Statement of the problem and rationale for the study
Writing is deemed to be difficult because it involves employing a variety of skills from generating ideas, being grammatically correct to using appropriate language to express opinions in the process of writing (Ross, 1968, p 253) Students do not seem to have difficulty forming a central idea and using correct grammar What is challenging to them is how to use the target language appropriately to convey a message precisely and add more meaning to what they express It is difficult to solve this problem, especially for low- level students, despite teachers‟ search for materials suitable for teaching writing, commitment to correcting students‟ written work, and adoption of many methods to teach vocabulary (Hsueh, 1994, p 1) In his opinion, the utilization of collocations may help to address this difficult problem because it enhances not only accuracy but also fluency Besides, “giving students collocations of words newly or previously met will widen their understanding of what those words mean and, more importantly, how they are used” (Lewis,
2000, pp 13 – 14) The importance of collocation in improving learners‟ writing skills is borne out by Conzett‟s study (2000, quoted in Hsueh, 1994, p
2) More specifically, once familiarized with the concept of collocation, his students are able to produce more accurate language In addition, Sonomura also argues that “writing in English for academic purpose demands access to an infinite store of common collocations, combined in ways that have become stabilized and are the familiar expected, and recognized ways of saying things in written English” (1997, quoted in Hsueh, 1994, p 13) This view is also shared by McCarthy and O‟Dell (2005, p 6), who believe that using collocations helps “improve your style in writing.”
However, there is a lack of emphasis on teaching collocations to learners of English as a second language According to Marton (1977) and Briskup
(1992) (quoted in Ying and Hendricks, 2002, p 53), the major cause for this phenomenon is that collocations do not create difficulty in comprehending a text as they are mostly made up of familiar and simple words That is why language teachers do not draw students‟ attention to the collocations in a text, thereby causing students not to notice collocations and learn them To tackle this problem, Lewis (2001, quoted in Ying and Hendricks, 2002) proposes that language teachers should increase learners‟ awareness of collocation by helping them to pay more attention to words and their combinations in reading
“This does not mean finding rare words but rather finding relatively common words which intermediate students already know (or half-know) and pointing out the words they occur with.”
Besides, having been a writing teacher of 2 nd -year students for two years,
I myself have come to realize that most of the students I have taught during those two years are generally unconscious of the issue of collocation, lack the ability to notice collocations in a text and do not make an effort to learn them
The majority of students in class K45E17 are also confronted with the above-mentioned problems when it comes to collocation According to the findings of the pre-test (the production test), those students made a lot of mistakes about collocation in the first version, which were not corrected in the second one This was particularly true for the two following types of collocation: verb + noun and adjective + noun Besides, they did not score highly in the pre-test (recognition test) and chose the wrong collocate of even familiar words For example, they chose careful instead of good as a collocate of care More importantly, after the test was over, they answered that the test was on vocabulary without being able to specify that its focus was on collocation and that they had never learned collocations as a way to widen their vocabulary
For all the aforementioned reasons, I have decided to conduct an action research on raising second-year students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English through the CAR (Collocation Awareness Raising) Process, which is based on the CAR Process originally invented by Ying and Hendricks (2002).
Research aims and research questions
Conducting the present study, the researcher aimed to accomplish the following purposes First, the extent to which the CAR process could help to raise the learners‟ awareness of collocation in writing English would be examined Second, on completion, the study would yield insights into the difficulties perceived by the students as they went through the CAR process
These aims were formulated into the following research questions:
1 To what extent does the CAR Process help to raise the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English?
2 What difficulties are perceived by the participants when they went through the CAR Process?
Scope of the study
First, the researcher chose to investigate the effectiveness of one specific process – the CAR process that aims to raise students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English
Second, the participants of this study were twenty 2 nd -year students in class K45E17, which the researcher is teaching writing this semester.
Methods of the study
Given that the current study was carried out in an attempt to improve the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English, the researcher decided to adopt the action research approach because this type of research is aimed at improving a situation In order to achieve this goal, the following instruments were utilized:
A pre-test and post-test (production test) were targeted at investigating the students‟ use of collocations in their writings before and after the CAR Process
Another pre-test and post-test (recognition test) tried to find out the learners‟ ability to recognize correct collocations before and after the CAR Process
Between the pre-tests and the post-tests, the intervention – the CAR Process – was introduced and applied to see whether it helped raise the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English
Besides, a survey questionnaire was administered to further explore the participants‟ opinions on the benefits of the CAR Process and find out the difficulties perceived by them as they went through the CAR Process
Finally, semi-structured interviews were conducted face-to-face with eight participants to clarify and supplement the data collected from the questionnaire.
Significance of the study
As the study is finished, it is expected to benefit the target population, their teachers, and other researchers interested in the topic First, because current research on raising students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English, especially in Vietnam, is limited, this study will partly fill the gap in the literature and serve as a source of reference for other researchers who share an interest in related issues Second, the researcher hopes that this study can, to some extent, raise the students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English as well as in other English skills Besides, the researcher also hopes that the participants can perceive their own difficulties during the CAR Process and be able to come up with solutions to deal with the difficulties
The rest of the paper includes two other parts as follows:
Part B consists of three following chapters:
Chapter 1 – Literature Review – provides the background of the study, including definitions of key concepts (collocation and language awareness) and review of related studies
Chapter 2 – Methodology – describes the participants and instruments of the study, as well as the procedure employed to conduct the research
Chapter 3 – Results and Recommendations – presents and analyzes the findings according to the two research questions Besides, the participants‟ suggestions on solving the difficulties perceived by them as they went through the CAR Process were mentioned
Part C - Conclusion – summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper, the limitations and contributions of the research, as well as some suggestions for further studies
PART B - DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW
According to the Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (7 th edition), the term collocation has two meanings First, it is an uncountable noun when used to refer to the fact of two or more words often being used together Second, it is countable when used to refer to a specific combination of words that are often used together Therefore, in this chapter, the word collocation will be used if it has the first meaning and the word collocations will be used in case it has the second meaning.
The term “collocation” was first coined by Firth (1957, quoted in Martynska, 2004, p 2) to refer to a combination of words associated with each other, for example make a decision It derives from the Latin word collocare, which means “to set in order/ to arrange.” However, since the issue of collocation in second language teaching and learning was brought into focus, a large number of researchers have done studies on it, causing a variety of definitions to be offered Those definitions can be categorized into several groups
First, some common dictionary definitions of this term are as follows
According to the Long Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (2002, p 87), collocation is “the way in which words are used together regularly.” As defined in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2004), it is an “arrangement or juxtaposition of words or other elements, especially those that commonly co-occur, as rancid butter, bosom buddy or dead serious.” Meanwhile, it is described as “the association between two words that are typically or frequently used together” in Encarta World English Dictionary (2006) Finally, in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1992), collocation is referred to as “a habitual combination of words that sounds natural.” As can be seen from the above definitions of collocation, despite being differently worded, all of them have those elements in common: combination of words (demonstrated by the phrases used together, juxtaposition of words, and combination of words) and regular use (demonstrated by the words regularly, commonly and habitual), which makes them sound natural
Second, collocation is defined by a lot of researchers Below are some typical ones As Kasuya (2008, p 2) put it, “Collocation can be defined as the restrictions on how words can be used together, for example, which prepositions and verbs are used together, or which nouns appear with particular verbs.” According to McCarthy and O‟Dell (2005, p 3), “A collocation is a pair or group of words that are often used together.” In the words of Manning
& Schutze (1999, p 142), “A collocation is an expression consisting of two or more words that correspond to some conventional way of saying things.” For instance, it is normal to say broad daylight, but saying bright daylight is considered unconventional From Finegan‟s point of view, collocation refers to the way words “can be assembled … [in] different, meaningful ways” (2004, p
348) Another noted researcher, Hill (2000, p 51), believes that, “A collocation is a predictable combination of words: get lost, make up for lost time, speak your mind.” Nattinger and DeCarrio (1997, p 36, quoted in Boonyasaquan,
2009, p 100) defined collocations as “strings of specific lexical items that co- occur with a mutual expectancy greater than chance, such as rancid butter and curry favor.” For James (1998, p 152, quoted in Boonyasaquan, 2009, p 100), collocations are “the other words any particular word normally keeps company with.” It is apparent that although the above definitions are expressed differently, they all include the following ideas: combination of words (demonstrated by the phrases two or more words, used together, co-occur and so on) and/ or conformity to convention (illustrated by the words normally, conventional, predictable, to name but a few)
Third, collocation is defined based on a number of different perspectives
For example, Mitchell (1971, quoted in Li, 2005, p 5) considered each collocation a lexico-grammatical unit, which “brings morphology and syntax back into the center of lexical matters.” From the lexical aspect, Firth (1975, quoted in Li, 2005, p 6) regarded collocations as part of the meaning of a word In light of the discourse perspective, collocation is defined by Halliday and Hasan (1976, quoted in Li, 2005, p 5) as “the co-occurrence of two words, independent of grammatical types and likely to take place over sentence boundaries.” From a cross-linguistic perspective, Finegan (2004, p 354) states that collocation, which refers to words‟ ability to co-occur, is not “simple reflections of conceptual distinctions.” It is obvious that the above definitions are mostly concerned with the grammatical and lexical aspects of collocation to the exclusion of other respects
As can be seen, there are numerous definitions of collocation(s)
However, the dictionary ones as well as those given by various researchers are mostly about the ability of words to co-occur in accordance with convention, whereas the perspective-based counterparts typically discuss different aspects, especially grammar and lexis, related to collocation However, those definitions are not really comprehensive To be more specific, collocation can
“contain some element of grammatical or lexical unpredictability or inflexibility” (Nation, 2001, quoted in Li, 2005, p 15) For example, its combination can be several words apart like in I made him some tea (the collocation is make tea) In other words, considering a collocation as a combination of two or more words that often co-occur is sometimes not sufficient Besides, in many cases immediately adjacent words do not collocate, for instance although he, but if, and so on That means it is necessary to take both grammar and meaning into consideration in order to produce a correct collocation That is why the researcher hopes to be provided with a definition that covers all the following elements: conventional combination of words, attention to grammar, and a focus on meaning Nevertheless, a collocation in this research will be used to simply refer to a group of two or three words that frequently occur together to make a meaningful chunk
According to Manning & Schutze (1999), collocations have the following characteristics:
The first characteristic is non-compositionality A phrase is compositional if it is possible to predict its meaning from the meaning of the parts A typical example is a young mother Meanwhile, the meaning of a non- compositional phrase is unpredictable from its parts Collocations like strong tea are non-compositional However, they are not entirely non-compositional because the literal meaning of strong can somehow enable learners to have some ideas in their mind about its figurative meaning in that context
Second, collocations are characterized by non-substitutability That means one word in the combination is irreplaceable Obviously, it can be substituted by other collocates having a similar meaning in the same collocational field For example, both lovely and beautiful can be used with weather However, it is unlikely to replace it with one not being a collocate of the headword no matter how appropriate it may sound By way of illustration, even though yellow accurately describes the color of wine, it cannot take the place of white in white wine
Finally, it is typical of collocations to be non-modifiable by means of additional lexical material or through grammatical transformations A case in point is strong tea More specifically, it is impossible for us to say stronger tea
Given the above-mentioned characteristics of collocations, it is understandable that learning and using collocations create difficulties for learners To make it clearer, as the meaning of a collocation is unpredictable from its parts, it is rather unlikely for students to translate directly from their first language into the target language Additionally, it is impossible to replace a collocate with one not being a collocate of the headword no matter how appropriate it may sound Therefore, students may easily make mistakes when using a word that is not a collocate of a word but sounds reasonable In short, it is important for learners to understand clearly the characteristics of collocations in order to pay attention to learning them and using them correctly
The concept collocation is defined in a variety of ways by different researchers This in turn makes it hard to provide an accurate categorization of collocations
LITERATURE REVIEW
Collocation(s)
According to the Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (7 th edition), the term collocation has two meanings First, it is an uncountable noun when used to refer to the fact of two or more words often being used together Second, it is countable when used to refer to a specific combination of words that are often used together Therefore, in this chapter, the word collocation will be used if it has the first meaning and the word collocations will be used in case it has the second meaning.
The term “collocation” was first coined by Firth (1957, quoted in Martynska, 2004, p 2) to refer to a combination of words associated with each other, for example make a decision It derives from the Latin word collocare, which means “to set in order/ to arrange.” However, since the issue of collocation in second language teaching and learning was brought into focus, a large number of researchers have done studies on it, causing a variety of definitions to be offered Those definitions can be categorized into several groups
First, some common dictionary definitions of this term are as follows
According to the Long Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (2002, p 87), collocation is “the way in which words are used together regularly.” As defined in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2004), it is an “arrangement or juxtaposition of words or other elements, especially those that commonly co-occur, as rancid butter, bosom buddy or dead serious.” Meanwhile, it is described as “the association between two words that are typically or frequently used together” in Encarta World English Dictionary (2006) Finally, in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1992), collocation is referred to as “a habitual combination of words that sounds natural.” As can be seen from the above definitions of collocation, despite being differently worded, all of them have those elements in common: combination of words (demonstrated by the phrases used together, juxtaposition of words, and combination of words) and regular use (demonstrated by the words regularly, commonly and habitual), which makes them sound natural
Second, collocation is defined by a lot of researchers Below are some typical ones As Kasuya (2008, p 2) put it, “Collocation can be defined as the restrictions on how words can be used together, for example, which prepositions and verbs are used together, or which nouns appear with particular verbs.” According to McCarthy and O‟Dell (2005, p 3), “A collocation is a pair or group of words that are often used together.” In the words of Manning
& Schutze (1999, p 142), “A collocation is an expression consisting of two or more words that correspond to some conventional way of saying things.” For instance, it is normal to say broad daylight, but saying bright daylight is considered unconventional From Finegan‟s point of view, collocation refers to the way words “can be assembled … [in] different, meaningful ways” (2004, p
348) Another noted researcher, Hill (2000, p 51), believes that, “A collocation is a predictable combination of words: get lost, make up for lost time, speak your mind.” Nattinger and DeCarrio (1997, p 36, quoted in Boonyasaquan,
2009, p 100) defined collocations as “strings of specific lexical items that co- occur with a mutual expectancy greater than chance, such as rancid butter and curry favor.” For James (1998, p 152, quoted in Boonyasaquan, 2009, p 100), collocations are “the other words any particular word normally keeps company with.” It is apparent that although the above definitions are expressed differently, they all include the following ideas: combination of words (demonstrated by the phrases two or more words, used together, co-occur and so on) and/ or conformity to convention (illustrated by the words normally, conventional, predictable, to name but a few)
Third, collocation is defined based on a number of different perspectives
For example, Mitchell (1971, quoted in Li, 2005, p 5) considered each collocation a lexico-grammatical unit, which “brings morphology and syntax back into the center of lexical matters.” From the lexical aspect, Firth (1975, quoted in Li, 2005, p 6) regarded collocations as part of the meaning of a word In light of the discourse perspective, collocation is defined by Halliday and Hasan (1976, quoted in Li, 2005, p 5) as “the co-occurrence of two words, independent of grammatical types and likely to take place over sentence boundaries.” From a cross-linguistic perspective, Finegan (2004, p 354) states that collocation, which refers to words‟ ability to co-occur, is not “simple reflections of conceptual distinctions.” It is obvious that the above definitions are mostly concerned with the grammatical and lexical aspects of collocation to the exclusion of other respects
As can be seen, there are numerous definitions of collocation(s)
However, the dictionary ones as well as those given by various researchers are mostly about the ability of words to co-occur in accordance with convention, whereas the perspective-based counterparts typically discuss different aspects, especially grammar and lexis, related to collocation However, those definitions are not really comprehensive To be more specific, collocation can
“contain some element of grammatical or lexical unpredictability or inflexibility” (Nation, 2001, quoted in Li, 2005, p 15) For example, its combination can be several words apart like in I made him some tea (the collocation is make tea) In other words, considering a collocation as a combination of two or more words that often co-occur is sometimes not sufficient Besides, in many cases immediately adjacent words do not collocate, for instance although he, but if, and so on That means it is necessary to take both grammar and meaning into consideration in order to produce a correct collocation That is why the researcher hopes to be provided with a definition that covers all the following elements: conventional combination of words, attention to grammar, and a focus on meaning Nevertheless, a collocation in this research will be used to simply refer to a group of two or three words that frequently occur together to make a meaningful chunk
According to Manning & Schutze (1999), collocations have the following characteristics:
The first characteristic is non-compositionality A phrase is compositional if it is possible to predict its meaning from the meaning of the parts A typical example is a young mother Meanwhile, the meaning of a non- compositional phrase is unpredictable from its parts Collocations like strong tea are non-compositional However, they are not entirely non-compositional because the literal meaning of strong can somehow enable learners to have some ideas in their mind about its figurative meaning in that context
Second, collocations are characterized by non-substitutability That means one word in the combination is irreplaceable Obviously, it can be substituted by other collocates having a similar meaning in the same collocational field For example, both lovely and beautiful can be used with weather However, it is unlikely to replace it with one not being a collocate of the headword no matter how appropriate it may sound By way of illustration, even though yellow accurately describes the color of wine, it cannot take the place of white in white wine
Finally, it is typical of collocations to be non-modifiable by means of additional lexical material or through grammatical transformations A case in point is strong tea More specifically, it is impossible for us to say stronger tea
Given the above-mentioned characteristics of collocations, it is understandable that learning and using collocations create difficulties for learners To make it clearer, as the meaning of a collocation is unpredictable from its parts, it is rather unlikely for students to translate directly from their first language into the target language Additionally, it is impossible to replace a collocate with one not being a collocate of the headword no matter how appropriate it may sound Therefore, students may easily make mistakes when using a word that is not a collocate of a word but sounds reasonable In short, it is important for learners to understand clearly the characteristics of collocations in order to pay attention to learning them and using them correctly
The concept collocation is defined in a variety of ways by different researchers This in turn makes it hard to provide an accurate categorization of collocations
First, collocations are divided into two types: lexical collocations and grammatical collocations by many researchers According to Le (2010, p 5), the former refers to the “recurrent combinations of two lexical content words/ open class words commonly found together.” Lexical content words/ open class words are often nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs Some examples of the first type are:
verb-noun combinations (commit a crime)
adjective-noun combinations (an acquired taste)
noun-verb combinations (disaster strikes) Meanwhile, the latter refers to the “recurrent combinations of one lexical content word/open class word and a grammar function word/ closed class word” (Le, 2010, p 5) A grammar function word/ closed class word in this case is often a preposition Therefore, collocations of the second type usually consist of combinations like:
The classification of Benson, Benson and Ilson (1997) and Mahmoud
Language awareness
According to the Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (7 th edition), awareness means “knowing something; knowing that something exists and is important; being interested in something.”
In the opinion of Cardenas (2010), awareness refers to the “ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns …”
In biological psychology, awareness is defined as “a human‟s or an animal‟s perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.”
According to Little (1997), language awareness can be understood in two senses First, it refers to “a person‟s sensitivity to and conscious awareness of the nature of language and its role in human life” (Donmall, 1985, p 7) In this sense, language awareness is “knowledge about language that is imparted to learners through schooling” Second, in psycholinguistics, language awareness means “the awareness that learners have of language, independently of conscious reflection on language” (Nicholas, 1991, p 78) In other words, language awareness is “part of our innate capacity for acquiring and processing language” In Little‟s opinion, it must not be assumed that one kind of language awareness is “easily convertible into the other” However, it is obvious that both of them “exist in our heads, so that in principle both may be implicated in language learning and language use” (1997)
Based on his above-mentioned definition of awareness in general, Cardenas (2010) defined language awareness as “explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use.” It is also means having “good knowledge about language, a conscious understanding of how languages work, of how people learn them and use them.”
From the viewpoint of Bolitho et al (2003):
Language awareness is a mental attribute which develops through paying motivated attention to language in use, and which enables language learners to gradually gain insights into how languages work
There are three levels of language awareness, according to Cardenas
(2010) The first level is attention More specifically, students at this level of language awareness pay attention to and are curious about particular features of the target language The second level is noticing, which means learners are able to register consciously the occurrence of some event Students are at this level when they notice the gaps between what they produce and what is regarded as acceptable in the target language Finally, learners reach the highest level of language awareness – understanding – if they recognize general rules, principles or patterns about a language phenomenon In fact, there is no awareness of something without having an understanding of it
1.2.4 The role of language awareness
According to Cardenas (2010), language awareness is of major importance because it is necessary for restructuring “the learner‟s mental representation of the language.” To make it clearer, if students have some degree of conscious awareness, their better understanding of a language phenomenon may be developed, thereby enabling them to correct their previous mistakes about that language phenomenon
According to Little (1997, quoted in Ying and Hendricks, 2002), language awareness also involves “the development of a psychological relation to one‟s learning content and process.” That means “once learners are more aware of a process through which something is learned, they are more likely to apply this process again” As a result, “a higher level of awareness may help learners to develop independence in learning in the long run.”
Among the levels of language awareness discussed above, one important level is “noticing”, which is regarded as a major step in learning According to Schmidt and Frota (1986, quoted in Ying and Hendricks, 2002), “those who notice most learn most” In addition, associating “what learners pay attention to in reception with their target production may perform a „noticing‟ function” In other words, if students are encouraged to apply what they have noticed, they may become aware of their own linguistic gaps, for example the difference
“between what they produce and what is regarded as acceptable in the target language” This in turn may urge students to find solutions to those gaps
Pienemann and Tomlinson (quoted in Bolitho et al., 2003) also have the same opinion when saying that “noticing” may make a feature more important,
“so that it becomes more noticeable in future input, and thereby contributes to the learner‟s psychological readiness to acquire that feature.”
1.2.5 How to increase students’ language awareness in teaching writing
Given the importance of language awareness as discussed above, it is necessary that increasing students‟ language awareness should be a priority to teachers, who can do so by taking into consideration the following things:
According to Bio, one method teachers can adopt to increase students‟ language awareness is to help them “learn concepts in the second language through an examination of their own language‟s structure and use, either due to similarities or differences between them.” This may be of use in enabling students to notice gaps in their knowledge For example, in order to help students be aware of collocation in writing, teachers can draw their attention to their mistakes about collocations and provide them with the correct ones
Second, learners‟ language awareness can be increased by helping them have a positive attitude toward the target language through being conscious of effective learning strategies This is because being aware of those strategies may help students “become more active in and more responsible for their own learning.” In writing, for instance, teachers can introduce students to practical methods of learning collocations Finally, students‟ language awareness may be heightened if what they have learned is integrated in other classes, in other words, is applied to other courses By way of illustration, the collocations students learn in their writing class can be applied to their speaking class
In Tomlinson‟s opinion (1994, quoted in Bolitho et al., 2003), in order for students‟ language awareness to be heightened, the main thing teachers should do is to “help learners notice for themselves how language is typically used so that they will note the gaps and achieve learning readiness.” As can be seen, this strategy is similar to the first one proposed by Bio above
Furthermore, another method to increase students‟ language awareness in writing is to encourage students to read widely since “the person who writes well is usually the one who has read widely” (Ross, 1968, p 253) This is because one may observe through reading “what the patterns of the language are” This means through observing while reading, one may gradually build awareness of those patterns, then by conscious awareness and “conscious manipulation of these patterns in writing, he can develop control over their use” (Ross, 1968, p 253)
In conclusion, the above-mentioned may be considered as guidelines for teachers to increase students‟ language awareness in general and in writing in particular However, how this can be done depends a lot on the activities or tasks teachers design That is to say, when trying to increase learners‟ awareness of one language phenomenon, teachers should bear in mind the necessity to design appropriate learning activities or tasks.
The CAR Process by Ying and Hendricks (2002)
The CAR Process was invented by Ying and Hendricks (2002) to be used in a writing class for the purpose of increasing learners‟ awareness of collocation, promoting their search for collocations throughout the writing process and encouraging their use of the found collocations in their writings In other words, this process aimed to help learners notice, note and incorporate desired target forms
The CAR Process was first used with a trial group of 46 postgraduate students in the National University of Singapore All of them came from China and were doing a postgraduate English writing course These learners had difficulty learning and using collocations because they used to focus on learning new words and their definitional means while neglecting their collocates
The CAR Process that was used with this group of students involved the following steps, of which the first five steps were done in class by the teacher- researcher:
Step one: The learners were introduced to a number of collocation resources such as collocation dictionaries, online concordances and relevant readings In this research, they were told about the BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English (Benson, Benson, & Ilson, 1986) and the online Collins
Cobuild Concordancer and Collocations Sampler
(http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uklform.html) and provided with articles relevant to the topic of their writing assignment
Step two: The students were given the writing assignment: writing a critique on the theme “Why Competition?” in response to an article of the same name by A Kohn in The Humanist (1980) As part of this task, the students were provided with a step by step worksheet to prompt, guide, and record their writing and active search for collocations throughout the writing process
Step three: The students generated main ideas being included in their critique
Step four: The students were instructed how to notice collocations in the given articles which were also on the theme “Why Competition?” They were told to pay attention to comparatively familiar words and the words that were used with them Afterwards, they were guided how to record these collocations so that their writing would benefit from them and told to record the collocations necessary for the writing assignment on their worksheets
Step five: The students were taught to search in the resources introduced for what they thought to be helpful collocations for their writing assignment
They were also told to keep a record of what they found
Step six: The students started writing in the provided worksheet This was done until time ran out Their critiques were finished outside of class.
Related studies
As a matter of fact, a large number of studies on different issues related to collocation have been conducted However, pieces of research focused on investigating the effectiveness of one specific process to raise students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English are not many The study that bears the closest resemblance to the researcher‟s is the research done by Ying and Hendricks (2002) on using the CAR (Collocation Awareness Raising) Process to help participants be aware of collocation The steps of the CAR Process used in this study were described in the previous part of this chapter, part 1.3 In general, the validity of the CAR Process was confirmed as there was considerable improvement in participants‟ use of collocations in their writings
Some other studies deal with other issues related to collocations
First, the study named Concordancers in EFL classroom, Cognitive Approaches and Collocation Difficulty by Sun and Wang (2003) worked towards examining whether learning collocations with the help of a concordancer using the inductive approach significantly differed from that when the deductive approach was adopted Besides, the researchers also hoped to look into whether there was a link between the difficulty of collocation patterns and learner performance These aims were achieved by using a pre- test, system training as intervention and a post-test with 81 participants divided into two groups – an inductive group and a deductive one The researchers found out that the members in the inductive group made more remarkable progress than their counterparts in the deductive group Besides, the inductive approach may work better for easy patterns, whereas these two approaches were nearly equally effective when difficult items were used
Second, Kuo (2009) conducted a study which was focused on analyzing the use of collocations by intermediate EFL college students in Taiwan with a view to offering recommendations about assisting students in dealing with certain errors Kuo utilized two tools to analyze collocations in students‟ writings, the online British National Corpus and collocation checker (http://candle.cs.nthu.edu.tw/vntango/) The results of the research were that the students made few mistakes about collocation
Third, Parastuti (2009) did a study on the negative transfers of English collocations produced by students of Gunadarma university Their essays were analyzed after being submitted to their teachers The outcome of the research was that the participants made a lot of inappropriate collocations as a result of negative transfers
In conclusion, there are a lot of studies on collocation-related issues, which have made important contributions to broadening understanding of collocations However, there are few studies that were focused on using a classroom-based process or method to raise students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English Especially, no such study has been conducted in Vietnam
Therefore, a proved process to help raise learners‟ awareness of collocation suitable for the context of Vietnam‟s education, especially for English majors in ULIS – VNU, is lacking That is the reason why the researcher conducted a study on raising 2 nd -year students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English.
METHODOLOGY
Rationale for action research design
A lot of definitions of action research have been provided Below are some of them:
Action research in general is defined by McNiff and Whitehead (2006) as
“a form of enquiry that enables practitioners everywhere to investigate and evaluate their work.” In Elliott‟s definition (1999, quoted in Altrichter et al.), it refers to “the study of a social situation with a view to improving the quality of action within it.”
In the educational context, “action research is a process in which participants examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully, using the techniques of research,” according to Ferrance (2000)
More specifically, it “refers to a disciplined inquiry done by a teacher” in the hope that the inquiry will have a positive effect on his/ her future practices
This research is conducted “within the context of the teacher‟s environment”
That means it is done with his/ her students and at the school where he/ she works “on questions that deal with educational matters at hand.” Teachers undertake action research because they want to “improve the quality of teaching and learning”, together with the learning and working conditions in schools
According to Altrichter et al., action research in the educational context is characterized by the following features:
First, it is done by the teachers directly concerned with the educational practice that is being researched
It “starts from practical questions arising from everyday educational work” with a view to improving “both the practical situation and the knowledge about the practice of the participants.”
It must be “compatible with the educational values of the school and with the work conditions of teachers.”
Action research is carried out by using suitable methods that do not overly disrupt practice
According to Ferrance (2000), the action research process has six steps as illustrated in Figure 1 below:
Figure 1: Ferrance’s action research process (2000)
Kemmis (1988, quoted in Burns, 2010) puts forward an action research process that includes two cycles, each having four steps: plan, act, observe and reflect However, in cycle two, the plan is revised based on the researcher‟s reflection in the first cycle
Figure 2: Kemmis’ action research process (1988)
McNiff and Whitehead (2006) propose an action-reflection cycle that involves the following steps: observe the practice, reflect on the effectiveness of the practice, act to improve the practice, evaluate the action, modify the action based on the evaluation and move in new directions based on the revised action This action-reflection cycle is demonstrated in the figure below:
Stringer et al (2010) put forward an action research process in teaching in particular This process has three phases: planning, instruction and evaluation
In each phase, researchers go through three steps: look (gathering information), think (analyzing information) and act This process is shown in the below figure:
Figure 4: Action research in phases of teaching by Stringer et al (2010)
As can be seen, although the above-mentioned models include different steps, they all share the following basic elements: the process begins with the researcher identifying a problem, then a plan of action is worked out, afterwards the plan is implemented, and the process culminates when the researcher evaluates the effectiveness of the plan and proposes next actions to further address the problem
In this study, the teacher-researcher followed the model proposed by Ferrance (2000) because the steps in his model made it easier and more convenient for the teacher-researcher to carry out the research Besides, it reflected correctly what steps were taken during the study More specifically, after realizing that most second-years students were unaware of collocation in writing, the teacher-researcher began to gather data about the target population results were obtained, the study was conducted to improve the situation
Finally, the results were evaluated to propose possible next steps
2.1.3 The reasons for choosing Action Research for this study
As mentioned in 2.1.1 and 2.1.2, action research is conducted to investigate a specific teaching situation or practice when the teacher in charge wants to find a solution to that situation or practice In my case, I am the writing teacher of K45E17 students At the beginning of the semester, I noticed that my students made quite a lot of mistakes about word choice For example, they combined the wrong adjective with a noun or the wrong verb with a noun
That was because they were not aware of collocation and its related issues As a result, a method should be developed to help my students be aware of collocation in writing English Therefore, I wanted specific actions to be taken so that the above-mentioned situation could be improved Obviously, action research aims at improving the situation This is the most important reason that urged me to choose Action Research for my study.
Participants
2.2.1 Background information about the participants
The participants of this study are among second-year students in the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS – VNU Despite its name, in this Faculty, there are only seven classes in which students major in English Language Teacher Education Besides, students in three other classes major in Translation and Interpreting Accounting for the largest number, students in the remaining ten classes major in both English and one of the Economics-related majors, namely Business Administration, International
Economics, and Finance and Banking This is the reason why those students are also called double-major students
In particular, the participants of this action research are students in class K45E17 They major in both English and Finance and Banking They learn subjects related to Finance and Banking in English Therefore, having a good command of English is as important as having good knowledge of Finance and Banking, and English actually helps them learn the other major better Among
20 students in this class, only one is male, the rest are female Summarized in the below table is some other information about the participants‟ demographic features:
Years of learning English 9 years 15
Self-assessment of mastery of English
Reading-writing total scores in the previous semester
Table 1: A summary of the participants’ demographic features
In the credit learning system which is now applied in ULIS – VNU, scores of 5.5 or below are at level D; scores between 5.5 and 6.9 are at level C, scores between 7.0 and 8.4 level B; and scores of 8.5 or higher level A
2.2.2 Sampling methods 2.2.2.1 Tests and questionnaire
All students in K45E17 took the tests and responded to the questionnaire This method of choosing participants was convenience sampling This is because as the writing teacher of this class, I chose them as the participants in my study for ease of conducting the research
After the results of the tests and questionnaire were analyzed, semi- structured interviews were held face-to-face with eight students in K45E17
According to the information about the participants‟ demographic features shown in Table 1, the reading-writing total score of all students in K45E17 in the previous semester was either B or C The researcher decided to select four participants whose score was B and another four students whose score was C
This method of choosing participants was purposive sampling I chose this method because I hoped that the opinions of the chosen students would be representative of those of their peers with the same score In the table below is a detailed description of the eight participants‟ profile
English Gender Age Reading-Writing total score last semester
Table 2: A summary of the interviewees’ profile
Research design
This study was conducted during the first seven weeks of the second semester, during which the CAR Process was implemented The CAR Process used in this research was based on the CAR Process invented by Ying and Hendricks (2002), which was described in the Literature Review in the previous chapter However, some modifications were made to the original model so that it would suit the working conditions of the teacher-researcher and the learning conditions of the participants Below is a detailed description of the CAR Process as utilized in this study as well as the differences between it and the model by Ying and Hendricks (2002):
The CAR Process in this study Differences from Ying and
- At home, students read the three reading texts provided in class by the teacher-researcher
- While reading, they were asked to identify the collocations of two types: adjective + noun and verb + noun and list them in the collocation worksheets
- Students did all of those activities in class according to the researcher‟s instruction
- They identified all collocations in the given articles.
2 - Students made an effort to learn the recorded collocations
- In the next class meeting, students wrote the first draft of the essay having the same topic as the topic of the three reading texts
- At home, students exchanged their writings
- After getting peers‟ feedback, they revised their first draft and wrote the second version, paying attention to correcting the mistakes about collocation, together with other aspects of academic writing.
Participants finished their writing outside of class by themselves
Table 3: The CAR Process in this study and its differences from Ying and Hendricks’ model
Besides the above-mentioned differences, the CAR Process in this study and that in Ying and Hendricks‟ research are also dissimilar in terms of the resources the participants were introduced to More specifically, learners in this research were familiarized with how to use the Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary and the Oxford Collocations: Dictionary for Students of English
Whereas, their counterparts were introduced to BBI Combinatory Dictionary of
English (Benson, Benson, & Ilson, 1986) and the online Collins Cobuild
(http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uklform.html)
There were two reasons why the participants were required to focus on those two types of collocation in the first step First, they made the largest number of mistakes about collocation of these two types Second, according to Woolard (2000, p 30), for learners who have no prior knowledge of collocation, limiting the selection of collocation mistakes to familiar verb-noun and adjective-noun combinations should be prioritized because dealing with too many types of collocations at the same time may be counter-productive as a result of students‟ being inundated with information
The CAR Process as described above was applied by students to two writing assignments during those seven weeks, and the whole process of conducting the study was shown in the table below
Week Mode Lesson contents Research procedures Activities
In class Unit 1: Structure of an essay
Do supplementary exercises Complete the practice of Unit 1
In class Unit 2: Classification essay
Pre-test: production test (first version)
- Students wrote the first draft of their classification essay of their chosen topic
Do supplementary exercises Complete the practice of Unit 2
Pre-test: production test (second version)
- Students revised the first draft and wrote the second draft of the classification essay
In class Unit 2: Classification essay
Collection of pre-test (production test)
- Students submitted the first and second drafts of their classification essay
At home Analysis of production test
Teacher analyzed students‟ writings to know whether they used collocations correctly and the most common errors about collocation
In class Collocation and related issues
- introduced the concept of collocation and related issues
- instructed students to identify collocations in the given text and look up collocations in the provided resources
- distributed the first three reading texts (Topic: How to make yourself attractive)
- distributed the collocation worksheets and instructed students how to use them
- Step 1 of the CAR Process cycle 1
- Students read the three reading texts, identified the collocations in those texts and listed them in the worksheets
Process cycle 1 the recorded collocations
In class Unit 3: Process essay
- Step 3 of the CAR Process cycle 1
- Teacher distributed the next three reading texts (Topic: Causes of business bankruptcy)
- Students submitted their collocation worksheets for the 1 st three reading texts
- Students wrote the first draft of the process essay (Topic: How to make yourself attractive )
At home Do supplementary exercises
- Step 4 of the CAR Process cycle 1
- Step 1 of the CAR Process cycle 2
- Step 2 of the CAR Process cycle 2
- Teachers analyzed students‟ worksheets to see whether they identified the collocations correctly
- Students wrote the second draft of the process essay
- Students identified the collocations in the next three reading texts and listed them in the worksheets
- Students tried to learn the recorded collocations
In class Unit 4: Cause – effect essay - Step 3 of the CAR
Process cycle 2 & first version of post-test (production test)
- Students submitted their collocation worksheets, and their process essay
- Students wrote the 1 st draft of the cause-effect essay (Topic: Causes of business bankruptcy)
At home Do supplementary exercises
- Step 4 of the CAR Process cycle 2 & second version of post-test (production test)
- Students wrote the second draft of their cause-effect essay
- Teacher analyzed students‟ worksheets to see whether they identified the collocations correctly and analyzed students‟ writings to check their use of collocations
- Collection of post-test (production test)
- Students submitted their cause and effect essay
- Teacher administered another collocation test
- Teacher carried out the interviews with the chosen participants
At home Do supplementary exercises
- analyzed students‟ writings to check their use of collocations
- analyzed the results of the post-test (recognition test)
- analyzed the questionnaires and interviews
Data collection instruments
In order to gather information about the participants‟ knowledge of collocations, a recognition test was administered It included a pre-test and a post-test that consisted of the same questions There were in total 34 multiple choice questions All of the collocations in the test were of two types: adjective + noun and verb + noun, and they were all taken from the reading texts provided to K45E17 students during the CAR Process in order to compare their performance before and after the process
In order to collect data about the participants‟ use of collocations in their writings before and after the CAR Process, a production test was administered
It included a pre-test and a post-test, which were actually two writing assignments In the pre-test, the participants were required to write a classification essay of their chosen topic At this time, K45E17 students had not been introduced to collocation, so they finished the first and second drafts as usual This was quite different from the post-test, for which learners wrote a cause-effect essay They were encouraged to use the collocations recorded during the CAR Process in the first version and pay attention to their use of collocations in the second draft
In order to collect data for this study, the survey questionnaire was used because it is particularly efficient in terms of researcher time, effort, and financial resources (Nunan, 1992, quoted in Phan, 2012, p 41) These benefits of using the questionnaire are relevant to the teacher-researcher‟s needs More specifically, given the constraints of time on the researcher‟s side, administering a questionnaire would allow the collection of a huge amount of information within a short period of time This in turn could allow the researcher to put in less effort and avoid unnecessary personal expenses in collecting data
There were two parts in the questionnaire Part A investigated the benefits of the CAR Process for the participants This part was again divided into three sections, each dealing with one category of benefits To make it clearer, these sections dealt with the benefits related to collocation knowledge, collocation awareness and improvement of collocation-related skills respectively Part B explored the difficulties perceived by K45E17 students as they went through the CAR Process This part also consisted of three sections, namely difficulties related to collocation knowledge, collocation awareness and improvement of collocation-related skills
In response to part A of the questionnaire, students had to score a statement according to a Likert scale from one to five In part B, students had to tick beside the difficulties that were perceived by them during the CAR Process That is to say, such a construction of the questionnaire could help minimize students‟ hesitation to reply to it
Furthermore, the questionnaire construction described above also facilitated the processing of data This is because its two parts served to answer the research questions More specifically, part A was aimed at investigating the benefits of the CAR Process, including the benefit of raising the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English, while part B was focused on finding out the difficulties perceived by them during the CAR Process
Besides, the use of the Likert scale also made it easier for the researcher to synthesize and analyze information according to prominent emerging themes
The contents of the questionnaire were constructed based on the research questions, the Literature Review, especially the part about Collocation , the
CAR Process as used in the study and the findings of the tests so that the it would cover necessary issues related to collocation and the CAR Process
The participants of this study were English majors and the questionnaire did not contain technical terms that were unfamiliar to them However, the researcher still used simple English in the questionnaire to avoid potential misunderstandings
As stated by Gass and Mackey (2005, p 173), “Because interviews are interactive, researchers can elicit additional data if initial answers are vague, incomplete, off-topic, or not specific enough.” Moreover, “interviews are particularly useful for getting the story behind a participant‟s experiences The interviewer can pursue in-depth information around the topic Interviews may be useful as follow-up to certain respondents to questionnaires, e.g., to further investigate their responses” (Nunan, 1992, quoted in Phan, 2012, p 43) As a result, semi-structured interviews were conducted at the end of this study with a view to elaborating on students‟ responses in the questionnaire and gathering data to answer the second research question
The content of the interview was divided into two parts corresponding to the two research questions In each part, there were several skeletal questions based on the emerging themes in the returned survey questionnaires Besides, the interviews were conducted in Vietnamese so that it would be easier for the researcher and participants to express their ideas, thereby helping to avoid misunderstandings In addition, all the interviews were recorded so that data could be restored and analyzed precisely.
Data collection procedures
Generally speaking, the process of data collection went through the following steps
First, the pre-test (production test) was administered in week 2 of the semester
Second, the participants took the pre-test (recognition test) in week 4
Then, the post-test (production test) was administered in week 6
Next, the questionnaire was designed based on the research questions, the Literature Review about Collocation, the CAR Process used in the study and the findings of the tests
The questionnaire was administered in week seven of the semester In this week, the participants also took the post-test (recognition test)
Afterwards, the researcher designed the interview questions based on the research questions and the emerging themes from the collected questionnaires
Finally, face-to-face interviews were conducted in Vietnamese in the teacher-researcher‟s writing lesson with the chosen participants in week seven.
Data analysis
The data collected for this study included both qualitative and quantitative data Therefore, the teacher-researcher used different methods to analyze these kinds of data First, in terms of quantitative data, the statistical method was utilized to present the data in charts and tables for the sake of clarity Second, qualitative data was mostly described
In respect of the recognition test, the collected data was quantitative data, so the statistical method was adopted For both the pre-test and the post-test, the first step of analyzing data was to score each student‟s test paper
Afterwards, the figures were classified according to the number of correct answers and participants having the same score Next, they were presented in numerical form in tables Finally, these figures for the pre-test and the post-test were compared and interpreted to obtain results for the study
For the production test, as the collected data was also quantitative data, the statistical method was followed For both the pre-test and the post-test, the first step of analyzing data was to list and calculate all collocation errors of the two types in the participants‟ writings Afterwards, these figures were tabulated according to the types of collocation Finally, the number of errors in the pre- test and the post-test were compared and interpreted to obtain results for the study
With regard to the survey questionnaire, the collected data was quantitative data, so the statistical method was the main tool of analysis
Concerning the procedures of analyzing data, the gathered information was classified according to the research questions Afterwards, for each research question, the participants‟ responses were calculated and presented in numerical form in tables Finally, these figures were interpreted to obtain results for the study
In terms of the interviews, the collected data was qualitative data, so the descriptive method was used Regarding the procedures of analyzing data, the first step of analysis was to listen to the recorded files Because the amount of information obtained was large, the researcher simply summarized the participants‟ responses according to the interview questions Second, the summarized information was categorized according to the research questions
Finally, those pieces of information were used to supplement the information gathered from the survey questionnaires in answer to the research questions
More specifically, the interviewees‟ answers were mostly used as quotations where necessary to further illustrate the findings from the questionnaires.
RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Results
After the students in K45E17 submitted their classification essay, the pre- test (production test), which included the first draft and the second version, the teacher-researcher began checking their writings One thing that was noticeable after several writings was that my students made a lot of mistakes about collocation in both versions Doubting that this problem might be true for the whole class, the researcher started to find and record all errors about collocation in the students‟ writings The mistakes made in each version were recorded separately and were then categorized according to the different types of collocation The collocation errors in the first versions, which were written in class in week two of the semester, were summarized in the table below:
Types of collocation The number of errors
Adjective + Noun 22 Significant types, comfortable service, clear emotions, gentle scenes, strong activity Verb + Noun 26 Attract concern, move tears, get profit, own skills, control situations, improve business, keep a belief
Noun + Noun 3 Type of entertainment
Verb + Preposition 3 Be divided in
Noun + Preposition 4 Complaints over, interest of, understanding in Adjective + Preposition 3 Suitable with, accompanied with, satisfied by Verb + Adverb 7 use positively, use suitably, handle positively
Table 5: Results of the pre-test (production test) – first drafts
As can be seen from the information in Table 5, the errors about collocation my students made in their first versions were mostly of the two types: adjective + noun and verb + noun Besides, it is noteworthy that those errors were usually related to familiar words such as service, emotion or activity
The second versions were completed at home and were submitted to the teacher-researcher one week after the first drafts The number of collocation mistakes in the second versions and several examples of them were shown in the table below:
Types of collocation The number of errors
Adjective + Noun 34 Frequent customers, wide source, extravagant universe, risky scenes, interesting laugh, convenient service
Verb + Noun 25 Own skills, pursue customers, create health, add knowledge, fill a need
Noun + Noun 2 Health spa, segments of emotion
Verb + Preposition 5 Tie up relation, find out emotions
Verb + Adverb 7 Handle positively, inform properly
Table 6: Results of the pre-test (production test) – second versions
The information in Table 6 indicates that in the second versions there was an increase in the number of collocation errors of the two types: adjective + noun and verb + noun, meanwhile the numbers for other types remained more or less the same Additionally, those mistakes were also related to familiar words such as source or customer Besides, some errors in the first drafts were no longer present in the second ones There were several reasons for this First, the first drafts were written in class under time pressure, so within 40 minutes most students did not have enough time to pay careful attention to grammar and language use, as well as think of ideas that they were satisfied with and elaborate on those ideas Therefore, it is understandable that they made quite many mistakes about collocation Second, they were allowed to complete the second version at home, thereby having a lot of time to improve their writing in the aspects they were not satisfied with Besides, in some cases, there were students who did not finish their first versions in class This caused the second version to be quite different from the first one: the ideas were often elaborated on, making it longer than the first one, some parts in the first draft were left out and replaced by some others However, the most important reasons for the participants making so many mistakes about collocation in both the first draft and the second version were explained by one student in the face-to-face interview:
When I was at high school, I did not know anything about collocation because I just focused on grammar to pass the university entrance exam When I entered university, my teachers often taught me the steps of writing and writing skills
They did not tell me to pay attention to collocation Therefore, as a habit, I usually translate directly from Vietnamese into English (S4)
Another important reason was mentioned by S3, who specialized in English at high school and was a member taking part in the national English contest for gifted student She claimed to have known about the term collocation as a high-school student:
After we wrote the first version in class, we had to exchange it with two peers for comments However, as they were also unaware of collocation, they were unable to correct our mistakes about collocation, and we usually corrected only the mistakes that they pointed out
Among other interviewees, S1 had the same background knowledge of collocation as S3, while S2, S5, S6, S7 and S8 had not known anything about collocation before the study
From the two participants‟ words above, it can be tentatively assumed that before this research was done, they were unaware of using correct collocations in writing even if they might have known about the term previously To further investigate the problem, the teacher-researcher administered a pre-test (recognition test), which included 34 multiple choice questions about the collocations of two types: verb + noun and adjective + noun The results of the pre-test were summarized in the table below:
The number of correct answers (out of 34 questions)
The number of students getting the same score
The % of students getting the same score
Table 7: Pre-test results: Recognition test
As can be seen from Table 7, the participants‟ scores in the pre-test (recognition test) were quite high, ranging from 19 to 25 correct answers out of
34 questions However, looking more closely at their choices to some questions in the test, the teacher-researcher found out that except for questions 2, 4, 6, 7 and 11, there were students who chose the wrong answer to all other questions
More noticeably, most of those questions targeted very familiar words and their collocates For instance, three students selected splendid as the collocate of news instead of good As another example, three students chose attain as the collocate of information instead of get Even the students that got 25 correct answers out of 34 questions chose the wrong collocate of familiar words By way of illustration, two participants chose great instead of efficient as the collocate of service To sum up, it seems that K45E17 students‟ store of collocations was limited It is possible that this was caused by their unawares of the issue of collocation
During the CAR Process, students had a chance to read six reading texts provided by the teacher, which included all the collocations in the pre-test (recognition test) Besides, they were required to record those collocations and learn them Therefore, after the CAR Process was over, the post-test (recognition test) was administered with the same questions to see whether the participants‟ scores improved The results are shown in the table below:
The number of correct answers (out of 34 questions)
The number of students getting the same score
The % of students getting the same score
According to the results shown in Table 8, the students in K45E17 scored more highly in the post-test More specifically, the highest score in the pre-test was 25, while that in the post-test was 30 In addition, the lowest score in the post-test was one point higher than the highest score in the pre-test (26 as opposed to 25) Furthermore, in the post-test, more students scored highly than in the pre-test To make it clearer, three students got 25 correct answer in the pre-test, whereas 4 participants got 30 correct answers Besides, the wrong answers were mostly related to more difficult and less familiar collocations such as hard facts and massive debt The reasons for this improvement in the students‟ test scores were found out in the interviews According to one interviewee:
We had to read the texts given by you in class, identify the collocations in those texts, list them in the worksheets and try to learn them Sometimes, I had to look them up to know more about their meaning That means we had the chance to encounter those collocations many times, so we can remember some of them, especially those that sound interesting and familiar to us That was why in the post-test, I did not choose the wrong answer to some questions as in the pre-test (S7)
However, the participants still had the wrong answer to some questions, which was also explained by S7:
It is difficult for us to remember all of those collocations correctly, especially the less familiar ones You know sometimes we still think of the wrong collocations first because they existed in our mind for a long time and had a deep impression in our mind Therefore, we become confused And because those wrong collocations sound very reasonable, we still chose the wrong answers in the test
All things considered, it may be assumed that the CAR Process, to some extent, increased the participants‟ store of collocations
Given the number of errors about collocation the participants made in the pre-test (production test), the teacher-researcher administered another post-test (production test) to see whether the participants‟ use of collocations in writing improved The number of collocation errors of the two types: verb + noun and adjective + noun made in the first drafts, which were written in class, were shown in the table below:
Adjective + Noun 19 typical kinds, great service, nice actors, paramount function, typical types, big pressure Verb + Noun 23 pay expenses, save property, grab customers, gain profit, gain achievement, have pressure
Table 9: Results of the post-test (production test) – first drafts
Recommendations
Despite the positive result that the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English is raised thanks to the CAR Process, the fact that they still had difficulties means that something should be done to deal with those difficulties The following suggestions for coping with the difficulties are based on the participants‟ own recommendations
According to S7, the teachers teaching the four English skills should draw their students‟ attention to the common and useful collocations emerging in a lesson This is because students tend to pay attention to the knowledge pointed out and emphasized by teachers This recommendation is in line with the opinion of Lewis (2000, p 18) He believes that it is necessary for teachers to draw students‟ attention to the collocations in a text However, given the familiarity of the words in collocations, it is advisable for them to elicit answers about useful word combinations in a text from students first Then, they should point out certain collocations for them only if it is absolutely necessary
In S4‟s opinion, when learning collocations, students should also learn the examples including those collocations rather than only know their meaning in order to understand the context in which they are used This is also one consideration mentioned by Finegan (2004, p 351) and Lewis (2000, p 19)
They believe that each context requires a particular suitable collocate, which are usually not similar Therefore, learners should “avoid breaking it up; keep something of the context and keep the chunks which are recorded as large as possible.” Nevertheless, in order to increase students‟ knowledge about this, teachers are also responsible for drawing their attention to the context in which a collocation is used, emphasize its meaning in that particular context and remind them to determine its correct significance in other contexts so that they can produce suitable collocations
From S2‟s point of view, in order to remember collocations effectively, students should recycle what they find in a text S5 also shares this opinion, adding that it is possible for them to apply collocations not only in writing but also in speaking For example, after knowing the collocations related to a speaking topic, they should use them in the discussions in the next speaking lesson As a matter of fact, recycling collocations is an activity students should do, according to Hill, Lewis and Lewis (2000, pp 90 – 91) Besides, teachers should create opportunities for students to recycle the newly acquired collocations
S1, S6 and S8 share the same opinion that learning collocations is not an interesting activity and students can easily lose motivation even though they are aware of its importance That is to say, teachers, especially writing teachers should give some incentives for them to try to learn collocations For example, S6 suggests that the student using the most correct collocations in a writing assignment should be appreciated by the teacher S8 recommends that such a student should be given bonus points As another way to motivate students to learn collocations, S1 recommends sometimes teachers should administer a collocation test, which is used as a form of assessment
Conclusion
The researcher conducted a study on raising 2 nd -year students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English through the CAR (Collocation Awareness Raising) Process with a view to accomplishing the following purposes: to examine the extent to which the CAR Process raised the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English, investigate the difficulties perceived by them as they went through the CAR Process and the reasons for those difficulties The major findings of the study were as follows:
Before the CAR Process, most of the participants had not heard about collocation for many reasons One reason was that as high-school students and freshmen, their teachers did not tell them to pay attention to collocation in the writing process Some exceptions are students that specialized in English at high school and were members taking part in the national English contest for gifted students They were unaware of its importance in writing
The CAR Process helped raise the participants‟ awareness of collocation in writing English This was partly demonstrated by the improvement in their results in the post-test compared with those of the pre-test (both the recognition and production tests) Besides, this was also proven by their responses in the questionnaire and face-to-face interviews
Among the three levels of awareness mentioned in the Literature Review, it seems that the participants of this study are at the first level – attention More specifically, they know the necessity to pay attention to collocation in writing
Nevertheless, they still lack the ability to notice the gaps between the collocations used by them and correct collocations For example, they made a lot of mistakes in the first versions of the post-test (production test), and they needed the help of dictionaries to identify and correct their mistakes
Apart from raising K45E17 students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English, the CAR Process also provided them with some knowledge of collocation such as the types of collocation and improved some skills related to collocation such as noticing collocation mistakes and looking up collocations
Quite many difficulties in all three aspects listed in the questionnaire were perceived by the participants during the CAR Process With regard to knowledge of collocation, the problem perceived by the largest percentage of K45E17 students was to distinguish the different types of collocation because there are many of them In terms of collocation awareness, their difficulty was making a serious effort to look up collocations This was due to the large number of collocates one headword has, which caused them to lose motivation to search for the most suitable collocate Regarding collocation-related skills, they perceived it difficult to apply the recorded collocations in their writings on account of having to use other collocations to support their ideas In addition, they also found it difficult to notice collocations in the given reading texts text due to being accustomed to only paying attention to the new words in a text
In conclusion, the objectives of the study were satisfactorily accomplished The researcher hopes that this study will provide concerned readers with useful information about the research area
Overall, this research on raising 2 nd -year students‟ awareness of collocation in writing English through the CAR Process could be helpful for teachers, students as well as researchers working on related studies This is because this study dealt with a practical issue in teaching and learning academic writing in English
As for the English writing teachers in the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education in the University of Languages and International Studies, the findings of the research may encourage them to apply the CAR Process to their teaching In addition, teachers of English as a second language in other institutions of higher education can adapt and make use of the CAR Process in a way that is beneficial for their own students
Second, next generations of 2 nd -year students, at least mine, may benefit from the stronger emphasis I put on teaching and learning collocations not only in writing lessons but also in reading lessons, as it can be integrated in reading courses as well
Finally, researchers who develop an interest in the same research area can refer to this study for useful information for their future related work For example, they can take advantage of the literature review as theoretical background for their research It is also likely for them to model their study on this research with necessary changes
Although the researcher devoted herself to conducting this study, difficulties in the process of implementation were unavoidable, which entailed some limitations for the research, as follows:
First, the number of participants taking part in the study was not high in comparison with the total number of 2 nd -year students In fact, only students in one class out of 20 classes participated It would have been better for the collection of data if more students had joined the study
Second, due to the constraints of time, the semi-structured interviews could not be held with all students in K45E17 This might have prevented the researcher to have a more comprehensive picture of the issues investigated in the study
Third, the teacher-researcher did not provide any recommendations based on the findings of the study
In conclusion, these above shortcomings should be taken into account when further related studies are conducted in the future
Despite being a matter of concern to many scholars and researchers in the field of second language teaching and learning, collocation is still a phenomenon with many exciting aspects open to further research
In regard to monitoring students‟ recording and learning collocations at home, it is advisable for researchers to adopt several methods to check and make sure they actually make a conscious effort to learn them For example, their collocation worksheets can be considered as a form of assessment