한국 대학생의 영어 연어 지식에 대한 연구

Abstract

A Study on the Knowledge of English Collocations among Korean College Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate Korean EFL learners’ knowledge and use of English lexical collocations in its relation to their general English proficiency (TOEIC test scores). The study focused on seven research questions: (1) Is there any difference in students’ collocational competence depending on their general English proficiency? (2) How different is their collocational competence from five types of collocations? (3) How is the self-assurance of their collocational knowledge? (4) Is there any correlation between their collocational knowledge based on the collocation test (the percentage of correct answers) and raw frequency or t-scores of corpus of each collocation? (5) What is the pattern of usage of various vocabulary learning strategies? (6) What are the students' attitudes towards vocabulary learning? (7) What are the frequent errors in their use of the collocations? Participants in the study were 227 college students from 6 different universities and were divided into three different groups based on their TOEIC test scores. The collocation test consisted of 45 items of five types: verb+noun, noun+noun, adjective+noun, adverb+verb, adverb+adjective collocations. Data analyses were performed with SPSS 12.0 utilizing reliability, one-way ANOVA, frequency, and error analyses. The results are as follows: First, there was a significant difference in the students’ collocational competence depending on their general English proficiency. Also, there was a significant difference among the three groups in the performance of the collocation test. Second, the most difficult type was found to be verb+noun and the easiest one was noun+noun for all proficiency groups. Third, the average score of the Likert scale was 2.72 in the self assurance of the students’ collocational knowledge. That means most students seemed to solve the questions without any confidence. Fourth, the learners' raw frequency or t-scores of corpus of each collocation did not always correlate with the scores of each question. Fifth, the most commonly used strategies were the use of a bilingual dictionary and guessing from textual contexts. On the other hand, the least used strategies were asking a teacher for the meaning, the use of a monolingual dictionary and communicating with a native speaker. Sixth, most students made much importance of individual words rather than the usage related to collocations even though they also notice the importance of vocabulary learning in English study. Pedagogical implications of this study are that Korean college students’ collocational competence is very limited and that teachers have a crucial role in the classroom by preparing learners to use a variety of English collocations. Teachers should also encourage students to notice the importance of collocations. Above all, practical collocations should be explicitly taught to learners depending on their proficiency level.