The Use of Collocations by B1, B2 and C1 Level Students of English as L2 at the University of Zenica

Abstract

The paper presents a research into the use of collocations by B1, B2 and C1 level students of English at the University of Zenica conducted by analysing student's examination papers. Collocations represent an important segment of the knowledge of a foreign language and its vocabulary. They appear in many different forms and learning them might be seen as the most difficult task of L2 learning. Difficulties in using collocations appear even at advanced levels of language learning. A preliminary study into the use of collocations by B2 level students of English showed that the students used proper lexical collocations in about 60% and proper grammatical collocations in about 50% of the cases. In view of those results, a research was conducted among B1, B2 and C1 level students of English at the English Department of the University of Zenica to investigate their use of collocations. Student translations were analysed with a focus on the different types of collocations. The translations were produced as a part of their final examination in the Contemporary English courses 1 through 8 corresponding to the different CEFR levels analysed. We assumed that the results of the students in all four years of the English studies would be consistent with the results of the preliminary study, and that there would be no significant difference between the use of grammatical and lexical collocations.