A study on teaching collocations (Verb+noun) in a secondary school EFL context

The purpose of this study was to find out whether teaching collocations would enhance learners' vocabulary knowledge and improve their retention. Our study was a quasi-experimental study with pretest, posttest and delayed posttest. Although the study was designed as a quasi-experimental study, it also included qualitative data collection procedures such as assigning writing tasks to the participants, field notes and open-response items. The study was carried out in a state secondary school in Turkey. The participants of the study were 52 seventh grade students, 16 of whom were placed in the experimental group which took the treatment. Before the treatment, all of the participants took the pretest in order to figure out whether a significant difference in participants' vocabulary knowledge would occur between experimental and control groups. After the treatment, both groups took the posttest to see whether teaching collocations helped the participants learn the words better. Two weeks later, the same posttest was conducted as the delayed posttest in order to check the retention of the participants in both groups. As for qualitative data, writing tasks were assigned to the participants to check the production. Open-response items were also included in the study in order to learn the participants' opinions about collocations. Moreover, the teacher took some notes by observing both groups during the treatment. The results of the tests showed that teaching collocations could help the participants gain vocabulary items better and easier. It was also concluded that the participants who were in the experimental group performed better in writing tasks and stated in the open-response items that learning words through collocations was more enjoyable.