Evaluating a New Test of Whole English Collocations

Abstract

Much of the L2 experimental research on the assessment of collocation knowledge (e.g. Marton, 1977; Channell, 1981; Fayez-Hussein, 1990; Bahns and Eldaw, 1993; Farghal and Obiedat, 1995; Herbst, 1996; Schmitt, 1998; Gitsaki, 1999; Bonk, 2000) has relied heavily on a single elicitation method that involves presenting test takers with a node-word prompt (e.g. attention), and asking them to select or supply one or more collocates (e.g. call, draw, pay) of that node word. Although responses elicited by test items of this kind may well give an impression of the depth of test takers’ knowledge of the node word, they offer little or no direct insight into the nature of test takers’ knowledge of the whole collocation (e.g. pay attention). This shortcoming is a logical consequence of the common practice of adopting what can be referred to as the word-property view of collocation. Collocation as a word property (Nation, 2001) is said to interact with several other word properties (Richards, 1976), such as orthography, grammatical behavior, meaning, association, frequency, and style. Together, these properties are said to characterize the form, meaning, and use of a word. The word-property approach to collocations has led researchers and teachers alike to view collocation knowledge as a subcomponent of word knowledge rather than as independent knowledge.