The Relationship between Thai University Learners' Vocabulary Sizes and their Receptive and Productive Knowledge of Lexical Collocations

Abstract

This study investigated Thai EFL university learners' vocabulary sizes and lexical collocations and their relationships, both receptively and productively. Participants were 121 first-year and 121 fourth-year English major students. Four tests were used to assess the participants' receptive and productive knowledge of vocabulary sizes and lexical collocations. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results showed that Thai university learners achieved significantly higher performance on receptive knowledge than productive knowledge, both in the tests of vocabulary sizes and lexical collocations. Besides, the fourth-year university learners outperformed the first-year learners in all tests. The analysis of these findings revealed the degrees of learning in both vocabularies and collocations. Like vocabularies, receptive knowledge of collocational knowledge is easier to acquire than productive knowledge. The correlational analysis of the findings also revealed the positive relationship between participants’ vocabulary sizes and collocational knowledge. Together, the current results indicate that the gain in Thai university learners' receptive and productive knowledge of collocations fosters their vocabulary sizes and vice versa. Other implications in light of pedagogy and future investigations are suggested.

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