论文总字数：45125字

摘 要

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………..….......1

1.1 Background of the study...………………………..............................................1

1.2 Need for the study...............................................................................................1

1.3 Research purpose..……….…….……..…..................................……..............…2

2. Literature review…..................................................................................................3

2.1 Definition of collocation......................................................................................3

2.2 Vocabulary learning tasks and L2 vocabulary acquisition…………...…………3

2.3 Involvement load hypothesis……....…..…..……………..…………..….…..…5

2.4 Empirical studies on L2 vocabulary acquisition……………………………..…6

3. Methodology…........................................................................................................7

3.1 Research questions...............................................................................................7

3.2 Subjects................................................................................................................7

3.3 Instruments..........................................................................................................8

3.3.1 Listening material and tasks……………………………..………………..8

3.3.2 Target collocations…………..………..………......……………..………9

3.4 Procedure of data collection…………………………………………..………10

3.5 Scoring methods…………………………………………………...…………..10

3.6 Data analysis…………………………………………………………………..11

4. Results and discussion...........................................................................................12

4.1 Results................................................................................................................13

4.1.1 Descriptive statistics for L2 receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition……………………………………………………………………………13

4.1.2 Tests of group differences in L2 receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition………………………………………………………..…………………..13

4.2 Discussion..........................................................................................................15

5. Conclusion.............................................................................................................. 16

5.1 Major findings of the study.............................................................................16

5.2 Implications.......…....……….…………...…...………………...................…...16

5.2.1 Theoretical implications……...........…………………………………...17

5.2.2 Pedagogical implications…..................…….…………………………..17

5.3 Limitations and suggestions for future research……...............………………18

References…………..................................................................……………………19

Acknowledgements

I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to all those who helped me during my thesis writing, because without their assistance and support, it would be impossible for me to complete this thesis.

Firstly, my deepest gratitude should be given to my supervisor, Professor Bao Gui, who offered me long-term support and consistent valuable suggestions in my academic studies. His inspiring instruction and constant encouragement helped me through the period of preparation, research and analysis during my thesis writing. His profound insights broadened my horizon in linguistic studies. Furthermore, it is my honor to benefit a lot from his personalities and diligence, which I will treasure in my future life.

Then, my thanks would go to my friends and my classmates who have given me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the paper. My heart will always be with you no matter where I am in the future.

In addition, my appreciation also goes to all participants from Nanjing Tech University, because without their participation and cooperation, this research would not have been made possible.

Last but not least, I would like to express my profound thanks to my family for their endless love, unwavering support and absolute confidence in my academic journey and even in my whole life.

Chen Xiaoyue

Abstract

The study intends to make a systematic study on the effects of different task types on EFL learners’ vocabulary collocation. To be specific, this research is to compare two listening tasks in their contribution to EFL learners’ understanding and producing of collocations. And the study centers on two basic questions:

1. Is there any significant difference in understanding the collocations between EFL learners who perform different learning tasks related to EFL collocations?

2. Is there any significant difference in producing the collocations between EFL learners who perform different learning tasks related to EFL collocations?

In this study, 76 first-year non-English majors with the same English proficiency from two intact classes in Nanjing Tech University were chosen as participants. All the participants were assigned into two groups at random and completed the tests in the two different classrooms for the different listening tasks. Initially, prior to the experiment, 30 first-year non-English majors with the same English proficiency as subjects were randomly chosen from another class to participate in the pilot study. Then, both the target collocations and the experiment design were modified based on the results of the pilot study. And before listening, all participants were given lists of the target collocations so that they could be familiar with these collocations. Five minutes later, these lists were taken back. Then, the participants listened to the same three passages, and after each of three passages, they received different tasks related to EFL collocations (Group 1, called the true/false group, had to answer a number of true/false questions related to the target collocations in the listening passages. And group 2, called the gap-filling group, had to finish the gap-filling tasks related to the target collocations in the listening passages). After 10 minutes’ break, all the participants were given an immediate L2 vocabulary collocation acquisition test. They were required to write down each collocation’s meaning and the total score was 10. After that, all the data were collected and two independent samples t tests were conducted to compare the two groups in understanding and producing target collocations.

Through data analysis, the results of the research confirm the basic findings of those previous studies. Firstly, there is a significant difference between the true/false task and gap-filling task in contributing to EFL learners’ receptive and productive acquisition of the target collocations. In other words, the gap-filling task group performs better than the true/false task group in contributing to both receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition of EFL learners. Besides, the results of this research provide us with profound pedagogical implications, which are of great help to enhance students’ knowledge of vocabulary collocations.

Key words: collocation; task type; involvement load; receptive; productive;

true/false; gap-filling

中文摘要

本研究旨在对不同任务类型对词语搭配习得产生的影响进行系统的调查。具体来说，本研究主要对相同水平英语学习者的词语搭配情况进行了比较分析，并围绕两个基本问题展开讨论：

1. 相同语言水平的英语学习者在接受不同的任务类型后在词语搭配的正确理解方面是否存在差异？

2. 相同语言水平的英语学习者在接受不同的任务类型后在词语搭配的产出方面是否存在差异？

在本研究中，受试者是76位来自南京工业大学非英语专业的两个不同班级的大一同学（英语水平相同）。所有的受试者被随机分成两组并在两个不同的班级完成与目标搭配词相关的听力任务。考虑到实验的可靠性，来自另一班级的30位非英语专业的大一学生（英语水平相同）预先参加了先导性研究，这30位同学是被随机抽取的。同时, 目标词以及实验设计都是根据先导性研究的结果进行调整的。在进行听力任务前，研究者首先会把写有目标搭配词的纸条发给每位受试者，以便他们能够熟悉这些目标搭配词。五分钟后收回纸条。接着，76位受试者同时听三篇相同的文章，听完每篇文章后完成与词汇搭配相关的任务练习（第一组完成正误判断任务，第二组完成填空任务）。任务完成后休息10分钟, 然后所有的参与者进行一个即时的词汇搭配习得测试，总分为10分。接着，分别收集两组同学词汇搭配测试的接受性和产出性的相关数据，并对两组学生的相应数据进行比较分析，从而总结出受试者对于目标词汇的理解及产出情况。

通过分析数据，实验的结果证实了以往研究的基本发现。首先，正误判断任务与填空任务在促进英语学习者接受性和产出性目标词汇知识的习得上存在显著差异；并且在促进英语学习者接受性和产出性目标词汇知识的习得上, 填空任务优于正误判断任务。除此之外，调查结果也为教学提供了深刻的依据，对提高学生词语搭配能力有很大的帮助。

关键词： 目标词搭配；任务类型；投入量；接受性；产出性；正误判断；填空

1. Introduction

The present study aims to study the effects of task type on L2 learners’ vocabulary collocation acquisition. This chapter focuses on presenting the general background of the current study, the need of the study and the purpose of the study.

1.1 Background of the study

In recent years, much research has been focused on teaching and learning L2 collocations. That is because, whether from the view of semantics or the angle of syntax, the organization and collocation of words are both very important in language productivity. Collocation is one of three elements which measures lexical study (word, idiom and collocation) (Hu, 1987), so it has been becoming a heated issue among the lexical teaching.

1.2 Need for the study

However, a lot of difficulties in either lexical collocation teaching or L2 lexical collocation learning will be easily envisioned, and this is actually the case. With the rise in status of lexical collocation in L2 learning, it is urgent to put forward effective vocabulary learning methods and strategies. Instructors and learners have attempted to find out ways in which instructional programs might furthest promote the lexical collocation acquisition. Then Laufer amp; Hulstijn (2011) proposed the involvement load hypothesis that pushed task-based L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition to the front, L2 researchers have designed various vocabulary collocation learning tasks either to test the involvement load hypothesis or to find out the most effective L2 vocabulary collocation learning strategies (Webb 2005; Keating 2008; Wu Xudong 2010; Kim 2011; Bao Gui amp; Wang Juanjuan 2013).

1.3 Research purpose

In this thesis, the author will conduct a study which is related to how EFL learners can correctly understand and produce the lexical collocations and suggest some ideas for teachers and students on how to correctly and effectively learn collocations. And the focus of my comparative study will concentrate on the condition of EFL learners’ understanding and producing about collocation according to EFL learners’ collocation test after they accept different tasks. In this essay, the questions I will answer are as follows:

1. Is there any significant difference in understanding the collocations between EFL learners who perform different learning tasks related to EFL collocations?

2. Is there any significant difference in producing the collocations between EFL learners who perform different learning tasks related to EFL collocations?

2. Literature Review

In this chapter, this chapter consists of three sections. Section 2.1 lists some definitions of collocation briefly. Section 2.2 mainly reviews about the effects of tasks on L2 vocabulary learning and what is exactly the "task". Section 2.3 gives introduction in detail on the Involvement Load Hypothesis proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn (2001), including some empirical studies on it.

2.1 Definition of collocation

About fifty years ago, Firth (1957), who was known as the father of collocation study, firstly raised collocation as a linguistic term in discussion. In his opinion, collocation can be generally summarized by four items. Firstly, collocation is the company words that keep their relationships with other words. Secondly, collocation is a kind of meaning style. Thirdly, it is mutual expectation and mutual prediction of each company word in habitual collocation. To some extent, Michael Lewis (2000) held the similar ideas about this aspect. He suggested that collocation is common combination of words or the way words combined in predictable ways. According to the above opinions, we can know that collocation emphasizes the way words co-occur predictably. Last but not least, colligation is an abstract which is superior to collocation. And colligation is also the mutual relationship among words, sentences and other grammatical categories. Firth thought that one could know the word’s meaning through one word collocating with the other (Palmer, 1981，p.76).

2.2 Vocabulary learning tasks and L2 vocabulary acquisition

In the range of SLA, researchers and teachers try to elicit some samples about language use from learners. They all go to "tasks" for help either as an instrument for investigating vocabulary acquisition or as a tool facilitating vocabulary learning to occur. As a result, "tasks" play an important role in current L2 researches and also in language teaching (Elks, 2003:1). In recent years, in order to in favor of task-based approaches to L2 pedagogy, many theoretical arguments have been proposed (Robinson, Ting amp; Urving, 1995). The emerging of task-based ways in the 80s of the 20th century is a big challenge to L2 education. Task-based teaching seems to have been a natural consequence of the communicative approach (Widdowson, 1978), since it focuses on providing contexts for learners for meaningful activities and practice in the procedural use of language, rather than on developing the learners' declarative knowledge of the component parts of a language in isolation from use its rules of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary meaning, etc.. Then, what is a task?

The common ground of the above definitions is that "task" is an activity involving any of the language skills (e.g., listening, reading, translating) with a focus primarily on meaning or a focus on both meaning and form when engaging learners in comprehending for achieving linguistic or non-linguistic outcomes. Such an activity requires learners to employ cognitive processes such as selecting, classifying, reasoning, and evaluating information for carrying out the task. It is obvious that tasks provide EFL learners accesses to vocabulary learning, receptively or productively, as an important part of linguistic outcome (Zhou, 2007).

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