The Use of Lexical Collocations and its Relation to Writing Fluency of Technological University EFL Students in Taiwan

• Main Authors: You-yin Lin, 林侑音
• Other Authors: Jeng-yih Hsu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/k6wrrx

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用英語所 === 96 === In the past decades, many studies have investigated lexical collocations but few of them directly measured learners’ production of lexical collocations and seldom concentrate on the relationship between learners’ ability to use lexical collocations appropriately and their writing fluency. It is therefore the purpose of the present study to explore college EFL students’ actual use of lexical collocations in terms of frequency and variety in their English writing (i.e., online writing and process writing) and further, to find out the connection between the use (i.e., frequency and variety) of lexical collocations and writing fluency. The participants were 28 undergraduate juniors of Department of English. They completed three online writing essays with different topics and three process writing essays belonged to different modes in the experimental semester. Totally, 168 essays (i.e., 84 essays of online writing and 84 essays for process writing) were collected as the data for tallying lexical collocations in this study. The findings of the study show that: 1. In terms of frequency and variety, the use of lexical collocations in the subjects’ online writing and process writing both displayed a three-level pattern: (a) L1 (verb + noun) and L2 (adjective + noun) represented the most tokens and types of lexical collocations; (b) the number of L4 (noun 1 of noun 2), L6 (adverb + verb) and L7 (noun 1 + noun 2) came closely and thus these three categories were grouped together in the second place; (c) L3 (noun + verb) and L5 (adverb + adjective) accounted for the least frequently-used lexical collocations in the students’ writing. 2. The students’ us of lexical collocations showed no obvious difference between online writing and process writing; however, the three-level distribution of lexical collocations remained distinct. 3. As for correlational measurement, in the part of online writing, the relationship between total tokens and types of lexical collocations and the writing scores achieved a significant level. Regarding the process writing, only total types of lexical collocations was significantly correlated with the students’ writing scores. 4. As far as each essay was concerned, Pearson correlation indicated a significant relationship between total tokens (i.e., frequency) of lexical collocations and the writing scores in prompt 1 and 2 of online writing, and in mode 3 of process writing as well. As for the correlation between total types (i.e., variety) of lexical collocations and the scores, there were also significant correlations in prompt 1 and 2 of online writing and in mode 1 and 3 of process writing. 5. With reference to the correlation between the use of the seven categories of lexical collocations and the scores, significant correlations were found in prompt 1: L1, L2 and L5 (both tokens and types); in prompt 2: L1 and L2 (both tokens and types) and L4 (types only); in prompt 3: L3 (both tokens and types). In the part of process writing, significant correlation existed in mode 3: L2 and L4 (both tokens and types) categories. In sum, the students’ use of lexical collocations is significantly correlated to their writing fluency, especially strong and apparent in online writing and in terms of variety (i.e., types of lexical collocations). In other words, if the students increase both frequency and variety of lexical collocations in their English writing, their writing fluency is assumed to be promoted. Although this study provides valuable findings about the relationship between college EFL students’ use of lexical collocations and their writing fluency, the small number and homogeneous background of subjects can be obvious limitations, thus making the findings difficult generalize to overall EFL learners. Future larger scale studies should be conducted for further investigation into the role of lexical collocations in college EFL students’ writing.