Investigating the Sudanese EFL Undergraduates Knowledge and Use of Colloction

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.