Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
CÍRCULO DE LINGÜÍSTICA APLICADA A LA COMUNICACIÓN, cilt.97, ss.1-16, 2024 (SSCI)
The mastery of
formulaic sequences by language learners is considered to be crucial since it
enables them to accomplish the basic communicative requirements (Wray, 2002) of
target language use. Of all the formulaic sequences, the mastery of
collocations is known to have an enormous impact on learners’ ability to move
beyond the intermediate level. This data-driven study explores the word
combinations (both conventional and unconventional L2 strings) of L2 users of
English. Specifically, the adjective-noun combinations in an L2 corpus (Turkish
Undergraduate Writers of English) were explored to find the potential L2
strings functioning as unconventional collocations. Then, these L2 strings were
compared with the adjective-noun collocations in the LOCNESS corpus to
determine whether the choices made by L2 learners differed from those of L1
users. The findings show that the spectrum of the L2 word combinations was
broader in comparison with LOCNESS. The results suggest that the L2 learners
produced a higher number of unconventional collocations than conventional
collocations matching with the L1. The L2 strings support that the use of
collocations can be rather problematic for learners of English however advanced
they are. Some pedagogical implications of the findings for explicit
collocation and vocabulary teaching are discussed.