Effects of input flood and negative evidence on learning of make/do collocations: A study with seventh grade Turkish EFL students

The verbs `make? and `do? are often confused by most of the Turkish EFL learners since they have the same meaning in Turkish and it is difficult to decide which one to use. The EFL students at the beginning of their learning of English generally tend to use `make? and `do? instead of one another. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of input flood and negative evidence on 7th grade Turkish EFL students? learning of make/do collocations. Totally ninety-one 7th grade Turkish EFL students from three classes were included in the study. These classes were randomly assigned to input flood, negative evidence, and control groups.Data were collected through pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest. Recognition level and production levels were measured by four tests designed by the researcher. While students? performances at the production level were checked by Translation Test and Cloze Test, students? performances at the recognition level were checked by Grouping Test and Correct/Incorrect Test. Data were analyzed within group to examine the improvement due to the treatments and between groups to compare the effects of treatments with the control group. As a result of within-group analysis, it was found that both input flood and negative evidence helped students expand their knowledge of make/do collocations at the production and recognition level. The results of between-group comparisons showed that input flood was significantly superior to the control group at the production level in the short term, but it had similar effects with the control group at the recognition level. However, negative evidence was significantly superior to the control group both at the production and recognition levels. When we looked at the long-term effect of the treatments, it was found that both treatments had significant decreases in the delayed posttest applied at the end of three weeks. Yet, it was found that the effects of input flood and negative evidence still remained and both had significant differences with the control group at the production and recognition levels. In the light of these findings, it is concluded that input flood and negative evidence can be preferred in order to improve students? knowledge of make/do collocations at the production and recognition levels. However, it is thought that input flood and negative evidence need to be supported with additional implementations which take place in/outside the classroom or they need to be used together in order to get more long-lasting benefit from the techniques.