An Investigation of Thai EFL High School Learners’ English Collocations

Abstract

Vocabulary knowledge is an important tool for second language (L2) learners, and learners need to know word combinations or collocations to perform effective communications. Therefore, this study investigated Thai high school learners’ receptive and productive knowledge of English collocations. Three hundred and fourteen participants, who voluntarily participated in the study, were given four different measures of receptive and productive knowledge of English collocations. The tests of collocational knowledge were methodologically designed and validated specifically for the current study to measure the participants’ receptive and productive collocations in English. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data. Correlational analysis was also used to examine the relationship between receptive and productive knowledge of English collocations. The results showed that Thai EFL high school learners had relatively poor knowledge of English collocations. Specifically, the participants performed better on receptive collocational tasks than productive collocational ones. Indeed, Thai EFL high school learners’ receptive knowledge of grammatical collocations is acquired first, followed by receptive knowledge of lexical collocations, productive knowledge of lexical collocations, and finally, productive knowledge of grammatical collocations. The correlational analysis also revealed that receptive and productive collocational knowledge were interrelated. Taken together, these findings are consistent with previous studies that, like vocabulary, receptive collocational knowledge is acquired before productive collocational knowledge and the development of L2 collocations is complex and incremental. The current study also provides insights into vocabulary acquisition and development along the receptive and productive continuum. Future research would benefit from longitudinal studies designed to examine more precisely this developmental continuum. Such research would provide additional important pedagogical and theoretical implications.

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