Strategies Used in Producing English Lexical Collocations by Saudi EFL Learners

Strategies Used in Producing English Lexical Collocations by Saudi EFL Learners

Noor, Hashim
Adubaib, Arwa

Thirty, with two distinct proficiency level, EFL Saudi English majors at Taibah University participated in this study. Two written elicitation tasks were used: a fill-in-theblank test which was accompanied by a self-checklist, and a translation test. In addition, retrospective data was also collected from the participants to elicit their reflections on their written production. The qualitative analysis of the data resulted in the development of a taxonomy of the strategies used by the participants of the study. The taxonomy was divided into five major categories: retrieval, L1 based strategies, L2 based strategies, reduction strategies, and test-taking strategies. The participants‘ overall use of strategies in producing unacceptable collocations was higher in frequency than their use of the strategies in producing acceptable collocations. The results also revealed that the participants relied on L2 based strategies more often than other strategies in producing both acceptable and unacceptable collocations. The results also showed that the two groups seemed to have chosen the same strategies and have not differed much in their total number of use. The results revealed that HPS and LPS differed significantly in their use of strategies in producing acceptable collocations especially with regard to the retrieval strategy, L2 based strategies and L1 based strategies in favour of the HPS group. In the production of unacceptable collocations, on the other hand, there were statistically significant differences between the two groups especially with reference to the use of the reduction strategies and L2 based strategies in favour of the LPS group. The implications of the research findings for teaching English collocations are discussed, along with pedagogical recommendations.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2011-05

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