Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS effects of english collocation instruction on the writing skill of first year english major students at hanoi university of science and technology

INTRODUCTION

Statement of the problem

Since Firth (1951, p.194) introduced the idea of collocation, there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of using words naturally and appropriately In second language teaching and learning, many researchers have perceived the crucial role of collocations in developing vocabulary, communicative competence and being toward native-like writing style (Brown, 1974; Channell, 1981; Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Howarth, 1998a, Gitsaki, 1999; Lewis, 1997, 2000;

On discussing the relationship between L2 learners‟ collocational knowledge and their writing proficiency, there have been two studies by Zhang (1993) and Hsu

(2007) In his study, Zhang (1993) compared the participants‟ knowledge of collocations and their writing quality, and the use of collocations in the participants‟ essays and their writing quality He concluded that “collocational knowledge was shown to be positively correlated with writing quality” and “effective use of collocational knowledge may help improve writing quality” (p 165) In a later study by Hsu (2007), the finding was consistent with Zhang‟s study (1993) in the aspect that “there seems to be a significant correlation between Taiwanese college EFL learners‟ frequency of lexical collocations and their online writing scores”

(p.192) From the findings of the two studies, it can be said that the knowledge and use of collocations is an indicator of good and poor writing Thus, it is absolutely essential for ESL learners to be aware of English collocations and to learn how to use collocations effectively in writing

Learning collocations; however, is a challenging job for ESL learners

Wolter (2006) notices that in second language learning, collocational knowledge is more difficult to learn than grammatical rules Even advanced language learners have great difficulties in the production of collocations (Nesselhauf, 2003; Laufer &

There has been a great concern among researchers about the reasons why ESL learners make collocational errors Recent studies have pointed out that the causes of collocational errors are mainly related to:

(1) The lack of collocational concept, i.e ESL learners are not aware of collocation as a potential problem in language learning (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993, p 108)

(2) The shortage of collocational knowledge, i.e students do not understand the potential collocational properties of the words they have already known For example, it can be assumed that most students know the collocation “a good boy”, but few students can generate “a good knowledge” (Ooi and Kim-Seoh,

(3) Interlingual transfer (the interference of mother tongue/L1), i.e some collocational errors are caused by direct translation (e.g for some Vietnamese ESL students, they write “learn knowledge” instead of “gain knowledge” or

“absorb knowledge”) (Bahns, 1993, p 61; Nesselhauf, 2003, p 234; Laufer and Waldman, 2011, p 665)

The first and second causes of collocational errors may imply that collocation teaching and learning could be neglected in ESL classes and therefore, learners are not aware that collocations may pose potential problems in their language learning

The use of collocation is more problematic on productive language skills, especially in writing because written contexts require precision in the use of words

Having taught English writing skill to first year English-major students for many years, the researcher notices that collocational errors account for a relatively high percentage among the types of errors her students make in writing English When they write a paragraph or an essay, it is no easy task for them to find the right collocates of a word, which affects their writing fluency In addition, the inappropriate combination of words makes their writing sound odd to native speakers of English It is, therefore, essential for teachers to raise students‟ awareness of collocations and to teach students how to use collocations appropriately and accurately in their writing

To date, there have been few published papers about collocation instruction in relation to writing skill Due to this lack of studies, this study was conducted to explore the effects of English collocation instruction on English writing skill as well as students‟ attitudes toward the teaching of collocation and its effect on their writing.

Scope and objectives of the study

Within the scope of an MA thesis, this study only aimed at investigating the effects of English collocation instruction on the writing skill of first year non-native English-major students at a university in Hanoi, Vietnam More specifically, the study was designed to address the following research question:

Could English collocation instruction help improve the writing skill of first year non-native English-major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST)?

This research question was broken down into 3 sub-questions:

1 What are the effects of the current English collocation instruction on the English essay writing scores of first year non-native English-major students at HUST?

2 What are the effects of the current English collocation instruction on the use of language in their English essay writing?

3 Is there any relationship between the students‟ use of collocation and their essay writing scores?

Significance of the study

The contribution of the study is pedagogical Although the study was carried out on a small scale, focusing on a particular group of Vietnamese English-major first year students, its results will (1) help teachers have a better understanding of English collocation instruction in relation to writing skill; (2) obtain students‟ opinions on ways to further enhance collocation instruction for better writing; and

(3) provide recommendations for teachers who are interested in using collocation instruction to improve writing skill of students in their own teaching context.

Organization of the study

This research report is divided into five main parts Chapter 1 presents a brief overview of the study The second chapter reviews previous studies whose focus and findings are relevant and beneficial to this one The third part discusses the methodology of this study, including the research type, the study site, the selection of participants, the description of the intervention and the methods of data collection and data analysis The fourth chapter reports the findings and their discussions

Finally, the report ends with the conclusion part which summarizes the research in some main remarkable points, gives some recommendations for those who want to teach collocations to improve students‟ writing skill in their own contexts and presents essential aspects relating to the study for future research.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Overview of collocation

Firth R.J is considered the first scholar to introduce the term “collocation”

He claims that a “collocation” is a “mode of meaning” in his book “Papers in Linguistics” published in 1951 He proposes that words obtain their meaning from their co-occurrence in the same context and collocations of a word help us understand its meaning better Firth then gives the example of the two words “dark” and “night”: “One of the meanings of night is its collocability with dark, and of dark, of course, collocation with night.” (p.196)

Since Firth‟s introduction of collocation, there have been various definitions of this term Benson, Benson and Ilson (1986) clarify collocations as “fixed, identifiable, non-idiomatic phrases and constructions” (p.1)

McCarthy (1990) understands the term collocation as “the likelihood of co- occurrence between words It is very likely that blond will occur with hair, but unlikely that it will occur with wallpaper; blond and hair are said to collocate” (p

158; cited in Schmitt, 1998) Schmitt claims that McCarthy‟s definition provides a general understanding of collocations for students However, this definition fails to determine “what the necessary degree of likelihood is before words are said to collocate” (p.29)

A leading author in studying collocations, Lewis (1997) defines collocation as “those combinations of words which occur naturally with greater than random frequency” (p 25) He also notes that “not all words which co-occur are collocations” (p.25) The characteristics of collocations will be further discussed in the later parts of this chapter

Another scholar, Nation (2001) points out that collocations are “closely structured groups whose parts frequently or uniquely occur together We would also expect collocations to contain some elements of grammatical or lexical unpredictability or inflexibility” (p 324)

In this study, the researcher follows Laufer and Waldman‟s (2011) definition that collocations are “habitually occurring lexical combinations that are characterized by restricted co-occurrence of elements and relative transparency of meaning” (p 648) It is because their definition has pointed out “the necessary degree of likelihood” of “co-occurrence between words”, that is restrictedness and meaning transparency

According to many researchers, one of the main characteristics of collocations is that collocations are pre-fabricated phrases (Howarth, 1998a, p 25;

Hill, 2000, p 47; Pawley & Syder, 1993 as cited in Seretan, 2011, p 9 & p 16)

Seretan (2011) claims that collocations are memorized as pre-fabricated chunks, therefore, collocations are available to native speakers as ready-made It means collocations are stored, retrieved and produced automatically by native speakers and this contributes to “conferring fluency and naturalness to their utterances” (p 16)

Another characteristic of collocations is that they are arbitrary (Cowie, 1998, p 162; Lewis, 1997, p 26) In other words, the individual words in a collocation cannot easily be substituted by their synonyms For example, “a tall man” cannot be substituted by “a high man”, or you can “make a mistake” but not “commit a mistake”

The matter whether collocations are idiomatic or non-idiomatic has been extensively discussed among researchers; however, the issue remains controversial

Idioms, according to McCathy and O‟Dell (2010), are “fixed combinations of words whose meaning is often difficult to guess from the meaning of each individual word… It has a non-literal or idiomatic meaning.” (p 6) Spears (2005) indicates that “all languages have phrases or sentences that cannot be understood literally… They are opaque or unpredictable because they don‟t have expected, literal meaning… A phrase or sentence of this type is said to be idiomatic” (p v), for example, a flash in the pan (meaning “something that happens only once”), a storm in a tea cup (meaning “a lot of worry or anger about something that is not important”), etc

In studying collocations, some researchers tend to distinguish collocations from idioms Semantic transparency seems to be the most important criterion to discriminate collocations from idioms According to Laufer and Waldman (2011), the meaning of collocations is relatively transparent; however, the meaning of idioms is much less transparent and often opaque The meaning of idioms can never be predicted from the meaning of the individual parts that compose them (p 649)

Additionally, in The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English, Benson et al (1986) defines collocations as “fixed, identifiable, non-idiomatic phrases and constructions” (p.1)

Cowie and Howarth (1995, as cited in Schmitt, 2000, p.79) proposes a framework for the levels of collocational complexity:

1 IDIOMS bite the dust, shoot the breeze

2 INVARIABLE COLLOCATION break a journey, from head to foot

3 COLLOCATION WITH LIMITED CHOICE AT ONE POINT take/have/be given precedence [over noun phrase] give/allow/permit access to [noun phrase]

4 COLLOCATION WITH LIMITED CHOICE AT TWO POINTS as dark/black as night/coal/ink get/have/receive a lesson/tuition/instruction [in noun phrase]

Figure 1: Levels of collocational complexity

According to this framework, idioms have the least complexity and variation

Idioms do not permit any change in their constituents If there is any change in the constituents of an idiom, it ceases to exist as a unit Schmitt (2000) gives an example of the idiom “kick the bucket” meaning “to die” If this idiom is changed into “kick the pail”, “boot the bucket” or “kick a bucket”, they all lose the idiom‟s meaning In Schmitt‟s words, idioms are called frozen collocations (p 78) In comparison to idioms, collocations are relatively fixed and the meaning is much more transparent because it is composed from the meaning of all the components

Howarth (1998a) also makes an effort to categorize collocations, free combinations and idioms His criteria for categorization include “restricted collocability, semantic specialization and idiomaticity” (p 28), which are all gradable

Lexical composites verb + noun blow a trumpet blow a fuse blow your own trumpet blow the gaff

Grammatical composites preposition + noun under the table under attack under the microscope under the weather

Howarth indicates that free combinations consist of freely substitutable components and can be understood literally Restricted collocations have one component in a non-literal sense while the other is in its normal meaning Figurative idioms have both a current literal interpretation and metaphorical meanings in terms of the whole, while pure idioms have a unitary meaning that cannot be derived from the meanings of the components Howarth also thinks that free combinations should be included in collocation category He calls free combinations “open collocations”

In a later study, Conzett (2000) distinguishes collocations from idioms and free combinations and suggests a collocation continuum (p 74)

The free combinations like friendly dog or old car as well as the fixed expressions like throw in the towel or Stars and Stripes are not regarded as collocations The combinations which fall in the middle of the two extremes on the continuum are counted as collocations Strong collocations mean that when you see a word, you strongly expect the presence of another Weak collocations mean the collocates can vary a great deal

Some other researchers, on the other hand, see collocations and idioms as similar, even overlapping terms Hill (2000) asserts that “all collocations are idiomatic and all phrasal verbs and idioms are collocations or contain collocations.”

(p 51) Lewis (2000) shares the same view with Hill when indicating that

“collocations are idiomatic” (p 134) and “very few collocations are truly self- evident or literal; there is a partially non-literal, metaphorical or idiomatic element to most collocations” (p 135) According to Lewis, collocations, like other idioms, are not fully predictable from their component words Lewis then gives an example of the meaning of the expressions strong opinions, wind, coffee, cheese The meaning of the word “strong” would be different in each expression, and when we translate these expressions into another language, we would need a different adjective in each expression Another scholar, Carter (2001) defines idioms as “non- subsitutable or fixed collocations, usually more than single word units and semantically opaque” (p 66) In this definition, idioms are considered a sub-class of collocations, or in other words, restricted collocations

Pedagogical issues on collocations

There is a general agreement that collocations play an important part in the development of L2 language competence (Brown, 1974; Channell, 1981; Bahns &

Eldaw 1993; Zhang, 1993; Howarth, 1998a; Gitsaki, 1999; Lewis, 1997, 2000;

In his research in 1974, Brown underscores that the improvement in listening and reading can be helped by increasing students‟ knowledge of collocations (p 1)

Channell (1981) claims that learners may fail to realize the potential of words they know well because they only use them in a limited number of collocations of which they are sure (p 120) This fact underlines the necessity of teaching collocations since teaching collocations can help promote vocabulary expansion Bahns and Eldaw (1993), furthermore, affirms that “a knowledge of collocations is actually necessary to communicative competence in English as one cannot always easily paraphrase one‟s way around collocations” (p 109) In another study, Zhang (1993) also finds a significant correlation between learner‟s collocational knowledge and the quality of their written communication

In recent years, more and more researchers and language teachers have emphasized the importance of collocations in language development According to Lewis (2000):

The reason so many students are not making any perceived progress is simply because they have not been trained to notice which words go with which They may know quite a lot of individual words which they struggle to use, along with their grammatical knowledge, but they lack the ability to use those words in a range of collocations which pack more meaning into what they say or write (Lewis, 2000, p 14)

Morgan Lewis argues that collocations help learners to get beyond the intermediate level He suggests that instead of trying to perfect their grammar and learn new, rare words, intermediate students should learn to use the words they already know in the huge number of collocations of which these words are parts By doing this, most intermediate students would increase their language competence dramatically

Nesselhauf (2003) also states the importance of collocations: “Collocations are of particular importance for learners striving for a high degree of competence in the second language” (p 223)

Being toward native-speaker fluency

In communication, the main factors to decide whether a speech is native-like or not involve the native-like selection of lexical items and native-like fluency

According to Pawley and Syder (1983), native-like selection is selecting “a sentence that is natural and idiomatic from among the range of grammatically correct paraphrases, many of which are non-native like” (p 191) Pawley and Syder; moreover, claim that to the native ears, most of non-natives‟ productions are unidiomatic The sentences that non-natives produce may be strictly grammatical but “the trouble is that native speakers just do not say things that way” (p 195)

Conklin & Schmitt (2008) supports Pawley and Syder‟s statement and affirms that the control of formulaic sequences is an important factor to distinguish between natives and even relatively advanced non-natives (p 84)

Native-like fluency, as Pawley and Syder (1983) claim, is “the native speaker‟s ability to produce fluent stretches of spontaneous connected discourse” (p

191) Hill (2000) indicates that native speakers can speak at a much faster rate because they are “calling on a vast repertoire of ready-made language, immediately available from their mental lexicons” (p 54) In other words, native speakers can speak at the speed that they do because they can predict unconsciously what is going to be said based on their own use of pre-fabricated phrases

It can be inferred from the above reviewed literature that if a non-native speaker or writer uses uncommon phrasing patterns, a native English speaker may find him or her harder to understand As it is generally agreed that collocations make up a significant part of a typical native speaker‟s communication in both speech and writing (Howarth, 1998b; Nesselhauf, 2003), it is inevitable that the mastery of collocations will enable English language learners to communicate more accurately and fluently, or in other words, more native-like Howarth (1998b) emphasizes the use of collocations as a sign of being toward native-like:

“Conforming to the native stylistic norms for a particular register entails not only making appropriate grammatical and lexical choices but also selecting conventional collocations to an appropriate extent… they are essential for effective communication, and their use by non-native writers is a clear sign that these learners have make an essential adjustment to the academic culture they are entering.” (Howarth, 1998b, p 186)

To summarize the role of collocations in helping L2 learners‟ language become more native-like, the researcher would like to refer to Nation‟s viewpoint

(2001): “all fluent and appropriate language requires collocational knowledge” (p

2.2.2 Choosing which collocations to teach

The importance of teaching collocations has been emphasized for decades

However, the unlimited number of English collocations has cause great trouble for teachers to decide which collocations to teach Researchers and teachers have different positions about choosing which collocations to teach, and which ones to ignore

According to Bahns (1993), collocations which have no direct translational equivalents in English and in the learners‟ mother tongue deserve more attention (p

56) Hill (2000) suggests that teachers should concentrate on medium-strength collocations which is “the main learning load for language users” and not only new collocations but the extension of learned words (p 64)

Over the decades, there have been numerous suggestions and recommendations about how to teach collocations to L2 learners In this part, the researcher only attempts to review the most common strategies and activities for collocation instruction

Raising learners‟ awareness of collocations

The importance of making students aware of collocations has been emphasized by a number of teachers and researchers In fact, raising students‟ awareness of collocations plays a crucial role in collocation instruction as well as language learning (Woolard, 2000; Hill, 2000; Conzett, 2000; Ying & O‟Neill,

It is noted that the concept “consciousness” is commonly equated with

“awareness” (Battista, 1978 & Rotner, 1987; as cited in Schmidt, 1990, p 131) In this research, the two terms are used interchangeably According to Ellis (1993), consciousness-raising refers to “a deliberate attempt on the part of the teacher to make the learners‟ aware of specific features of the L2” (pp 108-109) Many linguists and teachers share the view that consciousness-raising is clearly essential in language teaching and learning because learners need conscious understanding of the target language system to produce correct forms and use them appropriately (Schmidt, 1990, p 129)

In teaching collocations, Woolard (2000), Hill (2000) and Conzett (2000) propose some activities to raise students‟ awareness of collocations According to Woolard (2000), one of the best ways to make students aware of collocations is to point out their mis-collocations in writing He suggests that teachers should keep a record of students‟ mis-collocations and bring them into the classroom at appropriate times to extend vocabulary teaching (p 30) Another activity that Woolard advocates is highlighting collocations in a reading text and asking students to make sentences with the highlighted collocations or asking students to find out collocations in the text themselves He adds that Verb-Noun, Adjective-Noun, Verb-Adverb collocations should receive more attention (pp 31-32)

Hill (2000) mentions two activities to raise students‟ awareness of collocations The first activity is, similar to Woolard, to ask students to underline collocations in a text The second activity is to take a common word and ask students to find as many collocates as they can For example, students will not be considered as “really know the verb speak” if they do not know at least the following collocations: speak a foreign language, speaker your mind, speak in public, speak (French), speak clearly, speak openly, speak fluently, speak with a (Welsh) accent, speak volumes

Conzett (2000) gives a long list of activities to teach collocations among which the researcher finds two activities useful for raising students‟ awareness

Conzett shares the same view with Woolard and Hill in maintaining that training students to observe and note collocations in reading is an essential activity to raise their awareness However, she suggests another follow-up activity to reinforce the collocations that students have identified in the reading text The activity is to ask students to complete a writing assignment in which they have to use the collocations that they have found in the reading text Another thing is to teach students the word

Collocations in ESL writing

2.3.1 The need for collocation instruction in L2 writing process

It is generally agreed that collocations are more problematic in L2 productive language than receptive language (Hill, 1999; Ozaki, 2011) Because of their relatively transparency in meaning, collocations do not cause much comprehension problems in reading or listening However, when they are used in productive skills such as writing and speaking, L2 learners may not be able to use them properly in reproducing the language Hill (1999) further explains the problem of collocations in writing:

Students with good ideas often lose marks because they don‟t know the four or five most important collocates of a key word that is central to what they are writing about When students do not know the collocations which express precisely what they want to say, they create longer utterances which increase the likelihood of further errors (Hill, 1999, p 5)

Conzett (2000) expresses her frustration about the fact that her students often use their new vocabulary incorrectly when they move from receptive to productive language despite her careful and contextualized vocabulary instruction (pp 70-71)

It is, therefore, necessary for teachers to raise students‟ awareness of collocations and teach them how to use collocations correctly in L2 writing so that they can produce language with near-native accuracy

2.3.2 How to incorporate collocation instruction in teaching writing skills

Language teachers have proposed some ways to incorporate collocation instruction in teaching writing skills In essay preparation, the first activity to teach collocation is that teachers may brainstorm the words connected with the topic in class before they give their students home writing assignment and then useful collocates should be added to the words (Lewis, 2000; Conzett, 2000) Lewis (2000) suggests that the nouns which will be central to the content of the essay need to be introduced After that verbs and adverbs which collocate with the nouns should be added, and finally adverbs which collocate with the verbs For example, with an

“education” topic, nouns like school, education, qualification, teacher, etc may be introduced and for the word school, it may go with drop out of, leave, skip, go to, single-sex, mixed, state or private This activity helps learners to generate more ideas, increase vocabulary gain as well as enhance collocational competence

Another activity to help learners improve their use of collocations in writing is to find a text on the topic of the essay and use it to introduce useful collocations (Lewis, 2000; Conzett, 2000) Teachers may download a text from the internet and create a cloze-type exercise by deleting Verb-Noun collocations and ask learners to think as many words as they can to fill in the gaps The purpose of this activity is not to recreate the original text, but to encourage learners to acquire new combinations of words and to introduce lexis which they may need for their own essays

In the post-writing stage, Lewis (2000, p 95) proposes a process to give essay feedback with an emphasis on collocations The process can be summarized as follows:

Step 1: The teacher read students‟ first draft, focusing on meaning alone If there is a collocation to replace the learners‟ clumsy phrase and the teacher thinks the learners know that collocation, he may add a symbol meaning “Do you know a collocation to replace the underlined words?” For a more difficult collocation, he may add another symbol which means “Simplify with collocations including…” and gives the stronger member of the collocation

Step 2: The teacher returns the first draft and students reformulate it

Step 3: The teacher reads the reformulated version for meaning and textual coherence The teacher should provide in full any collocations which students are unable to produce correctly

Step 4: Students get the second version with correction and write the third and final version

Lewis (2000) claims that with this process of giving essay feedback, students become more aware of collocation as an essential carrier of meaning and improve their ability to recognize chunks in reading

2.3.3 Studies on the correlation between collocations and L2 writing proficiency

To date there have been limited empirical studies on the use of collocations in L2 writing Zhang (1993) is the first researcher on this topic Zhang (1993) tested

60 college freshmen (30 native and 30 non-native speakers of English) in a public university in Pennsylvania in the U.S by using a collocation test and a writing test

The collocation test was used to measure the participants‟ collocational knowledge and the writing test was administered to collect data on their use of collocations and writing proficiency Based on the results of the writing test, Zhang divided each group into two sub-groups: good writers and poor writers He then compared the correlation between the subjects‟ knowledge of collocations and their writing quality; the use of collocations in the subjects‟ essays and the writing quality With the collocational test results, he found that native speakers performed significantly better than non-native speakers and good writers within each group performed significantly better than poor writers With regard to the use of collocations in the writing test, native speakers surpassed non-native speakers and good writers within each group surpassed poor writers in the quality of collocations For the non-native group, the quantity of collocations of good writers outnumbered that of poor writers Based on the findings, Zhang draw two major conclusions: (1) collocational knowledge is a source of fluency in written communication among college freshmen and (2) quality of collocations in terms of variety and accuracy is indicative of the quality of college freshmen writing

In a later study, Hsu (2007) investigated the use of English lexical collocations and their relation to the online writing of English-major and non- English major college students in Taiwan Participants were 41 English majors and

21 non-English majors at a national university Hsu used a web-based writing program Criterion Version 7.1 to administer the 45-minute online writing test The test was used to elicit information on the participants‟ use of lexical collocations and to measure writing fluency of the two groups Hsu came to two conclusions: (1) there seemed to be a positive correlation between Taiwanese college EFL learners‟ frequency of lexical collocations use and their online writing scores; and (2) there seemed to be a significantly positive correlation between the subjects‟ variety of lexical collocations and their online writing scores

In summary, both Zhang (1993) and Hsu (2007) came to the consensus that learners‟ knowledge and use of collocations correlated with L2 writing proficiency

2.3.4 Studies on the effects of collocation instruction on L2 writing

As can be inferred from the previous studies, it is necessary for English teachers to incorporate English collocation instruction in teaching writing skills to ESL learners and the effects of collocation instruction on ESL writing need to be examined However, to date, there have been few published articles about this issue

Ying & Hendricks (2004) are the pioneers in this area

In 2004, Ying and Hendricks carried out a classroom-based study that investigated the effects of the CAR (Collocation Awareness Raising) process on the writing of 46 Chinese postgraduate students in the National University of Singapore The CAR process consisted of six steps as summarized below:

Step 1: Students were introduced to a variety of collocation resources including dictionaries, relevant readings and concordances

Step 2: Students were assigned the writing task: a summary-analysis essay in respond to an article

Step 3: Students brainstormed for main ideas to develop in their writing

Step 4: Students were shown how to notice collocations in the given related articles and were taught to record these collocations on a provided worksheet

Step 5: Students were encouraged to search for key words and collocations in the online concordance and collocation dictionary and recorded what they found

Step 6: Students started writing in the provided worksheet until the class finished Their summary analysis essays were completed outside the class In their essays, students were told to highlight the collocations they used from what they found

THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Type of research: Action research

According to Nunan (1992) an action research “is initiated by the practitioner and is derived from a real problem in the classroom which needs to be confronted”

“Action research is envisaged as conferring two important benefits Firstly, it encourages teachers to reflect on their practice, and therefore leads to potential change It plays an important part in reflective teaching, where personal and professional development occurs when teachers review their experience in a systematic way Secondly, it is said to empower teachers, releasing them from dependence upon precepts handed down by trainers and inspectors By testing for themselves the methods and materials they use in the classroom, they can establish which are the most effective for them.” (Field, 1997, p 192)

It is essential for a teacher-researcher to know that action research is an on- going cycle for improvements An action research should consist of a cycle of phases beginning from identifying a problem, planning an action, taking action, observation and evaluation The given phases are illustrated in the following diagrams:

Figure 5: Simple Action Research Model (MacIsaac, 1995; as cited in O‟Brien, 2001)

Gerald Susman (1983; cited in O‟Brien, 2001) distinguished five phases to be conducted within each research cycle as follows:

Figure 6: Gerald Susman’s action research cycle with five phases

This study featured all the characteristics of an action research:

(1) The researcher was the teacher of the participants, she, therefore, easily identified a problem in her teaching English writing: the lack of both explicit/implicit collocation instruction

(2) The research ideas stemmed from the researcher‟s observation in her classroom that English collocations caused great trouble for her students in English writing

(3) Through the action research, the solution (collocation instruction) to the problem (collocational errors in students‟ writing) was tested

(4) This study was a chance for the researcher to review her experience in teaching collocations to EFL students and to report the effects of collocation instruction on the participants‟ writing skill

(5) From the findings, potential changes may take place Because collocation instruction is beneficial in improving students‟ writing skill, the researcher will continue with teaching her students how to use collocation in writing in the future.

Research design

In this research, the researcher adopted the pre- and post-test single group design This research design “utilizes a single group of respondents who undertake the pre-test, then the treatment and then the posttest” (Cheng & Tan, 2008, p 38)

This design was taken due to the lack of the control group At the research site, there were six classes of first year English-major students Two of them were in the morning and four of them were in the afternoon During the time the research was carried out (from February to May 2012), the researcher had to take Academic French lessons and Materials Development in Language Teaching lessons at the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and Foreign studies (ULIS), thus, she could not teach four afternoon classes There were only two morning classes of first year English-major students for her to collect data

However, the fact that the students in the two classes were not of the same (or roughly the same) level in English proficiency resulted in the impossibility to assign one group as “experimental” and the other as “control” group Due to these problems in sampling and the time constrain to complete the M.A thesis, the researcher decided to carry out a pre- and post-test single group design, although she was aware that this design was a weak experimental research design with many threats to internal validity The researcher was also aware that she should make attempts to minimize these threats

According to Tan & Cheng (2008, p 31), there are six threats to single-group design, as indicated below:

History: The increase in the post-test mean is attributed to something else other than the intervention

Maturation: The increase in the post-test mean is caused by the normal growth or maturation of the respondents

Testing: When the same test is used in the pre-test and post-test, students become more experienced, therefore, they do better in the post-test

Instrumentation: Because the pre-test and post-test are marked at different times, they may not be marked in the same way when the rater gets tired

Mortality: Some low scorers in the pre-test may drop out from the research project

The post-test is taken without these low scorers, therefore, the mean is higher

Regression: The project involves students from the extremes and the pre-test and post-test are not perfectly correlated

To minimize these threats, the researcher did the following things:

(1) To confirm that the intervention (collocation instruction) really helped the students to improve their writing skill but not something else, the researcher interviewed students after the intervention to get their opinions about the effectiveness of collocation instruction

(2) The pre-test and the post-test were of the same format and both were typical assignments at the research site However, the topics for essay writing in the two tests were different

(3) The pre-test and post-test were marked by the same teachers First, two experienced teachers marked the tests independently Then the researcher compared the results If there was any discrepancy of greater than 10 points (out of 100) for the writing score and 6 points for the language use score, the two teachers had to work together until a consensus or near consensus was reached This was to increase the objectiveness in assessing writing

(4) The researcher obtained students/participants‟ consent to follow through the research so that the participants in the pre-test and post-test were the same No one dropped out from the research project.

Setting of the study

The study was conducted at the School of Foreign Languages, Hanoi University of Sciences and Technology The School of Foreign Languages was originally founded in 1956, and took the current official name in 2012 It is one of the leading educational institutions which provide full-time undergraduate programs of English for science and technology In the first three semesters, English-major students work mostly on language skills including reading, writing, listening and speaking In the following semesters, students study translation and interpreting skills and take some ESP courses such as English for information technology, English for environmental science, etc

This particular site was chosen for two main reasons First, the researcher could get approved access to the school, where she had worked for nearly two years as a teacher Secondly, the researcher received support from the leader as well as the teachers in the English writing skill group in her research.

Selection of participants

The participants of the study were 21 first year English major students in the same class at the School of Foreign Languages, Hanoi University of Science and Technology The number of students per class at this research site ranged from 24 to 27; however, there were only 21 students in this class during the time of the study because after the first semester, one student went abroad for studying; one moved to

Ho Chi Minh city and one dropped out of school without any apparent reasons

21 students in this class were chosen as participants for the study for two reasons: (1) the researcher had had two years‟ teaching experience with students at this level and she had a good understanding of the writing program for the English- major students at the research site and (2) after explaining the purposes of the study to them, the participants were willing to take part in the research

Before entering the university, most of the participants had studied English as a foreign language at their secondary schools and high schools for 7 years Most of them were at intermediate level of English and a few of them were at upper- intermediate or advanced level When taking part in the study, the participants had studied sentence writing and paragraph writing in the first semester of the academic year 2011-2012.

Description of intervention

In the light of the literature reviewed in chapter 2, the researcher chose the collocation instruction strategies and materials that she believed were suitable for her students The strategies for teaching collocations included (1) raising learners‟ awareness of collocations by introducing the concept “collocation” to them and highlighting collocations in a reading texts; (2) encouraging students‟ independent collocation learning outside the classroom by teaching them the skill to do collocation search in a dictionary; (3) teaching collocations through exercises; and

(4) recording collocations in a notebook Besides, the researcher followed the suggestions by Conzett (2000) and Lewis (2000) to integrate collocation instruction into the writing program With regard to materials, authentic articles from online magazines and newspapers, an exercise book and a collocations dictionary were used to teach collocations

The intervention took place in the second semester of the academic year 2011-2012 It began in February 2012 and finished in May 2012 The teaching of English collocations was integrated into the writing course in which the participants learned essay writing The course book was Great essays (2 rd edition) by Folse, Muchmore-Vokoun and Solomon (1999) In this writing course, the participants had to write at least five essays as home assignment, took a writing test under time pressure in the middle of the semester and another writing test under time pressure at the end of the semester The course lasted 15 weeks with a lesson of 90 minutes for each week

In the first three weeks, the participants studied the process of essay writing, the structure of an essay, the development of an essay and the coherence and unity of an essay Collocations were not taught during the first three weeks At the end of week 3, the participants were asked to write their first essay in the semester This first assignment was considered the pre-test

From week 4 to week 6, the participants learned about narrative essays

Collocation instruction began in week 4 In this week, the researcher introduced the concept “English collocation”, the importance of collocations to English language learning in general and to English writing in particular, and gave a brief presentation of the types of collocations to the participants The researcher did not go into details about the types of collocations in this lesson because it would take too much time For each lesson, there was about only 10-15 minutes for collocation instruction; the rest of the time should be devoted to teaching essay writing The aim of collocation instruction in this lesson was to make the participants aware of collocations and why they had to learn collocations The handouts used in this lesson were: English Collocations In Use Intermediate by McCarthy and O‟Dell

(2005, pp 6-7) and “Types of collocations” handout designed by the researcher

In week 5, the participants were introduced to the resources for collocation learning and the skill to search for collocations in a dictionary The researcher believed that teaching the participants the skill to do collocation searching was the most important activity in teaching collocations Taking Woolard‟s viewpoint

(2000) in teaching collocations, the researcher understood that if the participant could master the skill to search for collocations, they would learn collocations actively and effectively outside the classroom to further enhance their collocational competence On the day of the lesson, the researcher brought a paperback version of the Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English and an electronic version of the dictionary installed on her computer to the class The researcher introduced the dictionary to her students and demonstrated how to find the collocates of a word using both versions of the dictionary She also provided her students with the link to download the electronic version of the dictionary on the internet and the address of the bookstore to buy the paperback version The handouts for home reading on collocations included: English Collocations In Use Intermediate by McCarthy and O‟Dell (2005, pp 10-11)

The focus of collocation instruction in week 6 was storing collocations in a notebook This was also an important skill to promote learners‟ independent collocation learning (Woolard, 2000) The most crucial information for the students in this lesson was that they should record collocation in a phrase or a sentence showing how it was used The collocation should be highlighted by underlining it or by using a text-surfer The researcher also reminded her students that a collocation should be stored as a single item in their memory For example, they should remember “make a mistake” as one lexical item, instead of storing the two words

“make” and “mistake” in their memory and reconstruct the phrase when they wanted to use it As Hill (2000) claims, native speakers can speak at a great speed thanks to the vast repertoire of ready-made chunks that they store in their head (p

54) If L2 learners do the same thing, i.e store the collocations in their head as ready-made items, their fluency would improve considerably The material for this lesson was English Collocations In Use Intermediate by McCarthy and O‟Dell

(2005, pp 8-9) and a handout on the model for recording collocations in a notebook This model was adapted from Conzett‟s notes for recording collocations (p 76)

Another activity that the researcher did in week 6 was to ask the participants to work on a worksheet called “Dreams and nightmares” at home In this worksheet, there were various exercises on finding collocations related to dreams and nightmare The purpose of this activity was to prepare for the second essay in the semester, a narrative essay with the topic: “Write a narrative essay ending with

„Thank god, it‟s just a dream‟” By doing the exercises on this worksheet, the participants had a chance to practice their collocation searching skill and they were encouraged to use some of the collocations they learned from the worksheet in their narrative essay The worksheet was downloaded from www.macmillandictionaries.com

From week 7 to week 8, the participants studied comparison-contrast essays

In week 7, the researcher gave her students a deeper look into lexical collocations

The document for teaching included 5 pages from “The BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English” (1986) As the handout was relatively long, the participants were asked to read it more carefully at home and bring it to the next class for discussion In this lesson, the researcher also drew her students‟ attention to the importance of using collocations to vary vocabulary use in essay writing Instead of overusing the most common intensifying adverb “very”, the participants were advised to try other intensifiers such as “highly competitive”, “bitterly disappointed”, or “deeply ashamed” The material for this activity was English Collocations In Use Intermediate by McCarthy and O‟Dell (2005, pp 16-17)

In the following week, the students learned the skill to identify lexical collocations in a reading text Before learning this skill, there was a brief discussion on what the students had read about lexical collocations in the previous week The two texts “How eating at home can save your life” (from an internet newspaper

“The Huffington Post”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/family- dinner-how_b_806114.html?view=screen) and “Diabetes risk from dining out”

(from an Australian online magazine called “Sydney Morning Herald”: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/diabetes-risk-from-dining-out- 20101120-181uq.html) were chosen for the students to identify lexical collocations

Data collection instruments

The researcher used two tests (see Appendix 1) as tools to evaluate the result of the action procedure The first test called Pre-test was to check how students used English collocations in their writing before the action began The second test called Post-test was to examine the progress in the use of collocations in writing and the writing quality after 11 weeks of taking action Both of the tests were in the form of standardized home writing assignments used for first-year English-major students in the research site They were designed based on the writing course book Great essays (2 rd edition) by Folse, Muchmore-Vokoun and Solomon (1999)

In each test, the participants were given a list of 4 topics They were asked to choose one of the suggested topics to write an explanatory essay of about 250-350 words This was the default word limit for short essays in the research site

However, most of the participants tended to write about 400 words The participants had to submit their essays one week after they received the assignment

The scores of the two tests were recorded and analyzed to measure the development of students‟ writing skill, especially the development in the use of language in the essays

At the end of the study, the participants were interviewed by the researcher

There were 21 participants in the study; however, only 19 of them could take part in the interviews One participant had a stomachache and was in hospital so she could not come to the interview The other participant was busy with her family affair so she could not come either

Each participant was given the “Participant Information Statement”, the

“Consent Form” (Appendix 4) and the list of suggested questions (Appendix 3) at least 2 hours before the interview Each interview took about 8 minutes All the interviews were audio recorded and completed in two sessions on two different days at the classroom setting The total time of the interviews was about 140 minutes.

Data analysis procedures

This section discusses how the raw data collected for the study were organized and analyzed

The pre- test and post- test papers were marked using the analytic scoring rubric which is currently used to judge the students‟ mid-term and final writing tests at the research site (Appendix 2) The measuring scale is from 0 to 100 points with

0 indicating incompetence in writing and 100 indicating superior competence In this analytic marking rubric, the language use of the essay accounts for 30 out of

Two teachers who had formal training and experience in teaching essay writing marked the test papers independently When the two teachers finished their marking, the researcher compared their scores Any discrepancy of greater than 10 points for the writing score and 6 points for the language use score was discussed between the two teachers until a consensus or near consensus was reached The two writing scores for each writing test paper were averaged out to produce a single final writing score Similarly, the two language use scores for each paper were averaged to produce a single language use score

3.7.2 Examining the use of collocations in the test papers

All the pre- test and post- test papers were examined by the researcher with respect to their use of collocations The identification of collocations in these papers was done manually Identifying collocations in a writing paper is a challenging task for any non-native speaker of English, therefore, “The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English: A Guide to Word Combinations”, the “Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English” and the “British National Corpus” (BNC) were used as references to check the appropriateness of the collocations and detect the participants‟ collocational errors in the test papers

After skimming each writing test paper, the researcher color-coded the collocations in it Collocations were divided into four categories: correct lexical collocations (LC), correct grammatical collocations (GC), lexical collocational errors (LE) and grammatical collocational errors (GE) Correct lexical collocations were highlighted with pink colour; correct grammatical collocations were marked with green; lexical collocational errors were in orange and grammatical collocational errors were in blue The purpose of color-coding was to make it easier for the researcher to count the number of collocations in each category It should be noted that in the same essay, the repeated collocation was not counted For example, if the collocation "right lifestyle" was used in the introduction and then repeated several times in the rest of the essay, it was only counted as one collocation in that essay Also, a “complex” collocation such as “have a quick breakfast” was considered as two collocations: “have breakfast” and “quick breakfast”

The counts of collocations and collocational errors in the writing test papers were used to examine the differences in the quantity of correct and incorrect collocations in writing before and after the participants‟ experiencing collocation instruction As the number of words in the pre-test and post-test were roughly the same (about 8000 words), for simplicity in analyzing the data, the number of collocations in both pre-test and post-test were counted as “frequency of occurrence per 8.000 words” so that the differences could be compared against the same measurement (adapted from Zhang‟s measurement of frequency of collocations,

In analyzing the collected data statistically, the researcher took Creswell‟ viewpoint (2005, as cited in Mertler, 2008, p 36) that “in most cases, descriptive statistics will suffice for the analysis of action research data; however, inferential statistics may be required if it is necessary to compare groups or measure relationships between variables” In this study, the researcher used both descriptive and inferential statistics

According to Siegle (2002), “a paired (or correlated) t-test is concerned with the difference between the average scores of a single sample of individuals who is assessed at two different times (such as before treatment and after treatment)” In this study, the researcher would like to test whether there was a significant difference in the mean writing scores (WS) of the same group of students before and after they experience collocation instruction Therefore, a paired t-test was the best option Similarly, another paired t-test was carried out to test the difference in the mean language use scores (LUS) of the participants before and after they received collocation instruction To reduce computation work, the researcher used SPSS version 15, which is a statistical software, to calculate the two paired t-tests

Pearson correlation coefficients were computed using SPSS version 15 to reveal the relationship between sets of variables, namely, between the use of lexical and grammatical collocations and writing quality and between collocational errors and writing quality

3.7.4 Analyzing data from semi-structured interviews

Responses to the semi-structured interviews, which were conducted and audio recorded by the end of the study, were transcribed, categorized and analyzed to have a deep insight into the participants‟ reflections of collocation instruction, their difficulties in learning and using collocations in their writing as well as their suggestions to further enhance the teaching of English collocations The questions in the interview were grouped into six categories:

 The role of English writing skill to the students‟ study and future jobs

 The students‟ problems with English writing

 The effects of collocation instruction on students‟ writing

 The effects of collocation instruction on encouraging learner independence in collocation learning

 The students‟ difficulties in learning collocations

 The students‟ suggestions for further enhancing the teaching of collocations

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The effects of the current HUST English collocation instruction on the

First, the researcher analyzed the data by calculating the mean, median, mode and the standard deviation to compare the pre-test and post-test writing scores (WS) The results were shown in table 5:

Table 5: Descriptive statistics of the pre-test and post-test writing scores

N Mean Median Mode Std Deviation

From this table, it is clearly seen that the post-test mean score is 9.6 points (out of 100 points) higher than the pre-test mean score The mean, median and mode all show greater improvement in the post-test writing scores

To test the difference in means between the pre-test and post-test writing scores of this group of students, the researcher ran a paired t-test using SPSS version 15 The α value set for significance was 0.05 Table 6 shows the results of the paired t-test for overall writing scores:

The p value of 0.001 of the test shows that the difference is significant and unlikely to occur by chance In other words, it must be the result of the treatment (collocation instruction)

It can be concluded that participants‟ writing scores on average increased 9.57 points (out of 100 points) between the pre-test and post-test This increase is statistically significant at p < 05 (df = 20, t = 4.11).

The effects of the current English collocation instruction on the use of

To examine the effects of English collocation instruction on the use of language in English writing, the researcher compared the mean language use scores before (pre-test) and after (post-test) the subjects experienced collocation instruction, the differences between the pre-test and post-test in the quantity of correct collocations and the differences between the pre-test and post-test in the quantity of collocational errors

Table 6: Pa ired samp les t-test for writing sco res

Std Error Mean Paired Differences t df Sig (2-tailed)

Comparing the mean language use scores (LUS) in the pre-test and the post-test

To compare the pre-test and post-test language use scores (LUS), the researcher calculated the mean, median, mode and the standard deviation The results were shown in table 7:

Table 7: Descriptive statistics of the pre-test and post-test language use scores

N Mean Median Mode Std Deviation

Table 7 indicates that the mean, median and mode all show improvement in the post-test language use scores The post-test language use mean score is 3.1 points (out of 30/100 points for language use in an essay) higher than the pre-test language use mean score

To calculate the statistical significance of the difference in means between the pre-test and post-test language use scores of this same group of students, the researcher ran another paired t-test using SPSS version 15 The α value set for significance was 0.05 Table 8 shows the results of the paired t-test for language use scores:

The p value of 0.00019 of the test shows that the difference is significant and unlikely to occur by chance The increase in the mean of the post-test language use scores can be attributed to the treatment (collocation instruction)

Table 8: Paired samples t-test for language use scores

Std Error Mean Paired Differences t df Sig (2-tailed)

In brief, the participants‟ average language use score in the post-test increased 3.1 points (out of 30/100 points for language use in an essay) This increase is statistically significant at p < 05 (df = 20, t = 4.55)

Differences between the pre-test and post-test in the quantity of collocations

Table 9: The number of correct collocations and collocational errors in the pre- test and post-test

LC LE GC GE Total Number of words

LC: Number of correct lexical collocations LE: Number of lexical collocational errors GC: Number of correct grammatical collocations GE: Number of grammatical collocational errors

Table 9 presents the research findings on differences between the pre-test and post-test in the quantity of collocations In table 9, the column “number of words” indicates the total number of words in 21 essays in the pre-test and the post- test Because the number of words in the pre-test and post-test are roughly the same, for simplicity in analyzing the data, the number of collocations in both pre-test and post-test are counted as “frequency of occurrence per 8.000 words” so that the differences can be compared against the same measurement (adapted from Zhang‟s measurement of frequency of collocations, 1993)

In total, there is a difference of 155 collocations (including errors) between the pre-test and the post-test

Next, the researcher looks at the difference between the pre-test and post-test in the quantity of correct collocations and collocational errors more closely

Figure 7: Differences between the pre-test and post-test in the quantity of correct collocations

Figure 7 shows that there is a sharp increase in the number of correct lexical collocations used in the students‟ writing after the intervention, from 264 correct lexical collocations in the pre-test to 449 in the post test However, only a slight difference in the total number of correct grammatical collocations exists between the pre-test and post-test, 337 in the pre-test as compared to 396 in the post-test It implies that collocation instruction has a greater effect on the students‟ use of lexical collocations than on their use of grammatical collocations In the interviews at the end of the research, the students shared that they found it easier to learn lexical collocations because they felt familiar with such combinations as V-N, Adj-

N, Adv-V The verb patterns were relatively complicated for them to remember

Therefore, they had a tendency to focus more on lexical collocations in writing It explains why after receiving collocation instructions, students are able to use much more correct lexical collocations than grammatical collocations in their writing

Correct lexical collocationsCorrect grammatical collocations

Figure 8: Differences between the pre-test and post-test in the quantity of collocational errors

Figure 8 provides information about the number of lexical and grammatical collocational errors in the pre-test and post-test It is clearly seen that the number of grammatical collocational errors reduces by half and the number of lexical collocational errors also decreases considerably by 35% To figure out the reasons why there was a sharp decrease in the number of grammatical collocational errors, the researcher contacted three students who had the biggest reduction in the number of grammatical collocational errors in their writing One of them revealed that she felt ashamed when she saw the prepositional errors highlighted by the teacher; therefore, she checked prepositional errors carefully when she proofread her essay before submission Another student stated that she did a lot of exercises in a prepositional exercise book in the semester The last student said she read more grammar books because from the teacher‟s comments in her writing, she realized that she had grammar problems From their responses, it can be inferred that highlighting collocational mistakes and giving essay feedback proved to be effective in raising students‟ awareness of their own problems so that they would find out their own solutions Additionally, in the semi-structured interviews, most of the students reported that they had formed a habit of checking both lexical and grammatical collocations that they were not sure of when they wrote English essays and this good habit helped them avoid making collocational mistakes It can be

Grammatical collocational errors concluded that collocation instruction had a significant influence on helping the students reduce collocational errors, thus, improve their use of language in writing.

Correlation between non-native English-major students‟ use of collocation

The researcher examines the relationship between the use of collocations and the writing scores by correlating the number of correct lexical collocations, the number of correct grammatical collocations, the number of lexical collocational errors, the number of grammatical collocational errors with the writing score The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were computed to measure possible correlation between the use of collocations and the writing scores Table 6 shows the correlation coefficients in the pre-test:

Table 10: Correlation coefficients between the use of collocations and the writing score in the pre-test

PretestWS: Pre-test writing score LC1: Number of correct lexical collocations in the pre-test GC1: Number of correct grammatical collocations in the pre-test LE1: Number of lexical collocational errors in the pre-test

GE1: Number of grammatical collocational errors in the pre-test

The following observation may be made about table 10:

(1) The correlation coefficient between LE1 and PretestWS (-.064 at 786 level) means that there is no correlation between the quantity of lexical collocational errors and the writing score of non-native English-major students This finding is different from Zhang‟s conclusion (1993) that there is a significantly negative correlation between the number of lexical collocational errors and writing quality of non-native English students The researcher assumes that this difference can be attributed to the nationality of the teachers who mark the writing test In Zhang‟s study, the raters were American, thus, they might detect lexical collocational errors easily in writing and the number of lexical collocational errors would negatively influence the writing score In this study, the raters were ESL Vietnamese teachers

The raters and the students shared the same L1, so the raters might not have problem understanding the literal meaning of lexical collocational errors They, therefore, might not notice all lexical collocational errors in the students‟ writing and these errors would not have much influence on their marking of the essays

Another possible explanation could be that the current study took place in North Vietnam where the variety of English used in education seems to lean toward British English thus making it somewhat incompatible to Zhang‟s study using American raters (who could well use the variety of American English)

(2) Significant correlations are found between the quantity of correct collocations (both lexical and grammatical) and the writing scores of non-native English-major students

(3) There is a significant negative correlation between the number of grammatical collocational errors and the writing score of non-native English-major students The correlation coefficient between GE1 and Pre-test WS is -.638 at 0.02 level This means that grammatical collocational errors have a close relationship with the writing score

Similar statistical procedures were followed with the post-test data Table 7 presents the correlation coefficients in the post-test

Table 11: Correlation coefficients between the use of collocations and the writing quality in the post-test

PosttestWS: Post-test writing score LC2: Number of correct lexical collocations in the post-test GC2: Number of correct grammatical collocations in the post-test LE2: Number of lexical collocational errors in the post-test

GE2: Number of grammatical collocational errors in the post-test

It can be observed in table 11 that there is again strong correlation between the quantity of correct collocations and the writing scores Significant negative correlation is also found between the number of grammatical collocational errors and the post-test writing scores with the correlation coefficient between GE2 and Post-test writing score being -.508 at 0.15 level It is consistent with the research finding in table 10 that there is medium correlation between lexical collocational errors and the writing score.

HUST first year non-native English-major students‟ reflections on

To find out the students‟ reflections on collocation instruction in English writing, the researcher examines the audio recordings of the semi-structured interviews carried out at the end of the study The students‟ answers are grouped into 6 categories

The role of English writing skill to the students‟ study and future jobs

Question 1: How important is English writing skill to your present study and future jobs?

This question aimed at the students‟ evaluation of the role of the writing skill for their study and future jobs This is a decisive factor for the success of collocation instruction The results show that most of the students thought the writing skill was very important for their study (94.7%) and future jobs (58%) The reasons were various 21% of the students were aware that they had to learn writing well to support for their long essay writing in the third semester and translation in the second and third year 26.3% of the students expressed a great passion for becoming a translator in the future, so they asserted that writing was extremely important for their future careers A few students said writing helped them improve their vocabulary, grammar and background knowledge; and through learning writing, they knew how to work with reports or various forms in their jobs One student believed he should learn writing well in order to get a high IELTS score for studying abroad in the future

One student said writing was just as important as the other skill and she was not sure about the use of writing in her future job because she wanted to become an interpreter and she would not need to write much

Students‟ problems with English writing Question 2: What problems do you often have when writing in English?

The researcher wanted to know her students‟ problems to see whether she could help them solve any of the problems through collocation instruction The students gave various answers to this question; however, there were four major problems: unnatural use of language (73.7%), lack of vocabulary (52.6%), poor background knowledge (31.6%) and bad grammar (26.3%) Most of the students complained that they were unable to use the language naturally They did not know how to use the words effectively to communicate their ideas, so they tended to write lengthy sentences Some admitted that when they wrote a paragraph or an essay, they tried to think of the ideas in Vietnamese first, then they made direct translation into English As a result, their writing sounded unnatural Vocabulary was another big problem The students‟ vocabulary stock was limited and they were likely to use a fairly repetitive vocabulary in writing Several students said that they could not come up with interesting ideas in writing due to their poor background knowledge

A few students asserted that they were not confident with their grammar

The effects of collocation instruction on students‟ writing

Questions 3 and 4 were used to elicit information about the students‟ evaluation of how collocation instruction affected their essay writing and writing habits

Question 3: Do you think that collocation instruction in this semester is helpful to you in writing English essays? If yes, in what way do you think that collocation instruction helps you in your writing? If no, why do you think that collocation instruction is not necessary for essay writing?

All of the students said that they found collocation learning very helpful to their English writing First, collocation instruction made them aware that word combinations were very important in English Once they knew the importance of collocations, they would have more motivation to learn collocations in order to improve their writing Another important finding is that most of the students thought through collocation instruction, they found solutions to many of their problems with vocabulary and expression

“Learning collocations helps me a lot Before I know about collocation, I know many words but I do not know how to put them together Now if I want to find the collocates of a word, I just look it up in the collocation dictionary and choose the appropriate word I feel more confident because I know for sure that these combinations are correct.”

“I can use more complicated collocations to replace the weak collocations I used to write in my essays My writing sounds more proficient and interesting”

“I can use various intensifying adverbs to replace the word „very‟; my vocabulary use is less repetitive.”

“Using collocations makes my writing more interesting, more native-like and natural.”

On answering this question, 12 students, making up 63.2% of the total interviewees, believed that the correct use of collocations made their writing sound natural and fluent, 7 students (36.8%) believed that learning collocations helped them vary vocabulary in writing For example, instead of using “very” as an intensifying adverb all the time, the student could replace it with “completely”,

“highly” and so on Also by looking at the list of collocates in the dictionary, she could find many other choices to replace the common or sometimes wrong word combinations she used to write

The third finding is that only one student noted the effectiveness of learning collocations on her use of verb patterns and combinations with preposition From the researcher‟s observation, the students paid more attention to lexical than grammatical collocations One possible reason is that there are too many types of grammatical collocations and the verb patterns are too complicated for the students to remember In addition, “Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English”, the dictionary of collocations that most of the students in the study used, does not list the verb patterns, thus, students were not fully aware of grammatical collocations

Finally, 3 students (15.8%) found that learning collocation was not only useful for their essay writing but also for their speaking They claimed that their speaking skill also improved after receiving collocation instruction

Question 4: After receiving collocation instruction, do you think you have changed your writing habits? If yes, in what way have you changed your writing habits?

All the interviewees reported that after receiving collocation instruction, they had changed their writing habits to a certain degree

First, all of the students confirmed that they formed a good habit of doing collocation search in the process of writing Some searched for collocations in only one stage of the writing process: pre-writing, writing or post-writing Others looked for collocations in all three stages In the pre-writing stage, the students said they made an outline, figured out the key words and found the collocates of these words for using in the writing stage In this stage, it seemed that students only found lexical collocations such as Verb-Noun, Adjective-Noun and Verb-Adverb In the writing stage, the students said they stopped writing to search for collocations whenever they needed them In the post-writing stage, the students searched for collocations because they wanted to add more collocations to their writing or to check the collocations they were not sure of

Second, two students said that the awareness of collocations made them change the habit of direct translation from Vietnamese to English Instead, they tried to find appropriate collocations to express their ideas One revealed that even when she translated from Vietnamese to English, she was aware of checking the collocations again to avoid collocational mistakes

The last habit that the students acquired after receiving collocational instruction is storing collocations in notebooks for revising and future use 5 out of

19 students (26.3%) stated that they noted down the collocations that they thought would be necessary for them to learn in a notebook They found it easier to learn, revise and remember collocations with collocation notebook

The effects of collocation instruction on encouraging learner independence in collocation learning

Because in this study, the researcher adopted Woolard‟s viewpoint (2000, p

28) about encouraging learner independence in teaching collocations, questions 5, 6 and 7 were included in the interview to find out whether the students could learn collocations independently after receiving collocation instruction in class or not

Question 5: Among the activities that the teacher used to teach collocations in this semester, which activities do you like best? Why do you like these activities? (Please tick 2 activities)

Table 12: The students’ preferences of collocation instruction activities

28.9% The teacher trained me how to search for collocations in a collocation dictionary.

23.7% The teacher showed me how to identify collocations in reading passages.

10.5% The teacher taught me how to choose appropriate collocations when writing essays.

10.5% The teacher highlighted collocation mistakes in my essays.

10.5% The teacher required me to learn, use and underline at least five collocations in each essay.

7.9% The teacher asked me to do collocation exercises.

5.3% The teacher taught me how to store collocations in a notebook.

2.7% The teacher wrote confusable collocations on the board and gave explanations

CONCLUSIONS

Research questions revisited

Drawing on the findings from the pre-test and post-test and the findings from the interviews in the previous chapter, the research questions will now be considered again, and a brief summary of the results will be provided

What are the effects of the current English collocation instruction on the English writing scores of first year non-native English-major students at HUST?

The results of the two tests have shown that English collocation instruction was effective The students‟ writing scores improved remarkably after they experienced collocation instruction On average, there was an increase of 9.57 points (out of 100 points) from the pre-test to the post-test This increase is statistically significant at p < 0.05 (df = 20, t = 4.11)

What are the effects of the current English collocation instruction on the use of language in English writing of first year non-native English-major students at HUST?

English collocation instruction has led to better use of language in writing

There was a considerable increase of 3.1 points (out of 30/100 points for language use in an essay) in the students‟ use of language scores from the pre-test to the post- test This increase is statistically significant at p < 0.05 (df = 20, t = 4.55)

The results from the analysis of the use of collocations in the pre-test and post-test have shown that after receiving collocation instruction, students were able to use much more correct collocations, especially lexical collocations and they made less collocational mistakes, especially grammatical collocational mistakes

This indicates that the students benefited from collocation instruction and that their improved use of language could, in all likelihood, be attributed to the instruction

Is there any correlation between the non-native English-major students‟ use of collocation and their writing scores?

Statistical analysis has indicated that the quantity of correct collocations (both lexical and grammatical) and the writing scores of non-native English-major students were positively correlated There was a significant negative correlation between the number of grammatical collocational errors and the writing scores of non-native English-major students However, no correlation between the quantity of lexical collocational errors and the writing scores of non-native English-major students was found This finding is inconsistent with Zhang‟s conclusion (1993) that there was a significantly negative correlation between the number of lexical collocational errors and writing quality of non-native English students The difference between this finding and Zhang‟s result can be attributed to the nationality of the teachers who marked the writing test In this study, the raters were Vietnamese (non-native, using British English to some extent) while in Zhang‟s study, the raters were American (native, maybe using American English) As Vietnamese raters might not have problem understanding literal meaning of the lexical collocational errors, they might not really notice these errors, and thus lexical collocational errors might not affect the writing scores given by non-native raters

HUST first year non-native English-major students‟ reflections on collocation instruction

The findings from the semi-structured interview suggest that the students found collocation instruction useful to them in many ways They all gave positive feedbacks on the teaching of collocations and emphasized how learning collocations helped them improve their writing as well as language learning They have become aware of the fact that using collocations properly would increase the complexity in their writing and make it sound more natural The students have also developed the habits of learning collocations independently outside the classroom

Besides the merits, collocation instruction was associated with some challenges for students First, because of the unlimited number of collocations, students found it challenging to select which collocations to learn and how to use them appropriately Second, due to the time constrain, it was impossible for the teacher to help her students master all the types of collocations (7 types of lexical collocations, 8 types of grammatical collocations with 19 verb patterns)

Consequently, the students have only made use of some basic types of lexical collocations such as Adj-N, V-Adv or V-N.

Pedagogical implications

Based on the research findings and the students‟ suggestions in the semi- structured interviews, recommendations for collocation instruction in this context include:

 This study has demonstrated that collocation instruction has good effects on the use of language in writing of students as well as the overall writing quality Therefore, it is essential to incorporate collocation instruction in the writing syllabuses

 Writing teachers need to make students aware of the importance of collocations in writing in particular, and in language learning in general

 Students should be encouraged to do collocation search in the process of writing

 Special attention has to be paid to the skills to search for collocations in a collocations dictionary and to identify collocations in a reading text These are the most important skills that students have to master in order to learn collocations independently outside the classroom

 Students should have access to any of the three forms of collocations dictionary: paperback, computer-based or online This is to ensure the effectiveness of independent collocation learning

 Authentic materials are highly recommended in teaching collocations

Teachers should select and adapt these materials according to their students‟ specific needs

 Collocation instruction should be flexible, depending on the specific needs and language levels of specific groups of students.

Limitations of the study

This is the first time English collocation instruction has been incorporated into the English writing syllabus at HUST Therefore, the study encountered several limitations

The first drawback concerns the study‟s internal validity In this study, the researcher used the “one-group pretest posttest design” (Nunan, 1992) Nunan

(1992) indicates that “such studies have weak internal validity” (p 40) The key question for establishing the internal validity, according to Nunan (1992), “Is the research design such that we can confidently claim that the outcomes are a result of the experimental treatment?” (p 17) In other words, internal validity is guarded against threats if it can be confidently claimed that the outcomes are the result of the experimental treatment, not the result of other extraneous variables As discussed in chapter 3 - section 3.2, the researcher did her best to minimize the threats to the internal validity of the research To confirm that the intervention (collocation instruction) really helped the students improve their writing skill but not something else, the researcher interviewed students after the intervention to get their opinions about the effectiveness of collocation instruction The results of the interviews showed that students highly appreciated collocations instruction and they reported that they found collocation instruction very helpful for their writing The internal validity of the study was improved with the findings from the semi-structured interviews

Another limitation of this research is that the “one-group pretest posttest design” with a small sample size (21 students) at a particular setting at HUST affects the external validity of the study External validity here refers to “the extent to which the results can be generalized from samples to populations” (Nunan, 1992, p 15) Therefore, whether this study‟s findings might be generalisable to a larger population is questionable

The third limitation is that the two raters of the pre-test and post-test were non-native EFL teachers using British English to some extent The nationality of the raters and the variety of English they use may affect their notice of lexical collocational mistakes As they share the same L1 with the students, they may not have problem understanding the literal meaning of the lexical collocational errors

Therefore, they may not easily detect the lexical collocational errors that are caused by interlingual transfer (the interference of L1) Once they do not notice these mistakes, lexical collocational errors will not influence the writing scores given by non-native raters Consequently, the precision in the writing scores given by the non-native raters will be affected

Fourthly, one more limitation is that the researcher did not examine the variety of collocations used in the pre-test and the post-test In order to explore the improvement in the use of language, both the quantity (in terms of the number of collocations) and the quality (in terms of variety and accuracy) should be examined

However, in this study, due to the time constrain and the scope of a MA thesis, the researcher only investigated the quantity (the number of collocations) and the accuracy (correct collocations and collocational errors) of the collocations used in the two tests This is the room for further research to have a deeper investigation into the quality of the collocation used in terms of both variety and accuracy

Finally, the researcher is concerned that the briefness and relatively low intensity of collocation instruction (11 weeks with 15 minutes per week) may have weakened the expected effects of collocation instruction on the students‟ use of language The researcher believes that a longer and more intensive collocation instruction program would result in a much better use of language of the participants.

Suggestions for further research

Though the research questions of the study have been addressed, there are other questions that arose during the course of the study These include:

- Would the results be the same if English collocations were taught to non- English major students?

- What might be the effects of collocation instruction on the variety of collocations used in writing?

Additionally, in this study, the researcher did not make use of corpora to teach collocations to her students At the end of the research, the researcher realized that corpora would be extremely useful for collocation teaching Further studies may investigate the effects of using corpora in teaching collocations

Alsakran, R A (2011) The productive and receptive knowledge of collocations by advanced Arabic-speaking ESL/EFL learners (Unpublished master‟s thesis)

Colorado State University, United States

Bahns, J (1993) Lexical collocations: A contrastive view ELT Journal, 47 (1), 56-

Bahns, J & Eldaw, M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System,

Benson, M., Benson, E & Ilson, R (1986) The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English: A Guide to Word Combinations John Benjamins Publishing

Brown, D F (1974) Advanced vocabulary teaching: The problem of collocation

Carter, R (2001) Vocabulary: Applied linguistic perspectives The USA & Canada:

Channell, J (1981) Applying semantic theory to vocabulary teaching English Language Teaching Journal, 35 (1), 115-122

Cheng, S.K & Tan, C (2008) Workshop on action research: Transforming teachers to action researchers Education Leadership 21

Conklin, K & Schmitt, N (2008) Formulaic sequences: Are they processed more quickly than nonformulaic language by native and nonnative speakers? Applied

Conzett, J (2000) Integrating collocation into a reading and writing course In M

Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach (pp 70-87) London: Language Teaching Publications

Cowie, A.P (1998) Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Applications Oxford University Press

Coxhead, A (2008) Phraseology and English for academic purposes: Challenges and opportunities In: Meunier, F & Granger, S (Eds.), Phraseology in foreign language learning and teaching (pp 149-161) Amsterdam & Philadelphia:

John Benjamins Çelik, S (2011) Developing collocational competence through web-based concordance activities Novitas-ROYAL, 5 (2) 273-286 Retrieved from: http://www.novitasroyal.org/Vol_5_2/CelikS.pdf Ellis, R (1993) The structural syllabus and second language acquisition TESOL Quarterly, 27(1), 91-113

Farrokh, P (2012) Raising awareness of collocation in ESL/EFL classrooms

Journal of Studies in Education, 2 (3), 55-74 Retrieved from: http://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jse/article/download/1615/1525 Field, J (1997) Key concepts in ELT: Classroom research ELT Journal, 51 (2),

192-193 doi: 10.1093/elt/51.2.192 Firth, R.J (1951) Modes of meaning In Papers in linguistics 1934-1951, 190-215

Gitsaki, C (1999) Teaching English collocations to ESL students NUCB Journal of Language Culture and Communication, 1(3), 27-34

Hill, J (1999) Collocational competence English Teaching Professional, 11, 3-7

Retrieved from: http://www.freewebs.com/english1-0/competence.doc Hill, J (2000) Revising priorities: from grammatical failure to collocational success In M Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach (pp 47-69) London: Language Teaching Publications

Howarth, P (1998a) Phraseology and second language proficiency Applied Linguistics, 19 (1) 22-44

Howarth, P (1998b) The phraseology of learners' academic writing In A.P Cowie (Ed.), Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Applications (pp 161-186) Oxford University Press

Hoey, M (2000) A world beyond collocation: New perspectives on vocabulary teaching In M Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach (pp 224-243) London: Language Teaching Publications

Hsu, J T & Chiu, C (2008) Lexical collocations and their relation to speaking proficiency The Asian EFL Journal Quarterly, 10 (1), 181-204

Hsu, J Y (2007) Lexical collocations and their relation to the online writing of Taiwanese college English majors．Electronic Journal of Foreign Language

Teaching, 4 (2), 192–209 Retrieved from: http://e- flt.nus.edu.sg/v4n22007/hsu.pdf

Laufer, B & Waldman, T (2011) Verb-Noun collocations in second language writing: A corpus analysis of learners‟ English Language Learning, Vol 61, Issue 2, 647–672 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00621.x

Lewis, M (1993) The lexical approach: The state of ELT and the way forward

Lewis, M (1997) Implementing the lexical approach: Putting theory into practice

Lewis, M (2000) Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach London: Language Teaching Publications

McCarthy, M & O‟Dell, F (2010) Advanced English idioms in use Cambridge

Mertler, C.A (2008) Action research: Teachers as researchers in the classroom

Michiko, K (2008) Teaching collocation in Japanese classrooms Retrieved from: http://www.cels.bham.ac.uk/resources/essays/Kasuya_Lexis MichikoKasuya_

.pdf Nation, I.S.P (2001) Learning vocabulary in another language Cambridge:

Nesselhauf, N (2003) The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and some implications for teaching Applied Linguistics, 24 (2), 223-242

Nesselhauf, N (2005) Collocations in a learner corpus John Benjamins

Nunan, D (1992) Research methods in language learning Cambridge: CUP

Nunan, D (2004) Task-based language teaching Cambridge University Press

O'Brien, R (2001) An overview of the methodological approach of action research

In R Richardson (Ed.), Theory and practice of action research Retrieved from: http://www.web.ca/~robrien/papers/arfinal.html Ooi, D & Kim-Seoh, J.L (1996) Vocabulary teaching: Looking behind the word

Ozaki, S (2011) Teaching collocations effectively with the aid of L1 The Language Teacher, 35(3), 37–40 Retrieved from: http://jalt- publications.org/files/pdf-article/art6_2.pdf

Pawley, A & Syder, F (1993) Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency In: Richards, J & Schmidt, R

(Eds.), Language and Communication Harlow: Longman

Schmidt, R W (1990) The role of consciousness in second language learning

Schmitt, N (1998) Measuring collocational knowledge: key issues and an experimental assessment procedure In ITL Review of Applied Linguistics 119-

Schmitt, N (2000) Vocabulary in language teaching Cambridge University Press

Seretan, V (2011) Syntax-based collocation extraction Springer

Siegle, D (2002) An introduction to t-tests [Powerpoint slides] Retrieved from: http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/research/t-test/ttest.pps Spears, R.A (2005) McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American idioms and phrasal verbs doi: 10.1036/0071435786 Wolter, B (2006) Lexical network structures and L2 vocabulary acquisition: The role of L1 lexical/conceptual knowledge Applied Linguistics, 27 (4), 741-747

Woolard, G (2000) Collocation - encouraging learner independence In M Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach (pp

Ying, Y & Hendricks, A (2004) Collocation awareness in the writing process

Reflections of English Language Teaching, 3, 51-78 Retrieved from: http://www.nus.edu.sg/celc/research/relt/files/Vol3/51- 78yang%26hendricks.pdf

Ying, Y & O‟Neill, M (2009) Collocation learning through an „AWARE‟ approach: Learner perspectives and learning process In: Barfield, A &

Gyllstad, H (Eds.), Researching collocations in another language: Multiple interpretations Palgrave MacMillan

Zhang, X (1993) English collocations and their effect on the writing of native and non-native college freshmen (Unpublished doctoral dissertation) Indiana

University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, USA

Examples of students’ texts produced in the pre-test and post- test

Rubric for Assessment of an Essay

(Currently used at the research site)

Rubric for Assessment of an Essay

(maximum of 100 points for each essay)

- Exceptional introduction that grabs interest of reader and states topic, thesis, and all subtopics in proper order

- Thesis is exceptionally clear, well developed

- Proficient introduction that states topic, thesis, and all subtopics in proper order

- Adequate introduction that states topic , thesis and some of the subtopics

- Weak introduction of topic, thesis & subtopics

- is complete, accurate, and thorough

- includes all important ideas and demonstrates an understanding of important relationships

- contains fully developed evidence for generalizations and supporting arguments are

- generally fulfills the task expectations demonstrates a good understanding of the topic

- includes most of the important ideas and shows a good understanding of important relationships

- only partially fulfills the task expectations and demonstrates some knowledge and understanding of the topic but may show gaps in student‟s knowledge

- includes some of the important ideas related to the

- demonstrates poor knowledge and understanding of the topic

- fails to fulfill the task expectations and the topic is not always addressed clearly

- contains insufficient or irrelevant evidence for

- contains no irrelevant information supporting arguments are provided in a relevant and credible way

- may contain some irrelevant information limited understanding of relationships

- includes some evidence for generalizations and supporting examples, though these may be weak supporting arguments

- may be vague, repetitive, or not well developed, and may include misconceptions or some inaccurate information

6 Exceptional summary of topic (with no new information), thesis and all subtopics in proper order with concluding ideas that leave an impact on reader

4-5 Good summary of topic, thesis and some subtopics with some final concluding ideas There may be repetition of parts of the topic sentence

3-2 Plain summary of topic, thesis and some subtopics with weak concluding ideas

There is heavy repetition of parts of the topic sentence

0-1 Lack of summary of topic, thesis and subtopics No concluding ideas

- is logically organized around major ideas, concepts or principles

- achieves coherence through the appropriate and varied use of academic language structures and cohesive devices

- contains paragraphs which are separate and logical units,

- is generally well organized around major ideas, concepts or principles

- achieves some coherence through the appropriate use of academic language structures and cohesive devices

- contains paragraphs which are separate and logical units,

- is loosely organized around important ideas, concepts, or principles

- uses some appropriate academic language and cohesive devices, though these may be repetitious

- paragraphs may not be separate, related to the thesis

- is not organized around important ideas, concepts, or principles

- paragraphs are not separate, related to the thesis or connected to each other by appropriate transitions

/20 to the thesis and effectively connected to each other by appropriate, well-chosen and varied transitions effectively connected to each other by appropriate transitions appropriate transitions connected series; transition words and other cohesion devices may be missing or used inappropriately

- is clearly written with no errors

- includes academic vocabulary that is rarely inaccurate or repetitive

- demonstrates excellent and appropriate word choice -includes generally accurate word forms and verb tenses -uses a variety of sentence types accurately

- is generally clear with some errors, most of which do not interfere with comprehension

- uses generally accurate academic vocabulary

- demonstrates occasional problems with word choice -includes some inaccurate word forms and verb tenses

- uses simple and compound sentences with occasional errors and may attempt complex sentences

- contains few serious errors which may interfere with comprehension

- demonstrates somewhat limited vocabulary or inappropriate word choice

- includes a number of inaccurate word forms

-contains some problems with verb tenses

-uses a limited number of sentence types

- contains serious errors, most of which interfere with comprehension

- uses simple and repetitive vocabulary that may not be appropriate for academic writing

- uses inappropriate word forms and verb tenses -does not vary sentence types sufficiently

9-10 Punctuation, spelling, capitalization are correct No errors

7-8 Punctuation, spelling, capitalization are generally correct, with few errors

4-6 Some errors in punctuation, spelling, capitalization

0-3 Distracting errors in punctuation, spelling, capitalization

SUGGESTED QUESTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW

1 How important is English writing skill to your present study and future jobs?

2 What problems do you often have when writing in English?

3 Do you think that collocation instruction in this semester is helpful to you in writing English essays?

If yes, in what way do you think that collocation instruction helps you in your writing?

If no, why do you think that collocation instruction is not necessary for essay writing?

4 After receiving collocation instruction, do you think you have changed your writing habits? If yes, in what way have you changed your writing habits?

5 Among the activities that the teacher used to teach collocations in this semester, which activities do you like best? Why do you like these activities? (Please tick 2 activities)

 The teacher trained me how to search for collocations in a collocation dictionary

 The teacher taught me how to choose appropriate collocations when writing essays

 The teacher showed me how to identify collocations in reading passages

 The teacher asked me to do collocation exercises

 The teacher highlighted collocation mistakes in my essays

 The teacher taught me how to store collocations in a notebook

6 Do you have a dictionary of collocations? If yes, when did you get your collocation dictionary, before or after receiving collocation instruction in this semester?

7 Did you do any collocation search during the process of writing your essays in this semester? If yes, from what sources did you search for collocations? If your choice is no, what was the main reason for you not to search for collocation?

8 Do you have any difficulties in learning collocations after receiving collocation instruction this semester? If yes, what are your difficulties?

9 After experiencing collocation instruction, would you like to know more about collocations? Why?

10 What do you think I should change the way of teaching collocations and the materials

I, , give consent to my participation in the research project:

Effects of English collocation instruction on the writing skill of first year English major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology

In giving my consent I acknowledge that:

1 The procedures required for the project and the time involved have been explained to me, including any inconvenience, risk, discomfort, and any questions I have about the project have been answered to my satisfaction

2 I have read the Participant Information Statement and have been given the opportunity to discuss the information and my involvement in the project with the researcher

3 I understand that being in this study is completely voluntary – I am not under any obligation to consent

4 I understand that my involvement is strictly confidential I understand that any research data gathered from the results of the study may be published however no information about me will be used in any way that is identifiable

5 I understand that I can withdraw from the study at any time, without affecting my relationship with the researcher or the University of Languages and International Studies – Vietnam National University now or in the future

6 I understand that I can stop the interview at any time if I do not wish to continue, the audio recording will be erased and the information provided will not be included in the study

RESEARCH TITLE: Effects of English collocation instruction on the writing skill of first year English major students at Hanoi University of Science and Technology

You are invited to participate in a study aiming at investigating the effects of collocation instruction on the writing performance of a group of first year English major students at a university in Hanoi, Vietnam More specifically, the study is designed to address the following research questions:

1 What are the effects of the current HUST English collocation instruction on students’ writing skill?

2 What should be done, in students’ opinions, to further enhance the teaching of English collocation and its effect on their essay writing?

Although the study will be carried out on a small scale, focusing on a particular group of Vietnamese EFL first year students, the researcher hopes that its results will (1) help teachers have a better understanding of English collocation instruction in relation to writing skill; (2) obtain students’ opinions on ways to further enhance collocation instruction for better writing; and (3) provide recommendations for teachers who are interested in using collocation instruction to improve writing proficiency of students in their own teaching context

The study is being conducted by Ms Trần Thị Huệ and will form the basis for the Degree of Master at the University of Languages and International Studies under the supervision of Dr

If you volunteer to participate in this study, I would ask you to take part in an interview within 10-15 minutes You can choose to be interviewed and answer either in Vietnamese or English The interview will take place at Room 303, D4 building, HUST and will be audio recorded The list of suggested questions will be given to you at least 2 hours prior to the interview

Being in this study is completely voluntary You are not under any obligation to consent and you can withdraw at any time without affecting your relationship with the researcher or the