4.1. The participants’ common errors in the use of FSs
4.1.3. Relative distribution of FS errors by FS types
Of the total of 535 FS errors identified in this study, 81.2% are collocational errors. Errors involving idioms and phrasal verbs account for 15.3% and 3.5% of all FS errors, respectively (See Figure 4.6). On a surface level, this distribution makes errors in the category of collocations the most common type of FS errors committed by the participants in this study.
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Figure 4.6. Relative distribution of FS errors
The skewed distribution of FS errors toward collocations may be partly explained by the fact that collocations are more common than idioms and phrasal verbs in naturally occurring language (Vilkaitė, 2016). It makes sense that the participants made considerably more errors with collocations (81.2%). Regardless, the lower number of errors in idioms and phrasal verbs should not be understood as mastery of those types of FSs. In fact, closer scrutiny of the data reveals several problematic patterns as follows.
Instead of using idioms, the participants often opted to use their own words to convey the meaning intended. For example, to convey the meaning of vòng luẩn quẩn, only 26 out of 50 participants successfully produced the idiom vicious circle/cycle. The rest attempted to convey the meaning using their own words.
Results range from unformulaic sequences such as *unending circle to almost nonsensical sequences such as *circular round or *syllogistic circle. One participant went as far as giving a detailed description: going round in a full circle.
Similarly, where the idiom room for improvement would be appropriate, the participants used phrases along the lines of needs some improvements or needs to be improved.
The participants’ struggles with idioms seem to reflect the findings of Phan et al. (2021) who claim that learners have trouble with idioms due to their inability
FS errors - Collocations
81.20%
FS errors - Idioms 15.30%
FS errors - Phrasal Verbs
3.50%
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to find English equivalents for Vietnamese idioms. In the present study, this issue can be seen in the responses to questionnaire item Q11. One participant stated that they find FSs problematic because they “may not have any suitable equivalents”
in Vietnamese. The participants’ failures to properly produce idioms such as vicious circle and room for improvement could likely be attributed to either avoidance of idioms or a genuine lack of knowledge that such idioms exist.
Additionally, even when the participants managed to use idioms correctly in terms of meanings, the idioms they produced still had article-related errors. For example, many participants wrote on *the paper or on *a paper instead of on paper, or on *the top of the world instead of on top of the world. This error pattern has been previously documented by Nguyen (2020). She gave an example of learners using under *the one roof instead of under one roof to illustrate this point.
It is not difficult to see that the participants of this study, similar to those in Nguyen’s (2020), seem to have the habit of inserting articles into idioms where articles are not present. This habit might have come from intralingual sources, particularly an overgeneralization process in which the participants exercised the rules of English articles requiring the use of articles with singular nouns. In the sequences mentioned above, paper and top (of the world) appear to look singular (although paper is actually not). As a result, many participants might have been prompted to add an article in front of them out of habit. This could likely be an example of learners overgeneralizing L2 rules without being aware of the exceptions to those rules.
When it comes to phrasal verbs, learner avoidance was evident. When a phrasal verb could be used, most participants would prefer single-verb equivalents – which is consistent with the findings of previous studies (Ghabanchi & Goudarzi, 2012; Hautte, 2018; Liao & Fukuya, 2004; Tran & Tran, 2019). Take the translated text “if ruminating thoughts are taking over your life” as an example. While some participants successfully produced the phrasal verb take over as expected, most used one-word verbs such as occupy or dominate. Another example is the phrase
“putting on a happy face.” When conveying this phrase, many participants went for single-verb equivalents of the phrasal verb put on, such as wear, show, or
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express. The phrasal verbs put on and take over are both highly frequent – put on has a FREQ of 31,055 occurrences, while take over has a FREQ of 12,820 occurrences in COCA. While there is a possibility that some participants might not know about these phrasal verbs, this possibility is likely very low as the participants were already English-major students in their third and fourth years of university. A more viable explanation could be that it simply did not occur to them at the moment they were doing the test. In other words, their knowledge of phrasal verbs is most likely passive. They could probably understand these phrasal verbs well but might find it challenging to use them productively in their writing.
On top of learner avoidance, even when the participants attempted to use phrasal verbs, they still made errors. There are several cases where the participants used the wrong particles, for example, result *to instead of result in. Sometimes, the participants used phrasal verbs where one-word verbs would have been more appropriate, such as *settle down the problem instead of settle the problem. This aligns with what has been reported by Sonomura (1993). In some other cases, the participants seemed to omit prepositions in phrasal verbs, such as adapt* new or difficult situations instead of adapt to new or difficult situations, lead* quicker healing instead of lead to quicker healing, and put* a happy face instead of put on a happy face. As Castro (2013) speculated, the omission of prepositions in phrasal verbs might be caused by incomplete rule application, an intralingual process.
Figure 4.7 provides a visualization of the distribution of FS errors compared with the total attempts to use FSs across all the types of FSs. The horizontal axis represents the actual number of attempts made by the participants in the test. While more than half of the participants’ attempts to use collocations resulted in errors (55.06%), only 7.36% of their attempts to use phrasal verbs and 23.75% of their attempts to use idioms created errors. This comparison confirms the earlier finding:
collocations were the type of FSs most prone to errors. In contrast, even though the participants might not have been able to produce as many idioms and phrasal verbs as they did with collocations, when they made attempts to use idioms and phrasal verbs, their attempts appear to be more successful and resulted in much fewer errors.
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Figure 4.7. Distribution of FS errors in comparison to the total attempts to use FSs
In conclusion, the large majority of FS errors identified in this study are distributed in the category of collocations (81.2%). 15.3% of FS errors are errors involving idioms. FS errors in the category of phrasal verbs account for only 3.5%
of all errors. The low percentages of FS errors involving idioms and phrasal verbs may indicate a problematic pattern of avoidance behaviors. There is also evidence suggesting a possible lack of knowledge about these types of FSs. Although the participants seemed to find it harder to produce idioms and phrasal verbs than collocations, when they did attempt to use idioms and phrasal verbs, they made much fewer errors than they did with collocations.