INVESTIGATING COLLOCATIONAL KNOWLEDGE; (A CASE STUDY OF ENGLISH MAJORS AT COLLEGE OF LANGUAGES, SUST).

Abstract

The study of collocations has risen into prominence in the last two decades due to the establishment of vocabulary rather than syntax as the central aspect of foreign language learning. Taking this fact into consideration, this study is intended to measure the mastery of collocation knowledge among Sudanese English majors. The objective of the research is twofold, namely to determine the degree of collocational knowledge among these students as well as the causes of collocational errors, with the ultimate goal of offering pedagogical solutions. The study instrument was an accredited collocation test comprising 42 multiple-choice and ticking/crossing questions divided among four collocation patterns. This tool was distributed among 100 students majoring in English in their third and fourth year at the College of Languages, Sudan University of Science and Technology. The data has been statistically analyzed by SPSS programme. The research findings have revealed serious inadequacies in the subjects' collocational knowledge as shown by the scores of the test. Despite some differences in the subjects' performance among four patterns, the overall results were below the average. The numerous collocational errors can be ascribed to the factors of lexical overgeneralization, negative interlingual transfer from the mother tongue (Arabic as well as erroneous synonymy of lexical expressions and synformic similarity). Based on the subjects' unsatisfactory performance, the researcher has recommended forward certain remedial measures including the incorporation of The Lexical Approach into university syllabuses, prioritizing vocabulary and collocation items in teaching modules, and raising awareness among both language teachers and learners about the central place that lexical combinations have in the contemporary view of language learning.