The Effect of Teaching Lexical Collocations on Iranian EFL Learners’ writing Ability: Focusing on the Appropriate Use of Collocations

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to investigate the possible effects of explicit instruction of lexical collocations on Iranian upper intermediate EFL learners’ comprehension of collocation and the appropriate use of them in their writing.  A total number of 66 university level EFL learners were selected and then were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Pretests of collocation and writing task were initially administered to both groups.  Then, the specific treatment including explicit instruction of collocation was given to the experimental group while the control group received placebo. Afterwards, both groups took the post-test which was statistically analyzed through Independent sample t-test. The results showed that the performance of both groups improved in the post-tests of collocation comprehension and writing post-test.  Based on the analysis of t-tests, this progression was statistically significant simply for the experimental groups. The experimental group that received explicit instruction on collocations made a noticeably higher progress as compared to the control group in the posttest of collocation and writing task.