ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)
3.1 (2015): 8-25
DOI: 10.1515/exell-2016-0008
Original scientific article
Collocational competence of primary and
secondary school students
Evelina Miščin
University of Applied Sciences ‘Baltazar’ Zaprešić
The aim of the paper is to test collocational competence of primary and secondary school students to
establish the most frequent problems they encounter. Based on these collocational errors teachers could
devise their teaching material and help students in improving their collocational competence.
Key words: collocations; collocational errors; collocational competence; productive knowledge; recep-
tive knowledge.
1. Introduction
This paper wants to investigate collocational competence of primary and second-
ary students in order to see what the most frequent problems they encounter are
and to help later in their collocational competence at the university level. If teach-
ers are familiar with the most common collocational errors, it could help them to
devise their teaching material thus enhancing their students’ collocational compe-
tence.
The paper will start with a short theory of collocations, and then proceed with
the explanation of the research mentioning subjects, instrument and methods. In
the end, the results will be analysed and the conclusion will be made.
2. Theoretical Framework
Collocations are combinations of words on syntagmatic level, first described by
Firth (1957), who mentions that “you know a word by the company it keeps”. Ac-
cording to him, the relation between lexical units can be shown by two axis, a ver-
Evelina Miščin: Collocational competence of primary and secondary school students
tical one which is paradigmatic and includes words of the same class and the hori-
zontal one, which is syntagmatic and refers to the ability of words to connect one
with another. In a sentence, for example, Sara plays the flute, flute is in a paradig-
matic relation to piano, cello and in syntagmatic relation with plays and Sara. Crystal
(1995) mentions that lexical items involved in collocations are always, to some
degree, mutually predictable. Morton et al. (1986) distinguished between gram-
matical and lexical collocations. Grammatical collocations are those that include
prepositions, infinitives or sentences while lexical collocations include nouns, ad-
jectives, verbs and prepositions.
McCarthy (1995) thinks that the relationship of items in a collocation is funda-
mental to the study of vocabulary and it is a part of the native speakers’ compe-
tence. Some other theoreticians also recognised the importance of collocations par-
ticularly due to the interference with mother tongue. Thus, in 1999, Hill introduced
the term ‘collocational competence’ used also previously by Nattinger and DeCar-
rico (1992).
McCreton and Rider (in James, 1998) pointed out the importance of mistakes
made by non-native speakers of English and illustrated it in the following way:
THE MOST SERIOUS THE LEAST SERIOUS
Lexis > spelling > negation > word order > prepositions > verb forms> concord
Figure 1. Hierarchy of mistakes according to McCretton and Rider (James 1998:
229)
Collocational mistakes belong to lexical ones and as it can be seen in Figure 1,
they are the most serious mistakes which can lead to misunderstanding. Several
researchers propose raising awareness of collocations by pointing out to students
their mistakes (Woolard, 2000). Lewis (2000) also emphasised that students should
also be aware of wrong combinations, not just the correct ones. Miščin (2012) test-
ed 297 first year medical students. The target of the research were verb-noun med-
ical collocations which were tested by multiple choice, gap-fill and translations
both from English to Croatian and vice versa. The results showed that receptive
tasks were much easier for the participants than the productive ones. Pavičić &
Miščin (2013) conducted a similar study where they tested 50 first year medical
students, 51 fifth year medical students and 26 doctors. The test consisted of recep-
tive and productive tasks (multiple choice, gap-fill and translations both from Cro-
atian into English and vice versa). The results showed that the collocational com-
petence was similar in all three groups and that their receptive knowledge was
much better than the productive one. Miščin (2015) tested 20 first year and 20 se-
cond year business English students. This time verb-noun and adjective-noun
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Evelina Miščin: Collocational competence of primary and secondary school students
business collocations were tested by multiple choice and gap fill. The results
showed that the receptive knowledge was much better than the productive one
and that students were more competent in verb-noun collocations than adjective-
noun collocations. Table 1 gives the list of some of the studies on the acquisition of
collocations.
Table 1 shows that most students make collocational mistakes. With language
proficiency, these mistakes decrease. It also indicates that the receptive knowledge
is much better than the productive one, in general English, medical and business
English.
3. Materials and method
The study wanted to test collocations which appear in the obligatory textbooks.
Only collocations from textbooks were used, not from workbooks, presuming that
not all children had workbooks. The following textbooks were used for primary
school: Project, Building Bridges, Way to Go. Only textbooks for classes from 5th to 8th
were analysed. The following textbooks were used for secondary school: New Ma-
trix, Solutions, English in Mind, Tune up, Log on @, New Opportunities, Success. The
exercises with collocations were looked for, while the texts were not analysed.
Sometimes, collocations were referred to as word partnerships or word combina-
tions. After that, the test was devised which included the most frequent colloca-
tions and its purpose was to test collocational competence of students to see if it
was enough to expose students to collocations in exercises. The following research
questions were posed:
1) Which are the most frequent types of collocations used in English textbooks?
2) What is the level of collocational competence of primary and secondary
school students of English?
3) Is there any difference in collocational competence between different prima-
ry/secondary schools?
3.1. Analysis of collocations in primary school textbooks
Collocations in textbooks were analysed in the exercises that appear either before
or after the text. Collocations in the texts were not analysed and included in the
survey. Table 2 shows types of exercises in which collocations were used and how
many times.
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Table 2. Types of exercises in primary school textbooks.
Type of exercises Number of occurrences
Answering questions 1
Filling the table (while listening) 1
Writing sentences by using collocations 2
Matching pictures with collocations 1
Speaking about yourself or another person 2
A dialogue with collocations 1
Matching exercises 9
Completing a chart by making a collocation 1
from the verb
Filling in sentences 2
Sorting into categories 1
Completing sentences with the correct verb 2
Glossary 1
Yes/no sentences 1
Answering questions with collocations 1
Asking and answering questions 2
Listening and ticking correct answers 2
Translating 7
Filling the table with 3 verbs 1
Finding collocations in the text 1
As can be seen from Table 2, the exercises in all textbooks are quite scarce. The
highest number of exercises are matching exercises followed by translations. Most
of the exercises are receptive and only a few are productive. The most frequent
collocations are upward collocations, i.e. those in which the first element is a collo-
cate and the second one a node (e.g. ‘do homework’ where ‘do’ is a collocate and
‘homework’ a node).
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3.2. Analysis of collocations in secondary school textbooks
The situation in secondary school books is quite similar. Table 3 shows types of
exercises which are the most common.
Table 3. Types of exercises in secondary school textbooks.
Type of exercises Number of
occurrences
Matching exercises (parts of collocations) 19
Gap fill 1
Completing the sentences 7
Providing a verb/a noun 4
Classifying into categories (V+N, Adj+N, V+Adj, V+Adv) 1
Classifying into categories – nouns with make/do, take/put 2
Glossary 3
Guessing the noun which collocates with certain verbs or adjec- 2
tives
Completing the vocabulary network 1
Writing sentences with collocations 2
Matching collocations and their meaning 1
Using a dictionary entry and completing the sentence 1
Filling in the table 1
Mind map 1
As it can be seen in Tables 2 and 3, there are a bit more exercises with colloca-
tions in secondary school textbooks. It might be the result of considering those
children more competent for the use of more complicated tasks. Again, the most
frequent collocations are upward collocations, especially combinations verb +
noun, verb + adjective, verb + adverb, adjective + noun.
3.3. Participants
The research was carried out at two different primary schools and two different
secondary schools. It included 40 primary and 40 secondary school children, 20
from each school. Each category included one small town school and one big town
school in order to show if children from bigger towns were better as they also had
more opportunities for studying English outside school. Participants from primary
schools were 8th grade students and from secondary school 3rd grade students as
the test was taken in June when 4th grade students were already preparing for
their final exams. Out of 20 bigger city primary school children, 6 learn English out
of school and 6 did not provide the answer so it can just be presumed that they do
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Evelina Miščin: Collocational competence of primary and secondary school students
not learn English out of school. Out of 20 smaller city primary school children 6
learn out of school and the remaining 14 do not. Regarding sex distribution, 7 boys
and 13 girls participated from the bigger city primary school and 8 boys and 12
girls from the smaller city primary school, so the numbers are quite similar.
Out of 20 bigger city secondary school children 4 learn English out of school, 15
do not and 1 did not provide the answer. Out of 20 smaller city secondary school
children 1 learns English out of school, 16 do not and 3 did not provide the answer.
Regarding sex distribution, 10 boys and 10 girls took part from a bigger city sec-
ondary school and 9 boys and 11 girls from a smaller city secondary school.
3.4. Instrument
The instrument used for the research was a collocational competence test. It con-
sisted of four groups of exercises – a multiple choice, a gap-fill, a translation from
English into Croatian and a translation from Croatian into English. Therefore, the
first exercise tested a receptive level of collocational knowledge (a multiple choice),
the second and the fourth tested a productive level (gap-fill and translation from
Croatian into English). The third group belonged to a productive level as the stu-
dents had to recognise the meaning of the collocation in English and give its trans-
lation. Each group had 5 sentences which gives the total of 20 questions.
3.5. Procedure
Students were tested during their regular English class. The instructions were giv-
en in English and they had 20 minutes to do the test. The test was done anony-
mously.
3.6. Scoring criteria
The maximum score result for each exercise was 5 points, so the total was 20
points. Each correct answer was awarded one point. All correct answers were tak-
en into account, not only those that could be found in the textbooks, but also in
collocation dictionaries (BBI, Oxford). In translations, only underlined collocations
were taken into account and it was not important if other parts of sentences were
correct. The aim of the test was only to check the scope and level of collocational
knowledge.
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4. Results and discussion
4.1.Primary school results
The most frequent errors of the tests can be seen in tables 4, 5, 6 and 7. A target
collocation was given in the first column, while the other two show the most fre-
quent errors of bigger city students and smaller city students. Table 3 shows the
most frequent errors of the multiple choice task.
Table 4. The most frequent errors of the multiple choice task.
Target collocation The most frequent errors
Bigger city students Smaller city students
go cycling ----- do cycling
play tennis ------ -------
do gymnastics go gymnastics play gymnastics
play football ------- -------
go swimming -------- do swimming
As can be seen from Table 4, students made only a few errors, which was ex-
pected as they could choose among three answers. The most difficult collocation
here was ‘do gymnastics’. Table 5 shows the most frequent errors of a gap-fill exer-
cise which proved to be more difficult.
Table 5. The most frequent errors of the gap-fill task.
Target collocation The most frequent errors
Bigger city students Smaller city students
Keep a secret Hide a secret Tell a secret, know a secret,
find out a secret
Do the vacuuming Finish the vacuuming Finish the vacuuming
Do/write homework Finish homework Make homework/ have
homework
Make a noise Do a noise, such a noise Too a noise
Tidy/ clean the room --------- Make the room / tied the
room
As can be seen in Table 5, the most difficult collocation for students was ‘keep a
secret’ where most different collocational errors were made. Students used seman-
tically wrong collocations instead of ‘do the vacuuming’ and ‘do/write homework’
with the same verb ‘finish’. Some students had a problem with ‘make a noise’ and
did not understand that the verb is missing, thus resulting in combination like
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‘such a noise’ and ‘too a noise’ where they probably mistook the noun ‘noise’ for
the adjective ‘noisy’. ‘Tidy the room’ is the collocation used in textbooks. However,
only two bigger city students used that collocation while nobody used it in a
smaller school. One student used ‘tied the room’ and it can be presumed that
he/she had this collocation on his/her mind, but misspelled it.
Table 6 deals with mistakes in translation from English into Croatian.
Table 6. The most frequent errors of the translation from English into Croatian.
Target collocation The most frequent errors
Bigger city students Smaller city students
Prati zube (brush your Oprati zube Oprati zube
teeth)
Ručamo (have lunch) Imamo ručak, moramo Imamo ručak, imamo
ručati doručak, jedemo ručak
Obavlja kupovinu Ide u kupovinu Kupuje stvari
(does the shopping) Obavlja šoping Ide u šoping
Kupuje sve što je po- Ide u kupovinu
trebno Ide u dućan
Kupuje namirnice Kupuje
Ide u šoping Sve kupuje
Obavlja dućan
Slijediti upute (Follow Pratiti upute Pratiti upute
the instructions) Pratiti instrukcije Slijediti instrukcije
Raditi prema uputama Pratiti instrukcije
Slijediti instrukcije Pratiti nastavu
Pisati upute
Slikali Uslikali smo Slikali smo fotografije
smo/fotografirali smo Napravili smo fotogra- Uslikali smo par slika
(took some photo- fije Uzeli smo fotografije
graphs) Uzeli smo par fotogra- Uzeli smo nekoliko slika
fija Fotografili smo nekoliko
Slikali smo nekoliko puta
slika Pričali smo s fotografima
As can be seen from Table 6, students make collocational errors in their native
language. The English collocation that had to be translated is in the first column in
the brackets. Students’ mistakes can be either the result of their lack of knowledge
of English collocations or the lack of knowledge of its mother tongue counterpart.
The first collocation in this exercise (brush your teeth) was the easiest for students
though they translated it with a verb oprati which denotes a finished action but
was still accepted as a correct answer. Surprising answers were obtained for the
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collocation ‘have lunch’ where some students literally translated it as imati ručak.
‘Follow the instructions’ proved to be difficult for smaller city primary school stu-
dents with only 3 correct answers where they either misunderstood the collocate
or the node. However, ‘took some photographs’ proved to be the most difficult for
both groups of students where they also translated it literally (uzeli smo par foto-
grafija, uzeli smo nekoliko slika) or completely misunderstood it, like pričali smo s
fotografima where it can be presumed that the verb ‘take’ was mistaken for the verb
‘talk’.
Table 7 shows the results of the most difficult exercise, translating from Croa-
tian into English.
Table 7. The most frequent errors of the translation from Croatian into English.
The most frequent errors
Target collocation
Bigger city students Smaller city students
Take/have shower Shower Shower
Wash Take bath
Go to shower Bath
Go to shower
Make mistake Wrong Be wrong
Get it wrong Do mistake
Miss
Get wrong
Mistake
Lay/set the table Set up the table Make a table
Make the table Do the table
Put a table Do the desk
Serve the table
Win the medal Reach the medal Get a medal
Earn a medal
Beat the opponent Win a competitor Win the ____
Win the enemy Beat rivalry
Beat the enemy Win the enemy
Beat the competition Concur the other player
Win the opponent Fight my enemy
Beat this one
This exercise which tested the productive level of knowledge, proved to be very
difficult. The smallest number of errors occurred with ‘take/have shower’ but only
because the American variant ‘shower’ where noun is used as a verb, was accept-
ed. Nobody used ‘have shower’ although this collocation was used in textbooks.
‘Make mistake’ caused problems because students did not know the node, so they
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used the most similar word. Although ‘lay the table’ was used in textbooks, no
student used that collocation, only its synonym ‘set the table’. However, in this
collocation students were less familiar with its collocate, resulting in strange com-
binations like ‘set up the table’, ‘make a table’, ‘do the table’ or ‘put a table’. The
most difficult in this exercise was ‘beat the opponent’ where students had prob-
lems both with the node and its collocate thus leading to combinations like ‘win a
competitor’, win the enemy’, ‘win the opponent’ and the others, which can be seen
in Table 7.
Test results were analysed by SPSS which was used for statistical data analysis.
The aim was to show which task was the most difficult for primary school stu-
dents. The results of SPSS analysis can be seen in Table 8.
Table 8. SPSS analysis of differences between exercises.
Difference M Std. Error
stdv t df p
between exercises difference Mean
I and II 0.65 0.98 0.154 4.215 39 .000
I and III 2.43 1.06 0.168 14.476 39 .000
I and IV 1.86 1.42 0.224 8.365 39 .000
As can be seen from Table 8, the difference between the receptive, productive-
receptive and productive level was examined by a paired samples t-test. The dif-
ference between the score obtained in the first group of exercises – multiple choice
and the score in the second group of exercises –gap-fill is statistically significant
(t=4.215, p<0.05).
The difference between Exercise I multiple choice (receptive level) and the third
group –Translation into Croatian is also statistically significant p<0.05.
The difference in score between the Exercise I –Multiple choice (receptive level)
and the score in the fourth group of exercises – translation into English is also sta-
tistically significant because p is <0.05). It can be seen that the receptive level is
much easier for students than the productive level.
4.2 Secondary school results
The principle in secondary school testing and analysing the results was the same.
Table 9 shows the results of multiple choice exercise.
As with primary school students, this was the easiest exercise with only a few
mistakes. The most difficult collocation was ‘take somebody’s word’ with the
highest number of incorrect answers and the easiest were ‘change her mind’ and
‘take risk’ where in each case only one student from a bigger city made a mistake.
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Table 9. The most frequent errors of multiple choice exercise
Target collocation The most frequent errors
Bigger city students Smaller city students
Broaden horizons Lengthen horizons Straighten horizons
Take sb’s word Have sb’s word Believe sb’s word
Change her mind Make her mind ------------
Make decision ------- Take decision
Take the risk Have the risk -----------
The situation was different in the second exercise, gap-fill, as it can be seen in
Table 10.
Table 10. The most frequent errors of gap-fill exercise.
Target collocation The most frequent errors
Bigger city students Smaller city students
Make the reservation Book the reservation Take the reservation
Confirm the reservation Hook the reservation
Take the reservation Confirm the reservation
Do the reservation
Pay the reservation
Miss the train Late to the train Took the train
Have an accident Make an accident Make an accident
Cause an accident Cause an accident
Cash a cheque Write a cheque Write a cheque
Get a cheque Take a cheque
Bank a cheque Deposit a cheque
Make a cheque Put a cheque
Change a cheque Change a cheque
Have a cheque
Do a cheque
Express the opinion Have an opinion Tell the opinion
Show the opinion State the opinion
State the opinion Say the opinion
Give the opinion Give the opinion
Say the opinion Add the opinion
Put the opinion Have an opinion
Change the opinion
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As can be seen from Table 10, students had more problems with this type of ex-
ercise where the node was provided and they had to give the collocate, a verb. The
easiest collocation with very few wrong answers was ‘miss the train’ where stu-
dents who made a mistake did not understand that the verb was missing leading
to incorrect combinations. Another difficult collocation was ‘cash a cheque’ which
could also be the result of the fact that today there are no longer cheques and they
could be too young to remember them, although the collocation appears in their
textbooks. In the bigger city school there was not a single correct answer about this
collocation. ‘Make the reservation’ also caused a lot of problems and students
came up with interesting results like e.g. ‘confirm the reservation’ which could be
semantically acceptable. ‘Hook the reservation’ is probably misspelled version of
‘book the reservation’.
As with primary school children, translations were the most difficult for sec-
ondary school children, too. Table 11 shows the most common errors in transla-
tions from English into Croatian.
Table 11. The most frequent errors of translations from English into Croatian.
Target collocation The most frequent errors
Bigger city students Smaller city students
Pogriješiti ---------------
------------
(Make a mistake)
Propustiti priliku/šansu Izgubio je priliku -----------------
(Miss an opportunity) Prokockao je šansu
Biti ponosan Osjećati se ponosno Osjećati se ponosno
(Feel proud)
Požaliti se Uložiti žalbu Napraviti prigovor
(Make a complaint) Napraviti pritužbu Podnijeti žalbu
Izreći primjedbu Napraviti žalbu
Imati žalbu Dati kompliment
Podići žalbu Uložiti tužbu
Prijaviti se za posao Prihvaćen za posao
(Apply for a job) ---------------- Dobio posao
Zatražio posao
As can be seen in Table 11, the easiest collocation was ‘make a mistake’ which
all students translated correctly. The collocation ‘miss an opportunity’ was easy for
smaller city students while two bigger city students made a mistake in translating
it. Two collocations had very similar results and these were ‘feel proud’ which was
translated quite literally by some students as osjećati se ponosno and ‘make a com-
plaint’ where some students did not know the meaning of the node resulting in
collocational errors. ‘Apply for a job’ was easy for bigger city students but a few
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smaller city students made a mistake in the first part of a collocation, i.e. a collo-
cate.
Table 12 shows the errors in the last exercise, translation from Croatian to Eng-
lish.
Table 12. The most frequent errors of translations from Croatian to English.
The most frequent errors
Target collocation
Bigger city students Smaller city students
Have/take a shower Take showers Shower
Get shower
Wash
Shower
Make/give/leave a good Put a god impression Put a good impression
impression Make a good attitude Take a good impression
Take part Participate Participate
Attend
Win
Take/accept the advice Take the advice Follow the advice
Except the advice
Listen the advice
Reach/make an agree- Make a deal Have agree
ment Agree Set an agreement
Settle an agreement Make a deal
Have a deal
The easiest collocation was ‘take/have shower’ although some students also
used ‘shower’ as the verb – the same as primary school students. However, unlike
primary school students, secondary school students were aware of both colloca-
tions, i.e. ‘have shower’ and ‘take shower’. ‘Take advice’ also proved to be an easy
collocation with only few students making a mistake. ‘Make/leave/give good
impression’ also did not result in many mistakes. ‘Reach an agreement’ was the
most difficult collocation producing various combinations as a result of students
not being familiar with either the verb or the noun. Thus, students frequently used
‘deal’ instead of ‘agreement’ or they even used a verb instead of the noun (‘agree’).
Test results were also analysed by SPSS which was used for statistical data
analysis. The analysis shows which task was most difficult for secondary school
students. The results of SPSS analysis can be seen in Table 13.
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Table 13. SPSS analysis of differences between exercises.
Difference between M difference stdv Std. t df p
exercises Error
Mean
I and II 1.23 0.18 0,188 6.526 39 .000
I and III -0.10 0.16 0.155 - 39 .523
0.644
I and IV 0.48 0.13 0.129 3.681 39 .000
The difference between the receptive, productive-receptive and productive lev-
el was examined by a paired samples t-test. The difference between the score ob-
tained in the first group of exercises – multiple choice and the score in the second
group of exercises – gap-fill is statistically significant (t=6.526, p<0.05).
The difference between Exercise I multiple choice (receptive level) and the third
group –Translation into Croatian is not statistically significant.
The difference in score between the Exercise I –Multiple choice (receptive level)
and the score in the fourth group of exercises – translation into English is also sta-
tistically significant because p is <0.05). It can be seen that, similar to primary
school students, the secondary school students find the receptive level much easier
than the productive level. The results only vary in that for secondary school stu-
dents there is almost no difference between receptive and receptive-productive
level.
5. Conclusion and further recommendations
This paper deals with collocational competence of primary and secondary school
children. After conducting the analysis of primary and secondary school text-
books, it was shown that the number of exercises dealing with collocations is quite
scarce.
The second study, which tested the knowledge of collocations of 40 primary
and 40 secondary school children, showed that students still heavily rely on their
mother tongue or use approximation, i.e. guess the collocation. However, second-
ary school students are a little bit better on the receptive-productive level since
they made fewer mistakes in translations from English to Croatian than their pri-
mary school counterparts. Therefore, the results corroborate the findings of other
studies of collocations use (see Table 1).
The results of the study bear important implications for teaching collocations.
Taking into consideration the importance of collocations on the one hand and the
fact that they are one of the most difficult areas for non-native users on the other, it
can be concluded that the approach to teaching collocations should be more sys-
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tematic. Explicit vocabulary teaching should not be practiced. It should be known
which types of collocations are likely to cause problems at a certain level, thus
indicating teachers to introduce such collocation gradually. This could be achieved
not only by relying on exercises in textbooks which proved to be insufficient but
also by using additional exercises, word games, introducing new words in con-
junction with their collocations, doing more translations from English into Croa-
tian and vice versa. Teaching efforts should also concentrate on eliciting the collo-
cations, e.g. matching the appropriate verbs to nouns, completing parts of colloca-
tions. Also, explanations of L1-L2 differences in specific collocations and transla-
tion practice of these collocations would be effective.
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Evelina Miščin: Collocational competence of primary and secondary school students
Author's address:
postal: Domagojeva 27, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
e-mail: [email protected]
Received September 21, 2015
Accepted for publication November 20, 2015
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