Ngoc Thai Bao Pham
University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. ORCID: 0000-0001-5070-678X. Email: phamthaibaongoc@hcmussh.edu.vn
Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 1, April-May, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n1.05
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Abstract
Collocational competence is of critical importance to EFL learners’ language proficiency. Due to limited research on L1 influence on L2 learners’ development of receptive and productive knowledge of adjective + noun collocations, especially in the context of Vietnam, this study is an attempt to address these gaps by investigating whether Vietnamese learners could recognize and use congruent English adjective + noun collocations more accurately than incongruent ones. Data were collected from 72 English-major undergraduates in a Vietnamese university who completed three collocational tests: the Receptive Knowledge Test, the Productive Knowledge Test, and the paragraph-writing test. Results showed that, in contrast to language transfer theory, congruent collocations posed considerably more problems for the students in identifying the well-formed lexical combinations and using them accurately in writing. These findings highlight the importance of explicitly teaching congruent and incongruent collocations in EFL classrooms.
Keywords: congruency, language transfer, congruent collocation, incongruent collocation, adjective + noun collocation