On the Impacts of Four Collocation Instructional Methods: Web-Based Concordancing vs. Traditional Method, Explicit vs. Implicit Instruction

Abstract

Due to the fact that collocations have been considered as one of the main concerns of both EFL learners and teachers for many years, the present study has dealt with this issue in a three-dimensional way. First, it compared the efficiency of teaching collocations both through web-based concordancing practices and through traditional methods. Second, it investigated and compared the impact of implicit and explicit collocation teaching on the students` learning. Third, it examined the effect of L1 (Farsi) on collocation learning; in other words, the effect of congruent (those collocations which have equivalent in Farsi) and non-congruent collocations. Fifty-four EFL students participated in this study. At the beginning, the researchers gave the participants a Michigan test to select those with the same level of proficiency. There were two treatments: A and B, the former investigated the effect of concordancing and traditional approaches, and the latter examined the implicit and explicit collocation teaching. In both treatments, learners were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. There were both a pre-test and a post-test to determine the effect of treatments. Subsequently, after obtaining the data, some statistical analyses (t-Tests) were performed. The results indicated that concordancing approach was highly efficient in teaching and learning collocations, and participants’ scores learning collocations through this method were higher than learners’ scores  in traditional method (especially in learning non-congruent collocations that the difference was significant); in addition, learners’ performance in the group receiving explicit instruction of collocations was meaningfully better than those receiving implicit instruction through mere exposure.

Key words: Collocation Learning; Web-based Concordancing; Traditional Method; Explicit Instruction; Implicit Instruction; L1