The Use of Collocations by Advanced Learners of English and Some Implications for Teaching

Although it is widely acknowledged that collocations are both indispensable and problematic for language learners and that they therefore should play an important part in second language teaching, especially at an advanced level, learners' diculties with collocations have not been investigated in much detail so far. This paper reports on an exploratory study that analyses the use of verb noun collocations such as take a break or shake one's head by advanced Germanspeaking learners of English in free written production. First, an attempt is made to dene `collocations' as precisely as possible, and the methodology that has been developed for analysing learner collocations in free production is described. Then,…

• UB
  Universität Basel