The Impact of Teaching Corpus-based Collocation on EFL Learners' Writing Ability

Abstract The present study explores the impact of corpus-based collocation instruction on intermediate Iranian EFL learners' writing ability. For this study, ۸۴ Iranian learners, studying English as a foreign language in Bayan Institute, Iran, were selected and were randomly divided into two groups, experimental and control. Conventional methods of writing instruction were taught to the control group while the experimental group received corpus-based collocation instruction in writing essays for ۱۵ sessions. The design of the research was based on pre- and posttest method. The tests were employed to measure the writing fluency of the two groups. Test results were scrutinized to answer a major question for correlation between the participants’ variety of corpus-based collocations and their writing. The results illustrated that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of control and experimental groups in writing elements (p<۰.۰۵). Actually, lexical collocation instruction expanded the writing elements of vocabulary and mechanics rather than grammar and fluency in writing essays. The study findings indicated that there is a significantly positive correlation between the participants’ use of various lexical collocations and their writing proficiency.

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Key words: lexical collocation , Instruction , Writing skill , EFL learners , collocation pre- teaching