Soleimani H Jafarigohar M and Iranmanesh

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
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 Posttest Pretest Posttest
(Comparison Group One) (Comparison Group One) (Noticing Group) (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

95% Confidence Interval
of the Difference
Std. Std. Error Sig. (2-
Mean Deviation Mean Lower Upper t df tailed)
-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 t-test for Equality of Means
Variances
95% Confidence
Interval of the
Sig. (2- Mean Std. Error Difference
F Sig. t df tailed) Difference Difference
Lower Upper
VAR00004 Equal 2.054 .161 -2.392 35 .022 -2.67857 1.11959 -4.95146 -.40568
variances assumed
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.
To attain such objective, raising learners’ awareness of language elements, underlining parts of
input was used by the researcher as a writing task. Underlining, as a measure of noticing, has
been subject to some criticisms by scholars for its precision and accuracy, therefore, taking into
account the shortcomings, results obtained from conduction of this research should be interpreted
cautiously. Also, in the light of logistic considerations, the maximum length of experimentation
time for each of the groups participating in the study was around 20 minutes. It appears that
within such time limit for applying experimentation and treatment, participants might be
restricted to perform at their utmost ability to attain desirable outcomes. In addition, selection of
participants and insufficient number of the participants were among other things as problems to
affect negatively on the validity of the results; consequently, care must be taken in generalization
of the research results.
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World

KEYWORDS: Collocation, Academic Collocations, Collocation-Awareness Raising, Noticing

Vocabulary in language learning and Strategies to Learn Vocabularies

Definitions and Types of Collocations

To Schmidt, (Schmidt, 1990, 1994) Noticing, is a conscious or subconscious process to change

Question 1: Do Iranian EAP learners learn academic collocations by noticing them in an

Hypothesis 1: Collocation awareness-raising does not lead to the noticing of academic

Hypothesis 2: Collocation awareness-raising has no significant effect on the achievement of

Materials and Data Collection

The model paragraph

A list of academic collocations

Research Design and Procedure

Following checking their awareness of collocations, the researcher handed over a

Comparison Group One

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

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

Table 3: Paired Samples Test of the Noticing Group

-6.53913 2.86090 .59654 -7.77628 -5.30198 -10.962 22 .000

Table 4: t-test (Comparison Group One vs. Noticing Group)

Table 5: Independent Samples Test

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