earticle

영어

The term ‘collocation’ is used to refer to a group of words that commonly occur together like hold a party (*open a party) and strong tea (*powerful tea). Knowledge of collocation improves the fluency and accuracy of students learning English as a foreign language because it allows English learners to think more quickly and communicate more efficiently. The purposes of this study are: (1) to investigate students’ experiences of learning English collocations in high school; (2) to investigate the English collocational competence of Korean university freshmen; (3) to investigate the correlation of general English proficiency with English collocational competence. Through this study, we will analyze the effectiveness of the education of English collocations at high schools in Korea and suggest desirable English vocabulary teaching methods. The participants in this study were 262 freshmen of Kangwon National University. We gathered informations through a questionnaire and the test of English collocations included in high school English textbooks. Our findings show: (1) that the teaching of collocations in high school is not sufficient; (2) that Korean university students’ collocational competence is very limited and English teachers need to encourage students to study English collocations; (3) that there is a considerable correlation between collocational competence and TOEIC test scores/English scores on the government-sponsored scholastic aptitude test for university admission.