Resumen de A comparative corpus analysis of adjective-noun collocations in native English speakers and Spanish learners
Maria Arnal Ortega, Laia Roig Palau
Collocations are multiword units composed of two or more words which co-occur in a predetermined order. Since the relationship between the words which form the collocations is mostly arbitrary, English learners do not acquire them easily. Recent studies have inquired as to how to teach English collocations and its importance. However, little research has been conducted in order to know if learners with an upper-level of English succeed in employing collocations as native speakers would. Thus, this paper aims to focus interest on collocations from the learners’ perspective.
The current study compares the frequency of collocations – in particular, adjective-noun collocations – between native speakers and Spanish learners of English with an advanced level in written non-academic applications. The study has been conducted by means of corpus analyses.
The data comes from the British National Corpus (BYU-BNC) and The Santiago University Learner of English Corpus (SULEC). Through selected samples extracted from exhaustive searches on the corpora, results reveal both a higher frequency of collocations and a more proper utilisation by the native group. Moreover, findings also demonstrate that Spanish speakers with an intermediate level of English outperform native English speakers in the use of certain collocations. This overuse may be due to two reasons: (a) a direct equivalence in their mother tongue, and (b) the limited range of collocations they know. In addition, some limitations results are detailed. Finally, we propose implications for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers in order to teach collocations as well as suggestions for further research.
