The effect of explicit teaching of collocations on students’ writing achievement
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Date
2017
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university of Oum- El- Bouaghi
Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to investigate the role of explicit teaching of collocations in raising foreign language writing achievement. Students of English as a Foreign Language are facing a variety of problems that make their writing not proficient. One major problem is the lack of appropriate vocabulary which could be related to the ignorance of collocations. Thus, we hypothesize that a correlation may exist between explicit teaching of collocations and writing proficiency. To prove this hypothesis, an experimental study has been conducted. Two groups have constituted our sample: an experimental group and a control group. A pre-test has been administered to examine students' use of collocations through paragraph writing in form of a letter. The results of the pre-test have shown a limited knowledge of collocations. An experiment has been conducted to raise students' writing proficiency by developing their collocational competence mainly through an explicit teaching of collocations. The Pearson Correlation Coefficient Test has been administered by assessing students' writing of the first examination paragraphs. The results of the post-test have confirmed our hypothesis that a strong linear correlation exists between writing proficiency and teaching collocations. Thus, we recommend the adaptation of a Communicative-Collocational Approach to teaching writing which entails teaching writing through a communicative approach by developing students' collocational competence.
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Keywords
Explicit teaching, Collocation