Investigating students’ collocational errors of the near synonymous verbs earn gain and win and their causes
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Date
2022
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Université De Larbi Ben M’hidi Oum EL Bouaghi
Abstract
The use of collocations is regarded as an important aspect in the field of second language acquisition. Foreign learners may face difficulties while using a new language; such difficulties may stem from their inability to collocate words together. This research aims at examining students' collocational competence in the near synonymous verbs: "gain," "win," and "earn", and it intends to discover the main sources behind students' collocational errors. To test the study's hypothesis that students may distinguish between the collocations of the previously mentioned verbs, and that their mother tongue can be the main source of students miss-collocations, a mixed method was selected to collect the required data. Firstly, a test which consists of 30 sentences, each sentence containing a blank that needs to be filled in with the appropriate verb, was given to 26 third-year students who were randomly selected from the English department of L'arbi Ben M'hidi University. Following the test, a questionnaire-made up of 15 questions- was administered to the same students in order to determine the source of their collocational errors. The data were calculated and analyzed with SPSS software, and the Oxford collocations Dictionary was employed to analyze students' collocational errors and provide suggestions for correction. The test's analysis showed that students made erroneous collocations of the near synonymous verbs: "gain", "win", and "earn", thus refuting the study's hypothesis. As for the questionnaire, the findings revealed that interference of the mother tongue and lack of collocational competence are the main sources of students' collocational errors. The results also showed that some strategies (synonyms, overgeneralization, paraphrasing) students use affect their use of collocations.
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Keywords
collocations, collocational competences