Soleimani, H., Jafarigohar, M., & Iranmanesh, T. (2013). The effect of collocation awareness-raising...

International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World (IJLLALW)

Volume 4 (3), November 2013; 256-‐272 Soleimani, H., Jafarigohar, M., & Iranmanesh, T EISSN: 2289-‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-‐3245 www.ijllalw.org

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THE EFFECT OF COLLOCATION AWARENESS-RAISING ON THE EAP LEARNERS' ACHIEVEMENT OF ACADEMIC

COLLOCATIONS THROUGH WRITING TASKS

Hassan Soleimani, Manoochehr Jafarigohar, Tahereh Iranmanesh Payame Noor University

ABSTRACT The effect of collocation awareness-raising plays an important role on achievement of academic collocations by English for academic purposes (EAP) learners. In order to provide a developmental inquiry into raising learners’ awareness to achieve academic collocations through writing tasks, this study examined a sample of 38 English language learners in two groups: one group with teaching academic collocations through underlining, as a measure of noticing, and the other group with explicit teaching of academic collocations within a six-week semester. The participants' collocational competence was tested running a pretest of academic collocations prior to teaching and a posttest of academic collocations following six sessions of teaching the collocations in question. The results demonstrated that the learners who learnt academic collocations through Collocation Awareness Raising (CAR) showed a constant increase in success rate, the number of collocations learnt, and making use of collocations to make more fluent and correct English sentences instead of creating incorrect, long and inappropriate phrases and utterances. Pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed in terms of training effect. KEYWORDS: Collocation, Academic Collocations, Collocation-Awareness Raising, Noticing INTRODUCTION Knowledge of academic vocabulary is crucial for students studying at an English-speaking university, particularly for reading and writing fluently in an academic context, including but not limited to essays, articles, texts and even giving lectures in English. The bigger the range of vocabulary, the more English as a foreign language (EFL) learners can cope with reading and writing skills. In the past decade, there has been increasing interest in the nature of vocabulary acquisition. One growing area of research focuses on vocabularies and collocations but there are different views as regards vocabulary acquisition process, the importance of contextualization of collocations acquisition, and strategies used by students to learn vocabulary during their English life. It has been suggested that learners learn vocabularies through exposure to language such as reading as well as linguistic contexts in which the words occur (e.g. Gray & Holmes, 1938; Werner & Kaplan, 1950; Sternberg & Powell, 1983; Jenkins, 1984; Nagy, 1987).



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Specifically speaking, many researchers have conducted research on second language acquisition and pedagogy over the two past decades; to them the core point of their research was focused on whether learners acquire an L2 language consciously or subconsciously, and whether consciousness learning is necessary condition to internal information. Introducing Acquisition Hypothesis, Krashen (1983) viewed acquisition as a subconscious process. Contrary to Krashen’s Acquisition Hypothesis is Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis, which as Schmidt (1994) claims acquisition is largely a conscious process (cf. Izumi/Bigelow 2000: 240). Tomlin/Villa (1994) is among other scholars who claim that acquisition is partly conscious and partly subconscious (cf. Hulstijn/Schmidt 1994: 7). However attention has constituted the core part of many researches in recent years (Sharwood Smith 1993; Long 1991; Ellis 1994; Schmidt 1994).

EFL learners need learning academic collocations which are necessary for gaining a native-like fluency in an academic context. There are several studies that point at second Language learners' incomplete knowledge of second language vocabulary, but there are no studies that follow the development of this incomplete knowledge into a native-speaker-like meaning. Since at advanced levels, students really need to be aware of collocation if they are to be effective in English, and since at higher levels, it is possible that students find useful word partnerships themselves, rather than focusing on grammar, they need to be looking at patterns in a more generalizable sense. Texts are a great way in noticing collocations. When learners engage in reading text enriched with academic collocations they encounter such collocations as such their attention will draw to them. Noticing as viewed by Schmidt is a tool for conscious attention that aid learners to change input into intake.

Taking into consideration the above points, the primary objective of this study was to reduce this gap by providing a qualitative inquiry into the development of L2 academic collocations to speak and write fluently in an academic context, which is deemed as an area of research that is extremely vital for instruction. In this research, noticing is deemed as a major tool to draw learners’ attention on learning academic collocations to promote the quality of learning. However there were some inconsistencies among the findings of applied linguistics as regards the effect of Collocation Awareness-Raising (CAR) on the EAP Learners' Achievement of Academic Collocations. To bridge the gap and to understand the importance of selecting appropriate tasks to promote learners’ awareness of such collocations, it is necessary to conduct more studies in the field.

LITERATURE REVIEW Since vocabulary is an important part of learning a second language researchers have been interested for years to explore the impact of learning collocations, type of teaching collocations and the importance of context on learning collocations, in general. Knowledge of vocabulary has constituted the core part of many research conducted in recent years. In order to read and write successfully, EFL learners need to be able to recognize as many words as possible in their textbooks and use as many academic vocabularies as possible in writing essays, articles, texts and even giving lectures in English. The bigger the range of vocabulary, the more EFL learners can cope with reading and writing skills. Although many researchers have conducted research on



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vocabulary acquisition (e. g., Haastrup, 1991; Mondria & Witde- Boer, 1991; Wang, Thomas, Inzana & Primicerio, 1993), but there are different views as regards vocabulary acquisition process, the importance of contextualization of collocations acquisition, and strategies used by students to learn vocabulary during their English life. Vocabulary in language learning and Strategies to Learn Vocabularies Vocabulary is a component of language learning such as other language skills as reading or speaking but having a sufficient range of vocabulary, however, does not yield fluency in language skills. On the one hand, researchers believe that context is important in vocabulary acquisition and comprehension but since learning words from context is a slow process, the contexts of use must be encountered before mastering a new word, as a result, extensive reading is required to acquire an extensive range of vocabularies. Collocations however illustrate the importance of context. For instance, “fair” has several meanings and so does “way” but when they occur near each other to make a collocation all the probable meanings fail to be established. The context in which a word is used is an important aspect in considering the word’s meaning. Contextualization shall be considered a ground for removing any ambiguities as regards work knowledge (Miller, 1996). Learners of English language make use of many strategies to acquire vocabulary such as consulting a dictionary to check on a guess made in the initial reading, writing the word’s meaning in the margin of the text, adding the word to a personal word list, or perhaps entering the word and its meanings into a card system of the kind recommended by Mondria and Mondria-de Vries (1994). The more effectively the vocabulary is elaborated during acquisition, the more readily it will be recalled by learners (Mayer, 1992; Wittrock, 1992). There are many studies, on the other hand, emphasizing on the importance of learning vocabularies independently through learners’ own experience and strategies. Among these studies are those carried out by McCarthy and Nation (McCarthy & Nation, 1990). Keyword method, as an example, is a strategy used by high school-level students. Levin (1979) carried out a study on high-school Spanish students and concluded that about half of them used strategies involving cognates, phoneme correspondences, and some other mnemonic tricks. Nation (1999) proposes types of word knowledge, which are necessary to be able to use a word in a wide variety of language situations that one comes across. These include: the meaning(s) of the word, the written form of the word, the spoken form of the word, the grammatical behavior of the word, the collocations of the word, the register of the word, the associations of the word and the frequency of the word. Therefore, it was concluded that only a fraction of words are likely to be acquired through formal study and others will have to be acquired through simple exposure to the language such as reading a text or hearing a conversation.

Definitions and Types of Collocations A number of studies have investigated the meaning and types of collocations (Firth, 1968; Hoey, 1991; Jones & Sinclair, 1974; Peters, 1983; Lewis, 1993). The technical term of collocation, linguistically, implies rather more than mere placing words side by side but, according to Firth (1968), it is the habitual juxtaposition or association of words with each other or group of words



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together. Firth believes that: “You shall know a word by the company it keeps” (1968, p. 179). By words’ meaning he does not mean the exact meaning of the words which are put near each other but rather the broader sense of ‘meaning’ characterized by Wittgenstein’s statement as “the meaning of words lies in their use” (Firth, 1968). According to Jones and Sinclair (1974), collocations are words which occur near each other with a random frequency than is expected. Sinclair (1991) believes that “words which stand in such a relationship can be said to ‘predict’ one another because the presence of one makes the presence of the other more likely than it would otherwise be (Sinclair, 1991).”

Many terms are used by second language researchers to refer to collocations as fixed lexical units including speech formulate (Peters, 1983), lexicalized stems (Pawley & Syder, 1983), lexical phrases (Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; Schmitt, 2000) and, above all, prefabricate chunks (Lewis, 1993). Collocation is a term used for advanced learners who try to write in an academic context like a native-like speaker.

Researchers define collocations from two points of view as semantic and non-semantic. Firth (1968), on the one hand, believes that collocation concerns meaning, and he gives priority to the term as regards lexicon study. Sinclair (1966), considers the term in view of memory and argues that grammar can be described by structures and systems, while the former refers to language rules the latter to lexical items collocating with one another. On the other hand, some researchers regard collocations from non-semantic point of view. Among them is McCarthy (1988) who considered the notion of collocation as a kind of cohesive device. In his view, collocation is co-occurring lexical items but non-semantically (McCarthy, 1988).

Other researchers, for instance, Nattinger & DeCarrico (1992) describe collocations as 'chunks' of language of varying lengths, such as on the other hand. Lexical phrases, in their view, are conventional form/function formations that go together more frequently having an idiomatic meaning as they occur more frequently near each other. Lewis (1997) believes that “collocations are those combinations of words which occur naturally with greater than random frequency”.

In the light of making benefits of the term "collocation" in many linguistic areas, many researchers classified collocations from different perspectives such as semantics, phraseology, corpus linguistics and systematic linguistics, pure idioms, figurative idioms, restricted collocations, and open collocations (Cowie & Mackin, 1975; Wood, 1981; Howarth, 1993).

Collocations and phrases are of paramount importance in the light of assisting EFL learners to gain a native-like fluency in an academic context. "Collocational Competence" as Lewis (2000) asserts is a characteristic of advanced learners which assist them to produce accurate, fluent and correct English sentences, while lacking such a knowledge yield creation of incorrect, long and inappropriate phrases and utterances impeding them from expressing the exact idea they are trying to say. Research on collocation has recently absorbed many attentions but little work is done as regards collocation as well as contrasting the collocational behavior in different languages (Xiao & McEnery, 2006).



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Role of Noticing in Learning Academic Collocations In fact, awareness or noticing concept has been considered mainly from cognitive psychological point of view. Many scholars in this view believe that language learning is the same as other types of learning. Noticing, as considered by psychologists, is a means which links input to memory system. There are challenging views as regards noticing and awareness. Noticing is considered an important tool in learning foreign language as some scholars (Schmidt, 1990; Ellis, 1999; Swain, 1995; Long, 1983, 1985; McLaughlin, 1987) believe that no acquisition takes place without awareness or noticing; while others, such as Truscott (1998) view noticing only as a means for the acquisition of metalinguistic knowledge.

To Schmidt, (Schmidt, 1990, 1994) Noticing, is a conscious or subconscious process to change input into intake; this input, however includes lexicon, grammatical form, pragmatics, etc (Schmidt, 1990), which in his view once learners attend to these kinds of input it becomes intake. Therefore, he considers noticing as a necessary and sufficient condition for language acquisition. In Schmidt’s view (1994), consciousness is defined as awareness, intention and knowledge. Different levels and degrees of awareness as Schmidt (1990) claims include noticing and understanding. Among those who consider noticing as both conscious and subconscious process are Smith and McLaughlin (Sharwood Smith, 1981; McLaughlin, 1987).

Schmidt’s view of Noticing hypothesis is a strong form of changing input into intake. The weak form of noticing as viewed by researchers has also a helpful but not a necessary role in language learning. To Robinson (1995) memorizing linguistic forms such as reading, repeating etc. can aid learners to attend consciously to linguist form for changing input into intake. This definition of noticing, as viewed by Robinson (1995) is termed as detection plus rehearsal, which is a significant tool to assist transferring linguistic features to their short-term memory.

Many researchers put an emphasis on the role of noticing in cognitive approaches to second language acquisition (Gass, 1988, 1991; Schmidt, 1990, 1992, 1993; Schmidt & Frota, 1986). Assisting learners notice the forms and focus their attention on the contrasts between their interlanguage and the target language has constituted the core point of many research carried out in EFL context (e.g. Ellis, 1997, 1999; Sharwood Smith, 1981, 1991; Swain, 1995; Swain & Lapkin, 1995; VanPatten & Cadierni, 1993a, 1993b).

Many researches have been carried out concerning learning English structures, forms and vocabularies through raising students’ awareness (Alanen, 1992; Lynch, 2001; Fotos, 1993). Although these studies are not directly related to development of raising students’ awareness of academic collocation through noticing, their findings are useful in understanding raising L2 learners’ awareness of academic collocations in general. In short, findings are mixed. For instance, major researches in this arena are conducted by Schmidt and Frota (1986). To assess Noticing Schmidt conducted a research on a native speaker who noticed a diary prepared by Schmidt; his interaction was recorded by Schmidt (1986). Schmidt (1986) found a connection between recorded noticing in the form of diary entries and linguistic forms used by him.



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However, the missing part in the previous studies is the importance of academic collocations and the effect of noticing academic collocations in an English language context. As a whole, the aim of this research is to assess the effect of noticing and awareness raising on learning academic collocations and the effects of learning academic collocations to be a fluent writer in English context. Researchers now understand the worth of academic collocations in English context especially to be a fluent writer or lecturer during their English life. RESEARCH QUESTIONS To identify the relations, contradictions, and gaps in the literature, the following research questions were formulated to check the aim of the study:

Question 1: Do Iranian EAP learners learn academic collocations by noticing them in an academic context? Question 2: Does EFL/ ESL learners pay attention to academic collocations through writing tasks such as noticing? These questions are concerned with whether paying EAP learners’ attention to academic collocations results in a change in learning academic collocations behavior, specifically, focusing on noticing and raising their awareness. Taking these questions into account, the following hypotheses were formulated: Hypothesis 1: Collocation awareness-raising does not lead to the noticing of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners in an academic context. Hypothesis 2: Collocation awareness-raising has no significant effect on the achievement of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners. METHODOLOGY This quasi-experimental research drew preliminary on Schmidt Noticing Hypothesis which was a foundation for investigating the impact of raising learners’ awareness on learning academic collocations in an EFL context. Participants For the purpose of the present study, there were 38 participants (9 males and 29 females). The participants ranged from early 23 to 35 years of age. All study participants were L1 Persian speakers studying English as a Foreign Language enrolled in Islamic Azad University (North Tehran Branch, Iran). An obligatory writing course entitled "Advanced Writing" was selected for the purpose of the study, because this level was intended for those with basic skills but struggle in academic writing and speaking. Placement of the subjects into the classes was based on the enrollment procedures of the university and students' passing the preparatory grammar courses.



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In order to measure their current knowledge level of academic collocations, a critical factor in academic contexts, the participants were asked to take an Academic Collocations Test as a pretest to be selected to serve as participants of this study. To acquire desirable result, it was necessary that all of the students in the two available classes present in all phases of the experiment: for the pretest, the instructional treatment, and the posttest session. Materials and Data Collection To collect data four types of materials were used for the purpose of the study: Testing materials In order to evaluate learners’ collocational competence, two tests were used by the researchers: a pretest of academic collocations for checking learners’ knowledge level of academic collocation, and a posttest with the aim of measuring and comparing acquiring collocational competence of the two groups after treatment. To assess level of the students’ knowledge of academic collocations, participants in both groups were given an Academic Collocations Test as a pretest prior to treatment and the same test as a posttest following treatment. Academic Vocabulary in Use by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O’Dell (2007) was taken benefit as a source and guidance to plan the tests. The pretest consisted in 45 and the posttest in 34 multiple-choice items on the English structure testing academic collocations. The reliability of both tests was determined by administering the test on a group out of the two groups in question with the same college level as the two groups in question. Attempts were made to plan the tests on academic collocations which appeared to be more beneficial in academic contexts such as giving lectures, writing articles, papers and thesis. The questions were designed as multiple-choice items so that students had four choices to select the correct answer. Having used the Kuder-Richardson formula 21, the reliability score of the pretest was estimated to be 0.86 and of the posttest to be 0.89. Following estimation of reliability, the tests were administered as a pretest and a posttest on the two groups in question to determine level of the students’ knowledge of collocations prior and after treatment. The rationale behind administration of the test was to ensure the knowledge of the test takers on the items in question, to obtain good facility values and discrimination and to have enough items as Crocker and Algina (1986) found the following:

Whenever a test is administered, the test user would like some assurance that the results could be replicated if the same individuals were tested again under similar circumstances. This desired consistency (or reproducibility) of test scores is called reliability. (p. 105)

The model paragraph A model paragraph containing academic collocations to be underlined by the subjects was used per session. The model paragraph was a paragraph enriched with ten beneficial academic collocations chosen from Academic Vocabulary in Use by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O’Dell



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(2007). The significance of the academic vocabulary items focused on in this book is verified by the Cambridge International Corpus of written and spoken English and also the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE) corpus of spoken English developed at the University of Nottingham in association with Cambridge University Press. These corpora include large collocations of written and spoken academic text so that it includes the language which is distinctive for academic contexts. Topics were selected in conformity with the aim of the study which was teaching typical academic collocations with the specifications of enjoying topic for writing in an academic context and enrichment with academic collocations of the most frequency to be used for academic purposes. In each sentence of the paragraph would learners notice and underline academic collocations. Therefore the model paragraph seemed to be consistent with the aims of the study in line with Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis.

A list of academic collocations For each session, a list of ten academic collocations was prepared with examples and comments on them (including but not limited on key nouns, key verbs, key academic expression and terms, key phrasal verbs and key quantifying expressions). Since the purpose of the research was to aid EFL learners to speak and write fluently in an academic contexts attempts were made to choose the academic collocations which intended to be of paramount importance in giving lectures and writing theses, dissertations, papers as well as articles in an academic contexts. The list in question included ten beneficial academic collocations chosen from Academic Vocabulary in Use by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O’Dell (2007). The significance of the academic vocabulary items focused on in this book is verified by lexicography and computational team at Cambridge University Press which has build up Cambridge International Corpus to provide evidence about language use that assists to better enhancement of teaching materials.

Matching exercises As an assignment seven to ten matching exercises was designed so that the participants should try on them at home to master the academic collocations they have been taught per session. Research Design and Procedure To examine the research hypotheses, two groups were established: one comparison group and one noticing group. The groups were two classes which were selected randomly; their homogeneity was verified utilizing the pretest of academic collocations. All the participants in the comparison group one and noticing group were thoroughly informed of the procedures to be followed throughout the study prior to the tasks. A weekly reading and noticing academic collocation session was administered for 6 weeks. A text enriched with the most beneficial and useful academic collocations which assumed to be of paramount importance in assisting learners to write and speak in academic contexts was presented and taught to the participants per session.



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Noticing Group The maximum length of experimentation time for each group participating in the study was around 20 minutes. For the passage reading and underlining, in order to have the participants focus on the activity of reading and noticing academic collocations, they were instructed to read the passage at a comfortable speed and to focus on overall passage to raise their awareness of academic collocations. Underlining was used as a measure of noticing as the participants were requested to underline academic collocations they come across within the text in question. All of the participants underlining the collocations in question exhibited a basic understanding of them (within a time limit of 5 minutes in average). After reading and underlining the researcher handed out a paper including ten academic collocations in form of sentences and taught them to participants emphasizing on their synonyms and comments. The maximum time allotted to complete the task was 5 minutes. Following checking their awareness of collocations, the researcher handed over a passage of ten academic collocations as a quiz to the participants to check their understanding of academic collocations which they had learnt in previous session. The participants in the noticing group were told to read the paragraph carefully and underline the collocations acting as the input to help them in writing attempt. They were required to underline all and every academic collocation available in the paragraph. Underlining such collocations they showed their promotion level of collocational competence. The participants completed the task in approximately 5 minutes in average. Such quiz-papers were collected for assigning a mark to each participant to announce them their level of promotion. In the third phase of the treatment, the students were required to receive feedback on the quiz administered in the previous session. However, such quiz was an opportunity to motivate them to challenge on learning academic collocations. In approximately 3 minutes in average, the task was accomplished. The remaining hour of the class time was allotted to give them feedback on matching exercises which they were requested to do at home as an assignment (approximately 2 minutes). Comparison Group One Following research conducted by Carter (1998) concerning explicit instruction of collocations, the comparison group one received academic collocations just through teaching them in context explicitly. Teaching collocations explicitly is important in the light of Carter’s (1998) claim that “collocational mismatches are frequent in the language production of second-language learners since learners never encounter a word or combinations of words with sufficient frequency” (pp. 73-74). Therefore, the comparison group one received no treatment to acquire academic collocations. They were given a paper of ten academic collocations per session the same as noticing group and a paper of matching exercises including 7 to 10 sentences of previously-learnt academic collocations as an assignment.



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5. Data Analysis To examine the research hypotheses, the data were collected using a three-fold instrumentation procedure: the pretest of academic collocations prior to treatment, underlining academic collocations during the treatment and the posttest of academic collocations following the treatment. For the purpose of this study, since the researcher focused on the acquisition of academic collocations included in paragraphs with the theme written for academic purposes, underlining was used as a measure of noticing constructs in question. In the present study, underlining academic collocations was indicative of their learning the academic collocations. The data obtained from 45 multiple-choice items as pretest and 34 multiple-choice items as posttest concerning academic collocations were analyzed as well. The reliability coefficient of both tests was estimated through the Kuder-Richardson Formula 21 (KR-21). The rationale behind administration of the tests was to ensure the knowledge of the test takers on the items in question, to obtain good facility values and discrimination and to have enough items as Crocker and Algina (1986) found that test scores shall have desire consistency (or reproducibility), i.e. the results could be replicated if the same individuals were tested again under similar circumstances. The mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) of the scores were calculated. Corresponding to the research hypothesis, the data analyzed herein are of two types: a) the noticing, b) the effect of noticing on achievement of collocations.

The descriptive statistics such as measure of tendency as the mean, mode and median as well as measures of dispersion like the range, variance and standard deviation was run to summarize the participants’ characteristics. The normality tests were run to examine the distribution of data. To test the research hypotheses various statistical tests were used.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION To probe the research questions raised in this study a number of different statistical analyses were employed. The first and foremost of all is the testing of the assumptions of research hypotheses. However, the nature of the study permitted the researcher to employ parametric tests. The main research questions are analyzed through independent and paired-sample t-tests. These are followed by relevant graphs and descriptive statistics. The first step to test any research hypothesis is to determine the distribution of the scores obtained. For this purpose, the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variances were tested empirically. To prove normality of the data, the ratios of skewness over their respective standard errors should be more than .05. For this purpose, the Kolomogorov-Smirnov Test was conducted as regards posttest of both groups in question. The ratio of Kolomogrov-Smirnov Test for both groups (comparison group one and the noticing group) are displayed in table 1. As displayed in the table 1, the ratio of Kolomogrov-Smirnov Test for comparison group one is .802, i.e. .802 > 0.05., and the same ratio obtained for noticing group in pretest is .574, i.e .574 > 0.05. That is to say the students’ scores on the pretest enjoy normal distribution. However the students’ score in posttest for comparison group one is .508, i.e. .508 > 0.05, while the same ratio for noticing group is .629, i.e. .629 > 0.05, indicating that the data obtained for both groups in question is normal.



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Table 1: One-Sample Kolomgorov-Smirnov Test of Groups Under Study Pretest (Comparison Group One)

Posttest (Comparison Group One)

Pretest (Noticing Group)

Posttest (Noticing Group)

.802 .508 .574 .629 Hypothesis 1 In response to the first question of the present research, hypothesis 1 predicted that collocation awareness-raising does not lead to the noticing of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners in an academic context. Following the Noticing Hypothesis, if the learners were asked to notice the academic collocations in the model text, a good effect could be achieved. In other words, awareness raising task could make the learners’ performance in learning academic collocations more appropriate than those did in another group (comparison group 1). The participants underlining of the model passage was analyzed to address the noticing issue as an on-line measure. Therefore, the results obtained from both pretest and posttest of the noticing group supports Schmidt’s (1993) noticing hypothesis in relation to the fact that noticing could direct to understanding and understanding to a good learning effect. Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics of pretest and posttest of noticing group.

Table 2: Descriptive Statistics, Pretest and Posttest of Noticing Group

N Mean Std. Deviation Pretest 23 6.4609 2.18429 Posttest 23 13.0000 3.54837 The mean score obtained by the students on pretest is 6.4609 while the same mean score on posttest obtained by them is 13.00. Consequently, there is a significant difference between the mean scores of the noticing group on the pretest and posttest. Therefore, it can be concluded that the first hypothesis as “collocation awareness-raising does not lead to the noticing of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners in an academic context” is rejected. The main supposition based on hypothesis 1 was whether underlining as a measure to raise learners’ awareness lead to acquisition of academic collocations. Table 3 shows a paired- samples t-test to compare the noticing groups’ means scores on the pretest and posttest of noticing. As is displayed in the table 3, the t-observed value is -10.96 (df=22, p=.000 < .05) (Table 3).

Table 3: Paired Samples Test of the Noticing Group Mean

Std. Deviation

Std. Error Mean

95% Confidence Interval of the Difference

t

df

Sig. (2-tailed) Lower Upper

-6.53913 2.86090 .59654 -7.77628 -5.30198 -10.962 22 .000 Based on the results obtained it can be concluded that there is a significant difference between the mean scores of the noticing group on the pretest and posttest. As displayed in Table 2, the students in noticing group outperformed on the posttest in comparison to pretest with a mean



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score of 13.00. The statistics showed that a significant difference emerged between the scores obtained by the noticing group in pretest and posttest of academic collocations. Hypothesis 2 According to hypothesis 2, collocation awareness-raising has no significant effect on the achievement of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners. In other words, the prediction based on the second hypothesis was: having raised learners’ awareness in terms of academic collocations does not impact on the acquisition of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners. In this case the participants in noticing group were presented with a paragraph enriched with ten academic collocations per session, and they were requested to underline the academic collocations in the text. Underlining therefore was used as a measure of noticing. As Table 4 shows, the mean score for the Noticing participants (Mean = 13.00) exceeded that of the comparison participants (Mean = 10.23). The t-test was applied to find whether any statistically significant difference existed between the scores obtained on posttest of academic collocation by both groups in question. (see Table 4).

Table 4: t-test (Comparison Group One vs. Noticing Group) Mean N Std. Deviation Std. error Mean Comparison Group One 10.3214 14 2.83933 .75884 Noticing Group 13.0000 23 3.54837 .73989 An Independent Sample Test was applied to find the assumption of homogeneity of variances (see Table 5). As table 5 displays, Levene’s F of homogeneity of variances obtained was 2.054. Since the probability associated with this F-value, i.e. 161, is higher than the significance level of .05, it can be concluded that the assumption of homogeneity of variances is met. In addition, referring to the results, it can be claimed that there is a significant difference between the score obtained by the comparison group one and that of the noticing group.

Table 5: Independent Samples Test Levene’s Test

for Equality of Variances

t-test for Equality of Means

F

Sig.

t

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Mean Difference

Std. Error Difference

95% Confidence Interval of the Difference

Lower Upper VAR00004 Equal variances assumed

2.054 .161 -2.392 35 .022 -2.67857 1.11959 -4.95146 -.40568

Discussion The main research question motivating this study was to investigate whether or not collocation awareness-raising has a significant effect on the achievement of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners. To this end, the participants were divided into two groups: Comparison group One and Noticing Group. Table 1 displays the normal distribution of the scores obtained by the two groups participating in the study.



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The first research hypothesis investigated whether collocation awareness-raising does lead to the noticing of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners in an academic context or not. To this end, the noticing group’s score on pretest was compared with the same scores obtained by them in posttest. Table 2 displays that the mean score obtained by the noticing group on pretest (6.4609) is much less than the same mean score on posttest obtained by them (13.00).

The results of the parametric paired- samples t-test for learners’ performance on the posttest after noticing academic collocations gives support for positive answer to this critical research question. A significant difference was found between the noticing groups’ means scores on the pretest and posttest of noticing. As is displayed in the table 3, the t-observed value is -10.96 (df=22, p=.000 < .05) (see Table 3 for details). The result might be used to imply that the differing experimental conditions of the noticing group show significant difference of the extent of attention paid by the learners to and noticing the target academic collocations. In fact, as a result of noticing the academic collocations as input, the learners’ awareness to such input was raised and they probably noticed the input to change it into intake. The finding of the first research hypothesis might be used to confirm Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis for the noticing function, which is deemed as a necessary and sufficient condition for language acquisition. Schmidt however introducing the noticing hypothesis asserts that having attend to input, the learners change input into intake (Schmidt, 1990).

The second research hypothesis examined whether collocation awareness-raising has significant effect on the achievement of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners or not. In fact, the prediction was that raising learners’ awareness of academic collocations does not lead to acquiring collocations in question. To this end, the results of parametric t-test for two related samples revealed a significant difference between the scores obtained on posttest of academic collocation by both groups in question. The mean score for the Noticing participants (Mean = 13.00) exceeded that of the comparison participants (Mean = 10.23) (see Table 4 for more details). The results showed that the noticing group outperformed in posttest in comparison with the comparison group one. The result indicates that individual variation in terms of noticing the collocations in question for the comparison group was considerably less than that of the noticing group. In other words, it reveals that the comparison group’s attention was paid to the collocations much less than the noticing group. Taking the noticing function of input into account, it might be claimed that the participants output of noticing group acted as noticing promoter, and consequently it resulted to draw the learners' attention to the target collocations. In fact, as a result of their reaction to the task of underlining as a measure of noticing, the learners bridged the gap found and noticed the input they received. To test the related hypothesis, an independent sample test was run, too, to compare the mean scores of the comparison group one and the noticing group. Before discussing the results of the independent sample test, the assumption of homogeneity of variances was probed. The Levene’s F of homogeneity of variances obtained was 2.054 (Table 5). The probability associated with this F-value, i.e. .161, is higher than the significance level of .05. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the assumption of homogeneity of variances is met. As displayed in Table 4, the noticing group with a mean score of 13.00 outperformed the comparison group one with a mean



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score of 10.32. Thus the second null-hypothesis as “collocation awareness-raising has no significant effect on the achievement of academic collocations by Iranian EAP learners” is rejected.

CONCLUSION This study made an attempt to explore a significant aspect in language learning, the impact of academic collocations to be a fluent-writer or speaker in an academic context, which is disregarded by language teachers in writing classes especially at college level. This research, also, was carried out to provide beneficial teaching techniques in language classrooms to improve students’ range of vocabularies to increase their ability to access communicative competence for expressing themselves in English language context. In this study, noticing is deemed as a necessary condition to raise learner’s awareness of academic collocations so that assisting them to gain native-like fluency. The main focus of this study was on providing input activities to assist learners to change input into intake through raising their awareness of such constructs. The findings of this study, however, support Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis.

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