The influence of L1 knowledge, meaning knowledge and language exposure on the processing and production of english collocations among EFL learners

• Main Author: Wu, Yongping
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: P Philology. Linguistics; PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania
• Online Access: https://etd.uum.edu.my/10278/1/s903339_01.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/10278/

Interlingual influence plays a critical role in the acquisition of English collocations. L2 learners often produced L1-based errors (Nesselhauf, 2003). However, the working mechanism of interlingual influence on the acquisition of L2 collocations is not fully understood. The current study aimed to ascertain the positive and negative effects of L1 on the acquisition of English collocations among EFL learners by examining congruency effects on collocation processing and production, the activation of L1 in the processing as well as the errors in collocation production. The study also investigated the effects of meaning knowledge and language exposure on the acquisition of English collocations. Participants are 60 Chinese EFL learners and they were divided into two groups according to their English proficiency. Reaction Time (RT) research techniques and a productive test were utilized to examine L1 influence on English collocation processing and production respectively. The data of the processing tasks were analyzed in quantitative ways, and the data of the productive test were firstly analyzed with statistical techniques and were further analyzed with the technique of Error Analysis. The study has gained significant congruency effects on processing (p<.001) and production (p<.001), significant priming effects of L1, with F (2,58)=49.004, P<.01, on the processing of incongruent collocations, but non-significant effects of language exposure and meaning knowledge. Almost a half of incongruent collocations were given more than 50% L1-induced deviant answers in production. The results revealed that L1 played positive and negative roles in the acquisition of English collocations, and transferred L1 would be fossilized in L2 lexicon and was hard to be discarded. The findings provide insights into interlingual influence on English collocation processing and production, as well as some implications for theory construction. Based on the findings, the study gave suggestions for pedagogical practice on L2 collocation acquisition and further research.