A Study of English Verb-Noun Collocational Knowledge of Technological University English Majors in Taiwan

[[abstract]]過去幾十年來，研究學者已開始重視英文字詞搭配的重要性，同時也針對學習者的字詞搭配能力進行研究。本研究調查科技大學英語系學生的英文動詞與名詞字詞搭配的能力，其主要探討議題共有以下三項：（1）主修英文之大學生的字詞搭配能力是否隨著年級而提升；（2）搭配字詞出現的相對頻率與學生字詞搭配能力之間的關聯性；以及（3）歸類學生所犯之字詞搭配錯誤。 受測者為一百七十八名國立高雄第一科技大學一到四年級應用英語系學生。本研究利用研究者所設計之填空測驗來測試學生的字詞搭配能力。此填空測驗共有五十五題，其中五題則為練習之用，每一題皆含有一個英文動詞與名詞的搭配字詞，受測者必須在各題的空格中填入一個適當的動詞。多數題目包括二至五個句子，以協助受測者填入適當的答案。本研究的主要發現如下： 1.測驗結果顯示，此四個年級的平均分數出現差異，表示學生的字詞搭配能力會隨著年級而提升。此外，各年級相互比較後，發現四年級與其他各個年級之間的差異最為顯著。 2.在搭配字詞出現相對頻率與學生字詞搭配能力方面，獨立樣本t檢定的結果顯示，透過搜尋引擎Google.com所得之搭配字詞出現的相對頻率，並非影響學生字詞搭配能力的重大因素。 3.學生所犯之錯誤，依照Lombard（1997）提出的分類方法，共分為四類：語詞轉換（lexical transfer）、語音類似（phonological similarity）、文法不規則（grammatical irregularity），以及語意選擇（semantic choice）。除此之外，另外增加一類來分類無法歸納至上述任何一分類的錯誤。其中語詞轉換與語意選擇所佔的比例最高，共達74%，而比例最少的則為語音類似與文法不規則。上述分類比例較少的可能原因為受測者僅可填入一個字的動詞，因此語音類似與文法不規則的錯誤則相對減少。 儘管研究發現學生的字詞搭配能力會依年級逐年增加，但是他們的平均分數卻顯示他們的字詞搭配能力仍然不足，整體的平均答對率僅為58.08%，低於及格分數60分。因此，我們建議教師應該將字詞搭配納入教學中，而更重要的是要讓學生明白字詞搭配的重要性，敦促他們在教堂外仍能自動自發學習字詞搭配。[[abstract]]In past decades, researchers have begun to value the importance of English collocations, and conduct studies on exploring learners' collocational knowledge. This study investigated students' knowledge of verb-noun collocations, exploring whether the knowledge of collocations of technological university students majoring in English increases with their academic years, examining the association between relative frequency of collocations and students' production of collocations, and categorizing collocational errors made by students. The subjects were 178 English majors at the four academic years (freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior) at National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology in southern Taiwan. Their knowledge of collocations was measured by a researcher-designed fill-in-the-blank test that contained fifty items with five additional items for practice. Each item included a verb-noun collocation with the verb missing that subjects had to supply. Most items had 2-5 sentence contexts to constrain appropriate responses. The major findings are present as following. 1.The subjects' results of the test showed that a difference exists in mean scores among the four academic years, which means that collocational knowledge of the subjects increases with their academic years. Also, significant differences were found between seniors when compared to each of the other years. 2.As for the association between relative frequency of collocations and students' production of collocations, the results of the independent samples t-test showed that relative frequency of collocations in use as determined by the search engine Google.com was not a significant factor that influenced the subjects' knowledge of collocations. 3.The errors made by the subjects were categorized into the four types of collocational idiosyncrasy proposed by Lombard (1997): lexical transfer, phonological similarity, grammatical irregularity and semantic choice. An additional category was added for errors that could not be classified according to this system. The closely related lexical transfer and semantic choice accounted for most of errors, over 74%. The smallest proportions were phonological similarity and grammatical irregularity. The small size of the last categories were most likely because the test allowed only single verbs to be given as answers, so many grammatical irregularities were eliminated by this. Although we see students' collocational knowledge increases with their academic years, their average scores showed that their knowledge of collocations was deficient as shown by the combined average of all years of 58.08%, which is less than the 60% normally accepted as a passing score in the Taiwan educational system. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers should incorporate more explicit information about collocations in their instruction. What is more important is that students need to become aware of collocations and learn collocations even outside of the classroom