Article published in:
Spanish Learner Corpus Research: Current trends and future perspectives
Edited by Margarita Alonso-Ramos
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 78] 2016
► pp. 299–331

Chapter 11
A corpus study of Spanish as a foreign language learners’ collocation production

| University of A Coruna
| University of Coruña
| University of Coruña
| University Universidade da Coruña

We carried out a learner corpus study with the aim of exploring Spanish as a Foreign Language learners’ collocation production. The study involved the manual annotation of collocations in a portion of the CEDEL2 corpus using a typology specific to learner collocation errors. The quantitative comparison of learners’ and native Spanish speakers’ collocation production showed that although the two groups use a similar number of collocations, learners have a smaller repertoire and they overuse frequent combinations with less variability regarding the choice of the collocate. An analysis of learner errors revealed that most lexical collocation errors affect the collocate, the element whose selection is restricted, and that most errors result from L1 transfer.

Keywords: collocations, learner corpus, Spanish as a Foreign Language, lexical errors
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research on language learners’ knowledge and use of collocations
    • 2.1Studies investigating quantitative differences between native and non-native speaker collocation use
    • 2.2Studies investigating collocation errors
  • 3.Research questions
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1The corpus
    • 4.2The annotation procedure
  • 5.Quantitative differences in the collocation use of SFL learners and native speakers of Spanish
    • 5.1Results
    • 5.2Discussion
  • 6.Exploring collocation errors in SFL learners’ writing
    • 6.1Results
    • 6.2Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 December 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.78.11vin
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