Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
III International Eurasian Educational Research Congress (EJERCongress 2016), Muğla, Türkiye, 31 Mayıs - 03 Haziran 2016, ss.2006-2007
In learning a foreign language, the prime importance is given to fluency in the target language. Fluency is directly related with
the vocabulary knowledge of the language learners. Vocabulary learning and teaching is therefore an undoubtedly essential
part of language learning and teaching processes and “there has been constant effort in search of the best technique to teach
vocabulary” (Basal et al., 2016, p.47). Along with the developments in technology, its use is commonly witnessed in language
education (Glonka et al., 2014) including vocabulary teaching. These remarkable technological developments lead to
significant changes in teaching and learning processes (Pavlik, 2015) and experts in the field of foreign language teaching
increasingly realize the opportunities offered by the emerging technologies. As an important part of vocabulary knowledge,
collocations which can be described as “the habitual association of a word in a language with other particular words in
sentences” (Robins, 2000, p. 64), and is essential for becoming fluent in the target language (Wu, Franken, & Witten, 2010),
should be the main focus of language instruction since research has consistently shown that foreign language learners lack of
collocational knowledge and experience considerable difficulties while producing collocations (eg: Bahns & Eldaw ,1993;
Farghal & Obiedat,1995). Despite their utmost importance, “few have actually proposed how to accomplish… [to increase
collocational knowledge]” (Gatbonton & Segalowitz, 2005, p. 342). Chan and Liou (2005) state that ‘traditionally, collocation
instruction was mostly conducted in a classroom-based context where teachers took full responsibility’ (p. 233), which may be
ineffective way of teaching collocations since ‘collocations can partly be learnt in approximately similar ways to simple lexemes’
(Nesselhauf & Tschichold, 2002, p. 252). In this context, this study set out to test the effectiveness of a novel approach to
teach collocations to the learners of English as a foreign language. More precisely, the current study aims to investigate the
effectiveness of collocation teaching with an online collocation learning system. To this end, a new online platform for learning
collocations (COLP-www.studycollocation.com) was developed to teach adjective collocations of 50 nouns from the Academic
Word List (Coxhead, 2000) and tested for its effectiveness on the collocation learning.
This pretest-posttest quasi-experimental 5-week long study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of online collocation learning
platform (COLP) on teaching adjective noun collocations. The research question guided the study was: Are the activities with
COLP more effective than traditional activities in teaching adjective-noun collocations? Seventy seven first-year students from
an English Language Teaching Department of a state university in Turkey determined with convenience sampling formed the
participants of the study. The language proficiency levels of the participants could be accepted as upper intermediate based
on their Foreign Language Exam (YDS) scores. The study was carried out in a in the spring semester of the academic year
2015-2016 in a compulsory course called as Advanced Reading and Writing II whose aim was to increase the vocabulary
knowledge of the students in addition to improve their reading and writing skills. The participants were divided into control
(n=33) and experimental group (n=44). Traditional activities were used in the control group and COLP in the experimental
group. The researchers guided the activities in both groups. Fifty nouns randomly selected from the Academic Word List (AWL)
constructed by Coxhead (2000) and their adjective collocations were used in the study. A 50-item achievement test developed
by the researchers was employed as the pre and post-test to determine whether differences between the two groups were
statistically significant.
Based on the pretest result of the both groups at the start of the study, which tested their knowledge of adjective-noun
collocations, no significant difference was found, indicating that their level was similar on the target collocations. Following the
pretest, the participants in the control group learned collocations through the use of traditional activities whereas the
experimental group with COLP for five weeks. At the end of the study, the post test was employed. Based on the post-test
results, it was seen that the results of both groups increased their collocational knowledge significantly. However, when the
post-test results of the groups compared, the participants in the experimental group performed significantly better than the
control group, indicating the effectiveness of COLP in learning collocations over traditional activities.
Acknowledgement: This research has been supported by Yıldız Technical University Scientific Research Projects Coordination
Department. Project Number: 2015-09-02-KAP02