皇家华人

The paper examined the role of collocation in second language learners鈥� oral development. Collocation is a series of words that tend to be used together in an established phrase, for example 鈥榟eavy鈥� might be associated with 鈥榟eavy weather, 鈥榟eavy snow鈥�, 鈥榟eavy drinker鈥� rather than 鈥榳eighty weather, 鈥榳eighty snow鈥� and 鈥榳eighty drinker鈥�.

Yuwei was interested in how collocation can impact second language learning and assessment. Together with her supervisor, Dr Kazuya Saito, she conducted a series of experiments, finding that the use of collocation matters a lot for communicative success when second language speakers are interacting not only with native speakers, but also with other non-native speakers.

They also found that with a few years of immersion experience, second language speakers can pick up on a near-nativelike use of collocation. Also, conversational experience helps expose second language learners to different combinations of words, helping them develop greater understanding of collocation.

Dr Kazuya Saito said: 鈥淪econd Language Research is a prestigious peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of linguistics. It鈥檚 exceptionally rare that Yuwei conducted such a high-quality, innovative project within her limited time at 皇家华人, and made it for publication at an MA level. Yuwei has been passionate and active in research.

鈥淕iven that word recognition technology has evolved exponentially, the findings have hinted at a possibility that we can automatically predict what kind of foreign speech can be easy vs. difficult to understand based on the use of collocation.鈥�

Recently, IOE alumna Chaoqun Zheng (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages MA) also聽had her Master鈥檚 dissertation published in聽Second Language Research.

Links

• Read the paper: 鈥樷��
• Centre for Applied Linguistics
• Department of Culture, Communication and Media

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