An application of collocations in teaching academic speaking a case study at dongnai technology university

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HO CHI MINH UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
-----------------------------

NGUYEN NGOC MINH
AN APPLICATION OF COLLOCATIONS
IN TEACHING ACADEMIC SPEAKING:
A CASE STUDY
AT DONGNAI TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY

Major: English Language
Course code: 60220201

HO CHI MINH CITY, May 2021

I


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HO CHI MINH UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
-----------------------------

AN APPLICATION OF COLLOCATIONS
IN TEACHING ACADEMIC SPEAKING:
A CASE STUDY
AT DONGNAI TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY
Submitted to the
Faculty of English Linguistics
In partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in English Linguistics
Course code: 16SNA21
By

NGUYEN NGOC MINH
Supervised by
NGUYEN VU PHUONG, Ph.D.

HO CHI MINH, DECEMBER 2020

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The thesis entitled AN APPLICATION OF COLLOCATIONS IN TEACHING
ACADEMIC SPEAKING: A CASE STUDY AT DONGNAI TECHNOLOGY
UNIVERSITY was successfully defended and approved on March 30th, 2021 at Ho
Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH)
Academic supervisor: NGUYEN VU PHUONG, Ph.D

Examination Committee:
1. LE THI KIEU THU, Ph.D ....................................................... Chair
2. TRAN QUOC THAO, Ph.D .............................................. .Reader 1
3. CAO THI PHUONG DUNG, Ph.D..................................... Reader 2
4. NGUYEN NGOC TRAN CHAU, Ph.D .............................. Member
5. LE VAN TUYEN, Ph.D ....................................... Secretary member

On the behalf of Examination Committee
Chair

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CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis submitted today, entitled:
An Application of Collocations in Teaching Academic Speaking:
A Case Study at DongNai Technology University
In terms of the statement of requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs issued by
the Higher degree Committee of Faculty of English Linguistics, Ho Chi Minh City
University of Technology.

Ho Chi Minh, December 2020

NGUYEN NGOC MINH

IV


RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, Nguyen Ngoc Minh, being a candidate for the degree of Master of
Arts (English Linguistics) accept the requirements of the University relating to the
retention and uses of Master’s Theses deposited in the library.
In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Master’s Thesis deposited
in the library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance
with the normal conditions established by the Librarian for the care, loan and
reproduction for theses.

Ho Chi Minh, December 2020
Signature

NGUYEN NGOC MINH

V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many individuals have left their imprints in my path of exploring knowledge and in the
course of doing this thesis. I would like to acknowledgement their assistance,
cooperation and encouragement without which this study would not have been
completed.
First and foremost, I would like to express my whole-hearted appreciation to my
supervisor, Mr. Nguyen Vu Phuong Ph.D. for his dedicated assistance and valuable
advice without which this paper cannot come into life. He also shed light on the field
of Research Methodology and reminded me of the contribution of us, English teachers
and educators to the development of national Education and for the generations of elite
learners who are fluent English users and confidently ready for the new era of global
citizens and international integration.
Secondly, I also would like to send my deep gratitude to DongNai Technology
University who gave me the permission to conduct this study at university classes and
their constant encouragement and timely support as well as all the Teacher Care staffs
for their kind support in arranging classes and schedules, lending my all the facilities
and resources I needed in order to complete this thesis.
Many truthful thanks also extended to all the TESOL lecturers and teaching staffs at
HUTECH for their dedication and great support during my Master course here.
In addition, this thesis cannot be completed without 106 students in my classes who
enthusiastically took part in the pre-test, post-test, the questionnaires and the
experimental class which brought out the significant results and pedagogical
implications of this research.
Finally, my special thanks would like to go to my family and friends for their support
and encouragement within my research doing time.

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ABSTRACT
The study of collocations is also crucial to improve learners’ communicative
competence in English. Hence, this study is conducted in the context of DongNai
Technology University Vietnam to investigate the roles of collocation instructions
on learners’ speaking performance in the format of the IELTS test. The study
adopted a quasi-experimental design in a period of eight weeks in the course of
entitled Communicative Speaking with the expected learning outcomes of
intermediate levels of the IELTS test. The study used both qualitative and
quantitative instruments including test, questionnaire, and interview from a corpusbased approach. The findings of the study have proved that collocation instruction
played an important role in enhancing learners’ communicative competence in
fluency and grammatical range and accuracy. In addition, the implementation
entailed the higher degree of positivity in the perceptions of learners towards the
new model in speaking lessons in terms of confidence and cultural sensitivity.
However, the study had to handle a number of obstacles in the application such as
time constraint, complexity of the collocations, and de-motivation of difficulties in
the acquisition of collocation. This study has also proposed a number of strategies
and suggestions for other teachers in different rationales to maximize the
effectiveness of collocation instruction in speaking improvement.
Keywords: Collocation; corpus; speaking performance, fluency

VII


TABLE OF CONTENT
CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY ................................................................... IV
RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS ......................................................... V
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................. VI
ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................... VII

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................ VIII
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................. IX
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLSXVError! Bookmark not defined.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………… 1
1.1. Backgrounds of the study ······························································· 1
1.2. Statement of the problem ································································ 3
1.3. Research aims and objective ··························································· 4
1.4. Research questions ······································································· 5
1.5. Significance of the study ································································ 5
1.6. Scope of the study ········································································ 6
1.7. Definition of key terms.........................................................................................7
1.8. Preview of the organization ···························································· 7

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ················································ 9
2.1. Definitions of collocations ······························································ 9
2.2. Classifications of collocations ······················································· 11
2.3. Speaking and its issues ································································ 16
2.4. The significance of collocations in speaking performance ······················· 18
2.4.1. The enhancement of fluency ···················································· 18
2.4.2. The vocabulary development in collocation training ························· 20
2.4.3. The driver for cultural sensitivity ··············································· 20
2.5. Possible issues in learning collocations

·········································· 21

2.6. Procedures of collocation instruction ················································ 22

2.7. The empirical benefits of collocation instructions on speaking performance ·· 23
2.7.1. The perceptions of learners in collocation training ··························· 25
2.7.2. Learners’ speaking performance ················································· 25
2.7.3. Challenges of learning collocations ············································ 27
2.8. The conceptual framework ··························································· 31
2.9. Summary ················································································ 32
CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ····································· 33
3.1. Research design ········································································· 33
3.2. Research site ············································································ 35
3.3. Sample and Sampling procedure ····················································· 36
3.4. Research instruments ·································································· 39
3.5. Data collection procedure ···························································· 43

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3.6. Data analysis procedure ······························································· 46
CHAPTER 4 RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS ·········································· 48
4.1. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance ··························· 48
4.1.1. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in overall score ··· 59
4.1.2. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in fluency and
coherence ····················································································· 50
4.1.3. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in lexical resource 51
4.1.4. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in grammatical range
and accuracy ·················································································· 53
4.1.5. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in pronunciation ·· 54
4.1.6. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in the frequencies of
collocation usage ············································································· 56
4.1.7. The correlation between the frequencies of collocations and speaking
assessment ··················································································· 57

4.1.8. The relationship between the frequency of collocations and the criteria ·· 61
4.1.9. The internal comparison of the mean score fluctuation in EG and CG ···· 66
4.2. Learners’ perceptions towards the usefulness of collocation instruction in
academic speaking ·········································································· 68
4.3. Learners’ challenges in the acquisition of English collocations ················· 69
4.3.1. The lack of time ································································· 69

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4.3.2. The lack of cultural competence ·············································· 69
4.3.3. The complexity of collocations in English ·································· 70
4.3.4. The misuse of collocations ····················································· 70
4.4. The in-depth interviews ······························································· 70
4.5. The impact of collocation instruction on IELTS speaking performance········ 73
4.5.1. The improvement in fluency ··················································· 73
4.5.2. The enhancement in lexical resource ········································· 73
4.5.3. The development of grammatical range and accuracy ····················· 74
4.5.4. The decrease in pronunciation ················································· 74
4.6. Learners’ perception towards the usefulness of collocation instruction in IELTS
speaking ······················································································· 76
4.7. Learners’ possible challenges in learning collocations in speaking ············· 77
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION ··························································· 79
5.1. The pedagogical implication ·························································· 80
5.2. The limitation of the study ···························································· 82
5.3. Conclusion and recommendation for further study ································ 84
REFERENCES ············································································· 87
APPENDIX A: ……………………………………………………………………94
Questionaire …………………………………………..…………………………...94

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APPENDIX B: ……………………………………………………………………96
The post interview …………………………………………………………………96
APPENDIX C: ……………………………………………………………………98
Speaking Band descriptors (public version) …………………………………….…98
APPENDIX D: ……………………………………………………………………100
Sample IELTS Speaking test for pre-test and post-test ……………………………100
APPENDIX E: ············································································· 101
The overview of the test ··································································· 101
APPENDIX F: ············································································· 104
The course outline ·········································································· 104
APPENDIX G: .... ..................................................................................................107
LESSON PLANS.....................................................................................................107

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1. Number of participants attended in each section of the study
Table 3.2. General information of the research participants
Table 3.3. Mean Value Equivalence
Table 4.1. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in overall score
Table 4.2. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in fluency and
coherence
Table 4.3. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in lexical resource
Table 4.4. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in grammatical
range and accuracy
Table 4.5. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in pronunciation

Table 4.6. The comparison of EG and CG speaking performance in the frequencies of
collocation usage
Table 4.7. The frequency of collocations collected in the pretest of the controlled group
Table 4.8. The frequency of collocation use in the posttest of the controlled group.
Table 4.9. The frequency of collocation use in the pretest of the experimental group
Table 4.10. The frequency of collocation use in the posttest of the experimental group
Table 4.11. The results of the questionnaire on learners’ perceptions towards the
usefulness of collocation in the experiment.

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1: The conceptual framework of internal relationships of factors in the study
Figure 4.1. The relationship between the frequency of collocations and overall score
Figure 4.2. The relationship between the frequency of collocations and fluency and
coherence
Figure 4.3. The relationship between the frequency of collocations and lexical resource
Figure 4.4. The relationship between the frequency of collocations and grammatical
range and accuracy
Figure 4.5. The relationship between the frequency of collocations and pronunciation
Figure 4.6. The internal comparison of the means score in the controlled group
Figure 4.7. The internal comparison of mean scores in the experimental group

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
EG: Experimental group
CG: Controlled group

IELTS: International Language Testing System

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This chapter describes the overview of the thesis, including backgrounds,
statement of the problem, rationales, scope, research objectives, questions, and thesis
organization.
1.1. Backgrounds of the study
There has been a stronger demand for learners to accomplish their English
competence, yet they face many challenges in using English. One of the biggest
obstacles for the learners on the way to master the communicative performance is the
fluency in interactions and expressions of ideas. It is apparent that fluency is one of the
criteria in any speaking assessment to indicate the flow of expressions within the
constraint of time. The fluency is commonly a challenge for the majority of learners
due to the impacts of mother tongues and conventionality in using language that
negatively influence their speaking performance. Nevertheless, native speakers tend to
use a wide range of formulaic chunks or specific collocations in their speaking.
Learning and teaching collocations, thus, has been paid more attention among teachers
and scholars to investigate the impacts of collocations and their roles in the
development of learners’ academic speaking performance.
Collocations, with their complexities, have created many problems to both
teachers and learners (Peccina, 2008). Collocations reflect the combinations of two or
more than two words to produce a chunk with a meaning (Celcia-Murcia, 2010). This
integration as a segmental component in the utterance contributes to the creation of
natural sense relations in meaning generation. However, meanings of certain
collocations cannot be defined by means of the single elements, and cultural issues
might restrain learners from fully understanding the intention of the senders in the

1


interpersonal communication in the mode of speaking and writing (Zaalabawi &
Gould, 2017). This idea is contrary to the principle of compositionality proposed by
Fromkin et al. (2017) in which the meaning of the utterance is interpreted from the
meanings of the constituents.
Burns and Seidlhofer (2010) emphasized that speaking, an important productive
skill in any language teaching and learning, creates numerous problems for both
teachers and learners. Learners need not only linguistic knowledge but also sociocultural knowledge (Byram, 1997; Nguyen and Nguyen, 2019). The new vision of
intercultural communicative competence has shed the light for the ability of language
users to adjust the manners of communication to achieve the communicative goals with
speakers from different social and cultural backgrounds with the diversity of
repertoires (Byram, 1997). The concept of intercultural communicative competence
entails the ability to anticipate, analyze and generate appropriate interactions in the
target language culture (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2019). This competence requires the
authentic exposure to the culture to modify the language and behaviors in the actual
context.
Collocation knowledge is believed to play a key role in learners’ language
competence (Farrokh, 2012). The acquisition of collocations is able to foster learners’
ability to use the vocabulary in a natural way, which is actually existent in the target
language cultures instead of the subjective assumptions of language users (Choice et
al., 2018; Richards & Rogers, 2001). However, learners have difficulties memorising
and applying collocations in their writing and speaking skills (Nguyen Thi My Hang &
Webb, 2017).
demanded

As the productive skills, writing and speaking have increasingly

for soft skills in the learners to achieve the goal of communication.

However, speaking is still challenging for most of learners to master as it is a time-

2


taking process to foster the cognition of speaking and produce the suitable expressions
with little hesitation or just a few pauses.
1.2. Statement of the problem
The productive skills, especially speaking performance, have not drawn much attention
from teachers and scholars; hence, it “has not met the demand for competent Englishspeaking people” (Hoang, 2018, p.15). The context of DongNai Technology University
is not an exception for this reality. The goal of effective EFL teaching in this context
has dealt with the following problems in the implementation. First, the top-down
program design has not achieved its aim to enhance the minimum English performance
as a high school graduate attribute (Winstone et al., 2020). This has caused a huge gap
between teacher assumption and learners’ achievement to design the lessons. Second,
the focus on a reading skill and grammar and vocabulary components has resulted in
the imbalance in learners’ performance in productive skills (Chen, 2017). This has led
to certain confusion among learners to adjust to the tertiary education. Learners
experience a number of negative perceptions such as anxiety or frustration when the
teachers adopt English as a medium of instruction in class. Third, learners are familiar
with the dominance of grammar translation methods at high school so they try to
memorize the word separately with the influence of Vietnamese culture. This factor
entails the unnatural expressions to perform some particular speech acts in
communication. The functional language has been neglected due to the priority of
single word expressions. Some of learners’ utterances are linguistically correct but they
are not appropriate from the perspective of socio-linguistics.. All the aforementioned
elements has proved that though learners have been taught a lot of grammatical and
lexical items, their speaking performance cannot be improved.
The rationales behind this study are threefold. Learners’ spoken fluency has been

inhibited by many factors; one of which has been the use of English collocations which
3


ate different from the native language of the second language users. Following that, the
teacher/ practitioner wanted to explore to what extent collocation instruction can make
contributions to learners’ spoken fluency and foster the level of communicative
performance in the context of tertiary education in the private sectors. This value
would help the researcher to reflect and adjust the teaching methods and activities to
improve the teaching performance in a long run. Finally, learners’ possible difficulties
might be an important element that helped the teacher/ researcher better evaluate the
whole teaching process. This reality is observed in the imbalance in the speaking
performance among learners in the previous course that the researcher was responsible
for.
This reality has shed the light for the researcher to find the action research to fill
in this gap with the view of promoting learners’ English speaking performance in an
academic aspect in the context of DongNai Technology University. The study aims to
explore the impacts of collocation instructions in the format of the IELTS test which
stands for the International English Language Testing System. This test is considered
one of the most reliable test with the equivalence on the scale to Common European
Framework for Reference (CEFR).
1.3. Research aims and objectives
This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of teaching collocations on
learners’ academic speaking performance at DongNai Technology University. The
objectives of this study are mentioned as follow:
- To examine the impact of teaching collocations on learners’ academic
speaking performance
- To explore the learners’ perception towards the usefulness of collocation
training in academic speaking development.
4

- To identify the challenges in learning English collocations from learners’
perspective
1.4. Research questions
To achieve the objectives above, this study endeavours to answer the following
research questions:
Research question 1: What are the effectiveness of teaching collocation on EFL
learners' speaking performance?
Research question 2: What are EFL learners' perceptions towards the
effectiveness of teaching collocations for speaking performance?
Research question 3: What are possible challenges in learning collocations from
learners’ perspective?
1.5. Significance of the study
The context of globalization has increasingly posed more demands for language
learners to master the communicative performance. However, the traditional focus on
linguistic competence is not sufficient in the process of interpersonal communication.
As a result, the transformation from teacher-centered approaches to learnercenteredness has been encouraged in many institutional contexts. With the backward
design from the learning outcomes to the methods of delivery, this study will
contribute to the development of TESOL fields with the following proposed impacts.
From the theoretical perspective, this study is beneficial to fill in the research gap in
teaching collocations to improve learners’ speaking performance. The degree of
impacts of collocation training as part of learning outcomes will act as a fundamental
reference for teachers and scholars in similar educational context to consider when they
design the means of vocabulary training in collaborative programs. In addition, this
study provides insights into learners’ perceptions towards learning collocations in

5

academic speaking for teachers. Learners’ perceptions are significant as a source of
motivation in second language acquisition (Swan, 2015).
From the empirical perspective, this case study will play an important role in
assisting teachers to apply this model in their educational contexts to foster learners’
communicative performance. The use of collocations allows teachers to understand the
learners’ degree of applying language for academic purposes in a natural manner. The
investigation of learners’ challenges in collocation learning is useful for teachers to
shape the lessons to minimize the difficulties for the learners. Altogether, these ideas
are essential to ensure the effectiveness of teaching English as a foreign language in
this rationale.
1.6. Scope of the study
Due to the time constraint and human resource, this thesis only concentrates on
the impacts of teaching collocations to learners’ oral communicative competence for
academic purposes. Other language skills including Reading, Listening, and Writing
would be beyond the scope of this study. The sample of population were chosen based
on the convenience and availability for the researcher to conduct the study in two
classes, which means other classes in the same grade are not the focus of this study.
Furthermore, the exploration into possible difficulties the learners have encountered in
the acquisition of academic speaking is also analysed in this study to formulate the
foundation for further study to mitigate the negative factors on learners’ performance.
1.7. Definition of key terms
There are a number of key terms whose meanings are shaped in consideration of
the scope of the study.

6


Collocation: The group of words that appear together to form a natural version of
meaning.
Speaking performance: The learners’ ability in finishing the speaking section in

the IELTS test
Fluency: The extent to which learners can perform in speaking without pauses or
hesitation.
1.8. Preview of the organization
The structure of this thesis report includes five major chapters.
Chapter 1 – Introduction, provides key backgrounds, problems, rationales,
objectives, research questions, and thesis structure.
Chapter 2 – Literature Review, reports key literature on collocations, speaking,
collocational knowledge, teaching and learning approaches to collocations. It also
summarizes past studies concerning the features of collocations in learners’ spoken
communication and the effects of collocation instruction on learners’ language
development.
Chapter 3 – Research Methodology, states the research methods, participants,
instruments, data collection and data analysis procedure.
Chapter 4 – Results, describes results of data collection, expresses further
explications and shows links to previous studies.
Chapter 5 – Discussion
Chapter 6 – Conclusion, briefs key findings, limitations, and implications.

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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews key literature on collocations, speaking, collocation
knowledge, learning and teaching collocations. Previous studies on collocation use
and collocation problems in different contexts – both Vietnamese and other countries’,
are also summarized. All the theoretical backgrounds give ground to the construction
of the present study.

2.1.

Definitions of collocations
The topic of teaching collocations is not by far new in the academic world;

however, the concept of collocations vary in a geographical and chronological way.
According to Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (2002, p.87),
collocation is “the way in which words are used together regularly.” For example, “in
English the verb perform is used with the operation, but not with discussion: The
doctor performed the operation.” This instance indicates the common utilization of the
expression in reality, in which words are combined with high frequencies by the
habitualness among language users. In other words, collocations refer to the set of rules
that learners are supposed to memorize in the contextual usage on a daily basis of
communicative demand.
From the linguistic perspective, Petrovic et al. (2010) state that collocations are
“linguistic phenomena that occur when two or more words appear together more than
often by chance” and the meanings of the utterance cannot be interpreted based on the
meanings of its components in the expressions (p.383). This claim supports the ideas
that collocations are problematic for the majority of second language learners who

8


have little or no exposure to the contextual inference of the meaning (Fan, 2009). The
memorization of the common meaning in language learning has resulted in learners’
word-for-word translation when they confront with English collocations. The
interpretation of meanings in collocations does not obey the principles of
compositionality by Fromkin et al. (2017). In the principles of compositionality, the
meaning of the utterance is usually understood in the combination of the meanings of
its constituents. However, collocations are an exception for this statement. For

example, in the collocation tall man, language users do not prefer to use high with the
word man although high and tall share the similar meaning. Both high man and tall
man are linguistically correct but practically inappropriate in the authentic material.
Hence, the linguistic analysis is not sufficient to explain the comprehension in spoken
communication and word choice in English.
The idea that collocations are correlated with the co-occurrence of words has
been supported by many researchers such as Firth (1957), Halliday (1961), Nation
(2001). This reality is closely linked to the perspective of cognitive linguistics and
psycholinguistics towards the way collocations are stored and processed in human
brain. The collocations are the way to “organize our knowledge of words” into our
mind on the nature of frequency (Yule, 2010, p.122). Schmitt and Celcia-Murcia
(2010) mentioned collocations as “words co-occur together (e.g. black coffee, strong
coffee, etc.)” (p.9). These are usually formed in chunks and regularly used by native
speakers. The process of learning collocations deals with the fixedness in the rules of
collocation usage and collocation knowledge (Nation, 2001). However, the passive
cognition of collocations cannot guarantee the ability to apply these collocations in
practice because of the lack of comprehension of the meaning (Hunter & Smith, 2012).

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According to Pecina (2008) there is a variety of the definitions; however, collocations
should be defined in terms of five fundamental aspects – (a) grammatical boundedness,
(b) lexical selection, (c) semantic cohesion, (d) language institutionalization, and (e)
frequency and recurrence (p. 15). Thus, a collocation is a combination of words under
such associations which language users cannot explain thoroughly and break their
relationships. In the aspect of grammatical boundedness, the rules of collocations set
the limit in use for the learners to apply in the real context which are different from the
traditional grammar. Some expression are grammatically correct but they are not used
in the target culture. Take raise someone’s awareness as an example, the native

speakers prefer to use raise instead of increase although both words have the same
meaning. Moreover, lexical selection proposes the critical choice in the word use to opt
for suitable words in the particular context rather than the subjective assumption in the
use of vocabular. Additionally, while semantic cohesion builds a bridge between the
form and the meaning or functions of the expression, language institutionalization
refers to the diversity in use of collocations in different regions in the native speaking
contexts. Lastly, frequency and recurrence are the ultimate characteristics that
differentiate collocations with normal words choice. When the phrase is considered a
collocation, it needs to appear frequently in the actual context of speaking rather than
the low frequency uses of certain rare words.
Hornby (2000, as cited in Zaalabawi & Gould, 2017, p.22) denoted that “collocations
are typically viewed as an “idiomatic” aspect of English”. Previously, idiomatic
expressions are considered the dead metaphor when the expression is attached with one
unique meaning or reference to the authentic entity. Collocations also share the
characteristics of meaning interpretation but they have the flexibility in the word
choice with one certain form of expression. In addition, the term “collocations” refers
to the co-occurrence of words which sound natural to native speakers and thus

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