Verb + Noun Collocational Competence of Thai University EFL Students: A Comparative Study of a Regular Program and an English Program

Abstract

The objectives of this study were: 1) to examine how Thai university EFL students studying in the regular and English programs use verb + noun collocations, 2) to investigate the differences in collocational competence of verb + noun between students in the regular and English programs, and 3) to determine sources of errors of verb + noun collocations that Thai university EFL students studying in the regular and English programs experience in using the verb + noun collocations. The research participants were 30 third and fourth year marketing major students studying in a regular program, and the other 30 of the third and fourth year marketing major students in the English program of the Faculty of Business Administration at Saint John’s University. The research instruments used to investigate the participants’ proficiency of English collocations were: Test 1: A Translation Test, Test 2: A Gap-filling Collocation Test, and In-depth interview. The study findings revealed that the English program participants scored higher than the regular program participants. The English program participants used more variety of correct verb + noun collocations than did the regular program ones. The main source of errors of verb + noun collocations the regular program participants experienced was the learners’ lack of knowledge of collocations (46.73%) while the main source of errors of the English program participants was the learners’ application of the strategy of transferring L1-L2 collocations (54.62%). Furthermore, the English program students performed better in verb + noun collocation competence than did the regular program students. The result revealed that there was a significant difference in collocational competence of verb + noun between the participants in the regular and English programs in total, p-value was .0264 < .05.