CANTHO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ENGLISH DEPARTMENT !"! CONSTRAINTS ON ACQUIRING COLLOCATIONS OF CTU BACHELOR SENIORS Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu SUPERVISOR: Trương Thị Ngọc Điệp, M.A Can Tho, 2007 WRITER: Vũ Thị Ngọc Bích Student code: 7032519 Course 29 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich ABSTRACT This study examines constraints on acquiring English collocations of CTU Bachelor seniors when studying English as a foreign language The main objective of the study is to find out the major reasons that result in the inadequacy in the acquisition of English collocations in the case of CTU Bachelor seniors The work presents some factors that have strong influences on learners during the process of acquisition The problem relating to teaching methods, learning strategies and the lack of awareness of the importance of collocations were theoretically analyzed to lay a foundation on which data collection and analysis were based and focused Translating tests and questionnaires were distributed and collected from the seniors of four Bachelor classes in Can Tho University with an aim to figuring out the most common kind of factors constraining the acquisition of English Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu collocations The results show that collocation is a big problem for seniors although they have known collocations during some courses such as Semantics, Theory of Translation and Discourse Analysis Besides, from the analysis of data, teaching is the main factor that constrains the CTU Bachelor seniors’ acquisition of collocations Together with the findings, this study may be of help for teachers and learners to choose good ways to teach and learn collocations effectively Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude to those who have encouraged me and helped me a lot in completing this thesis First, I am sincerely grateful to the enthusiastic help of Ms Trương Thị Ngọc Điệp – my supervisor who mainly guided and aided me in shaping and conducting this study Second, I am thankful to Mr Nguyễn Thu Hương for his valuable suggestions I also wish to acknowledge the cooperation and interest of Mr Daniel White who helped me hand out the translation tests to most of his students In addition, it will be my fault if I not recall my appreciation here to many other teachers in English Department for their devotion to my study Further, the quality of this study was greatly enhanced by the participants of four English Bachelor Classes, course 29 who took part in my research and contributed a great deal to the completion of this study Finally, I would like to express my Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu gratitude to my family and friends for their support in different ways during the time I carried out this research Without these support, I was not able to finish the study Vu Thi Ngoc Bich Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich TABLE OF CONTENTS Pages TABLE OF CONTENTS i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale and research aims 1.2 Thesis organization CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions and categories of collocations 2.2 The inadequacy in the acquisition of collocations resulting from teaching methods 2.3 The inadequacy in the acquisition of collocations resulting from learning strategies 11 2.4 The inadequacy in the acquisition of collocations resulting from lacking the awareness of the importance of collocations 12 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 14 3.1 Participants 14 Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu 3.2 Instruments 14 3.2.1 Translation test 14 3.2.2 Questionnaire 15 3.3 Research procedure 16 CHAPTER DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 17 4.1 Translation test analysis 17 4.1.1 Findings 17 4.1.2 Discussions of translation test results 19 4.2 Questionnaire analysis 26 CHAPTER IMPLICATIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND LIMITATIONS 34 5.1 Implications 34 5.2 Recommendations 35 5.3 Limitations 36 5.4 Conclusion 36 BIBLIOGRAPHY 37 APPENDIXES 39 Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale and research aims: Many researchers affirm that collocation knowledge has a great contribution to learners’ performance For example, Nation (2001:318) states, “All fluent and appropriate language use requires collocation knowledge” Taiwoo (2004:1) affirms, “Effective performance of ESL learners depends on their stock of conventional collocations, which are characterized by varying degrees of restrictedness” Despite the significant role of collocation in English use, not many studies of collocations, especially studies in the acquisition of Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu collocations have been carried out with the Advanced Vietnamese students of English Therefore, the researcher makes a decision to conduct this thesis for the purpose to partly contribute to examining the constraints on acquiring collocations of CTU Bachelor seniors Besides, as a student majoring in English, the researcher realizes that one of the most crucial aspects that leads seniors to producing unnatural translation is their lack of English collocation knowledge although they have already learnt collocations In reality, the results the researcher gets after collecting and analyzing data show that the rate of misusing collocations according to open-choice principle and idiom principle is very high: 29.26 % for the former and 27.21% for the latter This fact implies that collocation is problematic to students who study English at a high level Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich Hence, it is necessary to find out reasons for the inadequacy in the acquisition of collocations of CTU Bachelor seniors In this research, the theoretical analysis will be discussed in the first section and then, in the following part, the data collection and analysis will be conducted to discover whether or not the inadequacy in the acquisition of collocations does exist, and what some main reasons for the inadequacy in the acquisition of collocations are Finally, a conclusion will be drawn to confirm the results The significance of the study is the discovery of one of the most common and important causes leading to the inadequacy in the collocation acquisition This study is conducted based on surveying some previous research and collecting data in real translating tests Therefore, the researcher hopes that Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu it can benefit both teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Can Tho University 1.2 Thesis organization: The thesis comprises chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction: The rationale and the research aims as well as the organization of the thesis are mentioned in this section Chapter 2: Literature review: The ideas of researchers and their concepts as well as the overview of those notions will be mentioned in this part Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich Chapter 3: Research methodology: subparts included in this chapter are participants, instruments and research procedure of the study Chapter 4: Results of the case study that the researcher carried out in Can Tho University will be reported in this section Chapter 5: Implications, recommendations for further research and limitations of the study: This chapter will mention implications, recommendations for further research and limitations of the study as well as the conclusion Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions and categories of collocations: Until now, many researchers have given definitions and categories of collocations Schmitt (2000:76) states, “Collocation is the tendency of two or more words to co-occur in discourse” As a result, two factors that learners have to pay attention are the co-occurrence of words and the degree of strength in the relationship between them A common example of strong collocation is “blond hair” because “blond” occurs almost only with the “hair” or few other nouns Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu like “woman”, “lady”, but never occurs with “paint” or “wallpaper” He affirms that there is no reason semantically why they not co-occur An example of weak collocation is “nice + noun” “Nice” almost occurs with any noun such as “view”, “car”, “salary” and so on Thus, the fewer number of words a word can combine with, the stronger the occurrence of them is And idioms are considered the strongest collocations, but “Idioms are the least complex because they allow no variation” (Cowie and Howarth 1985:68) Schmitt (2000) and other researchers such as Benson (1985), Biskup (1992) and Bahn (1993) affirm that there are two basic kinds of collocations: grammatical collocation and semantic collocation Benson (1985:60) defines, “Grammatical collocations are the ones in which an important word (usually Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 10 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich content word) combines with a grammatical one” For example, a noun, a verb or an adjective co-occurs with a preposition Benson (1985:60) also states, “Lexical collocations are the ones in which two basically “equal” words cooccur with each other” such as a noun and a verb like “ball bounces”, a verb and a noun like “spend money”, an adjective and a noun like “cheerful expression” and so on Besides these, Allerton (1984) believes that there is another kind related to time preposition These collocations seem to be arbitrary rather than based on grammatical or semantic patterning because we cannot explain why we use “at … o’clock”, but not “in … o’clock” Some other researchers care more about the characteristics of the frequency of the word combination (collocations) For example, Goddard Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu (1998:2) states, “collocation is a frequently found- combination of words” Similarly, Cook (2003:73) says, “collocation is a regular combination of words” Moreover, collocations with very similar meanings occur with different frequency For example, although saying “provide assistance” or “supply assistance” is acceptable, the former is used more frequently, so collocations with great frequency should be used commonly Besides, Cook affirms that collocation choices are based mainly on semantics because many combinations of words are sometimes grammatical, but they not occur Supporting this point of view, Robinson (2001) says that learners usually make errors because they only base on syntactic rules to select expressions, especially collocations Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 11 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich Consequently, when wanting to choose a right collocation, learners should care more about its frequency and meaning In the definition of Sinclair (1991), there is something rather new and different It is connected with the number of words and the distance between them in the combinations He defines, “collocation is the lexical co-occurrence of words within a short space of each other in a text” (Sinclair 1991:170) Usually, a string of words includes one “node word” and words in each side In reality, “there is no theoretical restriction to the number of words involve”, Sinclair (1991:17) affirms However, usually researchers carry out research with collocation patterns limited in pairs of words because the more words in a collocation researchers want to include, the more complicated the analysis Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu process is Also in this thesis, the researcher carries out it with collocations in pairs of words It results from that the thesis is not a kind of large-scale study In other words, conducting it with collocations in pairs is the most appropriate with time limitation, the scale of the thesis and the capacity of researcher Besides, this study also focuses on lexical collocation only because of its unpredictability It results from that one of the characteristics of words is arbitrariness, leading to the possibility of creating new combinations with various meanings Another prominent characteristic in Sinclair research is that he points out two principles of choosing collocations: the open-choice principle and the idiom one The open-choice principle tries to cover the idea that language is creative, Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 12 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich use both because first learners can look for English words in bilingual dictionaries and then check them in monolingual ones As presented in literature review, Vietnamese and English not match much Typically, many English words have the same meaning in Vietnamese, and vice versa Besides, using two kinds of dictionaries like this takes much time It is suggested that students should use monolingual dictionaries, especially collocation dictionaries because they provide more information about collocation use However, only 16.18% of respondents uses them Compared with the rate of respondents using bilingual dictionaries, it is lower It is obvious that bilingual dictionaries cause learners much trouble and reduce the success of learners in learning collocations Apparent from the table above, most of respondents choose learning Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu collocations in the contexts (38.64%), or making examples with collocations (33.33%) These two strategies are considered the most effective ones Because learning collocations like learning vocabulary should be put in the context in order that learners know how to use them in real situations As a result, when learning new collocations as big words out of the contexts, students may get their meanings, but cannot use them in reality In other words, from the table, the high rate of other choices shows that learning collocations of these participants is not effective The last section will focus on the students’ awareness of the importance of collocations through their interest of collocation learning, which is indicated in the following chart Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 48 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich The awareness of the importance of collocations 120 100 98.5 83.8 80 64.7 % 60 48.5 40 20 collocation being necessary for English teachers' paying attention Collocation' s emphaisis in the help in to collocation importance of expressing when studying collocation grammar or ideas concisely skills Chart 4: The awareness of the importance of collocations The students’ awareness of the importance of collocation is revealed Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu rather clearly in the chart above Almost every student (98.5%) knows the necessity of learning collocations Specially, they realize that thanks to collocations, they can express their ideas more concisely Therefore, 64.7 % of them pays attention to collocation when studying grammar or skills However, unfortunately, the importance of learning collocations is not emphasized frequently by teachers It is proved that only 48.5% of teachers reminds their students on this This data reflects that teachers’ lacking interest is the main factor that decreases the students’ awareness of the importance of collocations That is the reason nearly half of students (45%) only review or learn collocations whenever they like In general, students not spend much time or draw a specific schedule to learn collocation Therefore, it is hard for them to Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 49 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich reach a goal in studying collocations That will be illustrated by the following chart The frequency of collocation self-study 50 45 45 40 35 30 % 25 20 22 18 15 15 10 once a week twice a month once a month others Chart 5: The frequency of collocation self-study In general, teaching, learning strategies and lacking of the awareness of Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu the importance of collocations influences the acquisition of collocations by different ways Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 50 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 5.1 Implications: The main focus of this study is to identify the problems, to make analysis of them and lead to later research which can bring solutions to the problems The boundary of the study stops at figuring out factors of learning, teaching and consciousness that constrain the acquisition of collocations Therefore, it is possible to list out some possible ways that would be necessary and useful for the follow-up research Besides, this study has some implications for teaching and learning collocation, which is able to benefit both teachers and learners Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu An awareness of real state of students’ use of collocations will be able to aid them to identify at which level they are in learning collocations As a result, they may notice their learning and find out good strategies As to teachers, a good understanding of their students would be useful for them to design or choose materials and methods that most suit their students In terms of collocation teaching, the study points out that collocation does not catch teachers’eyes, while it is necessary for them to teach collocations any time they can because collocations are very important to advanced learners Besides, methods used to teach collocations is considered as a decisive factor Mastering strong as well as weak points of each method makes it easier for teachers to limit weak points and gain strong ones In addition, teachers can also Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 51 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich carry out a small survey to find out which methods are the most suitable Finally, this study helps teachers realize their important roles in teaching collocations, especially in suggesting some good ways to learn them or in gaining the students’ awareness of the importance of collocations To collocation learning strategies, only students themselves can choose the best ways to learn collocations However, it is difficult for them to choose a right one if they only depend on their habits To learn collocations effectively, students should have good knowledge of common strategies or ask their teachers for some advice However, the most important thing learners must have first is the awareness of the importance of collocations Last but not least, this study paves the way for future research on Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu solutions to the constraints on acquiring collocations of CTU Bachelor seniors The later research will probably overcome the limitations of this study to suggest the possible ways of teaching and learning collocations better Further, this study is carefully conducted; therefore, it contributes an important part to the knowledge foundation in acquiring collocations in foreign language 5.2 Recommendations: This study reveals a fact about reasons that cause the inadequacy in acquiring collocations The problems have been found out and discussed through the data analysis Therefore, the recommendations are especially for the need to conduct further research Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 52 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors - Vu Thi Ngoc Bich The most important further research should be about the possible solutions to solve the inadequacy in acquiring collocations - Further research should be carried out in a larger scale These studies should gather data from all English majors or students of different specialities - An important investigation would be about differences in translating for more text types or situations, for example, difference in translating business letters and academic essays 5.3 Limitations: Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu Although this study is prepared rather carefully before carrying out, it remains inevitable limitations First, this study is conducted in a fairly short time Therefore, its result is not so patent in order that it can persuade audiences Second, it is carried out in a limited scale and just focused on English Bachelor seniors; hence, no generalization of the majors or non-majors is made Finally, the study just finds out factors that constrain the CTU Bachelor seniors’ acquisition of collocations, but has not been able to set posssible and specific suggestions to help learners study them well 5.4 Conclusion: Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 53 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich The major concern of this paper has been with whether collocation is a problem for English Bachelor seniors and reasons for the inadequacy in acquiring collocations The results prove that although English Bachelor seniors know collocations in some courses such as Semantics, Theory of Translation and Discourse Analysis, collocation is still a big problem for them It is also clear from the data that the inadequacy in the acquisition of collocations results from the teaching, learning strategies and lacking the awareness of importance of collocations The translation test analysis reveals that collocations cause difficulties for students with a very high rate of miuse (56.47%) The questionnaire also supports this result by the self-evaluation of students about their ability in using Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu collocations in reality The questionnaire proves that teaching, learning strategies and the consciousness of the importance of collocations have a great contribution to the inadequacy in acquiring collocations Among factors, teaching most influences the students acquisition of collocations The researcher, therefore, hopes that teachers pay more attention to this in order that teaching collocations gets better results Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 54 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich BIBLIOGRAPHY Ahmed, M.O (1998) Vocabulary laerning strategies In Meara: 3-14 [17.1] Allerton, D J (1984) Three (or four) level of word co-occurrence restriction Lingua 63, 17-40 Bahns, J (1993) Lexical collocations A contrastive view ELT Journal 47 (1), 56-63 Benson, M (1985) Collocations and idioms Oxford University Press Biskup, D (1992) L1 influences on learners’ renderings of English collocations Oxford University Press Carter, R (1992) Vocabulary: Apllied linguistic perspectives Routledge, London and New York Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu Conzett, J (2000) Intergrating collocation into a reading and writing course Boston Cook, G (2003) Applied linguitics Oxford University Press Cowie, T & Howarth, P (1995) Phraseological competence and written proficiency The British Association of Applied Linguistic Conference Southampton, England Diegnan, A et al (1998) MA TESL/ TEFL open learning programme lexis Ellis, R (1997) Second language acquisition Oxford University Press Goddard, C (1998) Semantic analysis Oxford university Press Gu Y and Johnson, R.K (1996) Vocabulary learning strategies and language learning outcomes Language learning 46, 4:4:643-679 [17.1] Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 55 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich Hatch, E & Brown, C (1995) Vocabulary, semantics and language education Cambridge University Press Josep G Stockdale Definition plus collocation in vocabulary teaching and learning Retrieved May, 4, 2007 from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Stockdale_Vocabulary.html Lewis & Morgan (2000) There Is nothing as practical as a good theory IN: Teaching Collocation: Further Developments in The Lexical Approach, Michael Lewis (Ed.), Heinle, Boston Mc Carthy, M (2001) Issues in applied linguistics Cambridge University Press Mc Carthy, M (1990) Vocabulary Oxford University Press Trung tâmHiguchi Học liệu ĐHCollocation Cần Thơ@Tài học tập vàRetrieved nghiênMay, cứu Mika (1999) problemsliệu in EFL learning 18, 2007 from http://ci.nii.ac.jp/vol_issue/nels/AN007852/ISS0000391281.html Nation, I (2001) Learning vocabulary in another language Cambridge University Press Nation, I (1990) Teaching and learning vocabulary Cambridge University Press Robinson, P (2001) Cognition and second language instruction Cambridge University Press Schmitt, N (2000) Vocabulary in language teaching Cambridge University Press Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 56 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich Sinclair, J (1991) Corpus, concordance, collocation Oxford University Press Taiwoo, R (2004) Helping ESL learners to minimize collocation errors Obafemi Awolowo University Retrieved May, 16, 2007 from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Taiwo-collocation.html Walsh, M (2005) Collocation and the learner of English Retrieved April, 16, 2007 from http://www.walshsensei.org/CollocationWalsh.pdf Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 57 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich APPENDIXES APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE Is collocation problematic to you? a Yes b No When did your teachers last teach you about collocations? a One week ago c One year ago b One month ago d More than one year ago Do your teachers usually suggest some ways in order that you can learn collocations efficiently? Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu a Yes b No If yes, please answer sentence 4 Which of following your teachers suggest ? (you can choose more than one) a Using monolingual dictionary, especially English collocation one b Reading stories and literature c Learning new word with its collocations d Others:……………………………………………………………… Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 58 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich When you read stories and literature, a Your teacher help to find out and explain new collocations b You find out some new collocation and study them by yourself without your teachers’ explanations Which of following way you use to learn new collocations?(You can choose more than one) a Learning new collocations in the context b Learning individual words and then combining them to know its meaning c Learning collocations as big words d Learning new collocations by writing them on cards, then stick Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu them on positions you can see easily? Which kinds of dictionary you usually to look up and learn new collocations” a Bilingual dictionary b Monolingual dictionary c Both Is collocation necessary for your English? a Yes b No How often you spend time for self-study English collocations? a Once a week Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 59 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich b Once a month c Twice a month d Other……………………………………………………… 10 Do you pay attention to collocations when studying grammar or skills? a Yes b No 11 Do you try to use a new collocation by making an example with it? a Yes b No 12 How long your teachers spend teaching collocations when teaching Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu new vocabulary? a 30 minutes per period b 20 minutes per period c 10 minutes per period d Others ……………… 13 Are you able to use collocations in communication after learning them? a Yes b No 14 Do you agree that thanks to learning collocations, you can express your ideas concisely? a Yes Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 60 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich b No 15 Do your teachers emphasize the importance of collocations when teaching them? a Yes b No APPENDIX TRANSLATION TEST Một số lượng lớn nhật báo tạp chí lưu thông dân chúng Các ngân hàng thương mại, chi nhánh ngân hàng nước Việt Học Nam riết cạnh tranh với liệu Vietcombank Trung tâm liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài học tập nghiên cứu Trong năm 1995 có công trình khảo sát, thiết kế kêu gọi vốn đầu tư Hiện nay, An Giang bỏ hàng trăm triệu đồng để quy họach khu vực thành khu du lịch hoàn chỉnh Hành vi ngu ngốc Tom khiến ba má lo nhiều Khí đốt hóa lỏng ( Liquefied Petrolium Gas ) sản xuất Việt Nam đáp ứng nhu cầu nước mà xuất sang nước lân cận Giá gia tăng gay gắt lợi tức lại tụt hậu xa Việc tạo chữ tín khách hàng quan trọng Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 61 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich Có năm phụ nữ thích trang phục thật rộng, lại có lúc ôm sát thể 10 Làm huy động vốn điều hành tất nguồn vốn vấn đề “nóng bỏng” Việt Nam 11 Bố nàng thường tỏ cởi mở với tư tưởng 12 Chúng khổng thể đảm bảo việc làm thường xuyên cho công nhân 13 Cán có lực điều hành thị trường chứng khoán 14 Môi trường sống làm việc bị ô nhiễm nặng 15 Có nơi nồng độ bụi cao mức cho phép đến 40 lần 16 Gia đình họ xã hội phải gánh lấy hậu nặng nề Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài liệu học tập nghiên cứu cách nhìn giải hôm 17 Nếu bạn nghe lời khuyên bảo bạn nên khám bác sĩ 18 Việc cải tạo tội phạm cần nhiều thời gian 19 Chiếc xe máy “nghĩa địa” tiêu thụ nhiều nhiên liệu 20 Họ phát động chiến dịch quảng cáo rầm rộ để khuyến lọai kem đánh họ Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 62 [...]... collocation of CTU Bachelor seniors, a questionnaire of fifteen questions was designed It was segmented into two main Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 26 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich parts: The first one was about real state of collocation learning and use as well as teaching; the second one asked for the personal information of the participants All of the... learning strategies and the lack of the awareness of the importance of collocations constrain the acquisition of collocations of CTU Bachelor seniors Therefore, seeing the importance and necessity of a further research on the acquisition of English collocations in the case of Vietnamese, the researcher conducts a study that is designed to answer the following questions: Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ@Tài... collocations Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 29 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich Idiom collocations 370 27.21 544 40 Total 768 56.47 1360 100 Table 1: Number and percentage of students’ misuse of open-choice and idiom collocations The table shows that most of collocations produced by students are incorrect (56.47%) The incorrect open-choice collocations. .. used If learners cannot select which collocation is suitable, the idiom choice should be added 2.2 The inadequacy in the acquisition of collocations resulting from teaching: Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 13 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich Researches on reasons for the inadequacy in the acquisition of collocations have not been carried out in a wide range... the misuse of others considerably increases from 33.8 % of the collocation “open-minded towards new ideas” to 98.5% of the collocation “shoulder the heavy burden” Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 30 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich % The percentage of students' misuse of 8 idiom collocations 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 cause open-minded someone towards... collocations As a result, no matter how collocations are taught or learnt, they Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 15 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich must be put in a specific context Additionally, collocation dictionaries should be used commonly Another researcher, Ellis (1992) also conducts a research on collocation teaching He promotes giving students... production consists of piecing together such ready-made “pre-fabricated” units appropriate to a situation and that lexical acquisition may involve the learning of complete collocation chunks of language” Therefore, learning collocation may be carried out through Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 22 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich chunking (learning collocation... targeted” (Nation 1990:83) In conclusion, frequency-word lists help teachers Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 14 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich much in teaching collocations, but they should be taught along with the contexts in which collocations may be used Similarly, Hatch and Brown (1995:417) in the book “Vocabulary, Semantics and Language Education” state,... most of the data done by four classes had been Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 27 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich collected After collecting data, an analysis of mistakes made in these tests was conducted Almost every translation tests contained many kinds of mistakes, but the most focused points were the following kinds of mistakes: - Collocation mistakes... collocation is not as much as those of idiom one The lowest rate is at 16.2% while the highest rate is at 79.4% In general, the chart 2 shows a stable upward trend in the misuse of open-choice collocations Supervisor: Truong Thi Ngoc Diep 31 Constraints on acquiring colloccations of CTU bachelor seniors Vu Thi Ngoc Bich The percentage of students' misuse of 12 open-choice collocations compete fiercely 79.4 urgent