The Difference between Output and Nonoutput groups in Learning L2 Collocations via Concordancing

Collocational competence is of paramount importance to L2 learners and findings of different studies have yielded that even advanced learners have serious problems in comprehending and producing L2 collocations. This study attempted to explore the influence of output and nonoutput conditions in learning L2 collocations in the context of concordancing. It also elicited the experimental groups’ attitudes toward concordancing and output in learning collocations. In this study, 45 volunteer intermediate learners were randomly assigned to two experimental (i.e., output and nonoutput) groups and a control group. During the treatment sessions, the experimental groups were exposed to concordancing to find the proper collocate for 15 nodes with an exception that the output group was required to write a story for those collocations but the nonoutput group was just supposed to read them on the screen of the computer. The control group received placebo. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the experimental groups in the immediate posttest but in the delayed posttest, the output group did better than the nonoutput group in producing collocations The findings of the questionnaire also indicated that the learners’ attitudes toward this study were positive

Keywords:

Collocations , concordancing , nonoutput , output