An assessment of Vietnamese ESL learners' receptive knowledge of academic verb-noun collocations

Abstract

The main purposes of this study were: (1) to assess Vietnamese ESL learners' receptive knowledge of academic verbs and associated verb-noun collocations, (2) to examine the relationship between the two kinds of knowledge, and (3) to investigate how Vietnamese learners report their understandings of academic verb-noun collocations. Sample was 72 second-year university students in Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature, ABC University (pseudonym), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in the academic year of 2017. They were of intermediate English proficiency level, and with the major of English studies. The research instruments consisted of a Test of Academic Verbs (TAV), and a Test of Associated Verb-noun Collocations (TAVNC) which were administered to all study participants to assess their receptive knowledge of academic verbs and associated verb-noun collocations. In addition, a semi-structured interview was conducted with six random participants to investigate their understandings of academic verb-noun collocations. The results revealed that (1) students' receptive knowledge of academic verbs surpassed their ability to recognize associated verb-noun collocations, (2) the relationship between the two kinds of knowledge was moderate, (3) the students did not have the concept that a collocation consists of an academic verb node and noun collocate(s), and (4) they did not know that collocation meanings could be predicted from the two components. These findings indicated that Vietnamese ESL learners had inadequate knowledge of academic verb-noun collocations. Some pedagogic implications for teaching academic collocations are provided.