METHODOLOGY

PARTICIPANTS OF THE STUDY

participants in this study are 15 Iranian male and female postgraduate students at UKM
(Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) whose ages range from twenty four to thirty five.
English is their foreign language while their first language is Persian

INSTRUMENTS
The data collection instruments used in this study were a writing test and a collocation
test. The quantitative analysis was subjected to SPSS (statistical Package for the Social
Sciences) V19 analysis.

WRITING TEST
Students were asked to write about an unforgettable experience they have had. In order
to make it easier for students, a number of things were considered in the selection of
the title. Writing about an unforgettable experience is a personal matter and therefore it
is assumed to be motivating and thought-provoking. This test was a 35- minute writing
task. The holistic measure of writing proficiency was used to mark the papers. The rating
scale for writing test was 1-6. Two expert raters, who are doctors in Linguistics and
Education experienced in writing, marked the papers.

2. Method
2.1. Participants
Sixty Iranian pre-university students participated in this study. They were all majoring in the field of
mathematical
sciences. The groups were chosen according to convenient sampling from six classes in pre-university
centres in a
small town in the west of Iran. The reason for convenient sampling was the availability of a computer
lab for the
experimental group. Having used the pre-test-post-test quasi experimental design, the researcher
assigned the classes
to control and experimental groups arbitrarily.
2.2. Instruments
A language proficiency test was used as a pre-test prior to the study and as a post-test at the end of the
experiment.
The test had four main parts including reading (35 items), writing (7 items), listening (24 items) and
speaking (4
items). The reliability coefficient of the test was estimated using KR20 formula and found to be 0.70
for the pre-test
and .78 for the post-test.

5.2 Population of the Study

Subjects of our study are first year students at the English Department of
Guelma (East of Algeria). There are 240 first year students divided into ten groups,
each
group includes twenty-four students. Since it is difficult to deal with the whole
number
of the population, our sample is composed of two groups which are chosen randomly.
It
consists of forty-eight students whose native language is Arabic and their Second
Language is French. They are aged between 17 and 24 years. A group is to be
considered as the experimental group which will receive the treatment while another
group is considered as the control one. In addition to students’ population, we are also
interested in the teachers of written expression at the same department, aged between
21
and 41 years. There are four teachers for first year students–including me, and two
teachers for second year students. The reason behind choosing the teachers of writing
8
and not other modules is due to the fact that they are supposed to know more about
students’ writing level as well as collocations’ use.
5.3 Data Gathering Tools
To answer the research questions, quantitive data from students’ questionnaires
as well as teachers’ questionnaires would be collected. We begin with the students’
questionnaire in order to have a global view about students’ knowledge of
collocations
and their level in writing. However, the questionnaire could not provide access to
what
is “inside a person’s head” (Tuckman, cited in Cohen and Manion: 305) and as Cohen
and Manion claim: “…at the heart of every case study lies a method of observation”
(1980:125), it is better to put the target sample under observation through experiment
to
gain “research-relevant information”. Both the experiment and the questionnaires
would
help us to collect data about the status of teaching collocations and the problems that
students encounter in writing especially mis-collocations. The last problem is due to
students’ ignorance of the most common collocates a word has. Since students are
used
to study vocabulary through the other modules and not as a separate module, there is
no
clear tendency to include collocations within the curriculum. Eventually, a major part
of
vocabulary may be neglected. Therefore, we have to proceed to teachers’
questionnaire
to benefit from their experience in the field of teaching writing.
A pre-test is to be administered prior to the study in order to assess students’
level in writing in relation to the use of collocations. The pre-test has two parts: part
one
includes exercises from McCarthy and O' Dell textbook English Collocations in Use
(see appendix 4), while part two relied on the subjects’ essays to assess their level in
writing and their knowledge of collocations. Later, “mis-collocations” will be counted
in an objective way from both parts of the pre-test. The treatment includes a collection
of lessons in which the experimental group’s attention is directed intentionally
towards

Structure of the Dissertation

The dissertation includes two theoretical chapters: Chapter one –Collocations–
introduces the term 'collocations', explains its origin, definitions, patterns, types and
criteria. The nature of vocabulary is explained by focusing on individual words versus
Multi-Word Units. Next, the relation between collocations and the two close concepts,
idioms and phrasal verbs, is clarified. Then, the field of vocabulary teaching is
explored
in order to draw a relationship between teaching collocations and “communicative
competence”. Hence, the concept of “collocational competence” in foreign language
writing is explored. Chapter two –Teaching Collocations in Foreign Language
Writing
10

Method
2.1. Participants
Sixty Iranian pre-university students participated in this study. They were all majoring in the field of
mathematical
sciences. The groups were chosen according to convenient sampling from six classes in pre-university
centres in a
small town in the west of Iran. The reason for convenient sampling was the availability of a computer
lab for the
experimental group. Having used the pre-test-post-test quasi experimental design, the researcher
assigned the classes
to control and experimental groups arbitrarily.
2.2. Instruments
A language proficiency test was used as a pre-test prior to the study and as a post-test at the end of the
experiment.
The test had four main parts including reading (35 items), writing (7 items), listening (24 items) and
speaking (4
items). The reliability coefficient of the test was estimated using KR20 formula and found to be 0.70
for the pre-test
and .78 for the post-test.
2.3. Procedure
The study took place in the academic year 2010-2011. Two pre-university classes (n=60) were sampled
and
considered as the control (n=30) and the experimental groups (n=30). At the beginning of the study, the
proficiency
test was administered to both groups. For sixteen weeks, the new words of the reading comprehension
passages of
the textbook were taught by collocations and using concordancers and corpus-based activities in the
experimental
group. Meanwhile, the teacher used traditional techniques of teaching vocabulary including
explanation, definition,
and translation of the words out of the context by referring to the list of words in the form of marginal
glosses
available in reading passages of the textbook in the control group. At the end of the experiment the
language
proficiency test was administered again.

2. Methodology
2.1 .Setting and Participants
The research took place at Pamukkale University ELT Department. 50 third year pre-service
English teachers, 38 female and 12 male, ages ranging between 20 to 25 attended the
current study.
At the advanced level learners get specific and explicit instruction on collocations in the
cology d
book that instructors use for this course. However, this year Lexis class instructor was a
Fulbright Fellow,
who is a native speaker of English, and has been teaching EFL for 35 years. He used a
specific book
called Focus on Vocabulary: Mastering the Academic Word List (2005) by Schmitt & Schmitt
to teach
the lexicology
various chapters with authentic texts that contain the target words, word family, expansion,
and various
collocation exercises (fill in the blanks, matching, writing sentences with collocations)
targeting the
academic word list. During the interaction with the Lexis class instructor, he revealed that he
specifically
concentrated on collocation teaching. Because the sophomores are already taking the
lexicology class,
they will not be included in this study, in case they might be familiar with the procedures.
However, the
juniors who took this class with another instructor last year did not explicitly focus on
collocations during
the lexicology class and they are not familiar with this particular book nor the reading
passages, but
because they are advanced level students they were chosen to be the participants of this
research. The
third year level students were not randomly selected to be in one of two groups; the classes
were intact, so
the sampling was not random. The participants were divided into two treatment groups:
Single-item
vocabulary instruction, and collocation instruction.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints (the research took place in the last week of classes)
only 1
session of treatment was possible.

METHOD
4.1. Participants
There were 212 participants in this study. They were four groups of English major students in
an English Department in a university in Tehran in April 2010. They were selected from the
second term of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. There were 44 males and 168
females who were 18-35 at the time of the study. All of them were native speakers of Persian.
In the test session, a demographic questionnaire, and a test of telling story were administered
to students. The research design utilised in this study was a Cross-sectional design and
comprised the data was collected quantitatively. Nonetheless, the foremost short coming in
the Cross-sectional design, which encompasses quantitative data, is the lack of the
randomised sampling process and the researcher utilises the four intact groups of learners.
This inadequacy was taken care by selecting groups through cluster sampling from the second
terms of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior to gather the data.
Krejcie and Morgan’s (1970) Table was utilised to compute identical sample sizes in all cases
where the researcher converts the t value used based on population size and knows the Verb-
Noun Collocations in Spoken Discourse of Iranian EFL Learners International Journal on
Studies in English Language and Literature (IJSELL) Page | 45
populations. Based on this formula, the population of this study was 480 and the needed
sample size of the study was established as two hundred fourteen, but as in most of research,
10% is added to that number in case some students would not like to participate in the study.
Therefore, two hundred thirty five students were selected from four intact groups of male and
female students. However, some students withdrew from the experiment in the test session;
two hundred and twelve students finished the test. All groups were selected through cluster
sampling from the second term of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years. Therefore,
participants in the present study belonged to four groups which represent each academic level.
Group 1 comprised fifty-one students in the second term of their freshmen year. Group 2
included forty-seven students in the second term of their sophomore year, Group 3 consisted
of sixty-four students in the second term of their junior year, and Group 4 comprised of fifty
students from the second term of their senior year. All respondents were Iranian nationals and
spoke Persian as their mother tongue.
4.2. Instruments
The instruments of this study were a demographic questionnaire and a test of speaking in
which students told six stories in 20 minutes in the language laboratory. Each story was based
on a picture, but the nouns were not provided to see if the participants can use verb-noun
collocations correctly.

The Data and Respondents

a. The Respondents
The researcher distributed 150 copies of the three questionnaires composing the corpus of this
research paper. As
usual, not everyone responded in time. Consequently, I managed to have just a few over one
hundred responses at
the right time. For the sake of objective analysis and ease of statistical procedures, however, I
ignored the last few
responses and sufficed with 96 questionnaires distributed equally among all of the four
institutions, 24 each. All
of the MA students taking part in this data collection were either in their second year of a
two-year MA program
in translation or MA graduates from one of the four Arab universities in four Arab countries:
the Arab Higher
Institute of Translation (affiliated with the League of Arab States), Algiers, Algeria; the
Department of English at
Petra University, Amman, Jordan; the Higher Institute for Interpretation and Translation,
Damascus University,
Syria; and the Department of English at the Holy-Spirit University of Kaslik, Lebanon.
However, some of them are teachers of English or translators; others are just students. Their
ages ranged between
23 and 36. I am aware that this variance in age could have an impact on their performance.
But it was extremely
difficult for me to take each case of difference in age or experience in the use of English into
consideration. I must
admit this is one point of weakness in my research. However, it is also true that such tiny
discrepancies cannot
normally be taken into account. One piece of evidence for this claim is that a change in
respondents will naturally
result in a change of results. This is a vicious circle that nobody, I am afraid, could always
take into account. Age
and experience are in constant change, anyway.
b. The Data
The data consisted of three questionnaires. The first one had 20 Arabic collocations for the
respondents to
translate into English appropriate collocations (see Appendix 1). The second consisted of 20
English collocations
to be rendered into equivalent Arabic collocations (see Appendix 2). The third consisted of
the bases or nodes of
9 English collocations along with four choices of collocators or collocates for each base and
the equivalent
Arabic collocation (see Appendix 4). In this last questionnaire, the 96 respondents from the
four Arab Higher
institutions had to choose the right collocator (or collocate) for the right base or node. Finally,
two professors
kindly accepted to be informants; they, thus, read the data and decided that the most difficult
part of the data was
questionnaire one, and the easiest was questionnaire two. To them, questionnaire three was
quite realistic and
should be able to measure the competence of the MA students in understanding and using
collocations in English.
III. Method of Analysis
The methods used in the analysis of my findings were both quantitative, i.e. statistical, and
qualitative, i.e.
analytical. The data were, thus, tabulated in accordance with the errors committed by the
respondents of each
institution mentioned above and in relation to each questionnaire, as well. This included
assessment of the results
obtained from rendering collocations from Arabic into English (Questionnaire 1); rendering
collocations from
English into Arabic (Questionnaire 2); or selecting the proper collocate or collocator with the
suitable base or
node of English collocations (Questionnaire 3).
Analytically, the findings in one institution were compared and contrasted with their
counterparts in another. The
results of each questionnaire were also compared and contrasted for discovering the
differences in the
respondent’s skills and knowledge. Finally, my findings were compared with results of other
research projects on
the same topic. Reasons for misuse of collocations and the weaknesses of the respondents
were analyzed;
consequently, recommendations were made.

INSTRUMENTS
The data collection instruments used in this study were a writing test and a collocation
test. The quantitative analysis was subjected to SPSS (statistical Package for the Social
Sciences) V19 analysis.
WRITING TEST
Students were asked to write about an unforgettable experience they have had. In order to
make it easier for students, a number of things were considered in the selection of the
title. Writing about an unforgettable experience is a personal matter and therefore it is
assumed to be motivating and thought-provoking. This test was a 35- minute writing task.
The holistic measure of writing proficiency was used to mark the papers. The rating scale
for writing test was 1-6. Two expert raters, who are doctors in Linguistics and Education
experienced in writing, marked the papers.
COLLOCATION TEST
A multiple-choice test of collocation was used in this study. It included 50 items selected
from the Oxford Collocation Dictionary. This test, which was made up of both lexical and
grammatical collocation, was divided into 4 parts. The parts offered the following types
of collocations:
1. noun+verb
2. verb+noun
3. adjective+noun
4. noun+preposition
DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURE
There was a coding procedure after data collection. All the materials were placed into
folders with an identifying number on each. To assure participants’ anonymity,
identifying numbers were used instead of names.
PROCEDURE FOR SCORING THE DATA FROM THE

METHODOLOGY
This study is a correlational study which analyzes the relationship between the number of correct
lexical collocations used in a writing task and expressiveness benefiting from a quantitative approach.
Participants
To access the needed data for this study, 45 Iranian undergraduate students of different fields of study
in an English language institute in Tehran participated in the study. The participants had passed upper-
intermediate level in the institute and enrolled in IELTS preparation classes of the institute. The study
was conducted in the writing class focusing on task 1. Recruiting upper-intermediate level learners is
due to the fact that learners at this level have obtained an acceptable level of knowledge of vocabulary
and structure and they are ready to appreciate tiny points such as collocations to improve their
proficiency.
Instruments
To investigate the relationship between number of correct lexical collocations used in writing task 1 of
an IELTS test and expressiveness, the 45 participants were asked to sit for model test of International
Journal of English Language and Literature Studies 1(2):28-37 34
writing task 1. Based on the rules of IELTS tests, the participants were required to complete the task in
20 minutes using 150 words. Among the different models of IELTS writing task 1 include description
of a single single-line graph, double-line graph, bar chart, pie chart and process, the following single-
line graph was chosen. The graph, as shown in figure 1, indicates the price of rubber in 2005.

III. METHODOLOGY
Participants
The participants who were studying at intermediate level were selected. They took Quick Oxford
Placement Test (QOP) and 40 out of 80 were chosen to participate in this study. They were 31 females
and 9 males with the age range of 17 to 32. All of them spoke Persian as the same mother language and
they had never lived abroad. They had been studying English for 2 years at Shokouhe Tarbiat Institute
in Isfahan. They had been learning English through American Headway Book 3 at intermediate level.
Instrument
In this study, the participants were given QPT test, a collocations test, a collocation interview and they
answered a questionnaire before and after the treatment.
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES 1071
© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
For selecting the intermediate students, QPT, version1, was used. This test is divided into two parts:
Part 1
(Questions 1-40) and Part 2 (Questions 41-60). The participants whose proficiency scores of the test
were between one
standard deviation above and below the mean were selected to take part in this study.
Collocation test which was used as the pretest and posttest involved 30 multiple choice items. It was
administrated to
all forty students with the scores from 0 to 30. All of collocations were selected according to 10 units
of „English
Collocations in Use‟ which is written by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O‟Dell. Reliability of
collocation test was
calculated and it was 0.82.
Then the participants took part in a ten-minute interview, as a pretest and posttest, with the aim of
considering the
effects of teaching collocations on speaking ability. The 10-minute interview consisted of twenty
questions in two parts:
comprehension and production. In the comprehension part interviewer asked 10 questions which
included collocations
and students had to comprehend them to answer.
Next, the students answered other ten questions to produce the collocations. They had to talk about
some topics,
describe some pictures and complete some sentences to use the collocations. Each question had one
score and the total
score was out of twenty. The inter-rater reliability was calculated (.899) which is significant at the p =
0.01.
A questionnaire was given to the participants before and after the treatment to collect information about
participants‟
attitude in learning collocation. This questionnaire shed light on the better ways of learning
collocations for
intermediate students.
IV. PROCEDURE
First, QPT was given to 80 students. This placement test consisted of 60 items with 30 vocabulary
items and 30
grammar items. This test was given to four classes that involved 20 students in it. They were permitted
to answer it in
only in 30 minutes. The aim of this test was to homogenize and select intermediate level students. Forty
out of eighty
students were selected. Then, they were divided into two groups: 20 students in the control group and
20 students in the
experimental group.
All of forty students were fallen through pre-tests including a collocation test, an interview and a
questionnaire. Only
20 minutes was allocated for answering the 30-item collocation test. The participants had to choose one
of the four
choices to fill in the gaps with the correct collocations. After that, each one took part in an interview
with 20 questions.
It took each participant 10 minutes to answer them. Students circled the best choice on the
questionnaire according to
their attitudes of learning English collocations.
After the pretest session, students in the experimental group were engaged in a treatment which was ten
sessions on
learning lexical collocations. Each session was one hour and three times in a week. In the first session,
they were taught
one unit of the book „English Collocation in Use’. They were asked to practice the collocation
exercises by making
example sentences in which those collocations were used. Then, they had to do the exercises in the
following pages. In
the second session, the instructor went through the new units, after she made some questions of the
previous unit. This
procedure was the same for following sessions. The selection of these units, as it was mentioned in this
book, was based
on more useful collocations in written and spoken English and the collocations which were less
obvious and the
Cambridge Corpus shows can be problematic.
One week after the treatment, as the posttest, another collocation completion test which was parallel to
the first one
was administrated along with 10-minute interview was conducted. Again the collocation questionnaire
was given to the
participants in order to determine the possible changes in their attitudes of learning vocabulary through
lexical
collocations.
During these four weeks of experiment, while the experimental group used the lexical collocations, the
control group
didn‟t receive lexical collocations instruction. The other procedures like time limits, the content of
completion test and
interview (in pre and post test) were the same for control group.

1164
thinking. b) Writing can make more unified and stronger ideas and thoughts. c) Writing is one
of the procedures that student are able to translate their thoughts for others d) Writing helps
students with the other language skills, it assists students acquire how to form language, how
to spell and how to make reasonable arguments.
It is, therefore, essential for teachers to raise students’ awareness of collocations and to teach
students how to use collocations appropriately and accurately in their writing” (Trần, 2012).
Archibald (2004) notes that even though mastery in writing is to some extent related to
general language proficiency, betterments in language competence do not exactly influence
on students writing proficiency in second language.
As it is clear writing can be efficient in increasing mastery in a great number of areas.
Collocation is an unavoidable part of English language that can be considered as one of the
crucial point for differentiating native from non- native speaker. It’s an essential procedure
for students to speak accurate like native speaker. Mastery in speaking English language is a
very high capability to speak in a language. Moreover, a speaker should use a wide range of
vocabulary resource readily and flexibly to transfer accurate meaning and idiomatic language
spontaneously and precisely.
The outcomes of the earlier surveys Ganji & Beikian (2013) demonstrated that a significant
correlation existed between the EFL learners that whether there is any relationship between
the collocational knowledge and students writing and speaking abilities. They concluded that
there was a meaningful correlation between writing and speaking test but significant
correlation was not seen between speaking and the scores of collocational test.
Research Question & Hypothesis
-Is there any significant relationship between the students’ improvements in writing
performance and their speaking ability?
- There is significant relationship between the students’ improvements in witting performance
and their speaking ability.