questionnaire was given to the Japanese participants, either before or after the experiment, to obtain information about their English learning background The presentation of test materials and the recording of the reaction times and error rates were accomplished by using DMDX, a computer program developed by K Forster and J Forster at the University of Arizona (Forster & Forster, 2003) RESULTS In the computation of reaction time means, all incorrect responses were excluded Based on the practice in the field and our earlier experience, any response that was two standard deviations away from each participant’s mean, shorter than the low cutoff point at 400 milliseconds, or longer than the high cutoff point at 3,000 milliseconds was TABLE Mean Reaction Times (in Milliseconds) and Error Rates (in Percent) on Congruent and Incongruent Collocations by Native Speakers of English (NS) and Japanese ESL and EFL Groups NS Mean Reaction time Error rate Congruent Incongruent Difference Congruent Incongruent Difference 986 980 26 6.79 9.39 2.60 ESL SD Mean EFL SD Mean 175 167 1,388 184 1,542 1,385 221 1,597 22 55* 7.31 8.35 6.50 14.31 9.16 19.83 8.30 38.80 11.48* 24.49* SD 300 287 10.38 10.78 Note Difference the difference between congruent and incongruent items *p , 0.05 L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 COLLOCATIONS 657 also excluded This involved 4.9%, 5.6%, and 7% of the data of native speakers, ESL users, and EFL learners, respectively Table summarizes results of reaction times and error rates The difference between congruent and incongruent conditions was not statistically significant for native speakers (6 milliseconds and 2.60%), but the difference was significant for the Japanese groups, with ESL users and EFL learners making more errors (11.48% and 24.24%, respectively), and the latter reacting more slowly (55 milliseconds) on incongruent items than congruent items The table also details the difference in English proficiency among the three groups, with the native speakers being the fastest and most accurate, followed by ESL users, and finally by the EFL learners, who were slowest and least accurate A mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied, with the collocation type (congruent vs incongruent) as a within-participant variable, and group (native speakers of English, Japanese ESL users, and Japanese EFL learners) as a between-participant variable The statistical tests analyzed both participant (F1) and item (F2) variability Regarding error rate analysis, a main effect of collocation type was significant, F1(1,64) 104.17, p , 0.001; F2(1,69) 26.57, p , 0.001, and so was the main effect of group, F1(2,64) 36.95, p , 0.001; F2(2,69) 14.57, p , 0.001 The two-way interaction was also significant, F1(2,64) 24.86, p , 0.001; F2(2,69) 6.48, p , 0.01 Multiple comparison (Bonferroni) analysis showed that the groups were significantly different from each other with respect to participant analysis (p , 0.05) and item analysis (p , 0.05), with the only exception being a nonsignificant difference between ESL users and native speakers with respect to participant analysis (p 0.05) Thus, although the native speakers were more accurate than the ESL users, the difference was small; however, the EFL learners were less accurate than each of the other two groups As for the reaction times, the ANOVA obtained a significant main effect only for group, F1(2,64) 37.94, p , 0.001; F2(2,69) 105.35, p , 0.001 The main effect of collocation type was not significant, F1(1,64) 1.30, p 0.05; F2(1,69) 2.95, p 0.05, and the two-way interaction was also not significant, F1(2,64) 2.09, p 0.05; F2(2,69) 1.51, p 0.05 Multiple-comparison (Bonferroni) analysis confirmed the observation in Table 2, that is, the three groups were significantly different from each other with respect to participant analysis (p , 0.05) and item analysis (p , 0.05), with the native speakers significantly faster than the ESL users and the ESL users significantly faster than the EFL learners A series of post-hoc analyses was carried out to tease out the effects of congruency and participant groups The results are reported below in two separate subsections 658 TESOL QUARTERLY CONGRUENCY EFFECTS To examine the congruency effect (the difference between congruent and incongruent conditions), paired-sample t-tests were conducted for each group There was no difference in the error rate and reaction time for the native speakers of English both in participant-analysis, t(19) 21.29, p 0.05 (error rate), t(19) 0.42, p 0.05 (reaction time), and item analysis, t(23) 20.85, p 0.05 (error rate), t(23) 20.25, p 0.05 (reaction time), demonstrating that there was no effect of the Japanese language on the knowledge and processing of English collocations by native speakers of English The lack of congruency effect on native speakers suggests that the materials in the two conditions were properly controlled There was no congruency effect on ESL users’ reaction time either, t(23) 0.07, p 0.05 (participant analysis), t(23) 20.40, p 0.05 (item analysis), but they made more errors with the incongruent collocations than with the congruent collocations, t(23) 25.85, p , 0.001 (participant analysis), t(23) 22.78, p , 0.05 (item analysis) This discrepancy between reaction time and error rate suggests that, although L1 influence continues to affect the representation of L2 collocations, once learned or stored in the mental lexicon, L2 collocations are processed with little reliance on L1 The congruency effect appeared more strongly on EFL learners They made more errors with the incongruent collocations than with the congruent collocations both in participant analysis, t(22) 29.91, p , 0.001, and item analysis, t(23) 24.52, p , 0.001 The difference in reaction time was significant in participant analysis, t(22) 22.25, p , 0.05, and approached the significance level in item analysis, t(23) 21.96, p 0.06, with the incongruent collocations reacted to more slowly than the congruent ones This demonstrates that collocation congruency affects the process of learning L2 collocations, and, even if they are stored in memory, L2 collocations are processed through L1 mediation at an earlier stage of L2 learning GROUP DIFFERENCES For the purpose of further examining the group differences under the congruent and incongruent conditions separately, one-way ANOVAs with group as a between-participant variable were conducted The main effect of group was significant in all the analyses: error rate in the congruent condition, F1(2,64) 5.12, p , 0.01, F2(2,69) 4.68, p , 0.05; reaction time in the congruent condition, F1(2,64) 33.25, p , 0.001, F2(2.69) 89.78, p , 0.001; error rate in the incongruent condition, F1(2,64) 54.02, p , 0.001, F2(2,69) 12.34, p , 0.001; and L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 COLLOCATIONS 659 reaction time in the incongruent condition, F1(2,64) 38.35, p , 0.001, F2(2,69) 62.65, p , 0.001 These ANOVAs were followed by multiple comparison analyses (Bonferroni) to see the difference between each group Under the congruent condition, the difference in error rate between ESL users and native speakers was not significant with respect to participant analysis (p 0.05) and item analysis (p 0.05) However, the EFL learners made significantly more errors than the native speakers, both in participant analysis (p , 0.05) and item analysis (p , 0.05), and they made more errors than ESL users in participant analysis (p , 0.05) These differences in error rates suggest that ESL users’ knowledge representation of L2 collocations can approach that of native speakers when collocations are congruent to L1 counterparts, whereas that of EFL learners is different from that of native speakers, even if L2 collocations are congruent with their L1 counterparts In terms of speed, native speakers were faster than both groups of nonnative speakers in participant analysis (p , 0.05) and item analysis (p , 0.05) The difference between EFL and ESL groups was significant only with regard to item analysis (p , 0.05) The reaction time differences basically indicated the difference in English proficiency Under the incongruent condition, the error rates of the three groups were significantly different from each other with respect to participant analysis (p , 0.05) and in item analysis (p , 0.05), with one exception being the difference between ESL users and native speakers, which was significant only in participant analysis (p , 0.05) The reaction times of the three groups were all significantly different from each other in participant analysis (p , 0.05) and item analysis (p , 0.05) These results endorsed the difference in English proficiency among the groups and confirmed the difficulty of acquiring incongruent collocations for both EFL and ESL groups DISCUSSION To summarize the congruency effect, native speakers of English showed no difference in reaction time and error rate when they responded to English collocations that were congruent and incongruent to their counterparts in Japanese Japanese EFL learners took longer and made more errors when they responded to incongruent collocations Japanese ESL users also made more errors on incongruent collocations, but they showed no difference in reaction time between congruent and incongruent collocations The long-lasting congruency effect on the ESL users’ error rate suggests that incongruent collocations are difficult to accept in the L2 660 TESOL QUARTERLY mental lexicon, and acquiring this type of collocation takes a long time, requiring a massive amount of exposure to the L2 Considering the fact that these ESL users are at an advanced level of L2 proficiency using English on a daily basis, and these collocations are basically common ones, the results show that the incongruent collocation is a type of linguistic unit that is indeed hard to acquire by nonnative speakers of English Before discussing the reaction time results, it may be worth reiterating that only correctly answered items were used for reaction time analysis Therefore, the reaction time result shows how participants processed collocations that were acquired or stored in their L2 lexicon The congruency effect in reaction time was identified only on the EFL learners This indicates that L2 learners are initially dependent on the L1 mediation process, which resulted in the processing advantage of congruent collocations, but with the increase of exposure to and use of the L2, direct links between L2 collocations with concepts are formulated and L2 collocations come to be processed independently of the L1 lexicon This result, which indicates the gradual independence from the L1 lexicon, lends support to the prediction of Kroll and Stewart (1994) and Jiang (2000) These models have been examined with single word stimuli The present study, therefore, provides a unique opportunity of testing these models using collocations Furthermore, the fact that the L1 effect disappeared on reaction time more quickly than on error rate implies that, although it takes a long time to acquire incongruent collocations, once acquired, the dependence on the L1 lexicon in the process of recognizing L2 collocations disappears relatively quickly The reaction time result from the ESL users seems to contradict some previous findings that showed a continued reliance on the L1, even among advanced ESL speakers In Jiang’s (2002, 2004) studies, for instance, advanced ESL users were found to respond to two English words that shared the same L1 translation faster than two English words that had two different L1 translations, suggesting their performance was mediated by related L1 representations However, there is a fundamental difference between the present study and the two previous studies The present study assumes that an L2 collocation and its L1 counterpart share the identical or very similar concept Under such circumstances, no semantic or conceptual development or restructuring is involved in the acquisition of collocations The lack of difference in ESL users’ reaction time between congruent and incongruent collocations indicates that, given sufficient exposure and practice, a consolidated L2 collocation can link to its concept directly and function independently without any involvement of its L1 counterpart L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 COLLOCATIONS 661 In Jiang (2002, 2004), however, by comparing ESL users’ performance between same-translation and different-translation pairs, the focus was placed on assessing the semantic transfer from L1 (whether L2 learners were able to develop L2-specific new semantic representations, or continued to rely on L1 semantic representations) The faster reaction time on the same-translation pairs shown in those studies suggested that no new semantic distinction had developed in these advanced L2 users The L2 words continued to be linked to L1 concepts Considered together, these three studies demonstrate that advanced ESL users are able to develop direct links between L2 lexical items (words or collocations) and semantic or conceptual representations, as envisioned in previous studies (e.g., Jiang, 2004; Kroll & Stewart, 1994), but the development of new semantic representations is a much slower process Summarizing the findings from the second point of view (group differences), we only deal with the error rate, because reaction time results simply confirmed the proficiency difference in English EFL learners made more errors than ESL users and native speakers on both types of collocations, whereas ESL users made more errors than native speakers only on incongruent collocations As pointed out earlier, the long-lasting congruency effect on nonnative speakers revealed the difficulty of establishing mental representations of incongruent collocations At the same time, this difference in the error rate between the EFL and ESL groups shows the impact of L2 input as well Viewed collectively, therefore, both the amount of L2 input and learners’ L1 influence the acquisition of L2 collocations It may seem strange that EFL learners made significantly more errors than native speakers even on congruent collocations, because it would be possible to expect that they can easily accept and store congruent collocations in memory by simply resorting to L1 expressions This result, therefore, does not lend support to a simplistic view that L2 learners blindly rely on the L1 when they acquire L2 collocations This phenomenon may be explained by a mechanism that somewhat resembles the classical notion of psychotypology (e.g., Kellerman, 1979) Transfer from the L1 to the L2 does not always happen, even if the two languages have identical forms and functions A learner’s perception of the distance between the L1 and the L2 affects whether she or he transfers her or his L1 forms or functions to the L2 EFL learners may have developed general recognition that their L1 and L2 expressions not always coincide Therefore, even in the cases when they can simply apply their L1 expressions, they may not have done so This finding endorses the earlier contention that the availability of both L1 congruency and L2 input creates the optimal condition for acquiring L2 collocations Probably, noticing congruent L2 forms in input is a necessary process that helps firmly establish L1-equivalent L2 forms in the L2 lexicon 662 TESOL QUARTERLY The overall results suggested that the acquisition of L2 collocations is a process that takes a long time, and both L1 congruency and the amount of L2 input interactively affect the acquisition The findings also allow us to hypothesize the processes involved in the acquisition of congruent and incongruent collocations in a more specific manner, focusing on the role of L1 and input, within the framework outlined earlier We suggested that three steps are involved in the acquisition of a collocation: the initial recognition of a lexical combination as a legitimate collocation, which is usually accompanied by the understanding of its meaning; the consolidation of the collocation in the long-term memory as a result of repeated exposure; and finally the establishment of a strong connection between the collocation and related conceptual representation, so that it can function without activating its L1 counterpart We can imagine that, because congruent collocations can be accepted on the basis of their L1 counterparts, the frequency of encounters may not be as important for congruent collocations as it would be for incongruent ones in order to be understood and stored in the L2 lexicon However, extensive encounters would be needed for the direct link with concepts to be established, because of their initial reliance on L1 word association On the other hand, frequent encounters would be important for incongruent collocations to be accepted in the L2 lexicon, because the L1 either does not support or may even delay the initial stage of acquisition However, once the meaning is understood and incongruent collocations are stored in the memory, extensive encounters may not be necessary to establish a direct link with concepts, because incongruent collocations are likely to be acquired in contexts without much direct reliance on the L1 Learners may still go through L1 mediation (e.g., direct translation, then to correspondent L1 collocation, and finally to concepts) when they have not received enough input, but with the lack of word-for-word direct translation, incongruent collocations may have the advantage of making links with concepts over congruent collocations once they are stored in memory Although this idea needs to be further refined and explored in future studies, the strong congruency effect identified in this study clearly suggests that L2 educators should pay attention to the lexical networks in learners’ L1 when teaching L2 collocations Educators who have the same L1 as their learners (often nonnative teachers) can take advantage of their linguistic background (Hill, 2000) They would be able to predict problematic L2 collocations from their linguistic knowledge or from their own experience as L2 learners, and thus may be able to draw learners’ attention to the difference between L1 and L2 word combinations from the beginning and may help reduce negative L1 influence It might be difficult for teachers to predict L1-based collocational problems if they are not familiar with the learners’ L1(s) L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 COLLOCATIONS 663 Even in such cases, teachers can try to understand why learners produce unnatural collocations in the L2, by asking them whether they have directly translated from their L1 expressions Certainly, L1 is not the only source of problems, and therefore students’ answers would vary However, this process is likely to help teachers understand learners’ problems, and if it is L1-based, they can point out cross-linguistic differences in word combinations Lewis (2000b) listed several classroom activities for teaching collocations In one of these activities, L2 instructors list possible words to collocate with a target word (e.g., take, re-take, pass, and fail to co-occur with an exam) If teachers take one extra step and ask whether the same word combinations are used in the learners’ L1(s), it may help highlight the similarities and differences between L1 and L2 collocations If the class includes students from various L1 backgrounds, this extra step might provide a valuable opportunity for both teachers and learners to learn about collocations in different languages and help raise linguistic awareness Furthermore, this awareness may facilitate learning congruent collocations as well as incongruent ones Although congruent collocations are less problematic, our data have suggested that learners still need evidence that their L1 and L2 use the same word combinations to firmly store congruent collocations in their memory A simple acknowledgment of the correspondence may assist their learning All these explicit instructions are for facilitating the initial two steps in our model of acquisition (understanding and learning of collocations) The final step is making direct and autonomous connections between collocations and concepts What is necessary for this stage is to give learners a massive amount of exposure to collocations Instruction that can increase the amount of input, such as extensive reading and possibly extensive listening, may help boost this process If teachers prefer to use more focused input, corpus tools can help us extract numerous sentences containing target collocations Such sentences, some of which may need to be edited by teachers according to learners’ proficiency, can then be used as intensive input for learners to read collocations in contexts and strengthen the direct links with concepts We have focused our pedagogical discussion on the issue of L1 influence, because it was the focal point of the present study However, as we mentioned earlier, L1 is not the only source of problems in learning L2 collocations Intralinguistic strategies (analogy from known L2 expressions), for example, may also induce collocational errors In pedagogical settings, therefore, teachers need to pay attention to a wider range of factors We hope, however, our discussion helps raise teachers’ awareness of the importance of L1 influence and suggests some hints, however tentative they may be, that might help facilitate acquisition of L2 collocations 664 TESOL QUARTERLY Finally, limitations of the present study need to be addressed in future studies We assumed that individual words in our material were known to the Japanese participants on the basis of the frequency of the words However, it is always better to check participants’ knowledge of individual words, because we are not testing their word knowledge but the knowledge of possible word combinations Second, because of the relatively high error rate of EFL learners, close to one-half of their data in the incongruent condition was not included in the reaction time analysis This was an inevitable result following the conventional way of analyzing reaction time data Applicability of using reaction time data for examining lower proficiency L2 learners will need to be carefully considered CONCLUSION The present study is an endeavor to examine L1 influence on the acquisition of L2 collocations We identified two interacting factors (L1 and input) affecting the knowledge representation and processing of L2 collocations, and thus helped expand understanding of the acquisition of L2 collocations However, there are many other important issues to be explored in the future For example, the effect of input should be examined more systematically by controlling, for instance, the frequency of collocations (Sosa & MacFarlane, 2002) Second, different types of collocations as well as different combinations of L1 and L2 would need to be examined in order to see whether the present finding could be generalized Third, how instruction assists the acquisition of L2 collocations is an important pedagogical question to be examined Finally, reversed influence of the L2 on the representation of L1 collocation knowledge (Laufer, 2003) is an interesting line of research that would be worth consideration for elucidating our understanding of the mental lexicon of L2 users ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Exploratory Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (No 19652055) THE AUTHORS Junko Yamashita is a professor of Language Education Sciences in the Graduate School of International Development at Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan Her research interests include second language literacy (reading) development, second language acquisition and processing, and assessment of reading ability Nan Jiang is an associate professor of Second Language Acquisition in the School of Linguistics, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States His research interests include cognitive study of second L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 COLLOCATIONS 665 language processing and acquisition, bilingual language processing, and language and thought REFERENCES Altenberg, B., & Granger, S (2001) The grammatical and lexical patterning of MAKE in native and non-native student writing Applied Linguistics, 22, 173–195 doi:10.1093/applin/22.2.173 Brown, D F (1974) Advanced vocabulary teaching: The problem of collocation RELC Journal, 5, 1–11 doi:10.1177/003368827400500201 Carter, R., & 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QUARTERLY Krashen, S D., & Scarcella, R (1978) On routines and patterns in language acquisition and performance Language Learning, 28, 283–300 doi:10.1111/ j.1467-1770 .1978. tb00135.x Kroll, J F., & Stewart,... literature, the importance of multiword units has also been well recognized (e.g., Krashen & Scarcella, 1978; Weinert, 1995; Wray, 2002) Earlier research, for example, documented widespread formula use