The teaching of lexical collocations and its effects on the quality of essays and knowledge of collocations among students of program persediaan Ijazah Sarjana Muda Pendidikan of Institut Perguruan Batu Lintang, Kuching

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the effects of teaching lexical collocations on students’ knowledge of collocations as well as the possible relationship between knowledge of collocations and the quality of these students’ writing. The participants were 28 first semester students currently pursuing their foundation studies at Institut Perguruan Batu Lintang, Kuching. A lexical collocation test was constructed to assess participants’ knowledge of lexical collocations before and after the treatment, and an essay was used to collect naturally occurring data of the participants’ use of collocations and subsequently, to measure the quality of the essay. The Control Group was taught vocabulary using the conventional way, focussing on individual words, while the Experimental Group was taught using the Lexical Approach. Descriptive statistics was used to examine the participants’ knowledge of lexical collocations and explore possible associations between the teaching of lexical collocations and the quality of participants’ essays. The results indicated that there was a positive effect between the teaching of lexical collocations and the quality of the essays, and that the participants’ knowledge of collocations improved. Based on the findings, it is concluded that teaching vocabulary using the Lexical Approach contributes to more obvious improvement in participants’ collocational knowledge.