The present study explores lexical collocations and their relation to speaking proficiency of Taiwanese EFL
college students learning English for academic purposes (i.e., EAP). The data is obtained from 92 English majors at a national
university of science and technology in southern Taiwan. The results show that (a) direct collocation instruction promotes the
subjects’ performance on their speaking fluency tests, outscoring the other two instruction types; (b) the advanced level students
seem to benefit most as they outperformed the other three groups after receiving each of the three instruction types (i.e.,
lexical collocations, single-item vocabulary, and no instruction); and (c) no significant difference can be found between the
high-intermediate and intermediate groups with regard to their post-instruction performances. Therefore, the current study
concludes that direct collocation instruction deserves immediate attention and calls for a series of systematic studies to be done
on the possible connection between lexical collocations and English proficiency of EFL learners.
In the field of applied linguistics and TESOL, it is now widely accepted that longer, multi-word, phrase-like lexical units constitute an essential portion of proficient language use (Schmitt, 2008; Wray, 2000, 2002). In recent years, the field has also witnessed tremendous efforts contributing to the understanding of lexical units. According to Ellis (2008), 529 papers (in the 1980s) and 709 papers (in the 1990s), investigating the phenomenon of phraseology, can be found in the ProQuest-CSA database. It is becoming more apparent that these lexical units are paramount not only to language acquisition but also pedagogical practices (Schmitt, 2004). Terms like lexical phrases (Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992), formulas (Ellis, 1994), multi-word items (Moon, 1997), lexical bundles (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999), constructions (Ellis, 2003, 2006), lexical patterning (Schmitt, 2004), formulaic sequences (Schmitt & Carter, 2004), restricted collocations (O’Keeffe, McCarthy, & Carter, 2007), phraseological units (Meunier & Granger, 2008) have been previously used to describe the longer chunks of words. Among these labels, collocations, perhaps the most discussed lexical units, lie in the center of the past studies.
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