Abstract:

ABSTRACT: Studies have often focused on words that should be learned, and investigations have been conducted on the lexical profiles of texts. Although there has been some interest in collocation, investigations have often concerned academic research articles. The academic texts freshman students normally read have been relatively understudied. This study aimed to identify the collocational profile of a book chapter, and the collocations used in students’ writing examination papers in response to a question on the theme of the chapter. The first corpus included 3253 words while the second one included 4917. Results showed that 17.31% of Corpus 1 included collocational usages, with the types ‘adjective + noun’ and ‘verb + adjective + noun’ used most commonly. Corpus 2 showed a 7.69%-collocational coverage, heavily based on the type ‘verb + noun’. Possible reasons for these differences are discussed, and recommendations are offered to increase learners’ competence in using collocations. Keywords: collocation, academic writing, book chapter, learners’ corpus, vocabulary

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