An investigation of the effects of prefabricated patterns or collocations upon the enhancement of Iranian EFL learners’ writing skill level

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Mehdi Yaghoobi ¹ , Mehdi Haseli Songhori ²

1 - Qeshm University
2 - Department of English, Zahedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zahedan, Iran

Received: 2022-10-07 Accepted : 2022-11-15 Published : 2024-04-26

Keywords: lexical collocation, prefabricated pattern, writing skill, upper-intermediate,

Abstract :

The major objective of the present study is to measure up the effectiveness of teaching collocations in raising foreign language writing proficiency. It is widely acknowledged that collocations play an important role in second language learning, particularly at the intermediate and advanced levels. The current research was executed to investigate the influence of collocation instruction and consideration on enhancing Iranian EFL learners’ writing skill. To do so, thirty upper intermediate EFL learners were selected from among the learners in an English language institute. Their level of English proficiency was determined on the basis of a pretest at the outset of the study. Simply speaking, a test of writing ability as a pretest was administered of which the scores were used to assign the subjects into two homogeneous groups. The control group encountered passages without being resorted to prefabricated patterns (collocations), but the experimental group resorted to prefabricated patterns and tasks prior to writing texts respectively. The fundamental aim of this research was to gain a better understanding of the role collocations play in students’ writing. This study intended to investigate the correlation between Iranian EFL learners' use of lexical collocations (i.e. frequency and variety) and their writing scores. It was revealed that implementation of the prefabricated patterns had a great influence upon the subjects experiencing them in comparison to the control group. Experimental subjects outperformed in the post-test, at the significant level of .01. In reality, teaching collocations could play a prominent role in improving EFL learners’ writing skill.

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