The present study set out to investigate Swedish upper secondary school ESL learners’ use of adjective+noun collocations, with specific foci on collocational frequency and proficiency. Results relating to the collocational frequency question suggested that the most frequently occurring AN-collocations consisted of fairly general words with a low level of complexity, indicating that the Swedish learners use words that they know and are familiar with in AN-collocations. In accordance with previous studies, the primary findings demonstrated an overall high level of AN-collocational proficiency. Although the level of learner proficiency proved high, a majority of atypical/erroneous instances were caused by L1 interference, partly explained by similarities in the learners’ L1 and L2. Furthermore, results relating to frequency corroborated with previous studies in that learners tend to use collocations constituted of simple and non-complex words.
As for pedagogical implications, the findings can help educators identify instances where learners’ L1 transference has positive and negative effects, and, in turn, design student tasks aimed at the specific difficulties. Moreover, the ‘generality’ and low complexity among the most frequent AN-collocations suggest that learners would benefit from tasks aimed at developing a vocabulary of synonyms and/or alternative collocations.
Godkänt datum 2021-06-06