Abstract:
This study discussed the effect of knowledge and use of collocations at the undergraduate level, namely Sudan University of Science and Technology.
The study adopted the descriptive analytic method as a research methodology. Two data collection tools were used, these were a completion test for the students and a questionnaire for English language teachers at Sudan University of Science and Technology.
The study comes out with the following results:
• Limited knowledge and awareness of collocations by the students.
• The deviant answers collected from the test illustrate the learners’ confusion over the use of lexical and grammatical collocations.
• The students' mistakes provided evidence in favor of introducing the teaching of collocations.
The study recommended that:
• EFL teachers should raise awareness of the significance of collocations and foster collocational competence among their students.
• EFL teachers should provide examples of collocational differences between L1 and L2, particularly collocations without an equivalent in L1.
• EFL teachers should encourage their students to use a dictionary which provides good coverage of collocations.
• Students' errors indicate that EFL students depend on interlingual and intralingual strategies to facilitate learning.
