An exploration of second language collocation knowledge and development.

Despite the wealth of LI collocation studies and the explosive growth in corpus linguistics in the last 20 years, relatively little research has been conducted into L2 collocation knowledge and development. Most L2 studies have involved isolated single interventions that have taken as their main research focus collocation errors or collocation types. The assumption is that (advanced) L2 learners should strive for native-like collocation ability and that their lack of collocation accuracy should be judged by a far- removed NS standard. Extremely little experimental work has been completed on the development of L2 collocation knowledge at lower levels of proficiency. Even less has been carried out into how learners themselves address developing their L2 collocation knowledge and what psycholinguistic and contextual factors might be involved. This research sets out to investigate how we can experimentally measure L2 collocation recognition knowledge and production knowledge. It also seeks to examine factors in learning that help or hinder the development of L2 collocation knowledge. From exploring L2 collocation knowledge from these three viewpoints, an experimentally grounded model of L2 collocation knowledge is proposed. This model has several implications for how we might understand the development and organization of the L2 lexicon in relation to L2 collocation knowledge