Efl vietnamese learners use of lexical collocations in essay writing trần ngọc quỳnh phương

HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - TRAN NGOC QUYNH PHUONG EFL VIETNAMESE LEARNERS’ USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS IN ESSAY WRITING MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, Hue University THUA THIEN HUE, 2022 HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - TRAN NGOC QUYNH PHUONG EFL VIETNAMESE LEARNERS’ USE OF LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS IN ESSAY WRITING MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 8140111 SUPERVISOR: DR NGUYEN THI BAO TRANG THUA THIEN HUE, 2022 ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ - TRẦN NGỌC QUỲNH PHƯƠNG NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG CÁC CỤM TỪ VỰNG TRONG BÀI VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN VIỆT NAM HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ TIẾNG ANH LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 8140111 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS NGUYỄN THỊ BẢO TRANG THUA THIEN HUE, 2022 STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree in any university I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, my thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself Signed: ………………………… Tran Ngoc Quynh Phuong Date: ……/ ……/……… i ABSTRACT This study investigated the use of lexical collocations and related collocational errors in opinion essays written by Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) students In two separate 50-minute writing tests, each of the fifty second-year English majors at a Vietnamese university wrote two essays on two topics The data was analyzed by using AntConc (Anthony, 2021), the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the British National Corpus (BNC), and Oxford Collocations Dictionary (OCD) The findings found that adjective-noun collocations were the most common, followed by noun-noun, verb-noun, noun-of-noun, adverb-verb, verb-adverb, and verb-adjective Meanwhile, adverb-adjective collocations were the least frequent type Students both repeated exact wordings from task prompts and developed alternative phrases for prompt-derived collocations, albeit the exact repetition occurred more frequently To produce paraphrases, students tended to replace prompt-based collocations’ components with their synonyms or near synonymous words, resulting in both accurate and incorrect lexical collocations The study also revealed three broad error categories: wrong word combinations, incorrect forms of collocational elements, and mixed errors While the most common error committed by students in the first category was incorrect adjective choice, the omission of the plurality marker occurred most frequently in the second error category, and the number of mixed errors was insignificant Finally, pedagogical implications for enhancing collocational use are discussed to assist both students and teachers in their classroom learning and teaching ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest and most sincere gratitude to my supervisor Mrs Nguyen Thi Bao Trang, Ph.D, who devoted her time and effort to guide me and correct my thesis Not only did she provide me with guidelines for developing my thesis, but she also offered me a wealth of materials and references, as well as invaluable feedback throughout the research process Her kindness, enthusiasm, dynamism, and expertise have inspired me to overcome the challenges during the process of conducting this research It was a great privilege and honor to work and study under her guidance I am extremely grateful for what she has offered me Next, I would like to express my appreciation to my beloved friends, Nguyen Thi Nhat Ly and Wade Rutherford, who had spent their time helping me in the procedure of data collection and analysis Besides, my special thank goes to Nguyen Dac Quynh Anh who was always ready to offer help when necessary and more importantly, offered me spiritual assistance Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents for all the unconditional support and continuous encouragement in this very intense academic year Without their understanding and love, it would be impossible for me to complete my study iii List of Tables Table Grammatical collocations (Benson et al., 2010) 13 Table Lexical collocations (Benson et al., 2010) 14 Table Types of errors in verb-noun collocations (Nesselhauf, 2003, p.232) 16 Table Types of errors in verb-noun collocations (adapted from Dukali, 2018) 17 Table Types of collocational errors (Rodríguez-Fernández et al., 2015, p.531) 18 Table Types of errors in lexical collocations (Mahmoud, 2005, p.122) 19 Table Vietnamese collocational types (Trinh, 2001) 22 Table Previous studies utilizing the frequency of occurrence to assess the appropriateness of lexical collocations 33 Table TagAnt’s indicators for parts of speech 41 Table 10 Lexical collocations types (adapted from Benson et al., 2010) 46 Table 11 Formulas for lexical collocation types 47 Table 12 Coded collocational error types and examples from students’ essays 52 Table 13 Agreement percentage of lexical collocation types in Online learning 55 Table 14 Agreement percentage of lexical collocational errors in Online learning 56 Table 15 Agreement percentage of lexical collocation types in Volunteer work 56 Table 16 Agreement percentage of lexical collocational errors in Volunteer work 57 Table 17 The distribution of different lexical collocation types on two topics 58 Table 18 Use of the prompt-based lexical collocations 61 Table 19 Paraphrasing of the prompt-derived adjective-noun collocations in Online learning 63 Table 20 Paraphrasing of the prompt-derived verb-noun collocation in Online learning 65 Table 21 Paraphrasing of the prompt-derived adjective-noun collocations in Volunteer work 66 Table 22 Paraphrasing of the prompt-derived verb-noun collocation in Volunteer work 67 Table 23 The distribution of lexical collocation errors in students’ essays on two topics 69 Table 24 Error types of students’ paraphrases for prompt-derived lexical collocations 71 Table 25 Error types of exact wordings from the two task prompts 72 iv List of Figures Figure The process of identifying types of lexical collocations 46 Figure The process of identifying students’ recycled and alternative lexical collocations 47 Figure The process of identifying incorrect lexical collocation committed by students 49 Figure The distribution of lexical collocation types in EFL students’ essays 59 v List of Abbreviations L1……………first language L2……………second language EFL………… English as a foreign language ESL………… English as a second language CEFR……… The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages HUFLIS…… University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, Hue University COCA……… Corpus of Contemporary American English BNC…………British National Corpus OCD…………Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement of original authorship i Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii List of tables iv List of figures v List of abbreviations vi Table of contents vii Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Background of the study 1.2 Objectives of the research 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Research significance 1.6 Structure of the thesis Chapter Literature Review 2.1 Theoretical background of collocational studies 2.1.1 Definition of collocations 2.1.2 Features of collocations 2.1.3 Collocations versus idioms and free combinations 11 2.1.4 Classifications of collocations 12 2.1.4.1 Lexical and grammatical collocations 12 2.1.4.2 Open and restricted collocations 14 2.1.4.3 Weak and strong collocations 14 vii Liao, M T., & Tseng, C Y (2010) Students’ behaviors and views of paraphrasing and inappropriate textual borrowing in an EFL academic setting Journal of Pan-Pacific Association 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Using Tagant, AntConc, and COCA Picture Using TagAnt to label different parts of speech 112 Picture The tagged data of a student’s essay Picture Using AntConc to search for the frequency and context of a collocation 113 Picture The number of texts in which one collocation appear 114 Picture Inserting formula to search for Adjective – Noun collocations Picture Context of a phrase in AntConc 115 Picture The Collocates function of COCA Picture Using the basic search field in COCA to search for collocations 116 Picture The frequency of the collocation Picture 10 A sample of concordance lines of “online courses” 117