The role of teaching lexical collocations in raising EFL learners' speaking fluency

Collocations and its relations to learning languages have attracted the attention of linguists and scholars so far. This thesis investigates the importance of teaching lexical collocations to improve EFL learners' oral fluency. The hypothesis is that knowing collocations specifically lexical collocations and collocational usage in the right order would eventually improve their oral fluency and helps them speak as natural as native speaker of English language. The thesis sheds light on the origins of collocations, its types, and patterns. Forty five first grade students of English Language Department-Soran University were selected and divided into two groups of experimental and control groups. Students were tested for collocational knowledge and vocabulary usage. In the experimental group's class lectures were given with highlighting collocations and specifically focused on lexical collocations in. While with the control group the lectures paid no attention to collocations. The empirical study consisted of collocation exercise, students' pre-test, students' questionnaire, teachers' questionnaire, students' post-test. The results of the collocations exercise showed that the students did not have knowledge of collocations and the ways of using them. Also, the results of the pre-test showed that the students were not proficient in speaking. However the results of the post-test showed that after lectures about collocations and focusing on lexical collocations their speaking proficiency was improved and the hypothesis of the thesis had been true. Knowing the ways of mastering vocabulary segments either single words or sequences including collocations, gives the learners ability to speak fluently and overcome the anxiety of making mistakes and mis-collocations.