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Effects of Collocational Congruency, Frequency and L2 Proficiency on the Processing of English Adjective-Noun Collocations

  • Lianrui Yang

    Lianrui YANG is a professor at the College of Foreign Languages, Ocean University of China. His main research areas are second language acquisition, applied linguistics, foreign language education.

    , Qun Zhang

    Qun ZHANG is an English teacher in Weifang High Tech Zone Beihai School.

    , Ni Li

    Ni LI (the corresponding author) is a lecturer at the College of Foreign Languages, Wuhan University of Science and Technology. Her research interests are second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and corpus linguistics.

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    and Ying Chen

    Ying CHEN is a professor at the College of Foreign Languages, Ocean University of China. Her research efforts have focused on language testing and second language acquisition.

Published/Copyright: September 18, 2024
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Abstract

The present study investigates the effects of congruency and frequency on adjective-noun collocational processing for Chinese learners of English at two proficiency levels based on the data obtained in an online acceptability judgment task. The subject pool of this research included 60 English majors studying at a university in China; 30 were selected as a higher-proficiency group and 30 as a lower-proficiency group according to their Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt et al., 2001) scores and their self-reported proficiency in English. The experimental materials were programmed to E-prime 2.0 and included six types of collocations: (1) 15 high-frequency congruent collocations, (2) 15 low-frequency congruent collocations, (3) 15 high-frequency incongruent collocations, (4) 15 low-frequency incongruent collocations, (5) 15 Chinese-only items, and (6) 75 unrelated items for baseline data. The collected response times (RTs) and accuracy rates data were statistically analyzed by the use of an ANOVA test and pairwise comparisons through SPSS 16.0 software. The results revealed that: (1) the adjective-noun collocational processing of Chinese English learners is influenced by collocational frequency, congruency and L2 proficiency; (2) the processing time is affected by the interaction of congruency and frequency; and (3) the interactive effect of L2 proficiency in conjunction with congruency and frequency also influences the processing quality.

About the authors

Lianrui Yang

Lianrui YANG is a professor at the College of Foreign Languages, Ocean University of China. His main research areas are second language acquisition, applied linguistics, foreign language education.

Qun Zhang

Qun ZHANG is an English teacher in Weifang High Tech Zone Beihai School.

Ni Li

Ni LI (the corresponding author) is a lecturer at the College of Foreign Languages, Wuhan University of Science and Technology. Her research interests are second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and corpus linguistics.

Ying Chen

Ying CHEN is a professor at the College of Foreign Languages, Ocean University of China. Her research efforts have focused on language testing and second language acquisition.

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Published Online: 2024-09-18
Published in Print: 2024-09-25

© 2024 BFSU, FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy

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