A Study on “Delexical Verb+Noun” Collocation Errors of Thai EFL Intermediate and Advanced Learners
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This study investigates delexical verb+noun collocation errors of Thai EFL learners. An ability to understand and use collocations is crucial for EFL learners because the learners will be able to convey meaning more effectively and more precisely in communication and achieve native-like usage of the language. While many studies to date reveal that collocation is a problematic area for EFL learners and learners produce typical errors in collocation, especially delexical verb+noun, those studies yield conflicting results in two respects: i) whether collocational performance corresponds to increasing proficiency levels, and ii) how the learner’s L1 (Thai) affects collocational performance. Therefore, this study examines the performance of delexical verb+noun collocation (i.e., collocations whose forms and meanings are congruent in L1 and L2 and non-congruent items) of Thai learners from two different proficiency levels: intermediate and advanced learners of English. Forty Thai EFL learners were asked to complete two tests: a multiple-choice and a semi-controlled sentence construction test, which included congruent and non-congruent delexical verb+noun collocations focusing on high-frequency delexical verbs (do, make, take, get, give, and have). The overall results revealed that advanced learners could perform significantly better than intermediate learners in the multiple-choice test, but not in the semi-controlled task. Both groups of learners made errors significantly more on non-congruent than on congruent items in both tasks. The research findings are discussed descriptively and contribute towards pedagogical development in the delexical verb+noun collocation as a challenging part in English learning for Thai EFL learners with both levels of proficiency.
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