Research Background:

According to Brand and Brand (2006), the general meaning of fluency can be stated as
completing an
activity or a task effortlessly so that students complete that activity or task “automatically,
fluidly,
rapidly, quickly, and accurately”.
In writing in a second or foreign language, the idea of flow is supported by Casanave‟s (2004)
as writing
fluency. Writing fluency can be defined as the “writers‟ ability to produce a lot of language
without
excessive hesitations, blocks, and interruptions” (p. 67).
Collocations are seen as conventionalized, recurring word combinations. Brown (1974) was
one of the
first who proposed the incorporation of collocations in the EFL classroom. She emphasized that
learning
collocations not only increases EFL learners' knowledge of collocation but also improves
learners' oral
fluency, listening comprehension, and reading speed. Moreover, Brown contended that learning
collocations causes learners to be able to gradually recognize language chunks used by native
speakers in
speech and writing and to give them the sense of using words in a natural way (Hashemi,
Azizinezhad &
Darvishi, 2011). Similarly, Liu (2000) observed that the more often students are taught English
collocations, the more correctly and appropriately they are able to make use of collocations to
express
what they mean.
The fact that foreign language learners avoid using collocations in their production or make
many errors
about them is because of their lack of exposure to the natural language. Learners, who have the
habit of
reading magazine articles, novels and other books, watching English movies and listening to
English
news, make less collocationl errors than those who do not have such exposures.

Further, a number of studies

have highlighted the role of
Most of the studies reviewed above
In a similar study, Li and Schmitt (2010) analysed

In another longitudinal
More recently,
Lastly,

Bahns and Eldaw (1993) tested advanced

EFL learners’ productive knowledge of 15 verbnoun collocations
(e.g., serve a sentence) in a written translation task and a cloze test. They
discovered that although collocations made up around 23% of all
lexical words (i.e., words belonging to open-class categories, thus
excluding prepositions, articles, etc.), they accounted for more than
48% of all errors. Bahns and Eldaw thus suggest that collocations
present a major problem for advanced learners because collocational
competence does not develop in parallel with general vocabulary
knowledge.
Howarth (1998) researched verb–object collocations extracted from
native and non-native written corpora. He reports that NSs employed
about 50% more restricted collocations (e.g., reach a conclusion) than
advanced NNSs. Interestingly, he found deviation from standard
collocational forms in both native and non-native writing; a much
greater proportion of non-idiomatic language, however, was discovered
in non-native essays. Specifically, non-standard collocations
accounted for around 6% of collocations produced by learners and
only 1% of native-speaker collocations. Howarth’s findings also
L2 Learner Production and Processing of Collocation 431
_ 2008 The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes,
64, 3 (March/mars), 429–458
suggest that out of the three collocational groups – restricted
collocations, free collocations, and idioms – learners seem to experience
most difficulties in producing restricted collocations.
Other studies have also explored the nature of learner collocation
problems. Nesselhauf (2003) explored the use of verb–noun collocations
such as take a break and shake one’s head in essays written
by advanced German-speaking learners of English. Borrowing from
Howarth (1998), Nesselhauf (2003) distinguishes three major classes of
collocations: free combinations, such as want a car (both the verb and
the noun are used in an unrestricted sense; words can be freely
combined); collocations, such as take a picture (the sense of the noun is
unrestricted, but that of the verb is restricted; one can also say take a
photograph); and idioms, for example, sweeten the pill (both the verb and
the noun are used in a restricted sense; substitution is not possible, or
is very limited). The learners made the greatest proportion of errors
with collocations (79%), followed by free combinations (23%) and
idioms (23%). However, Nesselhauf also found the highest rate
of errors (33%) in collocations with a medium degree of restriction
(e.g., exert influence, where a number of other nouns such as control,
pressure, and power are also possible) and a much lower rate (18%) in
collocations with ‘a lot of restriction’ (e.g., fail an exam/test, where
fewer nouns are possible). These findings are congruent with those
reported by Howarth.
Granger (1998) also investigated native and non-native knowledge
of collocations, focusing on -ly intensifieradjective collocations
extracted from academic learner essays (L1 French) and essays written
by native-English-speaking students. Granger distinguishes between
two types of intensifiers: ‘maximizers’ (e.g., absolutely, totally) and
‘boosters’ (e.g., deeply, highly). She reports that the advanced learners’
usage of the former was not different from the native usage; the
‘boosters,’ however, seem to be used with lower frequencies in learner
production than in that of NSs. Having further submitted a number
of -ly intensifieradjective collocations to native and non-native
(L1 French) informants, she reports that learners had a poorer sense of
salience for collocations. Specifically, these learners were shown to be
more accepting of combinations found unacceptable by the NSs.
Overall, Granger concludes that although her learners did use
collocations, they underused native-like expressions and tended to
use atypical word combinations instead.
In yet another study, Farghal and Obiedat (1995) tested Arabic EFL
students for the productive knowledge of 11 adjectivenoun
and nounnoun English collocations (e.g., weak tea, depth of winter)
432 Siyanova and Schmitt
_ 2008 The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes,
64, 3 (March/mars), 429–458
in two written tasks. They conclude that, overall, L2 learners could
not cope with collocations because they were not made aware
of collocations in the language. They suggest that this led students
to employ strategies of ‘lexical simplification’ such as synonymy,
paraphrasing, avoidance, and transfer, as well as to use literal
translation from their L1.
Research into learners’ collocational knowledge has

Given that the notion of collocation has been discussed

and interpreted in

In 2002, Al-Salmani, A. has focused in his MA thesis on Collocations and idioms in English-
Arabic translation. Far from translation, other researchers have investigated other matters
related to collocations in Foreign Language Learning. In 2003, Hassan Abadi Siavosh has
studied learning English lexical and grammatical collocations by Iranian EFL learners. After
examining learners’ collocations types he has found that their performance differs according to
the patterns of collocation “in favour of verb-noun collocations” and that acquisition of lexical
collocations is easier than grammatical ones. In her research about learning collocations
Gitaski, C (cited in Siavosh, 2003: 51) has pointed out that learning collocations is facilitated
by the level of ESL learners. The higher is the level, the easier is learning collocations. She has
further stated that easiness depends also on the degree of Intl. Res. J. Appl. Basic. Sci. Vol., 9
(3), 328-334, 2015
993

complexity of the collocation itself. Concerning the problem of collocation errors, some
researchers have approached it within their mother tongue. In 1989, Kharma and Hajjaj (cited
in Mahmud, Abdelmoneim: 2005: 118) has focused on verb-noun collocations in their analysis
of collocational errors made by Arabic learners of English. In 2005, Dr Mahmoud,
Abdulmoneim has studied errors made by Arab Learners of English. The results of his empirical
study have indicated that collocation constitute a problem for Arabic learners. This problem
could be overcome by raising learners’ consciousness about collocation with the help of simple
contrastive analysis of English and Arabic.

There have been few published studies measuring collocational proficiency of second language
learners. Among the most comprehensive studies conducted thus far is Ha (1988, cited in Bonk,
2000) who measured ESL learners’ collocational knowledge using cloze-type tests in order to
investigate the correlation between general English proficiency and collocational knowledge.
Three types of collocations (verb-preposition, verb-noun, and adjective-noun) were selected
and items were developed by consulting BBI Combinatory Dictionary (Benson & Benson,
1986). A cloze test was also administered to measure general proficiency. The test instruments
used enjoyed acceptable reliability estimates (K-R 21 = 0.86 and 0.70, respectively) and an
acceptably high correlation (r= .83) was found between the scores of collocation measures and
those of general proficiency tests.
Gitsaki (1996, cited in Bonk, 2000) apparently conducted the largest-ever study of learners’
knowledge of collocations. The researcher studied 275 adolescent Greek schoolchildren’s
ability to produce English collocations, investigating the accuracy and frequency of 37 types of
collocations in the students’ free productions. The study found that the accuracy and frequency
of the students’ use of various types of collocations increased with their proficiency. Gitsaki’s
study, despite several methodological

Numerous studies have tried to measure learners' collocation knowledge (Aghbar, 1990;
AI-Zaharni, 1998; Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Farghal & Obiedat, 1995), and their common
results were that EFL learners were lacking collocation knowledge. Although numerous
studies have examined EFL or ESL learners' collocation competence, not many studies
have been done that deal with second language learners' collocation competence with
respect to a specific language skill. As one of the first researchers to do so, Zhang (1993)
examined the correlation between the use of English collocations and their relation to the
writing fluency of EFL learners using a fill-in-the-blank collocation test and a paper-andpencil
TOEFL-like writing test. Zhang showed that collocation competence is a source of
fluent writing.
Later, Al-Zaharni (1998) studied Saudi EFL learners' lexical collocation abilities using a
lexical collocation test and examined its relation to general language proficiency using a
paper-and-pencil TOEFL-like writing test. AI-Zaharni's study focused on only one specific
collocation type of lexical collocations, 'verb + noun.' Al-Zaharni's study found a
significant relationship between EFL learners' lexical collocation competence and writing
competence.
More recently, Bae (2012) implemented letter- and story- writing tasks in EFL children
and investigated ten cohesion markers, including collocations, used in the letters and
stories. Collocations were found to be one of a few markers that significantly influenced
the writing quality across the two tasks.
The Relationship of Collocation Competence with Reading and Writing Skills 101
While Zhang, AI-Zaharni, and Bae (above) tested learners' writing competence, Sung
(2003) considered learners' speaking competence and explored the relationship between
EFL learners' lexical collocation competence and speaking fluency. Sung concluded that
EFL learners' knowledge of lexical collocations was an important indicator of speaking
fluency.
While the four studies mentioned above examined the relationship between learners'
collocation competence and one particular language skill, very few researchers have taken
into consideration more than one language skills. Amid the paucity, Ahn (2009), for
example, investigated EFL students' use of collocations by using their reading and writing.
Ahn used the reading comprehension section of TOEFL, evaluated the participants '
general reading ability, and divided them into two groups. Then, the students wrote four
summaries of the reading materials from their textbook. Ahn analyzed lexical and
grammatical collocations within the students' summaries and found that the more
proficient readers used a greater variety of lexical collocations than the less proficient ones
However, Ahn did not examine the relationship of learners' collocation competence to
their writing ability.
There have been studies that examined the effect of collocation-based instruction. Oh
(2004) investigated the relationship between vocabulary teaching that focused on
collocations and reading abi lity. No significant correlation was found between collocation
knowledge and reading abi lity. Lee (2009) investigated the effects of collocation-based
English vocabulary instruction on the four language skills (listening, reading, writing, and
speaking) with Korean middle school students. Lee found that the effect of collocationbased
instruction was less significant on receptive ski lls (listening and reading) while more
obvious in productive skills (speaking and writing).

In general, research into collocational competence is conducted in two directions. Some

researchers focus on direct tests of collocations, e.g. Martynska (2004) analysed Polish EFL
learners whereas, more recently, Jaén (2007) reported findings from a test of collocations
administered to native speakers of Spanish. The other research direction is concerned with the
investigation of data extracted from corpora of authentic learner language. One of the largest
research projects in the area, i.e., compilation of a large corpus of learner language, representing
different mother tongue backgrounds, was initiated by S. Granger. The resultant International
Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) was used in a number of contrastive studies. Collocations,
in particular, were analysed by Altenberg and Granger (2001) who among other aspects
described collocations with the

the very first experimental study on collocations, done by Zhang (1993), fell into the area of
EFL/ESL writing. After Zhang several scholars, investigated the relations between collocations
and general English proficiency.

There have been a lot of research on the individual vocabulary items, but studies on corpus-
based collocations have rarely been conducted. Collocation is not a new concept. Brown (1974)
talked about students` obscurity in using correct collocations. Brown draw attention to the
complexity of collocating verbs. She also emphasized the significance of giving collocation
exercises to the learners and prepares a number of collocation activities for them. According to
Marton (1977), collocations did not seem to cause comprehension problems since learners
could understand and decode English sentences including collocations, but there was a fact that
they could not produce the same collocations while speaking or writing in English revealed that
collocations did make problems at the level of production. Channel (1981) declared that
vocabulary instruction should include collocations. They believed that collocations are
beneficial for learning new words. Starting from the 1990s, series of studies on the necessity of
collocations draw the attention of second language researchers and EFL/ESL practitioners.
Haswell (1991) claimed that the use of frequent set of expressions reveals a positive skillfulness
in writing while the lack of these expressions is a sign of beginner writers. Another reason is
that collocations are very hard to learn, especially because they are too many, senseless because
nobody knows why some words collocate and others do not and memorizing them all is almost
impossible. Empirical studies on collocations did not begin by Zhang (1993) who examined the
correlations among the EFL students’ knowledge of collocations, use of collocations, and
English fluency, testing 60 English speakers at the University of Pennsylvania, with a
collocation test to measure the students’ knowledge of collocation and a writing task to collect
their use of collocations and writing proficiency. Bahns and Eldaw (1993) also claimed in their
study that English learners' general vocabulary knowledge exceeds their collocational
knowledge.
Lennon (1996) worked on a group of German EFL learners disclosed that even the advanced
learners employed high frequency verbs erroneously, which designated their deficiency in
collocational knowledge. It was said that we need proficient ways to present vocabulary to EFL
learners (Zimmerman, 1997). Another research was conducted later by Al-Zahrani (1998). In
this study it was found that native writers performed considerably better than non-native writers
in the collocation test and in writing. Al-Zahrani (1998) claimed that there is a significant
difference in students’ knowledge of lexical collocations among the different academic years.
To be more detailed, the knowledge of lexical collocations enhanced along with the subjects’
studied. According to Lewis (2000), the problem of not having collocational competence often
makes learners form longer utterances since they are lack of knowledge of collocations which
convey in particular what they want to say. According to Nation (2001) there is a classification
of eight features of word knowledge, which has to comprise knowledge of lexical collocations.
According to Sung (2003) there is a significant strong correlation between EFL students’
knowledge of lexical collocations and their speaking fluency. According to Siik (2006) some
students endure from the lack of knowledge of collocation. Although they may have good
knowledge of vocabulary, they still make deviant language. According to Hyland (2008) multi-
word structures are elements of fluent linguistic production and main components in language
learning. Lewis (2008a) considered that, it is the collection of chunks which shapes the data by
which learners initiate to recognize patterns, morphology and other features of linguistic.
Ghonsooli, Pishghadam, and Mahjoobi (2008) stated that Iranian EFL learners may have a
superior knowledge of English vocabulary and grammar but problems with having the ability
to use collocations. McIntosh, Ben and Richard (2009) argued that collocations are the way
words come together in a language to create natural sounding communication and writing.
Although a number of studies have been completed in the area of grammar and collocation, a
few of them have examined the relationship between teaching lexical 55 International Journal
of Foreign Language Teaching & Research – Volume 3, Issue 10, Summer 2015

collocation and English learners’ writing ability (Ghonsooli et al., 2008; Mounya, 2010).
According to Hsu (2010) collocational studies display the effect of lexical collocation
instruction on other features of general English skill. The present study endeavors to fill this
space, i.e. to examine the impact of corpus-based collocation instruction on developing writing
proficiency of EFL learners. Zahedi & Mirzadeh (2010) have highlighted the significance of
drawing second language learners’ attention to collocations and idioms. The language
awareness framework was opted to assist students in learning collocations, since students did
seem to have difficulties in not perceiving collocated expressions, and it seemed required to
increase this awareness before collocation learning could occur. Hashemi (2012) in his research
state that EFL College students, high school students, and professors have little knowledge of
collocation because collocation has been neglected in EFL classrooms. He believes that a good
way to promote the fundamental mastery of collocation would be to work on an exercise that
raises learners’ awareness of collocations and then help them with tokens in their output. The
present study, therefore, aimed to investigate the effect of pre-teaching vocabulary and
collocations on writing development of advanced students. It actually sought to find answer to
the following research question

A number of studies have investigated collocations, for

example, Kaur and Hegelheimer (2005) examined whether the use
of an online concordance program together with an online
dictionary by 18 intermediate ESL undergraduates aided in the
transfer of word knowledge to an academic writing task. The
results indicated that there was statistically significant transfer of
vocabulary knowledge to the writing task. They stated that formal
writing in an academic setting required L2 learners to have a
strong linguistic foundation, including a vast range of lexical skills.
They called attention to the fact that L2 learners did not have as
much exposure to the target language as native speakers do, so
they had a more limited command of the language as well as of
vocabulary. Native speakers of English learn new words all their
lives through interaction with other speakers and exposure to the
language in formal and informal situations, but L2 learners’
exposure to and use of the target language is often limited. In
addition, producing academic essays is different from writing
personal accounts because the former requires transforming
knowledge; L2 learners have to be aware of how to process
information and transfer it by using effective vocabulary (Hinkel,
2004). Therefore, if these learners do not have a broad range of
productive vocabulary knowledge, they cannot produce the types
of writings expected of them in an academic setting.
Granger (1998), Howarth (1998), and Nesselhauf (2003) also
conducted studies in which they analyzed the writings of advanced
ESL learners. They identified deficiencies in learners’ writing
production. It is noteworthy that only Howarth was dealing
specifically with academic vocabulary collocations; however, they
all analyzed students’ use of collocations in advanced learners’
writings. They concluded that learners’ lack of knowledge of

collocation affected the learners’ writings. Moreover, the results

reinforced the point that learners have difficulty collocating words.
Similarly, Mounya (2010), who investigated the role of
teaching collocations in raising foreign language writing
proficiency, argued that a strong linear correlation exists between
writing proficiency and using collocations. He claimed to
overcome the problem of word associations, collocational
competence needs to be developed in order to achieve fluency and
proficiency in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) generally and
Foreign Language writing particularly. The development of
students’ collocational competence would result in the
improvement of communicative competence. Consequently,
proficiency in the foreign language would increase as far as the
learners’ competencies have developed. Thus, he recommended
the adaptation of a Communicative-Collocational Approach to
teaching writing which entails teaching writing through a
communicative approach by developing students' collocational
competence.
Given the significance of the related studies mentioned
above, the present study was an attempt to examine collocations in
Iranian L2 learners’ writing. Observing students' writing as an
instructor, the researcher has analyzed collocational errors that
constantly occur in English essays and paragraphs of EFL learners
which are under the influence of L1 collocational patterns. In
addition, the researcher as a language teacher has also noticed that
the rate of collocations in EFL writings was rather low as
compared to other linguistic structures. It seems that computing the
rate of collocations, comparing and examining the collocational
errors in both grammatical and lexical dimensions, contribute to
meliorate L2 learners' writings. Therefore, this study intended to
scrutinize EFL learners' rate of production in writing from both
dimensions of collocations: grammatical and lexical. To this end,
the researcher posed the following research questions:
The results from the L2 studies reviewed here will be discussed in relation to the
four main questions mentioned in the introduction. Due to the number of
studies on collocations, this overview is, however, not exhaustive. For a discussion
of some of the studies not included here see Koya (2005) (Japanese studies),
Pei (2008) (Chinese studies), Fan (2009) and Laufer and Waldman (2011).
Finally, it has not been possible to include newer articles published in 2012.
Two types of collocations have been the focus of investigation: lexical collocations,
i.e. possible syntagmatic combinations between nouns, verbs, adjectives
and adverbs (e.g. foul play, take sides, truly happy) and grammatical collocations,
i.e. collocations which include prepositions (e.g. hand over to, present
with, important for).
Many researchers have focused on lexical verb+noun collocations (e.g.
Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Barfield, 2003; Bonk, 2001; Chan & Liou, 2005;
Eyckmans, 2009; Gyllstad, 2007; Howarth, 1996; Koya, 2005; Laufer &
34 Birgit Henriksen
Girsai, 2008; Laufer & Waldman, 2011; Peters, 2009; Revier & Henriksen,
2006), often looking at the restricted, semi-transparent collocations which are
hypothesized to pose a special challenge for language learners (e.g. Nesselhauf,
2003, 2005; Revier, 2009). Another focus area has been the lexical
adjective+noun combination (e.g. Jaén, 2007; Li & Schmitt, 2010; Peters,
2009; Siyanova & Schmitt, 2008). Some researchers delimit their scope of
investigation to one type of collocation; others include two types, whereas others
include a range of collocational structures in their studies (e.g. Barfield,
2009; Fan, 2009; Fayez-Hussein, 1990; Gitzaki, 1999; Hoffman & Lehmann,
2000; Groom, 2009; Keshavarz & Salimi, 2007; Prentice, 2010; Skrzypek,
2009; Ying & O’Neill, 2009).

According to Robins (1976), studies on collocations started 2300 years ago in Greece. The
Greek Stoics related collocations to semantics and used the concept of collocation to study the
meaning relationships between words.

by Aghbar (1990) that shows the first attempts to measure collocational competence. His study
examined 97 ESL and 44 American students to measure the difference in collocational
competence between them by using a blank-filling test which included 50 verb-noun
collocations. The results showed that ESL students did well where ‘get’ was the key word. In a
study conducted by Aghbar and Tang (1991), they gave ESL students a cloze-test, which
consisted of 30 verb-noun collocations. The result revealed that collocations including ‘take’
and ‘find’ are early-acquired verbs and are comparatively easy for low proficiency students.
Alsakran (2011) investigated the productive and receptive knowledge of Arabic-speaking
learners of English regarding the use of collocation in ESL and EFL contexts. His findings
showed that English language learners have problems in learning the collocations. In another
study which is a case study, Seesink (2007) investigated intermediate students with Arabic,
Chinese, Japans, and Korean background to see if teaching vocabulary and collocations in
particular improves the writing of the students or not. She used an online program to teach the
collocations to students. In the end she concluded that attention to collocations had a positive
impact on the students’ results. But she did not clarify that what type of collocations she used.
In her study, she did not also show what types of collocations are difficult for the learners. Due
to the huge number of collocations, it is not possible to teach students all types of collocations,
therefore, those collocations which are more problematic to the students should be recognized
and taught first.
In sum, there have been many studies conducted on collocations. For example, experimental
studies have been conducted to measure language learners’ knowledge of collocations, to detect
the development of collocational knowledge at different levels, and to find the common
collocational errors that language learners make. Some other studies concentrated on the
relationship between collocations and language production, especially writing. Language
educators also studied the importance and methods of teaching collocations. As a result the
literature shows that collocations surely deserve the attention of linguists and language
educators.

Collocations are recognized as a crucial part of language use and distinguish native speakers
and non-native speakers
(Ellis, 2001; Fontenelle, 1994; Herbst, 1996; Koya, 2006; Lennon, 1996; Moon, 1992; Nation,
2001; Wouden, 1997).
Many researchers conducted empirical studies found EFL teachers and practitioners figured out
English collocations too
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diverse, yielding findings of limited practical value. For instance, numerous pioneer studies
only examined EFL/ESL learners‟ knowledge of collocations (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Biskup,
1992; Farghal & Obiedat, 1995; Keshavarz & Salimi, 2007; Zughoul & Abdul-Fattah, 2003) or
explored how EFL/ESL learners made errors1 of collocation (Huang, 2001; Jeng, 2006; Liu,
1999a, 1999b; Lombard, 1997; Wu, 2005). Only recently have we seen studies targeting the
possible connection between collocations and general language skills (Al-Zahrani, 1998; Bonk,
2000; Sung, 2003).
One of the researches was investigated the knowledge of English lexical collocations among
four academic levels of Saudi EFL university students and the relationship between the
participants‟ collocational knowledge and their general language proficiency. Al-Zahrani
found that among the different academic years there was a substantial difference in his subjects‟
knowledge of lexical collocations. The knowledge of lexical collocations improved with the
subjects‟ academic years. Above and beyond, he reported that there was a strong correlation
between the subjects‟ knowledge of collocations and their language proficiency.
Lin (2002) surveyed the impact of collocation instructions on receptive and productive
collocation competence of high-achievers and low-achievers in a group of EFL high school
students. The results indicated that all students made more progress in receptive collocation
tests than productive ones, but low-achievers performed better in productive tests after
collocation teaching. Both groups held positive attitudes toward collocation teaching activities.
Tseng (2002) divided 94 high school participants into an experimental group, who received 12
weeks of explicit collocation instruction, and a control group, who did not receive any training.
After collocation instruction, the experimental group far exceeded the control group in the post-
test regardless of their prior collocation levels.
Sung (2003) looked at the knowledge and use of English lexical collocations in relation to
speaking proficiency of international students enrolled in a university in Pittsburgh area. A total
of 72 non-native English speakers and 24 native English speakers participated in her study. Her
results showed that there was a significant correlation between the knowledge of lexical
collocations and the subjects‟ speaking proficiency.
Koosh and Jafarpour (2006) investigated the role of the Data-Driven Learning (DDL) and the
concordance materials in the production of collocation of prepositions. Their findings
recommended a new approach, such as DDL, towards the teaching of collocations using
concordance material. They also come to this conclusion that learners‟ difficulty in spoken and
written product is not related to their grammatical or lexical knowledge but to lack of
knowledge of the words accompanies it, that is, the collocation.
Rahimi and Momeni (2012) examined the effects of teaching vocabulary through collocation
and concordance techniques on language proficiency. The results showed that teaching
vocabulary has an effect on the improvement of language proficiency and vocabulary teaching,
be traditional methods such as translation, explanation and definition or new trend of
collocation teaching of the words, can bring about a significant growth in language proficiency.
A conclusion reached by a number of studies is that learners use overall fewer collocations than
native speakers (e.g. Hasselgren 1994; Howarth 1996; Kaszubski 2000; Granger 1998; Lorenz
1999) except for the small number of frequent ones which are overused (Kasuzbki, 2000). Other
recurrent findings have been that learners are not aware of restrictions (e.g. Herbust, 1996;
Howarth, 1996), but that they are at the same time not aware of the full combinatory potential
of words they know (Channell, 1981; Granger 1998). Individual studies have indicated that
learners are insecure in the production of collocations (Burgschmidt & Perkins, 1985) and that
the collocation problems are more serious than general vocabulary problems (Bahns & Eldaw,
1993).

There are a few studies on collocations in Iran. The first was done by Tajalli (1994) who worked
on translatability of
English and Persian collocations. He found out that first the main source of difficulty was that
students were not
familiar with English collocations owing to inadequate exposure. Second, non-congruent
grammatical structures of
English and Persian collocations were not responsible for possible constraints. Third, some
problems may be related to
the insufficient proficiency of the full semantic potential of simple lexical items when united to
form collocations.
Fourth, the experiment showed that the use of collocations was affected by the presence or
absence of direct
translational equivalence which significantly influences translatability. Finally, it was noticed
that some problems were
related to lack of sufficient familiarity with Persian collocations.
Unlike Tajalli, Morshali (1995) performed comprehensive research on the learning of English
lexical collocations by
Iranian EFL learners. Her study found out that first, the Iranian EFL learners’ proficiency of
collocations was far behind
their proficiency of vocabulary. Second, there was no significant relationship between the level
of language proficiency
and that of the proficiency of English collocations. Third, the Iranian learners did not normally
learn collocations
without formal teaching. Finally, the number of collocational errors made by the Iranian EFL
learners highlighted the
need for formal teaching of collocations (1995: iv).
Faghih and Sharafi (2006) focussed on the another aspect of collocations because they worked
on the impact of
collocations on Iranian EFL learners’ inter-language and an error pattern in the vocabulary of
Iranian EFL learners,
namely the confusion of collocations. Their results showed that collocation confusion was
really a common error in the
inter-language of Iranian EFL learners. There was also a positive correlation between students’
overall proficiency and
their proficiency of collocations; they did not have difficulties with all kinds of collocations,
but adjective-noun
collocations caused the most problem for them.
Unlike Faghih and Sharafi’ (2006), Koosha and Jafarpour (2006) used concordancing materials
through data-driven
learning (DDL) to observe its effect on the teaching or the learning of collocation of
prepositions, to discover whether
collocational proficiency of prepositions could be examined at the different levels of EFL
students’ proficiency, and to
find out how much Iranian EFL collocational proficiency of prepositions is influenced by their
mother tongue. To reach
this aim, they selected two hundred senior English major students from three universities in
Sharkord. Subjects were
given a Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency to determine the subjects’ level of
language proficiency. There
were two completion tests on collocations of prepositions as the pre-test and post-test to check
the effects of the
treatments. The results indicated that the DDL approach was extremely useful in the learning
and teaching, and
subjects’ performance in the test of collocation preposition was proved to be positively related
to their level of language
proficiency. Finally, error analysis of collocations showed that Iranian EFL learners transferred
their L1 collocational
patterns to their L2 production.
Bagherzadeh Hosseini and Akbarian’s (2007) study is different from the above mentioned
studies because they
investigated the relationship between collocational competence and general language
proficiency and examined the gotogetherness
of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of lexical proficiency. The subjects were selected
from thirty
senior students in two Iranian universities through a tailored TOEFL test. An MC test of noun-
verb collocations was
administered to the subjects. The results indicated that there was a relationship between the
collocation test and TOEFL
and between the vocabulary section of TOEFL and the collocation test. Moreover, subjects’
qualitative proficiency
went with their quantitative proficiency. It can be concluded that collocation had to be taught
at the right time through
explicit teaching to make students aware of collocations

Other studies worked on language transfer from L1 and found out

that students use collocations incorrectly because of negative transfer and lack of exposure
(Koosha and Jafarpour,
2006; Sadeghi, 2009; &Tajalli, 1994).
The correlation between collocations and language proficiency has been investigated by many
researchers such as
Nesselhauf (2005) who described the use of verb-noun collocations by advanced German
learners of English in free
writing. He collected thirty-two essays and showed there was a correlation between language
proficiency and
collocational proficiency and the learners’ L1 had a great influence on it. He also found that the
most frequent
collocational error types were associated with the wrong choice of the verb. He assumed that
the verb in a collocational
group contains a restricted sense (p. 239), and showed that learners’ L1 strongly affected
students’ collocation
productions.
Similarly, Shehata (2008) studied how advanced Arabic-speaking learners of English use
English collocations. Ninetyseven
subjects sat for two production tests and one reception test dealing with collocations. The data
analyses showed
that learners’ L1 and their learning environment had a strong influence on the acquisition of L2
collocations.
Furthermore, the findings revealed that there was a moderate positive correlation between
learners’ proficiency of
collocations. It can be concluded that students’ productive proficiency of collocations was
inferior to their receptive
proficiency of collocations.
Conversely, Zinkgräf, (2008), and Liao (2010) investigated the collocational errors which were
the result of negative LI
transfer. Their results concur with the findings of Martynska (2004) that most of collocational
errors resulted from
negative LI transfer. They emphasised the important role of collocations which do not have
equivalent in the mother
tongue, and the significant teachers’ role to facilitate the learning of collocations.
Thus, the research on collocations reviewed so far includes a wide range of discussion from the
measure of
collocational proficiency to types of collocational errors. These topics seem not to shift from
one decade to another, and
researchers retain an on-going interest in exploring collocations in the field. Moreover, the
empirical studies on
collocations attempt to examine learners' collocational proficiency, learners' development of
collocations, pedagogical
aspects of collocations, and types of collocational errors.

Many researchers discussed the relationship between collocations and the productive language,
especially writing (Al-
Zahrani, 1998; Bazzaz and Samad 2011; Farghal & Al-Hamly, 2007; Hsu, 2002; Zhang, 1993).
Zhang (1993) was the
first to study the correlation between knowledge and the use of collocations and the quality of
collocations in 30 native
and 30 non-native Indiana University of Pennsylvania freshmen .Al-Zahrani’s study did not
follow Zhang’s because Al-
Zahrani did not consider the use of collocations. Therefore, he made no report about his
subjects’ frequency of
collocations in the Writing Test. Al-Zahrani’s study investigates the correlation between Saudi
EFL students'
knowledge of lexical collocations and their general proficiency in English and their academic
levels. He suggests
teachers should incorporate a large amount of collocations with special emphasis on
collocations that do not have
linguistic and cultural equivalence in the native language. Another suggestion which was given
was that EFL teachers
should encourage their students to use English collocational dictionaries, such as The BBI
Dictionary of English Word
Combinations. He concludes that even though Saudi EFL students' knowledge of lexical
collocation develops along
with their general language proficiency, learners still will benefit from intense instruction of
collocations.
On the production of collocations in written discourse, Farghal and Al-Hamly (2007) performed
a study on collocations
as a challenging feature of foreign language learning and as an integral component of
communicative competence. They
observed lexical collocations in Kuwait University EFL learners’ essay writing. The learner
database included one
hundred essays written as final examinations for ENG 208 (Essay Writing). Collocational errors
were first inspected in
terms of head type and collocator vs. collocate orientation. Subsequently, collocations were
argued in light of their
etiology, i.e. whether they were the output of L1 interference or creative construction. The
researchers indicated that
the majority of KU prospective English majors experienced a range of mild to serious problems
in the area of lexical
collocations, among other things. They conclude that the ability to utilise natural collocations
in foreign language
compositions can be taken as an indicator of workable competence in writing, but they did not
concentrate on the
spoken discourse of learners.

comparison with
learners’general vocabulary knowledge, knowledge of collocations is rather weak as Bahns and
Eldaw (1993) found that collocation errors were more than twice than errors with lexical words.
When
collocation knowledge is compared among learners at different levels, it was reported that
collocation
performance did not improve as the advanced and the intermediate learners produced
significantly
more erroneous collocations than the basic learners (Laufer and Waldman, 2011). Similarly, in
another
more recent study exploring the collocational competence of two groups of Nigerian advanced
speakers of English as a second language, Obukadeta (2014) discovered that the participants
who had
been living/studying in the UK for up to 15 years were less proficient in terms of their
knowledge of
collocations than the other group which had never lived or studied outside Nigeria. These
studies
indicate a collocation lag, which means that collocational knowledge does not develop
alongside
learners’general level of English proficiency.

Mollanazar (1990) has examined the role of collocations in translation. His study reveals that
well-structured combinations and normal sequences of words in source language may
become ill-structured in the target language. The abnormality in the target text is due to the
difference of the source and target language in terms of their linguistic features of
collocations and also the different meaning of the corresponding combinations in the two
languages. (Mollanazar, 1990:101)
Shahriari (1997) has carried out a similar study about the restrictions of lexical collocations in
translation. He compares different types of combinations of collocations which are equivalent
in source and target languages. Researches on the field of collocation and its relation with
translation demonstrate that these experiments have a significant role in translation profession
in creating normal combinations and avoiding unnatural ones. (Shahriari, 1997:1)
Rasam (1996) in his research points out that collocataional relations are one of the important
features of language. He takes advantage of collocations to present an innovative approach to
categorize compound verbs in Persian language. In his opinion, collocations are cruc

There have been some empirical studies focusing on the learning of collocations in a
second/foreign language (e.g.,
Asaei & Rezvani, 2015; Fahim & Vaezi, 2011; Szudarski & Carter, 2016). Fahim and Vaezi
(2011) examined the effect
of TE on learning the verb-noun lexical collocations. The participants were 96 Iranian
intermediate learners. They were
randomly assigned to three equal groups. After the pretest, all groups received 10 sessions of
instruction constructed of
10 English passages. One experimental group received English passages with bolded or
capitalized collocations. The
other experimental group received a conventional treatment, and the control group received no
treatment. Afterwards,
all groups took a posttest. The results showed that there was a significant difference (p < .05)
in the scores obtained
from the pre and posttest. The results also indicated that both visually enhanced input and
conventional treatment had
significant effects on learning L2 collocations.
In another study, Asaei and Rezvani (2015) examined the effect of explicit and implicit
instructions on Iranian EFL
learners’ use of collocations in L2 writing. To this end, 45 adult Iranian EFL learners were
selected from three intact
classes. Two classes were assigned to the experimental groups, and the third class was assigned
to the control group.
The participants in the explicit group were taught the English collocations through repetition,
memorization and
translation. The participants in the implicit group were taught the target collocations through
typographical techniques
(i.e., bolding and underlining). The participants in the control group were asked to read the
passages and answer some
reading comprehension questions about the passages. A pretest was given to measure the
participants’ use of collocation
in a written form. It contained 20 selected collocations. After the treatment, the participants
were given the 20 target
words to write a complete sentence for each. The results of ANOVA revealed that the three
groups differed significantly
in terms of their mean scores on the posttest (p < .05). The results also showed that the explicit
group scored
significantly higher than the other two groups in using L2 collocations.
Recently, Szudarski and Carter (2016) compared the effect of two techniques (i.e., IF only and
IF plus TE) on the L2
collocation learning in an EFL environment. To this end, 41 students of English in Poland
attended in the study. They
were assigned to two experimental groups (13 participants in each group) and one control group
(15 participants). To
determine the roles of the two treatments, one of the experimental groups (the IF plus TE group)
read the stories in
group, while the IF group read the same stories, in which target collocations were not
highlighted. The control group
was also participated just in the pretest and posttest. The result showed that the IF combined
with TE group
outperformed the IF group.

Some empirical studies have so far been conducted in the field of collocations. Dechert and
Lennon (1989) came to the conclusion that advanced English learners who had an experience
of at least ten years living with native speakers could not speak and write like native speakers.
Furthermore, their production caused misunderstanding and interrupted comprehension.
Dechert and Lennon maintain that the errors made by the subjects are not mainly grammatical,
but lexical ones.
In another study, Bahns and Eldaw (1993) studied advanced EFL learners’ productive
knowledge of English verb+noun collocations. The participants were classified into two
groups. One group took a cloze test containing 10 sentences, each of which had a verb+noun
collocation in which the verb was missed. The other group received a translation test in which
they were supposed to translate 15 sentences, each made up by a verb+noun collocation in a
sentence. The results showed that around 50% of learners’ responses were acceptable English
collocations. Finally, Bahns and Eldaw concluded that “collocation is problematic, even for
advanced students” (1993, p. 102).
Similarly, Gitsaki (1999) intended to measure post-beginner, intermediate, and post-
intermediate ESL learners’ knowledge of collocations. Three tasks were employed including
essay writing, translation, and fill-in-the-blank. The results showed a positive correlation
between proficiency and the knowledge of collocation. It was found that frequency of
collocations lead to better learning of collocations.
In another study, Nesselhauf (2005) investigated the use of verb/noun collocations among
advanced German learners of English in free writing. It was found that production of
collocations is affected by their L1. It was also shown that the most frequent error was the
wrong choice of the verb.
In the Iranian EFL context, as far as learners’ general proficiency is concerned, Koosha and
Jafarpour (2006) studied the collocational proficiency of prepositions across various levels of
EFL proficiency. In addition, they studied the influence of EFL learners’ L1 on their
collocational proficiency of prepositions. Two hundred EFL learners were chosen through an
English language proficiency test. Two completion tests of collocations were utilized. The
results showed that EFL learners’ performance in the test of collocation had a positive
correlation with their general language proficiency. Finally, it was shown that Iranian EFL
learners transferred their L1 collocational patterns to their L2 production.
In the same vein as the above studies, Bagherzadeh, Hosseini, and Akbarian (2007) studied the
relationship between collocational competence and general language proficiency among thirty
Iranian EFL learners. The results showed that there was a relationship between the collocation
test and TOEFL and between the vocabulary section of TOEFL and the collocation test.
In another study, Keshavarz and Salimi (2007) employed open-ended, multiple choice cloze
tests, and TOEFL to measure collocational competence and language proficiency of one
hundred Iranian students. A test of collocation was used. The results showed a significant
relationship between the results of the cloze tests and collocational competence.
Similarly, Shokouhi and Mirsalari (2010) studied the relationship between collocational
proficiency and general linguistic proficiency of EFL learners. A 90-item multiple-choice test
was run among thirty-five subjects. The results revealed no significant correlation between the
general linguistic proficiency and collocational proficiency of EFL learners. Lexical
collocations were found to be easier than grammatical collocations.
Along with studies on the impact of language proficiency on collocation knowledge, the
colocations have been studied in other fields, too. For instance, contrary to the above researches,
Bazzaz and Samad (2011) investigated the effects of collocational proficiency on the use of
verb-noun collocations in writing. The participants were twenty-seven Iranian PhD students in
a Malaysian university. The number of collocations that the students used in their essays were
calculated. The results showed a positive relationship between proficiency of collocations and
the use of verb-noun collocations in the stories.
In addition, Bahardoust (2012) studied lexical collocations in L1 and L2. Midterm and final
tests were used as sources of data. The results showed that the rate of verb-noun and adjective-
noun were higher than other collocation