Corpus frequency and second language learners' knowledge of collocations: A meta-analysis

Tests of second language learners’ knowledge of collocation have lacked a principled strategy for item selection, making claims about learners’ knowledge beyond the particular collocations tested difficult to evaluate. Corpus frequency may offer a good basis for item selection, if a reliable relationship can be demonstrated between frequency and learner knowledge. However, such a relationship is difficult to establish satisfactorily, given the small number of items and narrow range of test-takers involved in any individual study. In this study, a meta-analysis is used to determine the correlation between learner knowledge and frequency data across nineteen previously-reported tests. Frequency is shown to correlate moderately with knowledge, but the strength of this correlation varies widely across corpora. Strength of association measures (such as mutual information) do not to correlate with learner knowledge. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for collocation testing and models of collocation learning.

[1]  N. Ellis,et al.  Formulaic Language in Native and Second Language Speakers: Psycholinguistics, Corpus Linguistics, and TESOL , 2008 .

[2]  Kathy Conklin,et al.  Seeing a phrase "time and again" matters: the role of phrasal frequency in the processing of multiword sequences. , 2011, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[3]  S. Gries.  Dispersions and adjusted frequencies in corpora , 2008 .

[4]  Xiao-Jun He,et al.  A Probe into the Negative Writing Transfer of Chinese College Students , 2015 .

[5]  P. Nation,et al.  Beyond single words: the most frequent collocations in spoken English , 2007 .

[6]  Julie Mathews-Aydinli,et al.  A Function-First Approach to Identifying Formulaic Language in Academic Writing. , 2011 .

[7]  N. Schmitt,et al.  Derivative Word Forms: What Do Learners Know? , 2002 .

[8]  Philip Durrant,et al.  Are high-frequency collocations psychologically real? Investigating the thesis of collocational priming , 2010 .

[9]  Henrik Gyllstad,et al.  Researching Collocations in Another Language , 2009 .

[10]  Nan Jiang,et al.  L1 Influence on the Acquisition of L2 Collocations: Japanese ESL Users and EFL Learners Acquiring English Collocations. , 2010 .

[11]  Nick C. Ellis,et al.  Memory for language , 2001 .

[12]  Stuart Webb,et al.  Learning Collocations: Do the Number of Collocates, Position of the Node Word, and Synonymy Affect Learning? , 2011 .

[13]  Robert Lee Revier.  Evaluating a New Test of Whole English Collocations , 2009 .

[14]  N. Schmitt,et al.  To what extent do native and non-native writers make use of collocations? , 2009 .

[15]  N. Schmitt,et al.  Adult learners’ retention of collocations from exposure , 2010 .

[16]  Brent Wolter,et al.  FREQUENCY OF INPUT AND L2 COLLOCATIONAL PROCESSING , 2013, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[17]  Winnie Cheng,et al.  From n-gram to skipgram to concgram , 2006 .

[18]  Douglas Biber,et al.  A corpus-driven approach to formulaic language in English: multi-word patterns in speech and writing , 2009 .

[19]  Philip Durrant,et al.  High frequency collocations and second language learning , 2008 .

[20]  Diane Larsen-Freeman,et al.  Language emergence: Implications for applied linguistics - Introduction to the special issue , 2006 .

[21]  Brent Wolter,et al.  Collocational Links in the L2 Mental Lexicon and the Influence of L1 Intralexical Knowledge , 2011 .

[22]  John Read,et al.  Assessing Vocabulary by John Read , 2000 .