VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



HOÀNG THỊ DUNG

THE EFFECTS OF USING COLLOCATIONS IN TEACHING
ENGLISH VOCABULARY FOR 11TH-GRADE STUDENTS AT
SON TAY HIGH SCHOOL
Ảnh hưởng của việc sử dụng kết hợp từ tiếng Anh đến việc học từ
vựng của học sinh lớp 11 trường THPT Sơn Tây

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

HANOI - 2016


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



HOÀNG THỊ DUNG

THE EFFECTS OF USING COLLOCATIONS IN TEACHING

To accomplish this study, I am indebted to many people for their thoughtful help.
First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge and thank my supervisor, Prof. Dr.
Nguyen Quang for his valuable guidance, critical feedback and enormous
encouragement, without which my thesis would be far from completion.
I am also grateful to all the lectures of the Graduate Department, University of
Languages and International Studies for their guidance and enthusiasm during my
course.
My sincere thanks go to all English teachers and 11th – grade students at Son Tay High
school.
Finally, I would like to express my thanks to my friends who are willing to help me
during the course. In particular, I find myself indebted to my family, especially my
husband, for their love, care and tolerance when I was in the process of conducting and
writing this thesis.

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ABSTRACT
This paper reports a quasi - experimental research that aimed to address the impacts of
collocation teaching on grade 11 students‟ vocabulary improvements. Data for the
study including two proficiency tests and a follow-up questionnaire were collected
from 92 students at Son Tay High school.
In this study, 46 students who followed the conventional vocabulary teaching methods
belong to control group, and 46 others participated in experimental group in which they
are exposed to different strategies related to collocation learning. The scores taken
from the two tests were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social
Sciences (SPSS) for Windows version 20.0 software package. The results show that
English collocation teaching has improved the students‟ vocabulary learning. The
findings from the questionnaire indicate that students also have positive attitude
towards the new vocabulary teaching method. They have become well aware of the

4.

Scope of the study………………………………………...……………………..4

5.

Significance of the study ………………………………………………………..4

6.

Organization of the study………………………………………………………..5

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1.

The role and the importance of vocabulary in ELT…………………...……...…6

1.2.

Collocation ……………………………………………………………………...7

1.2.1. Definition of collocation………………………………………...………………7
1.2.2. Classification of collocation………………………………………...……….…..9
1.3.

Collocation in teaching vocabulary…………………………………………….13

1.3.1. The importance of using collocation in ELT ……………………………….…13
1.3.2. Directions for teaching collocations in English vocabulary …………………..14


CHAPTER 2: THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
2.1. Research method………………………………………………………………….19
2.2. Context of the research…………………………………………………...……….20
2.3. The study………………………………………...………………………………..20
2.3.1. Participants………………………………………...……………………………20
2.3.2. Data collection instruments……………………………………………….…….22
2.3.2.1. Pretest and Posttest……………………………………………………………22
2.3.2.2. Survey questionnaire………………………………………...………………..23
2.4. Procedure. ………………………………………...………………………………24
2.4.1. The pre implementation phase………………………………………………….25
2.4.2. The implementation phase………………………………………...……………26
2.4.3. The post implementation phase………………………………………...……….30
2.5. Summary………………………………………...………………………………..30
CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1. Results………………………………………...…………………………………..31
3.1.1. Results of Pre-tests………………………………………...……………………31
3.1.2. Results of the effects of collocation teaching on students‟ English vocabulary
learning………………………………………...………………………………………32
3.1.3. Results of questionnaire (Students‟ attitude towards collocation
teaching)………….. ………………………………………...…………………….…..36

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3.2. Discussion………………………………………...………………………………39
3.2.1. Vocabulary gains as resulting from collocation teaching………………………39
3.2.2. Students‟ attitude towards collocation teaching……………………………...…40
3.3. Summary…………………………………………………...……………………..42



ESL

English as Second Language

M

Means

N

Number of Cases or Subjects of the study

p

Probability of chance (indicator of significance)

Std. Deviation

Standard Deviation

SPSS

Statistic Package for Social Science

t

Obtained Value

df


Independent Samples T-test of pre-tests

Table 3.3

Results of descriptive statistics of the CG and EG in Pre-test
and Post-test

Table 3.4

Result of independent samples t-test of mean gains of the
Experimental group and Control group after the treatment

Table 3.5

Results of questionnaire on the students „attitude towards
collocation teaching
Allocation of gains by Control group and Experimental group

Figure 3.1

after the treatment

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PART A: INTRODUCTION
This chapter provides the background to the study and statement of the problem, the
aims and research questions, the scope as well the significance of the study. It also
outlines the organization of the thesis.

vocabulary items mainly in English; and providing synonyms or antonyms of the new
vocabularies is another choice as well. Also, teachers can use pictures, realia, group
work, etc. to convey the words‟ meaning to their students. However, it is evident that
some of these techniques cannot bring about a great deal of vocabulary retention for
learners are not able to make use of presented words in performing academic tasks and
communicative activities (Hedge, 2008).
Collocation is also among these techniques. Within the lexical approach, particular
attention is intended for collocations and expressions that embrace institutionalized
utterances and sentence frames and heads. As Lewis affirms, we attempt to think of
collocations, and to use these collocations in our expressions instead of individual
words. It means, rather than trying to split things into even smaller pieces, we have a
cognizant attempt to see things in larger, more holistic manners (Lewis, 1997).
Therefore, teachers of English should be encouraged to attach more importance to
vocabulary teaching through collocation rather than only the acquisition of grammar
and the use of traditional vocabulary teaching strategies in their classes.
As a foreign language teacher at Son Tay high school, the researcher of the current
study also tries her best to support her students in acquiring accurate and native-like
competence effectively. In her teaching process, she observes and finds out that her
students, who are at grade 11, have to deal with countless difficulties in productive
skills. Examining learners' writing, the researcher could quickly notice the “miscollocations” that are widespread in their written assignments. The similar situation
can also be found out in speaking skill when students know the meaning of each
separate word, but they are still unable to connect these words together naturally and
correctly and use them fluently and constantly. This may be due to their ignorance
of collocations and the interference of the mother tongue which reflect their lack of
proficiency in the target language. In order to overcome these problems, a number of

2


methods can be taken into consider; among them is using collocations. Therefore, it is


4.

Scope of the study

Though the use of collocation can be applied in different aspects in language teaching
including the macro skills, grammar, vocabulary, etc., the researcher has chosen to
focus only on vocabulary teaching for the fact that collocation is so central to teaching
new words. If a student wants to master a new word completely, it cannot be denied
that he/she has to proficiently use that word in combining with other words or phrases.
A large number of studies prove that presenting new words through collocations result
in a better learning of the words than presenting them using traditional techniques.
Therefore, this research investigates the use of collocation in teaching vocabulary.
In the research conducted, the subject was a small group of grade 11 students who were
non-randomly assigned to a control group and an experimental group. The material
scope used for teaching students during 10 weeks of the investigation is restricted to
English textbook for grade 11.
5.

Significance of the study

Although it is widely acknowledged that collocations are not only indispensable but
also challenging for English language learners, and that they therefore should play an
integral part in L2 teaching at any level, learners' difficulties with collocations have not
been investigated in much detail so far.
The current study primarily focuses on finding out the feasibility of applying
collocations as effectively as possible to L2 teaching in the effort of improving
students‟ method of learning vocabulary. Therefore, it is much to the author‟s
expectation that the results of the current research will help teachers of language
become well aware of what they should do to improve their teaching performance in


PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, the author will present some theoretical background that proves
necessary in the realization of this research and helps provide related literature to the
study. First, the studies related to the L2 teaching and learning of vocabulary,
especially the application of collocation use in teaching English vocabularies that some
prominent researchers all over the world have conducted and what they have found out
will be reviewed systematically with the purpose of providing the basis of the
investigating issue.
1.1.

The role and the importance of vocabulary in ELT

Learning any foreign language involves the proficient manipulation of all macro skills
including speaking, writing, listening and reading, which leads to effective
communication. One capital factor in this process is the amount of vocabulary one
possesses as vocabulary forms the biggest part of the meaning of any language
(McCarthy, 1988). Indeed, vocabulary acquisition is currently receiving much attention
in second language pedagogical field and research, therefore how learners acquire
vocabulary effectively and efficiently and how it can best be taught are contentious
issues in applied linguistics (Lewis, 2006).
There have been a great number of different approaches related to language learning,
each with different perspectives on vocabulary (Richards & Rodgers, 2001). It is the
fact that learning a language should not be reduced to only learning vocabulary, but it
is also true that “no matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how
successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of
meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way”
(McCarthy, 1990). Language teaching methodologies sometimes have attached great


First, a look at some typical ones among the varied definitions that researchers and
linguists have brought out is taken. Many scholars believe that the term is first used in

7


1981 by Palmer, an English linguist and teacher, who defines “collocation” as “a
succession of two or more words that must be learned as an integral whole and not
pieced together from its component parts”. Some others, however, regard Firth, a
British linguist, as the one who sets the foundation of collocation and develops a
lexical and the most traditional approach to this phenomenon. He introduces the term
meaning by collocation as a new mode of meaning of words and distinguishes it from
both the “conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of words” and “contextual
meaning”. One of Firth‟s revolutionary concepts is to perceive lexical relations as
syntagmatic rather than paradigmatic ones. He takes “dark night” as an example. His
analysis is that one of the meanings of night is its collocability with dark, and one of
the meanings of dark is its collocability with night. Thus, a complete analysis of the
meaning of a word would have to include all its collocations. According to Firth
(1957), “collocations of a given word” are defined as “statements of the habitual or
customary places of that word.”
Halliday (1966), one of Firth‟s followers, considers collocations as examples of word
combinations. By the examples for his argument: “he argued strongly” and “the
strength of his argument”, which are grammatical transformations of the initial
collocation “strong argument”, he states that collocation cuts across grammar
boundaries.
According to Moon (1997), collocations can be defined in many ways, and some
of these definitions are as follows: collocations are words that occur together with
high frequency and refer to the combination of words that have a certain mutual
expectancy. “The combination is not a fixed expression but there is a greater
than


Example

A

verb (meaning creation or activation)+ noun
(pronoun or prep. phrase)

compose music;
make an impression

B

verb (meaning eradication or nullification)+
noun

revoke a license;
demolish a house

adjective + noun

strong tea; a rough estimate

noun + verb

bees buzz; bombs explode

noun1 of noun2

a pack of dogs; a herd of

G1
G2
G3
G4
G5
G6
G7
G8

Pattern

Example

noun + preposition

love for

noun + to inf.

They made an attempt to do it

noun + that clause

An agreement that she would
represent us in court

preposition + noun;

By accident, to somebody‟s
advantage

S + V + Od to Oi
S + V + Oi + Od

He sent a book to his brother.
He sent his brother a book.
They returned the book to her.

G8 (3)

S + V + Od to Oi
(do not allow the dative
movement transformation)
S + V + Od for Oi
S + V + Oi + Od

G8 (4)

S + V + Prep + O
S + V + O + Prep + O

He came by train.
We invited them to the meeting.

S + V to V

They began to speak.

S + modal V + V

He had better go.

S+V+O+C

She dyed her hair red.

S+V+O+O

We bet her ten pounds.

S + V (+ O) + Adverb

He carried himself well.

S + V (+ O) + wh-word

He wants what I want.

G8 (2)

G8 (5)
G8 (6)
G8 (7)
G8 (8)
G8 (9)
G8 (10)
G8 (11)
G8 (12)
G8 (13)
G8 (14)
G8 (15)
G8 (16)

verb, or verb and object, any of the intervening words may occur between the words of
collocations.
Hill (as cited in Michael Lewis, 2000: 63) produces another classification of
collocations according to strength into four categories: unique collocations, strong
collocations, weak collocations and medium-strength collocations. First, there are
unique collocations which are fixed and cannot make way for any other items. As
examples, he gives the two collocations “foot the bill” and “shrug your shoulders”.
The two collocations are unique because the verbs “foot” and “shrug” are not used with
any other nouns. In the second place, there are strong collocations like “trenchant
criticism” and “rancid butter”. These are not unique but not many possible collocates
can be used to substitute it. Thirdly, weak collocations relates to collocations with a
wide variety of collocates, as adjectives “long”, “short”, “cheap”, “expensive”,
“good” or “bad” can combine with many different nouns, for instance an expensive
shirt, a long shirt, etc. These combinations are “more predictable” and easy to the
majority of students. Finally, the fourth type is medium-strength collocations; for
example “holds a conversation” and “a major operation”. Hill thinks that students are
concerned with this type which is neither strong nor weak.
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Distinctions are made between grammatical collocations and semantic collocations
by Kathleen and Dragomir in their paper named Collocations. They affirm that
grammatical collocations often contain prepositions, including paired syntactic
categories such as verb+preposition (e.g. come to, put on), adjective+preposition (e.g.
afraid that, fond of), and noun+preposition (e.g. by accident, witness to). In these cases,
the open-class word is called the base and determines the words it can collocate with,
the collocators. Semantic collocations are lexically restricted word pairs, where only a
subset of the synonyms of the collocator can be used in the same lexical context.
1.3.


Collocations require to be taught so that the learners would be aware of them because
they would help learners not only to understand vocabulary but also to link ideas more
effectively when they write or speak. Numerous linguists and language teachers have
underscored the remarkable significance of collocation consciousness-raising in ELT.
Teaching collocations would provide learners with a helpful device in producing
language. It could facilitate the productive tasks by making it easier, more precise and
more natural and native-like. Conzett (2000) underlines that students should be taught
the word Collocation itself. This is because students have already formed in their mind
the collocations in their mother tongue without consciousness. Thus it is not
challenging for them to understand what collocation means, and it helps save much
time by using this term in class. Actually, some people may argue that if students do
not know the concept, they can still learn and use collocations, however when they
have knowledge of what collocations are, students would be more aware of the
existence and significance of collocations, and of course, they can learn how to develop
their knowledge of collocations independently (Woolard, 2000).
1.3.2.2. Making students be well aware of collocations
Teaching collocations and avoiding the interference of the mother tongue
Foreign language learners tend to transfer negatively already-known words and group
of words from L1 into the target language because of interference. They do translate
expressions either consciously or unconsciously from L1 into L2 due to

14


"interlanguage" or first language translation, as stated by many researchers such as
Selinker (1969), which is a considerable problem that disrupts learners‟ performance in
the target language. Therefore, for the reason that a common collocation in students‟
native language is not necessarily the same in English and vice versa, it is indispensible
for teachers to make their learners notice the difference between collocations of each
language and think in the target language as far as possible in order to avoid translating