Retention and use of lexical collocations (verb + noun and adjective + noun) by applying lexical approach in a reading course

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether teaching vocabulary via collocations would contribute to retention and use of foreign language, English. A quasi-experimental design was formed to see whether there would be a significant difference between the treatment and control groups. Three instruments developed were conducted to 60 participants. The experimental group was taught collocations through lexical approach by means of ten different kinds of activities for ten weeks. On the other hand, the control group was taught in a traditional way, only focusing on word definitions from dictionary, antonyms, synonyms and guessing from the text. The results showed that the participants in the experimental group outperformed the ones in the control group in all of the three instruments. The study also indicated that a period of treatment and exposure to lexical collocations led the treatment group to remember and produce the collocations in the reading courses more appropriately and less deviantly than the control group. This result showed that teaching collocations in the class systematically week by week and scaffolding learners’ progress could lead to better learners who can remember and use collocations in their reading comprehension in English.