A study of the use of academic verb collocations and English writing ability of undergraduate English-major students

Abstract

The objectives of this study were (1) to explore the types and most frequent type, and the sources and most frequent source of academic verb collocation problems of undergraduate students majoring in English at Walailak University, (2) to compare differences in the use of academic verb collocations among three groups of students: low, moderate, and high English language ability, and (3) to examine the relationship between the use of academic verb collocations and writing ability among three groups of students. The participants were 155 second- and third-year English majors who were studying at Walailak University in the second trimester of academic year 2009. The research instrument was the academic verb collocation writing ability test, which was a writing test consisting of 21 items. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA), and Pearson’s Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient. The findings revealed that (1) the verb-noun collocation was the most frequent type of errors, and approximation was the most frequent source of errors, (2) students in the high English language ability group gained significantly higher average scores on academic verb collocations than the other two groups at the level of .05, and (3) there was a relationship between the use of academic verb collocations and writing ability of students at the moderate level at the significant level of .05. The findings indicated the importance of collocations in language learning and teaching in classroom.