Effects Of Task Type And Familiarity Of Component Words On Chinese EFL Learners’ Adjective-Noun Collocation Learning

Collocation has been considered a significant component of second language learning and collocational knowledge contributes greatly to improving EFL learners’ levels of language accuracy as well as fluency.However,the mastery of collocations has been an immense challenge for EFL learners.Chinese Learner English Corpus reveals that collocation errors,adjective-noun collocation and verb-noun collocation errors in particular,account for a large percentage of language performance errors.In an effort to unveil the nature of collocation learning and to explore potential factors affecting collocation learning,an accumulating body of collocation studies have been carried out in recent years.However,despite the growing number of studies,the majority of studies concentrate on verb-noun collocation learning and few studies have targeted on adjective-noun collocation.In addition,few studies have paid attention to multiple factors that come into play within one study.The present study was conducted to examine the effects of task type and familiarity of component words on the enhancement of adjective-noun collocation learning.The interactive effects of two factors on adjective-noun collocation learning are also shown during the process of data analysis.The following research questions are addressed in the present study:1)Does task type(the receptive,productive or receptive-productive integration task)affect Chinese EFL learners’ adjective-noun collocation learning differently?If yes,to what extent?2)Does familiarity of component words in a collocation affect Chinese EFL learners’adjective-noun collocation learning?If yes,to what extent?3)Do task type and familiarity of component words in a collocation have interactive effects on Chinese EFL learners’ adjective-noun collocation learning?If yes,to what extent?The subjects were 160 freshmen from four intact classes in a vocational university in Suzhou.They were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups and a control group.Three experimental groups were exposed to the receptive task(the reading task),the productive task(the cloze task)and the receptive-productive integration task(the reading-cloze integration task)while the control group was merely engaged in tests.The time allocated to each task was strictly controlled.The pretest showed that the subjects had no prior knowledge of the target collocations.According to the results of the pretest and the questionnaire,the target collocations were selected,which fell into two categories,namely,high-high and low-high group in terms of the component words in an adjective-noun collocation.Upon the completion of treatment tasks,immediate posttests were distributed to all subjects and delayed posttests were administrated three weeks later.Two rounds of the posttests were expected to measure learners’ gains in receptive and productive knowledge of collocation form as well as collocation meaning.The major findings are summarized below:To begin with,task type has significant main effects on initial learning and retention of adjective-noun collocation in general.Specifically,in the immediate posttests,significant effects are found amongst four groups on the gains in productive knowledge of collocation form,receptive knowledge of collocation meaning and productive knowledge of collocation meaning(integration group>productive group>receptive group>control group).However,there exists no significant effect between productive group and integration group in terms of the gains in receptive knowledge of collocation form.In the delayed posttests,in terms of gains in receptive and productive knowledge of collocation meaning,the significant effects are detected among four groups(integration group>productive group>receptive group>control group).Nevertheless,there are no significant differences between integration group and productive group in terms of the learning of productive and receptive knowledge of collocation form.Furthermore,the familiarity of component words has significant main effect on initial learning and retention of adjective-noun collocation in general.Specifically,in the immediate and delayed posttests,collocations with high familiarity of component word are significantly higher than collocations with low familiarity of component word,in terms of gains in productive knowledge of collocation form,receptive knowledge of collocation form,productive knowledge of collocation meaning and receptive knowledge of collocation meaning.In addition,the interaction of task type and familiarity of component words on collocation learning in general is significant in both the immediate and delayed posttests.In addition,the interaction of task type and familiarity of component word is significant in light of the gains in productive knowledge of collocation form,receptive knowledge of collocation form,productive knowledge of collocation meaning and receptive knowledge of collocation meaning.Some pedagogical implications for Chinese teachers and learners are drawn on the basis of the study so as to improve the effectiveness of collocation learning.