Students' productive collocation knowledge in L2 German : the effect of study abroad and L1 congruency

This study explores the effect of a 5-month study abroad (SA) experience and first language (L1) congruency on the acquisition of second language (L2) German collocations using a pretest-posttest two group design. Participants were 45 Belgian students (L1 = Dutch), majoring in German and another foreign language. One group (n = 26) spent the semester abroad in a German-speaking country, while the other group (n = 19) went to a country with a different vernacular. To gauge participants’ productive collocation knowledge in German, a gap-fill collocation task with 50 collocations, containing 20 congruent and 30 incongruent collocations, was administered pre- and post-SA. Although a large proportion of the variance was due to variation among participants and items rather than to the effects of SA and L1 congruency, the results point to a slight advantage in acquiring incongruent collocations for students spending a semester in the target language country