Negative Transfer of Indonesian Collocations into English

and Implications for Teaching

Abstract

One of the most challenging problems for EFL students is to be able to

express themselves not just grammatically but also acceptably and

naturally in English in appropriate contexts The ability to produce

acceptable and natural expressions in English is closely related to the

EFL studentslsquo competence in collocationmdashwhich words go together in

normal usage The present study provides an empirical analysis on

negative transfer made by Indonesian EFL students in lexical collocation

and recommends practical ways to help students improve their

competence in collocation Data for the study were collected from

essays written by 40 EFL university students majoring in English in

Indonesia whose native language is Indonesian The students were asked

to write a two- to three-page essay on an assigned topic Of 445 lexical

collocation errors found in the English writing 321 (72) were negative

transfers of Indonesian lexical collocations into English The findings

suggest the necessity of direct teaching of collocations the use of The

Collins WordbanksOnline and designing bilingual collocation

dictionaries

Key words negative transfer lexical collocation acceptable collocation

INTRODUCTION

Collocation is one of the most challenging aspects in second language learning and is notoriously

difficult for EFL learners (Smadja McKeown amp Hatzivassiloglou 1996) however it has been

largely neglected by researchers and practitioners (Shei amp Pain 2000) The term collocation is

used to refer to a group of words that belong together either because they commonly occur

together like take a chancelsquo or because the meaning of the group is not obvious from the

meaning of the parts as with by the waylsquo or to take someone inlsquo (Nation 2001) In addition

collocation might be described as the words that are placed or found together in a predictable

manner (Hill 2000) Furthermore Sinclair (2004 p 141) defines collocation as ―the co-

occurrence of words with no more than four intervening words

Certain words occur together very often others occur together occasionally and some others

are not likely to co-occur at all In English the noun conclusionlsquo can co-occur with the verb

drawlsquo as in draw a conclusionlsquo but in Indonesian one would say make a conclusionlsquo

(membuat kesimpulan) This might be understood by native speakers of English but it sounds

strange

The importance of identifying errorsmdasheg negative transfer errorsmdashmade by students of

English was pointed out by Corder (1978) He argued that systematically analyzing errors made

by language students makes it possible to determine areas that need reinforcement in teaching

However systematic and in-depth analysis of Indonesian EFL students collocation errors has not

been done yet

A number of studies on collocation errors from other languages have been done For

example Nesselhauf (2003) analysed the use of verbndashnoun collocations such as take a breaklsquo or

shake onelsquos headlsquo by advanced German-speaking learners of English in free written production

The result of his analysis is that the learnerslsquo L1 has a much stronger influence than earlier

studies had predicted Taiwo (2003) conducted research into collocation errors made by

secondary school students in Nigeria The findings were that collocation errors with the highest

percentage were those that deal with the syntagmatic pairing of incompatible itemsmdashie two

immediately co-occurring itemsmdashwhile errors with the lowest percentage were those that deal

with the juxtaposition of several itemsmdashie more than two itemsmdashwhich do not collocate Li

(2005) conducted research on Taiwanese students and found that the students made both lexical

collocation errors ie open-class word with open-class word and grammatical collocation errors

ie open-class word with closed-class word with roughly the same frequency

However some studies have found that lexical collocation errors are more frequent than

grammatical collocation errors For example Wible et al (2003) examined error types in the

essays submitted through the web-based language learning system Intelligent Web-based

Interactive Language Learning and found that lexical miscollocations are among the most

prevalent Mahmoud (2005) through a systematic and in-depth analyses of EFL learners lexical

errors reported that of 420 collocations found in 42 essays written by Arabic-speaking university

students majoring in English two thirds of these collocations (64) were incorrect and 80 of

these were lexical collocation errors Furthermore he claims that 61 of the lexical

miscollocations were negative transfer of studentslsquo native language (Arabic) Ying (2009)

attempted to identify the characteristics of collocations and determine the existence of a

relationship between collocations and coherence in writing by Chinese EFL students The result

shows that both Chinese non-English and English majors made more lexical collocation errors

ie open-class word with open-class word than grammatical collocation errors ie open-class

word with closed-class word

Two of the very few studies regarding Indonesian students that have been published were

conducted by Kweldju (1999) and Moekardi (2002) The study on collocation conducted by

Kweldju was aimed at describing the ability of the English department students of Indonesia in

collocations She used a fill-in the blanks test to obtain her data which revealed that the subjects

had a low mastery of collocations Another study was a non-research-based analysis by

Moekardi (2002) who suggested some possible problems with grammatical and lexical

collocations that Indonesian students may encounter She predicted that there are three main

problems that Indonesian EFL students may encounter with lexical collocations One would be

Noun + Verb as in make a conclusionlsquo because the students directly transfer Indonesian

collocation membuat kesimpulan (membuat = make and kesimpulan = conclusion) The second

possible problem that Indonesian students may encounter is the collocation Adjective + Noun

such as thick coffeelsquo as a direct translation of kopi kental in Indonesian (kental = thick and kopi

= coffee) The third possible problem is that of overusing the English adverb verylsquo which is

equivalent to Indonesian adverb sangat Many English adverbs that procede adjectives have the

same meaning of Indonesian adverb sangat Students may play safe by avoiding using other

adverbs For example instead of saying These companies are fiecelykeenly competitive with

each otherlsquo the students may say These companies are very competitive with each otherlsquo

The present study however attempts to analyze Indonesian EFL studentslsquo negative transfer

of Indonesian into English based on an empirical study of actual writing samples looking at

lexical collocation in particular The purpose of this study was to identify the kinds of negative

transfer of lexical collocations into English produced by Indonesian EFL students and to

recommend practical ways to improve studentslsquo collocation in English

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Definition of collocation

Collocations are described as the words that are placed or found together in a predictable

manner The words naturally co-occur and these result in regular and specific combinations

(Wouden 1997 Hill 2000 Lewis 2000 Fellbaum 2007) For example in English we do not

say bitter coffeelsquo but strong coffeelsquo but in Indonesian we say bitter coffeelsquo instead of strong

coffeelsquo Benson et al (1997) distinguish between lexical collocations such as do researchlsquo

pack of dogslsquo deeply absorbedlsquo and grammatical collocations such as interested inlsquo look

intolsquo discussion aboutlsquo suggest thatlsquo

Sinclair Jones amp Daley (2004) define lexical items as words belonging to open classes such

as noun verbs adjectives etc In this terminology lexical collocations combine two equal

lexical components (open class words) while grammatical collocations combine a lexical word

(noun verb or adjective) with a grammatical word ie one open class word and one closed class

word Benson et al (1997) describe grammatical collocation as a recurrent combination of a

dominant word followed by a grammatical word typically a preposition (abide by admiration

for adjacent to etc) Furthermore they state that grammatical collocations consist of eight

types

Type Example

G1 noun + preposition combinations blockade against apathy against

G2 noun followed by to + infinitive It was a pleasure to do it They had the

permission to do it

G3 nouns + that clause We reached an agreement that she would

represent us in court

G4 preposition + noun combinations by accident in advance

G5 adjective + preposition

combinations

fond of afraid of

G6 predicate adjectives and a

following to + infinitive

The girl is ready to go

G7 adjectives + that clause It was nice that she was able to come home

for the holidays

G8 nineteen English verb patterns

eg dative constructions verb

plus infinitive or gerund

complement patterns complex

transitive constructions

He sent the book to his brother mdash He sent

his brother the book They described the

book to her We will adhere to the plan

They enjoy watching television She heard

them leave We consider her to be very

capable

Figure 1 Types of grammatical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

These types of collocations lie beyond the scope of this paper The focus instead is on

combinations of two or more open class words

Lexical Collocation

As mentioned above lexical collocations as opposed to grammatical collocations do not contain

prepositions but consist of nouns adjectives verbs and adverbs (Benson et al 1997)

According to Benson etal lexical collocations include seven types ie

Type Example

L1 Verb (transitive)+ nounpronoun

(or prepositional phrase)

make an impression come to an

agreement compose music

L2 Verb meaning essentially

eradication andor nullification +

noun

reject an appeal lift a blockade

L3 Adjective + noun strong tea weak tea

L4 Noun + verb blood circulates bomb explodes

L5 Noun (unit) + of + noun

a bouquet of flowers a colony of bees

L6 Adverb + adjective deeply absorbed keenly aware

L7 Verb + adverb Affect deeply apologize humbly

Figure 2 Types of lexical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

In this study however category L1mdashverb (transitive) + nounpronoun (or prepositional

phrase) is not separated from category L2mdashverb meaning essentially eradication andor

nullification + noun as cited by Benson et al Instead for convenience of analysis this study

considers combination of any verb + nounpronoun as one category Thus categories of lexical

collocation used in this study consist of six types ie

Type Description

L1 Verb + nounpronoun

L2 Adjective + noun

L3 Noun + verb

L4 Noun (unit) + of + noun

L5 Adverb + adjective

L6 Verb + adverb

Figure 3 Modified lexical collocations from Benson etal 1997

In addition collocations as used in this study differ from other types of fixed

expressionslsquo such as formulaic expressions or routines conventionalized language forms and

patterned phrases For example the routine formula by the waylsquo has the rhetorical function of

introducing a point in a discussionlsquo By contrast collocations (eg conduct research take some

medicine pay a visit strong coffee severe cold bitterly regret keenly aware of strictly

accurate highly interesting water flows alarms ring a colony of bees) do not have any special

rhetorical function other than to refer

Negative Transfer

A negative transfer is an error attributed to the native language in which learnerlsquos L1 habits

(patterns systems or rules) prevents himher in some way from acquiring the patterns and rules

of the target language because the learner is carrying over the habits of the L1 (Corder 1974)

Negative transfer errors occur as a result of a negative influence or interference of the L1 on the

performance of the target language learner (L2) Selinker (1974) introduced the term inter-

lingual errorslsquo which refers to the negative influence of learnerlsquos L1 on the target language

There is a good amount of evidence concerning the influence of the L1 on L2 lexis (Alonso

2002) Many times students of EFL use their previous experience in their native language to

form strings in English For example an Indonesian learner can say In my spare time I usually

kill time washing my eyes in the shopping centerlsquo To wash my eyeslsquo is a direct translation of

Indonesian words cuci and mata (cuci = wash mata = eyes) which glosses in English as

window shoppinglsquo Indeed an inter-lingual error is a negative transfer of learnerslsquo L1mdasha

learner employs the lexical item or structure of hisher mother tongue in the target language

To achieve proficiency in English collocation is a difficult task ―Persons learning a second

language often make mistakes because they collocate words together [sic] which go together in

their first language but which do not go together in the language they are learning (Larson

1998 p 155) Notice the following examples from Indonesian and English in which the same

meaning is expressed in the two languages but different adjectives are used The form is natural

to the language in which it occurs but would not sound natural if translated literally into the other

language

Indonesian English

mature water

bitter coffee

boiled water

black coffee

return-go ticket round-trip ticket

born room delivery room

EFL students encounter difficulties both with lexical and grammatical collocations (Bahns

and Eldaw 1993 Gitsaki 1999 Alonso 2002 Li 2002 Mohmoud 2005) In terms of lexical

collocation errorsmdashthe errors which occur as a result of combining words (open-class word with

open-class word) in the target language inappropriately many Indonesian EFL students say

Indonesian students English

noble values high values

collect homework hand in homework

speak hard speak loudly

These type of errors are called collocation errorsmdashthe errors occur as a result of combining

words in the target language inappropriately

Before recommendations can be made about how to help Indonesian learners acquire English

lexical collocations it is useful to first find out the kinds of collocation errors that these learners

make The above points about negative transfer will then be revisited in the context of

implications for teaching

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Source of the Data

A sample of written work was collected from 40 Indonesian EFL students They were university

students who had been studying English as their major for three years in the English

Departmentmdashie they were one year short of completing their BA degree These students had

been studying English since junior secondary school In addition they had been taught English

by Indonesian teachers whose native language was Indonesian Neither the teachers nor the

students had much exposure to English from their environment They used Indonesian most of

the time To collect data of the negative transfer of Indonesian collocations into English the

students were asked to write a two- to three-page essay on an assigned topic They wrote their

essays at home so that they had sufficient time to write and could make use of their dictionaries

or any other resources

Identifying and categorizing negative transfers

Lexical collocation errors were gathered from the 40 essays written by the Indonesian students

Error judgments were validated by a native English-speaking informant and by reference to two

collocation dictionariesmdashthe BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English and the Oxford

Collocation Dictionary The 445 errors that were thus identified were then divided into transfer

and non transfer groups This was done by finding out direct translations of the errors Errors

having no direct equivalence in Indonesian were separated out The resulting 321 negative

transfer errorsmdash72 of lexical collocation errorsmdashwere categorized based on the six modified

BBI categories mentioned above

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

An analysis of the data shows that Indonesian students do make negative transfer errors in lexical

collocations The 321 lexical collocation errors made by the students fall into four of the six

categories ie 114 errors of category L1 verb + nounpronoun 91 errors of category L2

adjective + noun 76 errors of category L6 verb + adv and 40 errors of category L3 noun +

verb Errors of the other two categories of lexical collocationsmdashcategories L4 and L5mdashwere not

found in the studentslsquo essays

Figure 4 Number and percentage of negative transfer lexical collocations made by

Indonesian students

Negative Transfer of L1 (verb + noun)

The largest percentagemdash3551 or 114321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocations made by

the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + nounpronoun The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers from Indonesian into English accompanied by a

likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation and English gloss

Noun + Verb Adj + Noun Verb + Adv Verb + Noun

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

Certain words occur together very often others occur together occasionally and some others

are not likely to co-occur at all In English the noun conclusionlsquo can co-occur with the verb

drawlsquo as in draw a conclusionlsquo but in Indonesian one would say make a conclusionlsquo

(membuat kesimpulan) This might be understood by native speakers of English but it sounds

strange

The importance of identifying errorsmdasheg negative transfer errorsmdashmade by students of

English was pointed out by Corder (1978) He argued that systematically analyzing errors made

by language students makes it possible to determine areas that need reinforcement in teaching

However systematic and in-depth analysis of Indonesian EFL students collocation errors has not

been done yet

A number of studies on collocation errors from other languages have been done For

example Nesselhauf (2003) analysed the use of verbndashnoun collocations such as take a breaklsquo or

shake onelsquos headlsquo by advanced German-speaking learners of English in free written production

The result of his analysis is that the learnerslsquo L1 has a much stronger influence than earlier

studies had predicted Taiwo (2003) conducted research into collocation errors made by

secondary school students in Nigeria The findings were that collocation errors with the highest

percentage were those that deal with the syntagmatic pairing of incompatible itemsmdashie two

immediately co-occurring itemsmdashwhile errors with the lowest percentage were those that deal

with the juxtaposition of several itemsmdashie more than two itemsmdashwhich do not collocate Li

(2005) conducted research on Taiwanese students and found that the students made both lexical

collocation errors ie open-class word with open-class word and grammatical collocation errors

ie open-class word with closed-class word with roughly the same frequency

However some studies have found that lexical collocation errors are more frequent than

grammatical collocation errors For example Wible et al (2003) examined error types in the

essays submitted through the web-based language learning system Intelligent Web-based

Interactive Language Learning and found that lexical miscollocations are among the most

prevalent Mahmoud (2005) through a systematic and in-depth analyses of EFL learners lexical

errors reported that of 420 collocations found in 42 essays written by Arabic-speaking university

students majoring in English two thirds of these collocations (64) were incorrect and 80 of

these were lexical collocation errors Furthermore he claims that 61 of the lexical

miscollocations were negative transfer of studentslsquo native language (Arabic) Ying (2009)

attempted to identify the characteristics of collocations and determine the existence of a

relationship between collocations and coherence in writing by Chinese EFL students The result

shows that both Chinese non-English and English majors made more lexical collocation errors

ie open-class word with open-class word than grammatical collocation errors ie open-class

word with closed-class word

Two of the very few studies regarding Indonesian students that have been published were

conducted by Kweldju (1999) and Moekardi (2002) The study on collocation conducted by

Kweldju was aimed at describing the ability of the English department students of Indonesia in

collocations She used a fill-in the blanks test to obtain her data which revealed that the subjects

had a low mastery of collocations Another study was a non-research-based analysis by

Moekardi (2002) who suggested some possible problems with grammatical and lexical

collocations that Indonesian students may encounter She predicted that there are three main

problems that Indonesian EFL students may encounter with lexical collocations One would be

Noun + Verb as in make a conclusionlsquo because the students directly transfer Indonesian

collocation membuat kesimpulan (membuat = make and kesimpulan = conclusion) The second

possible problem that Indonesian students may encounter is the collocation Adjective + Noun

such as thick coffeelsquo as a direct translation of kopi kental in Indonesian (kental = thick and kopi

= coffee) The third possible problem is that of overusing the English adverb verylsquo which is

equivalent to Indonesian adverb sangat Many English adverbs that procede adjectives have the

same meaning of Indonesian adverb sangat Students may play safe by avoiding using other

adverbs For example instead of saying These companies are fiecelykeenly competitive with

each otherlsquo the students may say These companies are very competitive with each otherlsquo

The present study however attempts to analyze Indonesian EFL studentslsquo negative transfer

of Indonesian into English based on an empirical study of actual writing samples looking at

lexical collocation in particular The purpose of this study was to identify the kinds of negative

transfer of lexical collocations into English produced by Indonesian EFL students and to

recommend practical ways to improve studentslsquo collocation in English

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Definition of collocation

Collocations are described as the words that are placed or found together in a predictable

manner The words naturally co-occur and these result in regular and specific combinations

(Wouden 1997 Hill 2000 Lewis 2000 Fellbaum 2007) For example in English we do not

say bitter coffeelsquo but strong coffeelsquo but in Indonesian we say bitter coffeelsquo instead of strong

coffeelsquo Benson et al (1997) distinguish between lexical collocations such as do researchlsquo

pack of dogslsquo deeply absorbedlsquo and grammatical collocations such as interested inlsquo look

intolsquo discussion aboutlsquo suggest thatlsquo

Sinclair Jones amp Daley (2004) define lexical items as words belonging to open classes such

as noun verbs adjectives etc In this terminology lexical collocations combine two equal

lexical components (open class words) while grammatical collocations combine a lexical word

(noun verb or adjective) with a grammatical word ie one open class word and one closed class

word Benson et al (1997) describe grammatical collocation as a recurrent combination of a

dominant word followed by a grammatical word typically a preposition (abide by admiration

for adjacent to etc) Furthermore they state that grammatical collocations consist of eight

types

Type Example

G1 noun + preposition combinations blockade against apathy against

G2 noun followed by to + infinitive It was a pleasure to do it They had the

permission to do it

G3 nouns + that clause We reached an agreement that she would

represent us in court

G4 preposition + noun combinations by accident in advance

G5 adjective + preposition

combinations

fond of afraid of

G6 predicate adjectives and a

following to + infinitive

The girl is ready to go

G7 adjectives + that clause It was nice that she was able to come home

for the holidays

G8 nineteen English verb patterns

eg dative constructions verb

plus infinitive or gerund

complement patterns complex

transitive constructions

He sent the book to his brother mdash He sent

his brother the book They described the

book to her We will adhere to the plan

They enjoy watching television She heard

them leave We consider her to be very

capable

Figure 1 Types of grammatical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

These types of collocations lie beyond the scope of this paper The focus instead is on

combinations of two or more open class words

Lexical Collocation

As mentioned above lexical collocations as opposed to grammatical collocations do not contain

prepositions but consist of nouns adjectives verbs and adverbs (Benson et al 1997)

According to Benson etal lexical collocations include seven types ie

Type Example

L1 Verb (transitive)+ nounpronoun

(or prepositional phrase)

make an impression come to an

agreement compose music

L2 Verb meaning essentially

eradication andor nullification +

noun

reject an appeal lift a blockade

L3 Adjective + noun strong tea weak tea

L4 Noun + verb blood circulates bomb explodes

L5 Noun (unit) + of + noun

a bouquet of flowers a colony of bees

L6 Adverb + adjective deeply absorbed keenly aware

L7 Verb + adverb Affect deeply apologize humbly

Figure 2 Types of lexical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

In this study however category L1mdashverb (transitive) + nounpronoun (or prepositional

phrase) is not separated from category L2mdashverb meaning essentially eradication andor

nullification + noun as cited by Benson et al Instead for convenience of analysis this study

considers combination of any verb + nounpronoun as one category Thus categories of lexical

collocation used in this study consist of six types ie

Type Description

L1 Verb + nounpronoun

L2 Adjective + noun

L3 Noun + verb

L4 Noun (unit) + of + noun

L5 Adverb + adjective

L6 Verb + adverb

Figure 3 Modified lexical collocations from Benson etal 1997

In addition collocations as used in this study differ from other types of fixed

expressionslsquo such as formulaic expressions or routines conventionalized language forms and

patterned phrases For example the routine formula by the waylsquo has the rhetorical function of

introducing a point in a discussionlsquo By contrast collocations (eg conduct research take some

medicine pay a visit strong coffee severe cold bitterly regret keenly aware of strictly

accurate highly interesting water flows alarms ring a colony of bees) do not have any special

rhetorical function other than to refer

Negative Transfer

A negative transfer is an error attributed to the native language in which learnerlsquos L1 habits

(patterns systems or rules) prevents himher in some way from acquiring the patterns and rules

of the target language because the learner is carrying over the habits of the L1 (Corder 1974)

Negative transfer errors occur as a result of a negative influence or interference of the L1 on the

performance of the target language learner (L2) Selinker (1974) introduced the term inter-

lingual errorslsquo which refers to the negative influence of learnerlsquos L1 on the target language

There is a good amount of evidence concerning the influence of the L1 on L2 lexis (Alonso

2002) Many times students of EFL use their previous experience in their native language to

form strings in English For example an Indonesian learner can say In my spare time I usually

kill time washing my eyes in the shopping centerlsquo To wash my eyeslsquo is a direct translation of

Indonesian words cuci and mata (cuci = wash mata = eyes) which glosses in English as

window shoppinglsquo Indeed an inter-lingual error is a negative transfer of learnerslsquo L1mdasha

learner employs the lexical item or structure of hisher mother tongue in the target language

To achieve proficiency in English collocation is a difficult task ―Persons learning a second

language often make mistakes because they collocate words together [sic] which go together in

their first language but which do not go together in the language they are learning (Larson

1998 p 155) Notice the following examples from Indonesian and English in which the same

meaning is expressed in the two languages but different adjectives are used The form is natural

to the language in which it occurs but would not sound natural if translated literally into the other

language

Indonesian English

mature water

bitter coffee

boiled water

black coffee

return-go ticket round-trip ticket

born room delivery room

EFL students encounter difficulties both with lexical and grammatical collocations (Bahns

and Eldaw 1993 Gitsaki 1999 Alonso 2002 Li 2002 Mohmoud 2005) In terms of lexical

collocation errorsmdashthe errors which occur as a result of combining words (open-class word with

open-class word) in the target language inappropriately many Indonesian EFL students say

Indonesian students English

noble values high values

collect homework hand in homework

speak hard speak loudly

These type of errors are called collocation errorsmdashthe errors occur as a result of combining

words in the target language inappropriately

Before recommendations can be made about how to help Indonesian learners acquire English

lexical collocations it is useful to first find out the kinds of collocation errors that these learners

make The above points about negative transfer will then be revisited in the context of

implications for teaching

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Source of the Data

A sample of written work was collected from 40 Indonesian EFL students They were university

students who had been studying English as their major for three years in the English

Departmentmdashie they were one year short of completing their BA degree These students had

been studying English since junior secondary school In addition they had been taught English

by Indonesian teachers whose native language was Indonesian Neither the teachers nor the

students had much exposure to English from their environment They used Indonesian most of

the time To collect data of the negative transfer of Indonesian collocations into English the

students were asked to write a two- to three-page essay on an assigned topic They wrote their

essays at home so that they had sufficient time to write and could make use of their dictionaries

or any other resources

Identifying and categorizing negative transfers

Lexical collocation errors were gathered from the 40 essays written by the Indonesian students

Error judgments were validated by a native English-speaking informant and by reference to two

collocation dictionariesmdashthe BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English and the Oxford

Collocation Dictionary The 445 errors that were thus identified were then divided into transfer

and non transfer groups This was done by finding out direct translations of the errors Errors

having no direct equivalence in Indonesian were separated out The resulting 321 negative

transfer errorsmdash72 of lexical collocation errorsmdashwere categorized based on the six modified

BBI categories mentioned above

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

An analysis of the data shows that Indonesian students do make negative transfer errors in lexical

collocations The 321 lexical collocation errors made by the students fall into four of the six

categories ie 114 errors of category L1 verb + nounpronoun 91 errors of category L2

adjective + noun 76 errors of category L6 verb + adv and 40 errors of category L3 noun +

verb Errors of the other two categories of lexical collocationsmdashcategories L4 and L5mdashwere not

found in the studentslsquo essays

Figure 4 Number and percentage of negative transfer lexical collocations made by

Indonesian students

Negative Transfer of L1 (verb + noun)

The largest percentagemdash3551 or 114321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocations made by

the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + nounpronoun The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers from Indonesian into English accompanied by a

likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation and English gloss

Noun + Verb Adj + Noun Verb + Adv Verb + Noun

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

miscollocations were negative transfer of studentslsquo native language (Arabic) Ying (2009)

attempted to identify the characteristics of collocations and determine the existence of a

relationship between collocations and coherence in writing by Chinese EFL students The result

shows that both Chinese non-English and English majors made more lexical collocation errors

ie open-class word with open-class word than grammatical collocation errors ie open-class

word with closed-class word

Two of the very few studies regarding Indonesian students that have been published were

conducted by Kweldju (1999) and Moekardi (2002) The study on collocation conducted by

Kweldju was aimed at describing the ability of the English department students of Indonesia in

collocations She used a fill-in the blanks test to obtain her data which revealed that the subjects

had a low mastery of collocations Another study was a non-research-based analysis by

Moekardi (2002) who suggested some possible problems with grammatical and lexical

collocations that Indonesian students may encounter She predicted that there are three main

problems that Indonesian EFL students may encounter with lexical collocations One would be

Noun + Verb as in make a conclusionlsquo because the students directly transfer Indonesian

collocation membuat kesimpulan (membuat = make and kesimpulan = conclusion) The second

possible problem that Indonesian students may encounter is the collocation Adjective + Noun

such as thick coffeelsquo as a direct translation of kopi kental in Indonesian (kental = thick and kopi

= coffee) The third possible problem is that of overusing the English adverb verylsquo which is

equivalent to Indonesian adverb sangat Many English adverbs that procede adjectives have the

same meaning of Indonesian adverb sangat Students may play safe by avoiding using other

adverbs For example instead of saying These companies are fiecelykeenly competitive with

each otherlsquo the students may say These companies are very competitive with each otherlsquo

The present study however attempts to analyze Indonesian EFL studentslsquo negative transfer

of Indonesian into English based on an empirical study of actual writing samples looking at

lexical collocation in particular The purpose of this study was to identify the kinds of negative

transfer of lexical collocations into English produced by Indonesian EFL students and to

recommend practical ways to improve studentslsquo collocation in English

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Definition of collocation

Collocations are described as the words that are placed or found together in a predictable

manner The words naturally co-occur and these result in regular and specific combinations

(Wouden 1997 Hill 2000 Lewis 2000 Fellbaum 2007) For example in English we do not

say bitter coffeelsquo but strong coffeelsquo but in Indonesian we say bitter coffeelsquo instead of strong

coffeelsquo Benson et al (1997) distinguish between lexical collocations such as do researchlsquo

pack of dogslsquo deeply absorbedlsquo and grammatical collocations such as interested inlsquo look

intolsquo discussion aboutlsquo suggest thatlsquo

Sinclair Jones amp Daley (2004) define lexical items as words belonging to open classes such

as noun verbs adjectives etc In this terminology lexical collocations combine two equal

lexical components (open class words) while grammatical collocations combine a lexical word

(noun verb or adjective) with a grammatical word ie one open class word and one closed class

word Benson et al (1997) describe grammatical collocation as a recurrent combination of a

dominant word followed by a grammatical word typically a preposition (abide by admiration

for adjacent to etc) Furthermore they state that grammatical collocations consist of eight

types

Type Example

G1 noun + preposition combinations blockade against apathy against

G2 noun followed by to + infinitive It was a pleasure to do it They had the

permission to do it

G3 nouns + that clause We reached an agreement that she would

represent us in court

G4 preposition + noun combinations by accident in advance

G5 adjective + preposition

combinations

fond of afraid of

G6 predicate adjectives and a

following to + infinitive

The girl is ready to go

G7 adjectives + that clause It was nice that she was able to come home

for the holidays

G8 nineteen English verb patterns

eg dative constructions verb

plus infinitive or gerund

complement patterns complex

transitive constructions

He sent the book to his brother mdash He sent

his brother the book They described the

book to her We will adhere to the plan

They enjoy watching television She heard

them leave We consider her to be very

capable

Figure 1 Types of grammatical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

These types of collocations lie beyond the scope of this paper The focus instead is on

combinations of two or more open class words

Lexical Collocation

As mentioned above lexical collocations as opposed to grammatical collocations do not contain

prepositions but consist of nouns adjectives verbs and adverbs (Benson et al 1997)

According to Benson etal lexical collocations include seven types ie

Type Example

L1 Verb (transitive)+ nounpronoun

(or prepositional phrase)

make an impression come to an

agreement compose music

L2 Verb meaning essentially

eradication andor nullification +

noun

reject an appeal lift a blockade

L3 Adjective + noun strong tea weak tea

L4 Noun + verb blood circulates bomb explodes

L5 Noun (unit) + of + noun

a bouquet of flowers a colony of bees

L6 Adverb + adjective deeply absorbed keenly aware

L7 Verb + adverb Affect deeply apologize humbly

Figure 2 Types of lexical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

In this study however category L1mdashverb (transitive) + nounpronoun (or prepositional

phrase) is not separated from category L2mdashverb meaning essentially eradication andor

nullification + noun as cited by Benson et al Instead for convenience of analysis this study

considers combination of any verb + nounpronoun as one category Thus categories of lexical

collocation used in this study consist of six types ie

Type Description

L1 Verb + nounpronoun

L2 Adjective + noun

L3 Noun + verb

L4 Noun (unit) + of + noun

L5 Adverb + adjective

L6 Verb + adverb

Figure 3 Modified lexical collocations from Benson etal 1997

In addition collocations as used in this study differ from other types of fixed

expressionslsquo such as formulaic expressions or routines conventionalized language forms and

patterned phrases For example the routine formula by the waylsquo has the rhetorical function of

introducing a point in a discussionlsquo By contrast collocations (eg conduct research take some

medicine pay a visit strong coffee severe cold bitterly regret keenly aware of strictly

accurate highly interesting water flows alarms ring a colony of bees) do not have any special

rhetorical function other than to refer

Negative Transfer

A negative transfer is an error attributed to the native language in which learnerlsquos L1 habits

(patterns systems or rules) prevents himher in some way from acquiring the patterns and rules

of the target language because the learner is carrying over the habits of the L1 (Corder 1974)

Negative transfer errors occur as a result of a negative influence or interference of the L1 on the

performance of the target language learner (L2) Selinker (1974) introduced the term inter-

lingual errorslsquo which refers to the negative influence of learnerlsquos L1 on the target language

There is a good amount of evidence concerning the influence of the L1 on L2 lexis (Alonso

2002) Many times students of EFL use their previous experience in their native language to

form strings in English For example an Indonesian learner can say In my spare time I usually

kill time washing my eyes in the shopping centerlsquo To wash my eyeslsquo is a direct translation of

Indonesian words cuci and mata (cuci = wash mata = eyes) which glosses in English as

window shoppinglsquo Indeed an inter-lingual error is a negative transfer of learnerslsquo L1mdasha

learner employs the lexical item or structure of hisher mother tongue in the target language

To achieve proficiency in English collocation is a difficult task ―Persons learning a second

language often make mistakes because they collocate words together [sic] which go together in

their first language but which do not go together in the language they are learning (Larson

1998 p 155) Notice the following examples from Indonesian and English in which the same

meaning is expressed in the two languages but different adjectives are used The form is natural

to the language in which it occurs but would not sound natural if translated literally into the other

language

Indonesian English

mature water

bitter coffee

boiled water

black coffee

return-go ticket round-trip ticket

born room delivery room

EFL students encounter difficulties both with lexical and grammatical collocations (Bahns

and Eldaw 1993 Gitsaki 1999 Alonso 2002 Li 2002 Mohmoud 2005) In terms of lexical

collocation errorsmdashthe errors which occur as a result of combining words (open-class word with

open-class word) in the target language inappropriately many Indonesian EFL students say

Indonesian students English

noble values high values

collect homework hand in homework

speak hard speak loudly

These type of errors are called collocation errorsmdashthe errors occur as a result of combining

words in the target language inappropriately

Before recommendations can be made about how to help Indonesian learners acquire English

lexical collocations it is useful to first find out the kinds of collocation errors that these learners

make The above points about negative transfer will then be revisited in the context of

implications for teaching

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Source of the Data

A sample of written work was collected from 40 Indonesian EFL students They were university

students who had been studying English as their major for three years in the English

Departmentmdashie they were one year short of completing their BA degree These students had

been studying English since junior secondary school In addition they had been taught English

by Indonesian teachers whose native language was Indonesian Neither the teachers nor the

students had much exposure to English from their environment They used Indonesian most of

the time To collect data of the negative transfer of Indonesian collocations into English the

students were asked to write a two- to three-page essay on an assigned topic They wrote their

essays at home so that they had sufficient time to write and could make use of their dictionaries

or any other resources

Identifying and categorizing negative transfers

Lexical collocation errors were gathered from the 40 essays written by the Indonesian students

Error judgments were validated by a native English-speaking informant and by reference to two

collocation dictionariesmdashthe BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English and the Oxford

Collocation Dictionary The 445 errors that were thus identified were then divided into transfer

and non transfer groups This was done by finding out direct translations of the errors Errors

having no direct equivalence in Indonesian were separated out The resulting 321 negative

transfer errorsmdash72 of lexical collocation errorsmdashwere categorized based on the six modified

BBI categories mentioned above

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

An analysis of the data shows that Indonesian students do make negative transfer errors in lexical

collocations The 321 lexical collocation errors made by the students fall into four of the six

categories ie 114 errors of category L1 verb + nounpronoun 91 errors of category L2

adjective + noun 76 errors of category L6 verb + adv and 40 errors of category L3 noun +

verb Errors of the other two categories of lexical collocationsmdashcategories L4 and L5mdashwere not

found in the studentslsquo essays

Figure 4 Number and percentage of negative transfer lexical collocations made by

Indonesian students

Negative Transfer of L1 (verb + noun)

The largest percentagemdash3551 or 114321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocations made by

the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + nounpronoun The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers from Indonesian into English accompanied by a

likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation and English gloss

Noun + Verb Adj + Noun Verb + Adv Verb + Noun

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Definition of collocation

Collocations are described as the words that are placed or found together in a predictable

manner The words naturally co-occur and these result in regular and specific combinations

(Wouden 1997 Hill 2000 Lewis 2000 Fellbaum 2007) For example in English we do not

say bitter coffeelsquo but strong coffeelsquo but in Indonesian we say bitter coffeelsquo instead of strong

coffeelsquo Benson et al (1997) distinguish between lexical collocations such as do researchlsquo

pack of dogslsquo deeply absorbedlsquo and grammatical collocations such as interested inlsquo look

intolsquo discussion aboutlsquo suggest thatlsquo

Sinclair Jones amp Daley (2004) define lexical items as words belonging to open classes such

as noun verbs adjectives etc In this terminology lexical collocations combine two equal

lexical components (open class words) while grammatical collocations combine a lexical word

(noun verb or adjective) with a grammatical word ie one open class word and one closed class

word Benson et al (1997) describe grammatical collocation as a recurrent combination of a

dominant word followed by a grammatical word typically a preposition (abide by admiration

for adjacent to etc) Furthermore they state that grammatical collocations consist of eight

types

Type Example

G1 noun + preposition combinations blockade against apathy against

G2 noun followed by to + infinitive It was a pleasure to do it They had the

permission to do it

G3 nouns + that clause We reached an agreement that she would

represent us in court

G4 preposition + noun combinations by accident in advance

G5 adjective + preposition

combinations

fond of afraid of

G6 predicate adjectives and a

following to + infinitive

The girl is ready to go

G7 adjectives + that clause It was nice that she was able to come home

for the holidays

G8 nineteen English verb patterns

eg dative constructions verb

plus infinitive or gerund

complement patterns complex

transitive constructions

He sent the book to his brother mdash He sent

his brother the book They described the

book to her We will adhere to the plan

They enjoy watching television She heard

them leave We consider her to be very

capable

Figure 1 Types of grammatical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

These types of collocations lie beyond the scope of this paper The focus instead is on

combinations of two or more open class words

Lexical Collocation

As mentioned above lexical collocations as opposed to grammatical collocations do not contain

prepositions but consist of nouns adjectives verbs and adverbs (Benson et al 1997)

According to Benson etal lexical collocations include seven types ie

Type Example

L1 Verb (transitive)+ nounpronoun

(or prepositional phrase)

make an impression come to an

agreement compose music

L2 Verb meaning essentially

eradication andor nullification +

noun

reject an appeal lift a blockade

L3 Adjective + noun strong tea weak tea

L4 Noun + verb blood circulates bomb explodes

L5 Noun (unit) + of + noun

a bouquet of flowers a colony of bees

L6 Adverb + adjective deeply absorbed keenly aware

L7 Verb + adverb Affect deeply apologize humbly

Figure 2 Types of lexical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

In this study however category L1mdashverb (transitive) + nounpronoun (or prepositional

phrase) is not separated from category L2mdashverb meaning essentially eradication andor

nullification + noun as cited by Benson et al Instead for convenience of analysis this study

considers combination of any verb + nounpronoun as one category Thus categories of lexical

collocation used in this study consist of six types ie

Type Description

L1 Verb + nounpronoun

L2 Adjective + noun

L3 Noun + verb

L4 Noun (unit) + of + noun

L5 Adverb + adjective

L6 Verb + adverb

Figure 3 Modified lexical collocations from Benson etal 1997

In addition collocations as used in this study differ from other types of fixed

expressionslsquo such as formulaic expressions or routines conventionalized language forms and

patterned phrases For example the routine formula by the waylsquo has the rhetorical function of

introducing a point in a discussionlsquo By contrast collocations (eg conduct research take some

medicine pay a visit strong coffee severe cold bitterly regret keenly aware of strictly

accurate highly interesting water flows alarms ring a colony of bees) do not have any special

rhetorical function other than to refer

Negative Transfer

A negative transfer is an error attributed to the native language in which learnerlsquos L1 habits

(patterns systems or rules) prevents himher in some way from acquiring the patterns and rules

of the target language because the learner is carrying over the habits of the L1 (Corder 1974)

Negative transfer errors occur as a result of a negative influence or interference of the L1 on the

performance of the target language learner (L2) Selinker (1974) introduced the term inter-

lingual errorslsquo which refers to the negative influence of learnerlsquos L1 on the target language

There is a good amount of evidence concerning the influence of the L1 on L2 lexis (Alonso

2002) Many times students of EFL use their previous experience in their native language to

form strings in English For example an Indonesian learner can say In my spare time I usually

kill time washing my eyes in the shopping centerlsquo To wash my eyeslsquo is a direct translation of

Indonesian words cuci and mata (cuci = wash mata = eyes) which glosses in English as

window shoppinglsquo Indeed an inter-lingual error is a negative transfer of learnerslsquo L1mdasha

learner employs the lexical item or structure of hisher mother tongue in the target language

To achieve proficiency in English collocation is a difficult task ―Persons learning a second

language often make mistakes because they collocate words together [sic] which go together in

their first language but which do not go together in the language they are learning (Larson

1998 p 155) Notice the following examples from Indonesian and English in which the same

meaning is expressed in the two languages but different adjectives are used The form is natural

to the language in which it occurs but would not sound natural if translated literally into the other

language

Indonesian English

mature water

bitter coffee

boiled water

black coffee

return-go ticket round-trip ticket

born room delivery room

EFL students encounter difficulties both with lexical and grammatical collocations (Bahns

and Eldaw 1993 Gitsaki 1999 Alonso 2002 Li 2002 Mohmoud 2005) In terms of lexical

collocation errorsmdashthe errors which occur as a result of combining words (open-class word with

open-class word) in the target language inappropriately many Indonesian EFL students say

Indonesian students English

noble values high values

collect homework hand in homework

speak hard speak loudly

These type of errors are called collocation errorsmdashthe errors occur as a result of combining

words in the target language inappropriately

Before recommendations can be made about how to help Indonesian learners acquire English

lexical collocations it is useful to first find out the kinds of collocation errors that these learners

make The above points about negative transfer will then be revisited in the context of

implications for teaching

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Source of the Data

A sample of written work was collected from 40 Indonesian EFL students They were university

students who had been studying English as their major for three years in the English

Departmentmdashie they were one year short of completing their BA degree These students had

been studying English since junior secondary school In addition they had been taught English

by Indonesian teachers whose native language was Indonesian Neither the teachers nor the

students had much exposure to English from their environment They used Indonesian most of

the time To collect data of the negative transfer of Indonesian collocations into English the

students were asked to write a two- to three-page essay on an assigned topic They wrote their

essays at home so that they had sufficient time to write and could make use of their dictionaries

or any other resources

Identifying and categorizing negative transfers

Lexical collocation errors were gathered from the 40 essays written by the Indonesian students

Error judgments were validated by a native English-speaking informant and by reference to two

collocation dictionariesmdashthe BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English and the Oxford

Collocation Dictionary The 445 errors that were thus identified were then divided into transfer

and non transfer groups This was done by finding out direct translations of the errors Errors

having no direct equivalence in Indonesian were separated out The resulting 321 negative

transfer errorsmdash72 of lexical collocation errorsmdashwere categorized based on the six modified

BBI categories mentioned above

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

An analysis of the data shows that Indonesian students do make negative transfer errors in lexical

collocations The 321 lexical collocation errors made by the students fall into four of the six

categories ie 114 errors of category L1 verb + nounpronoun 91 errors of category L2

adjective + noun 76 errors of category L6 verb + adv and 40 errors of category L3 noun +

verb Errors of the other two categories of lexical collocationsmdashcategories L4 and L5mdashwere not

found in the studentslsquo essays

Figure 4 Number and percentage of negative transfer lexical collocations made by

Indonesian students

Negative Transfer of L1 (verb + noun)

The largest percentagemdash3551 or 114321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocations made by

the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + nounpronoun The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers from Indonesian into English accompanied by a

likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation and English gloss

Noun + Verb Adj + Noun Verb + Adv Verb + Noun

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

G7 adjectives + that clause It was nice that she was able to come home

for the holidays

G8 nineteen English verb patterns

eg dative constructions verb

plus infinitive or gerund

complement patterns complex

transitive constructions

He sent the book to his brother mdash He sent

his brother the book They described the

book to her We will adhere to the plan

They enjoy watching television She heard

them leave We consider her to be very

capable

Figure 1 Types of grammatical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

These types of collocations lie beyond the scope of this paper The focus instead is on

combinations of two or more open class words

Lexical Collocation

As mentioned above lexical collocations as opposed to grammatical collocations do not contain

prepositions but consist of nouns adjectives verbs and adverbs (Benson et al 1997)

According to Benson etal lexical collocations include seven types ie

Type Example

L1 Verb (transitive)+ nounpronoun

(or prepositional phrase)

make an impression come to an

agreement compose music

L2 Verb meaning essentially

eradication andor nullification +

noun

reject an appeal lift a blockade

L3 Adjective + noun strong tea weak tea

L4 Noun + verb blood circulates bomb explodes

L5 Noun (unit) + of + noun

a bouquet of flowers a colony of bees

L6 Adverb + adjective deeply absorbed keenly aware

L7 Verb + adverb Affect deeply apologize humbly

Figure 2 Types of lexical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

In this study however category L1mdashverb (transitive) + nounpronoun (or prepositional

phrase) is not separated from category L2mdashverb meaning essentially eradication andor

nullification + noun as cited by Benson et al Instead for convenience of analysis this study

considers combination of any verb + nounpronoun as one category Thus categories of lexical

collocation used in this study consist of six types ie

Type Description

L1 Verb + nounpronoun

L2 Adjective + noun

L3 Noun + verb

L4 Noun (unit) + of + noun

L5 Adverb + adjective

L6 Verb + adverb

Figure 3 Modified lexical collocations from Benson etal 1997

In addition collocations as used in this study differ from other types of fixed

expressionslsquo such as formulaic expressions or routines conventionalized language forms and

patterned phrases For example the routine formula by the waylsquo has the rhetorical function of

introducing a point in a discussionlsquo By contrast collocations (eg conduct research take some

medicine pay a visit strong coffee severe cold bitterly regret keenly aware of strictly

accurate highly interesting water flows alarms ring a colony of bees) do not have any special

rhetorical function other than to refer

Negative Transfer

A negative transfer is an error attributed to the native language in which learnerlsquos L1 habits

(patterns systems or rules) prevents himher in some way from acquiring the patterns and rules

of the target language because the learner is carrying over the habits of the L1 (Corder 1974)

Negative transfer errors occur as a result of a negative influence or interference of the L1 on the

performance of the target language learner (L2) Selinker (1974) introduced the term inter-

lingual errorslsquo which refers to the negative influence of learnerlsquos L1 on the target language

There is a good amount of evidence concerning the influence of the L1 on L2 lexis (Alonso

2002) Many times students of EFL use their previous experience in their native language to

form strings in English For example an Indonesian learner can say In my spare time I usually

kill time washing my eyes in the shopping centerlsquo To wash my eyeslsquo is a direct translation of

Indonesian words cuci and mata (cuci = wash mata = eyes) which glosses in English as

window shoppinglsquo Indeed an inter-lingual error is a negative transfer of learnerslsquo L1mdasha

learner employs the lexical item or structure of hisher mother tongue in the target language

To achieve proficiency in English collocation is a difficult task ―Persons learning a second

language often make mistakes because they collocate words together [sic] which go together in

their first language but which do not go together in the language they are learning (Larson

1998 p 155) Notice the following examples from Indonesian and English in which the same

meaning is expressed in the two languages but different adjectives are used The form is natural

to the language in which it occurs but would not sound natural if translated literally into the other

language

Indonesian English

mature water

bitter coffee

boiled water

black coffee

return-go ticket round-trip ticket

born room delivery room

EFL students encounter difficulties both with lexical and grammatical collocations (Bahns

and Eldaw 1993 Gitsaki 1999 Alonso 2002 Li 2002 Mohmoud 2005) In terms of lexical

collocation errorsmdashthe errors which occur as a result of combining words (open-class word with

open-class word) in the target language inappropriately many Indonesian EFL students say

Indonesian students English

noble values high values

collect homework hand in homework

speak hard speak loudly

These type of errors are called collocation errorsmdashthe errors occur as a result of combining

words in the target language inappropriately

Before recommendations can be made about how to help Indonesian learners acquire English

lexical collocations it is useful to first find out the kinds of collocation errors that these learners

make The above points about negative transfer will then be revisited in the context of

implications for teaching

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Source of the Data

A sample of written work was collected from 40 Indonesian EFL students They were university

students who had been studying English as their major for three years in the English

Departmentmdashie they were one year short of completing their BA degree These students had

been studying English since junior secondary school In addition they had been taught English

by Indonesian teachers whose native language was Indonesian Neither the teachers nor the

students had much exposure to English from their environment They used Indonesian most of

the time To collect data of the negative transfer of Indonesian collocations into English the

students were asked to write a two- to three-page essay on an assigned topic They wrote their

essays at home so that they had sufficient time to write and could make use of their dictionaries

or any other resources

Identifying and categorizing negative transfers

Lexical collocation errors were gathered from the 40 essays written by the Indonesian students

Error judgments were validated by a native English-speaking informant and by reference to two

collocation dictionariesmdashthe BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English and the Oxford

Collocation Dictionary The 445 errors that were thus identified were then divided into transfer

and non transfer groups This was done by finding out direct translations of the errors Errors

having no direct equivalence in Indonesian were separated out The resulting 321 negative

transfer errorsmdash72 of lexical collocation errorsmdashwere categorized based on the six modified

BBI categories mentioned above

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

An analysis of the data shows that Indonesian students do make negative transfer errors in lexical

collocations The 321 lexical collocation errors made by the students fall into four of the six

categories ie 114 errors of category L1 verb + nounpronoun 91 errors of category L2

adjective + noun 76 errors of category L6 verb + adv and 40 errors of category L3 noun +

verb Errors of the other two categories of lexical collocationsmdashcategories L4 and L5mdashwere not

found in the studentslsquo essays

Figure 4 Number and percentage of negative transfer lexical collocations made by

Indonesian students

Negative Transfer of L1 (verb + noun)

The largest percentagemdash3551 or 114321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocations made by

the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + nounpronoun The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers from Indonesian into English accompanied by a

likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation and English gloss

Noun + Verb Adj + Noun Verb + Adv Verb + Noun

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

Figure 2 Types of lexical collocations adopted from Benson etal 1997

In this study however category L1mdashverb (transitive) + nounpronoun (or prepositional

phrase) is not separated from category L2mdashverb meaning essentially eradication andor

nullification + noun as cited by Benson et al Instead for convenience of analysis this study

considers combination of any verb + nounpronoun as one category Thus categories of lexical

collocation used in this study consist of six types ie

Type Description

L1 Verb + nounpronoun

L2 Adjective + noun

L3 Noun + verb

L4 Noun (unit) + of + noun

L5 Adverb + adjective

L6 Verb + adverb

Figure 3 Modified lexical collocations from Benson etal 1997

In addition collocations as used in this study differ from other types of fixed

expressionslsquo such as formulaic expressions or routines conventionalized language forms and

patterned phrases For example the routine formula by the waylsquo has the rhetorical function of

introducing a point in a discussionlsquo By contrast collocations (eg conduct research take some

medicine pay a visit strong coffee severe cold bitterly regret keenly aware of strictly

accurate highly interesting water flows alarms ring a colony of bees) do not have any special

rhetorical function other than to refer

Negative Transfer

A negative transfer is an error attributed to the native language in which learnerlsquos L1 habits

(patterns systems or rules) prevents himher in some way from acquiring the patterns and rules

of the target language because the learner is carrying over the habits of the L1 (Corder 1974)

Negative transfer errors occur as a result of a negative influence or interference of the L1 on the

performance of the target language learner (L2) Selinker (1974) introduced the term inter-

lingual errorslsquo which refers to the negative influence of learnerlsquos L1 on the target language

There is a good amount of evidence concerning the influence of the L1 on L2 lexis (Alonso

2002) Many times students of EFL use their previous experience in their native language to

form strings in English For example an Indonesian learner can say In my spare time I usually

kill time washing my eyes in the shopping centerlsquo To wash my eyeslsquo is a direct translation of

Indonesian words cuci and mata (cuci = wash mata = eyes) which glosses in English as

window shoppinglsquo Indeed an inter-lingual error is a negative transfer of learnerslsquo L1mdasha

learner employs the lexical item or structure of hisher mother tongue in the target language

To achieve proficiency in English collocation is a difficult task ―Persons learning a second

language often make mistakes because they collocate words together [sic] which go together in

their first language but which do not go together in the language they are learning (Larson

1998 p 155) Notice the following examples from Indonesian and English in which the same

meaning is expressed in the two languages but different adjectives are used The form is natural

to the language in which it occurs but would not sound natural if translated literally into the other

language

Indonesian English

mature water

bitter coffee

boiled water

black coffee

return-go ticket round-trip ticket

born room delivery room

EFL students encounter difficulties both with lexical and grammatical collocations (Bahns

and Eldaw 1993 Gitsaki 1999 Alonso 2002 Li 2002 Mohmoud 2005) In terms of lexical

collocation errorsmdashthe errors which occur as a result of combining words (open-class word with

open-class word) in the target language inappropriately many Indonesian EFL students say

Indonesian students English

noble values high values

collect homework hand in homework

speak hard speak loudly

These type of errors are called collocation errorsmdashthe errors occur as a result of combining

words in the target language inappropriately

Before recommendations can be made about how to help Indonesian learners acquire English

lexical collocations it is useful to first find out the kinds of collocation errors that these learners

make The above points about negative transfer will then be revisited in the context of

implications for teaching

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Source of the Data

A sample of written work was collected from 40 Indonesian EFL students They were university

students who had been studying English as their major for three years in the English

Departmentmdashie they were one year short of completing their BA degree These students had

been studying English since junior secondary school In addition they had been taught English

by Indonesian teachers whose native language was Indonesian Neither the teachers nor the

students had much exposure to English from their environment They used Indonesian most of

the time To collect data of the negative transfer of Indonesian collocations into English the

students were asked to write a two- to three-page essay on an assigned topic They wrote their

essays at home so that they had sufficient time to write and could make use of their dictionaries

or any other resources

Identifying and categorizing negative transfers

Lexical collocation errors were gathered from the 40 essays written by the Indonesian students

Error judgments were validated by a native English-speaking informant and by reference to two

collocation dictionariesmdashthe BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English and the Oxford

Collocation Dictionary The 445 errors that were thus identified were then divided into transfer

and non transfer groups This was done by finding out direct translations of the errors Errors

having no direct equivalence in Indonesian were separated out The resulting 321 negative

transfer errorsmdash72 of lexical collocation errorsmdashwere categorized based on the six modified

BBI categories mentioned above

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

An analysis of the data shows that Indonesian students do make negative transfer errors in lexical

collocations The 321 lexical collocation errors made by the students fall into four of the six

categories ie 114 errors of category L1 verb + nounpronoun 91 errors of category L2

adjective + noun 76 errors of category L6 verb + adv and 40 errors of category L3 noun +

verb Errors of the other two categories of lexical collocationsmdashcategories L4 and L5mdashwere not

found in the studentslsquo essays

Figure 4 Number and percentage of negative transfer lexical collocations made by

Indonesian students

Negative Transfer of L1 (verb + noun)

The largest percentagemdash3551 or 114321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocations made by

the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + nounpronoun The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers from Indonesian into English accompanied by a

likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation and English gloss

Noun + Verb Adj + Noun Verb + Adv Verb + Noun

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

lingual errorslsquo which refers to the negative influence of learnerlsquos L1 on the target language

There is a good amount of evidence concerning the influence of the L1 on L2 lexis (Alonso

2002) Many times students of EFL use their previous experience in their native language to

form strings in English For example an Indonesian learner can say In my spare time I usually

kill time washing my eyes in the shopping centerlsquo To wash my eyeslsquo is a direct translation of

Indonesian words cuci and mata (cuci = wash mata = eyes) which glosses in English as

window shoppinglsquo Indeed an inter-lingual error is a negative transfer of learnerslsquo L1mdasha

learner employs the lexical item or structure of hisher mother tongue in the target language

To achieve proficiency in English collocation is a difficult task ―Persons learning a second

language often make mistakes because they collocate words together [sic] which go together in

their first language but which do not go together in the language they are learning (Larson

1998 p 155) Notice the following examples from Indonesian and English in which the same

meaning is expressed in the two languages but different adjectives are used The form is natural

to the language in which it occurs but would not sound natural if translated literally into the other

language

Indonesian English

mature water

bitter coffee

boiled water

black coffee

return-go ticket round-trip ticket

born room delivery room

EFL students encounter difficulties both with lexical and grammatical collocations (Bahns

and Eldaw 1993 Gitsaki 1999 Alonso 2002 Li 2002 Mohmoud 2005) In terms of lexical

collocation errorsmdashthe errors which occur as a result of combining words (open-class word with

open-class word) in the target language inappropriately many Indonesian EFL students say

Indonesian students English

noble values high values

collect homework hand in homework

speak hard speak loudly

These type of errors are called collocation errorsmdashthe errors occur as a result of combining

words in the target language inappropriately

Before recommendations can be made about how to help Indonesian learners acquire English

lexical collocations it is useful to first find out the kinds of collocation errors that these learners

make The above points about negative transfer will then be revisited in the context of

implications for teaching

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Source of the Data

A sample of written work was collected from 40 Indonesian EFL students They were university

students who had been studying English as their major for three years in the English

Departmentmdashie they were one year short of completing their BA degree These students had

been studying English since junior secondary school In addition they had been taught English

by Indonesian teachers whose native language was Indonesian Neither the teachers nor the

students had much exposure to English from their environment They used Indonesian most of

the time To collect data of the negative transfer of Indonesian collocations into English the

students were asked to write a two- to three-page essay on an assigned topic They wrote their

essays at home so that they had sufficient time to write and could make use of their dictionaries

or any other resources

Identifying and categorizing negative transfers

Lexical collocation errors were gathered from the 40 essays written by the Indonesian students

Error judgments were validated by a native English-speaking informant and by reference to two

collocation dictionariesmdashthe BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English and the Oxford

Collocation Dictionary The 445 errors that were thus identified were then divided into transfer

and non transfer groups This was done by finding out direct translations of the errors Errors

having no direct equivalence in Indonesian were separated out The resulting 321 negative

transfer errorsmdash72 of lexical collocation errorsmdashwere categorized based on the six modified

BBI categories mentioned above

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

An analysis of the data shows that Indonesian students do make negative transfer errors in lexical

collocations The 321 lexical collocation errors made by the students fall into four of the six

categories ie 114 errors of category L1 verb + nounpronoun 91 errors of category L2

adjective + noun 76 errors of category L6 verb + adv and 40 errors of category L3 noun +

verb Errors of the other two categories of lexical collocationsmdashcategories L4 and L5mdashwere not

found in the studentslsquo essays

Figure 4 Number and percentage of negative transfer lexical collocations made by

Indonesian students

Negative Transfer of L1 (verb + noun)

The largest percentagemdash3551 or 114321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocations made by

the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + nounpronoun The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers from Indonesian into English accompanied by a

likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation and English gloss

Noun + Verb Adj + Noun Verb + Adv Verb + Noun

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

Indonesian students English

noble values high values

collect homework hand in homework

speak hard speak loudly

These type of errors are called collocation errorsmdashthe errors occur as a result of combining

words in the target language inappropriately

Before recommendations can be made about how to help Indonesian learners acquire English

lexical collocations it is useful to first find out the kinds of collocation errors that these learners

make The above points about negative transfer will then be revisited in the context of

implications for teaching

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Source of the Data

A sample of written work was collected from 40 Indonesian EFL students They were university

students who had been studying English as their major for three years in the English

Departmentmdashie they were one year short of completing their BA degree These students had

been studying English since junior secondary school In addition they had been taught English

by Indonesian teachers whose native language was Indonesian Neither the teachers nor the

students had much exposure to English from their environment They used Indonesian most of

the time To collect data of the negative transfer of Indonesian collocations into English the

students were asked to write a two- to three-page essay on an assigned topic They wrote their

essays at home so that they had sufficient time to write and could make use of their dictionaries

or any other resources

Identifying and categorizing negative transfers

Lexical collocation errors were gathered from the 40 essays written by the Indonesian students

Error judgments were validated by a native English-speaking informant and by reference to two

collocation dictionariesmdashthe BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English and the Oxford

Collocation Dictionary The 445 errors that were thus identified were then divided into transfer

and non transfer groups This was done by finding out direct translations of the errors Errors

having no direct equivalence in Indonesian were separated out The resulting 321 negative

transfer errorsmdash72 of lexical collocation errorsmdashwere categorized based on the six modified

BBI categories mentioned above

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

An analysis of the data shows that Indonesian students do make negative transfer errors in lexical

collocations The 321 lexical collocation errors made by the students fall into four of the six

categories ie 114 errors of category L1 verb + nounpronoun 91 errors of category L2

adjective + noun 76 errors of category L6 verb + adv and 40 errors of category L3 noun +

verb Errors of the other two categories of lexical collocationsmdashcategories L4 and L5mdashwere not

found in the studentslsquo essays

Figure 4 Number and percentage of negative transfer lexical collocations made by

Indonesian students

Negative Transfer of L1 (verb + noun)

The largest percentagemdash3551 or 114321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocations made by

the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + nounpronoun The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers from Indonesian into English accompanied by a

likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation and English gloss

Noun + Verb Adj + Noun Verb + Adv Verb + Noun

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

and non transfer groups This was done by finding out direct translations of the errors Errors

having no direct equivalence in Indonesian were separated out The resulting 321 negative

transfer errorsmdash72 of lexical collocation errorsmdashwere categorized based on the six modified

BBI categories mentioned above

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

An analysis of the data shows that Indonesian students do make negative transfer errors in lexical

collocations The 321 lexical collocation errors made by the students fall into four of the six

categories ie 114 errors of category L1 verb + nounpronoun 91 errors of category L2

adjective + noun 76 errors of category L6 verb + adv and 40 errors of category L3 noun +

verb Errors of the other two categories of lexical collocationsmdashcategories L4 and L5mdashwere not

found in the studentslsquo essays

Figure 4 Number and percentage of negative transfer lexical collocations made by

Indonesian students

Negative Transfer of L1 (verb + noun)

The largest percentagemdash3551 or 114321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocations made by

the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + nounpronoun The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers from Indonesian into English accompanied by a

likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation and English gloss

Noun + Verb Adj + Noun Verb + Adv Verb + Noun

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

(1) follow + test I could not decide whether I should follow the test or go homelsquo

mengikuti tes

follow test

take + test I could not decide whether I should take the test or go homelsquo

(2) invite + attention The fireworks invited my attention with the sparkslsquo

Mengundang Perhatian

Invite Attention

draw + attention The fireworks drew my attention with the sparkslsquo

(3) take out + money I have to take out a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Mengeluarkan uang

take out money

spend + money I had to spend a lot of money to buy some foodlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations in Englishmdashnegative

transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the students

directly render Indonesian collocations mengikuti tes into English follow testlsquomdashmengikuti

(follow) and tes (test) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation

mengundang perhatian into English invite attentionlsquomdash mengundang (invite) and perhatian

(atttention) and in (3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they

directly transfer mengeluarkan uang into take out moneylsquomdashmengeluarkan (take out) and uang

(money)

Negative Transfer of L2 (adjective + noun)

The second largest percentagemdash2835 or 91321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation

errors made by the Indonesian university students are errors of adjective + noun The following

are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers of adjective + noun collocations from Indonesian

into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word

translation and English gloss

(1) heavy + moment I felt that it was the heaviest moment in my lifelsquo

saat berat

moment heavy

bad + moment I felt that it was the worst moment in my lifelsquo

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

(2) great + traffic jam We found a great traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa

Jam traffic great

heavy + traffic jamlsquo We found a heavy traffic jam on our way to Puncaklsquo

(3) empty + day I knew in my heart that I needed these empty days with nothing to

dolsquo

hari-hari kosong

days empty

free + days I knew in my heart that I needed these free days with nothing to dolsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of adjective + noun in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations masa terberat into English heaviest

momentlsquomdashmasa (moment) and terberat (the heaviest) In example (2) the students directly

render Indonesian collocation kemacetan lalu lintas luar biasa into English great traffic jamlsquomdash

luar biasa (great) and kemacetan lalu lintas (traffic jam) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer hari-hari kosong into empty

dayslsquomdashhari-hari (days) and kosong (empty)

Negative Transfer of L6 (Verb + adverb)

The fourth largest percentagemdash2368 or 76321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of verb + adverb The following are

examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers verb + adverb from Indonesian into English

accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with word-for-word translation

and English gloss

(1) make + maturely All plans have been made maturelylsquo

buat dengan- matang

make ADV-mature

make + properly All plans have been made properlylsquo

(2) longly + awaited I longly awaited for his replylsquo

lama menunggu

ADV-long awaited

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

wait + a long time I waited a long time for his replylsquo

(3) leak + hard The gas was leaking out hardlsquo

bocor keras

leak out ADV-hard

leak + fast The gas was leaking out fastlsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of verb + adverb in

Englishmdashnegative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example

(1) the students directly render Indonesian collocations dibuat dengan matang into English

made maturelylsquomdashrencana (plan) dibuat (make-PP) and dengan matang (ADV-mature) In

example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation lama menunggu into English

longly awaitedlsquomdashlama (ADV-long) and menunggu (await) and in (3) the students use the same

strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer bocor keras into leak hardlsquomdash

bocor (leak out) and keras (ADV-hard)

Negative Transfer of L3 (noun + verb)

The third largest percentagemdash1246 or 40321mdashof negative transfer lexical collocation errors

made by the Indonesian university students are errors of noun + verb naming an action The

following are examples of the studentslsquo negative transfers noun + verb naming an action from

Indonesian into English accompanied by a likely common representation in Indonesian with

word-for-word translation and English gloss

(1) vehicles + skitter Vehicles could not skitter fastlsquo

kendaraan bergerak cepat

vehicles skitter ADV-fast

vehicles + move vehicles could not move fastlsquo

(2) fireworks + give light to Fireworks gave light to the skylsquo

kembang api memberi cahaya kepada

Firework give light to

fireworks + light up Fireworks lit up the skylsquo

(3) TV station + display Some TV stations displayed programs which have never

been displayed beforelsquo

stasiun TV menayangkan

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

TV-station display

TV stations + showed Some TV stations showed programs which have never been

shown beforelsquo

Examples (1)-(3) represent Indonesian studentslsquo miscollocations of noun + verb in Englishmdash

negative transfers from Indonesian collocations into English collocations In example (1) the

students directly render Indonesian collocations kendaraan tidak dapat bergerak cepati into

English vehicles could not skitterlsquomdashkendaraan (vehicles) tidak dapat (could not) and bergerak

cepat (skitter) In example (2) the students directly render Indonesian collocation memberi

cahaya kepada into English give light tolsquomdashmemberi (give) cahaya (light) and kepada (to) In

(3) the students use the same strategy to produce English collocation ie they directly transfer

stasiun TV menayangkan acara into TV stations displayed programslsquomdashstasiun TV (TV station)

menayangkan (display) and acara (program)

The data presented above demonstrates that Indonesian EFL students even at a fairly

advanced level directly translate Indonesian collocations into English and thus commit

collocation errors or negative transfers Studentslsquo use of this strategy suggests that either they are

not aware of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English or that they lack

the resources to discover what the appropriate collocation should be

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING COLLOCATION

Raising Awareness of Collocation

Schmitt (2000) claims that students have problems with collocation because they are not aware

that there are regularities in how words co-occur with each other Thus direct collocation

instruction is necessary in order to help the students recognize and solve their problems Direct

instruction raises studentslsquo awareness of word collocability and has positive effects on learnerslsquo

collocation learning and language skill development (McCarthy 1984 Lewis 1997 Hill etal

2000 Hsu 2002 Lien 2003 Chan amp Liou 2005)

Negative transfer errors indicate that Indonesian EFL students rely on an interlingual strategy

to cope up with their problems in expressing themselves in English Such a strategy is helpful in

case of perceived linguistic similarities For example in Indonesian makan dengan-lahapmdasheat

ADV-ravenousmdashcan be directly translated into English to achieve an acceptable collocation eat

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

ravenouslylsquo However the strategy fails in case of linguistic differencesmdashwhere there is no

direct equivalence between studentslsquo L1 and L2 For example Indonesian students may say do a

visitlsquo or hold a visitlsquo as the direct translations of melakukan kunjungan (melakukan = do and

kunjungan = visit) or mengadakan kunjungan (mengadakan = hold and kunjungan = visit)mdash

instead of English paymakearrange a visitlsquo

As mentioned above the use of this interlingual strategy by the students might be due to the

studentslsquo ignorance of the importance of collocations in expressing themselves in English It is

necessary therefore that EFL teachers direct the studentslsquo attention to the word combination

problems utilizing noticinglsquo The Lexical Approach proposed by Lewis (2002) would be

relevant here because of its emphasis on noticinglsquo as being paramount in teaching and learning

Noticing refers to the means by which a teacher raises awareness and encourages students to

make use of the various word combinations in English Through noticing learners can develop

an appreciation for the range and patterns of collocation and transfer this knowledge to

subsequent collocations they encounter in their language studies According to Lewis (2000) the

role of the teacher is that of provider model and guide a comfortable role somewhat like a

coach The teacher helps the learners see when they have it right and when they need to adjust

To trigger the studentslsquo attention to word combinations in English EFL teachers can do the

noticinglsquo to raise studentslsquo awareness This may be done in several ways

a Comparing collocations of L1 and L2

Comparing L1 and L2 collocations and examining the similarities and differences

between collocations of the two languages makes learners more sensitive to the features

of the L2 and students will learn L2 collocations easily (Willis and Willis 1996)

Teachers may give examples of congruent collocationsmdashcollocations having direct

equivalence in L2 For example

Kinds of Lexical Collocation Indonesian English

Verb + noun membuat janji make appointment

Adj + noun buku tebal thick book

Verb + adv bekerja keras work hard

Noun + verb air mendidih water boil

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

According to Bahns (1993) the number of collocations amounts to tens of

thousands and this enormous teaching and learning load can be reduced using a

contrastive approach to the concept of lexical collocations In fact there is for a

considerable portion of collocations direct translational equivalence such as neat

handwritinglsquo sincerely appreciatelsquo give advicelsquo etc that does not have to be taught but

which teachers should nevertheless make the students aware of

Teachers then introduce non-congruent collocationsmdashL1 word combinations

having no direct equivalence in L2 and then show their students the correct equivalence

in English For example

Indonesian English

make a conclusion draw a conclusion

kill the lamp switch off the lamp

get on the mountain climb the mountain

cook water boil water

drink medicine take medicine

brakes eat brakes work

lowly educated poorly educated

white hair grey hair

b Giving feedback to studentslsquo errors

An effective way to raise awareness of collocation is to focus on a selection of the

studentslsquo miscollocations (Woolard 2001) L2 students must recognize that they are

being corrected and understand the nature of the errors (Roberts 1995) and corrective

feedback significantly contributes

to learners accuracy (White et al 1991) This

consciousness raising activity may be done by supplying studentslsquo collocations errors

made by them and then show them the correct ones in L2

c Translating non-congruent collocations

Another way to raise awareness of the students in noticinglsquo with collocations is through

translation Indeed second language learners benefit from translation activities in L2

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

teaching (Laufer amp Girsai 2008) This may be done by providing Indonesian non-

congruent collocations in English then ask the students to supply the correct translation

The teachers then give response to the studentslsquo work supplying the correct collocations

in English when needed

Use of collocation resources

In addition to the studentslsquo lack of awareness of the importance of word combinations a very

crucial implication of the study is that students should be informed about available collocational

resources and how they can benefit from them when encountering word combinations problems

Available collocation resources that the students may use include Collins WordBanksOnline

English Corpusmdashcorpus access software Google Search engine the BBI Combinatory

Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English The first two

online resources have been proved to be beneficial in solving the problem of word combinations

The Collins WordbanksOnline English is an online corpus composed of 56 million words of

contemporary written and spoken text One of the main usages of Collins English corpus is that

of showing collocations both lexical and grammatical ones (Hunston (2002) For example the

corpus displays collocates of the noun researchlsquo which include the following verbs offerlsquo

initiatelsquo applylsquo sharelsquo continuelsquo conductlsquo involvelsquo allowlsquo providelsquo requirelsquo beginlsquo

dolsquo citelsquo supportlsquo fundlsquo helplsquo and knowlsquo (Query syntax VERB + research retrieved on

December 7 2009)

and pollution [p] [p] With continued research and conservation planning theres no

training on a European basis and offers research studies in law (a one year LLM is offered in

[h] Single-weighted options [h] a) Selected Research Topics in International Relations [p] b)

each of these areas On the basis of existing research programmes international funding is now

It provides an ideal platform for initiating research into ore geology or for updating

strengths in fundamental and apply research in social psychology It seeks further to

[h] Research [h] Facilities for supervised research are available in all schools and

is an exciting university city with advanced research environments in the fields of subsea

understanding this chemical may help research into Alzheimers disease [p] [h] How is

of research on teaching or of classroom based research Yet following Adams dictum if you want

anyone A lot of effort and marketing research had actually been put into it before we

Volkenrode housed a large amount of advanced research and test equipment for weapons aero-

an African poultry network which could share research findings It was felt that the extension

applying Buddhist insights and by continuing research in psychology [p] Have we come to an

framework they would also be conducting research which was relevant to the earlier classics

do well in any position which involves research and writing and where he is given sufficient

22 million for specific projects to help research into deafness and the one person in seven

pedagogic introduction of foot-related research Footsucker lacked drama `The idea has

banned by law A change in the law to allow research was recommended by the Royal Commission on

resolutions The company will both provide research analysis on governance issues and act as a

high flyers extended assignments requiring research or in-depth exploration of a topic [p]

to the mammals nose The Soviet navy began research into military uses of the creatures in 1965

the true figure is less than 6p [p] We did research two years ago which showed that 86 per cent

of names from his pocket `Ive been doing research on the murders Sheriff he explained `I

of life (preface p xi) [p] Taylor cites research supporting the conclusion that exaggerated

Awareness in Preschool Children Reading Research Quarterly 23 264--284 mccracken R and

Print and Orthographic Processing Reading Research Quarterly 24 402--433 Stosky S (1983) `

no problem with what amountsto self-promoting research Abraham Lincoln used the log cabin of his

he says the companies need money to support research and development [p] Bringing drug prices

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

it would be a big help to know what planned research and education programs we will be able to

T Brown Foundation We are currently funding research at The Weizmann Institute The Miami

can meet some incredibly boring people doing research [F0X] Yeah [F0X] But they actually do seem

The [tc text=pause] we had been er developing research broadly in the field of mineral processing

did any sociology [M01] Right erm Im doing research into erm technology and sort of by chance I

totally [M01] Yes Yeah [F01] in doing research [M01] Mm [F01] Its creeping in much more

[M02] So theres plenty of specialty-based research [M01] Mm [M02] theres very erm little

a lot was the extent to which you can do research on this and whether its sort of [ZGY]

[ZZ0] should be a body which both conducted research and practised on-the-ground conservation and

Erm you know [ZF1] a [ZF0] about you know research that is backed by [tc text=pause] industry

Because with that campaign from the tracking research we got lots of statements about I believe in

Teachers can make use of the concordance lines as the above raw corpus to guide students

towards noticing relevant information in the lines (Hunston 2002) The teacher may address

questions What verbs co-occur before the word researchlsquo in the lineslsquo What prepositions co-

occur after the word researchlsquolsquo or the teachers may ask the students to list collocates of the

word researchlsquo Other noticinglsquo exercises might be extended by the teachers in accordance with

their studentslsquo needs

Another online free-of-charge tool resource that the students can make use of is Google

search engine According to Zengin (2009) Google search engine provides L2 students with

much information about which collocational candidate to choose from Shei (2008) describes it

as a powerful gigantic engine of web-based corpus offering solutions to many of the questions in

collocations or multi word collocations For example if students want to make sure whether the

combination of class + endlsquo in the class ended earlylsquo is an acceptable combination or not they

simply type The class ended early and in only 036 seconds the students will get the answer of

about 42400 Google documents In the case of grammatical collocation a similar way can be

taken by the students For example whether afraid tolsquo or afraid oflsquo in I am afraid of ghostslsquo

students can simply type ―I am afraid to ghosts or ―I am afraid of ghosts (using direct quote) in

the slot of Google search engine and in a few seconds the students will get the correct answer I

am afraid of ghostslsquo

In addition Google can provide L2 students with models of idiomatic expressions

represented in a comprehensible way Combinations of words larger than the two or three word

units sentence fragments formulaic speech and idiomatic expressions can be explored using

Google search engine For example the fragment the negative effects of flu shotlsquo (which is

acceptable in Indonesian) cannot be found in any document in Google search engine but the flu

shot side effectslsquo is found in about 339000 documents This implies that the first fragment is not

commonly used in English but the second one is more common Indeed Google search engine

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

helps L2 learners solve problems of multi-word combinations Shei (2008 67) states ―no

currently well known corpus seems large enough to provide adequate instances of prefabricated

chunks like this for closer investigation

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

The result of this study shows that Indonesian EFL students produce negative transfer errors in

expressing themselves in English they directly translate Indonesian collocations into English

The finding confirms and enriches the findings of earlier studies conducted in the area of

collocation of foreign language students in general and Indonesian students in particular The

study provides empirical data verifying the belief that collocations constitute a challenging area

in learning English as a foreign language Indeed the findings support the claim that EFL

students make errors when producing collocations in English especially the lexical combinations

(Wible etal 2003 Mahmoud 2005 Ying 2009)

The findings imply that direct instruction of collocation is a must First of all teachers should

make the students aware of the importance of collocation in communication as people usually do

not communicate with single words but with a number of collocates This might be done through

noticinglsquo and making use of collocation resources such as Collins WordBanksOnline English

Corpus and Google search engine

This study however involved a very limited number of English department studentslsquo essays

in Indonesia and as such this is a limitation that needs to be acknowledged Further research

should pursue the same issuemdashboth lexical and grammatical collocation errorsmdashwith a larger

number of samples Furthermore it is suggested that a more fine-grained analysis of the types of

lexical pairs be conducted for further studies and in different types of texts narrative

argumentative and expository in different types of contexts such as academic journalism

politics religion Such research will help document collocations that need to be taught for

Indonesian students in particular

REFERENCES

Alonso MR (2002) The role of transfer in second language acquisition Vigo Universidade de

Vigo Servicio de Publicacioacutens

Bahns J (1993) Lexical collocations a contrastive view ELT Journal 47 56-63

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

Bahns J and Eldaw M (1993) Should we teach EFL students collocations System 21 101-

114

Benson M Benson E and Ilson R (1986) The BBI combinatory dictionary of English A

guide to word combinations John Benjamins Amsterdam and Philadelphia

Corder SP (1978) Error analysis and interlanguage London OUP

Fellbaum Christianne (ed) (2007) Idioms and collocation Corpus based Linguistic and

lexicographic studies London Continuum

Gitsaki C (1999) Second language lexical acquisition A study of the development of

collocational knowledge San Francisco International Scholars Publications

Hill J (2000) Revising priorities from grammatical failure to collocational success In Lewis

M (Ed) Teaching collocation 47-69 Croatia Heinle

Hunston S (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics Cambidge Cambidge University Press

Kweldju S (1999) English department students collocation abilities TEFLIN JOURNAL 10

(2)

Larson L M (1998) Meaning-based translation a guide to cross language equivalence (2nd

Ed) Lanham University Press of America

Laufer B amp Girsai N (2008) Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary

Learning A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation Applied Linguistics 29 (4) 694ndash

716

Lea D (Ed) (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English Oxford Oxford

University Press

Lewis M (2000) Language in the lexical approach In Lewis M (Ed) Teaching Collocation

126-154 Croatia Heinle

Lewis M (2002) Implementing the lexical approach putting theory into practice Heinle

Thomson Corporation

Mahmoud A (2005) Collocation errors made by Arab learners of English Asian EFL Journal

5(2) Retrieved 120109 from httpwwwasian-efl-journalcom

Moekardi R R D (2000) Grammatical and lexical English collocations some possible

problems to Indonesian students of English Humaniora 14 53-62

Nation ISP (2001) Learning vocabulary in another language Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

Nesselhauf N (2003) The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and some

implications for teaching Applied Linguistics 24 223ndash242

Roberts M A (1995) Awareness and the afficacy of error correction In R Schmidt (Ed)

Attention amp awareness in foreign language learning (pp 163-177) Honolulu University of

HawailsquoI Press

Selinker L (1974) Interlanguage In Richards JC (ed) Errors analysis Perspectives in

second language acquisition (pp 31-54) London Longman

Selinker L (1992) Rediscovering interlanguage New York Longman

Shei C C amp Pain H (2000) An ELS writerlsquos collocational aid Computer assisted language

learning 13(2) 167-182

Shei CC (2008) Discovering the hidden treasure on the Internet using Google to uncover the

veil of phraseology Computer Assisted Language Learning 21(1) 67ndash85

Sinclair J M Jones S amp Daley R (2004) English collocation studies The Osti Report

London Continuum

Sinclair J M (2004) Trust the text Language corpus and discourse London Routledge

Smadja F McKeown K R amp Hatzivassiloglou V (1996) Translating collocations for

bilingual lexicon a statistical approach Computational Linguistics 22 1-38

Taiwo R (2003) Collocational errors in the written English of Senior Secondary School pupils

in Six Yoruba-Speaking States in Nigeria PhD Dissertation Obafemi Awolowo University

Retrieved October 26 2009 from httplinguistlistorg

The Collins WordbanksOnline [On-line] Available httpwwwcollinscoukCorpus

CorpusSearchaspx

White L Spada N Lightbown PM amp Ranta L (1991) Input Enhancement and L2 Question

Formation Applied Linguistics 12(4) 416-432

Wible Kuo Tsao Liu and Lin (2003) Retrieved (IWiLL see httpwww iwillnoworg)

Willis J amp Willis D (1996) Consciousness-raising activities In J Willis amp D Willis (Eds)

Challenge and change in language teaching (pp 63-76) Oxford Heinemann

Woolard G (2000) Collocationmdashencouraging learner independence In M Lewis (Ed)

Teaching collocation Further developments in lexical approach London Language

Teaching Publication

Wouden T (1997) Negative contexts collocation polarity and multiple negations New York

Routledge

Ying S (2009) Study on collocations in English writing by Chinese students Sino-US English

Teaching 6 25-30

Zengin B (2009) Benefit of Google search engine in learning and teaching collocations

Eurasian Journal of Educational Research 34 151-166

ACKNOWLEDGEMEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Jack H Rouzer my counterpart at the

Program of Academic Recharging (PAR) for his guidance encouragement patience and

continuous support during the writing of this article Professor Rouzerlsquos extensive knowledge

vision and creative thinking have been a source of inspiration in the completion of this work I

am especially indebted to Isabelle Lecomte for her careful and thorough reading of the

studentsrsquo writings and in helping me identify collocational errors made by the students in

their English writings I would like to thank Professor Muchlas Samani the director of

Human Resource Development Directorate of Higher Education of Indonesia for the

invaluable opportunity and experience he gave me to be a member of the 2009 Program of

Academic Recharging at the Ohio State University which enabled me to have access to the

library of Ohio State University

THE AUTHOR

Mashadi Said is a Professor in Teaching English as a Foreign Language He earned his PhD

in teaching English as a Foreign Language from State University of Malang Indonesia in

1998 His teaching and research interests include lexicon and translation He can be

reached at mashadisaid77gmailcom

ACKNOWLEDGEMEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Jack H Rouzer my counterpart at the

Program of Academic Recharging (PAR) for his guidance encouragement patience and

continuous support during the writing of this article Professor Rouzerlsquos extensive knowledge

vision and creative thinking have been a source of inspiration in the completion of this work I

am especially indebted to Isabelle Lecomte for her careful and thorough reading of the

studentsrsquo writings and in helping me identify collocational errors made by the students in

their English writings I would like to thank Professor Muchlas Samani the director of

Human Resource Development Directorate of Higher Education of Indonesia for the

invaluable opportunity and experience he gave me to be a member of the 2009 Program of

Academic Recharging at the Ohio State University which enabled me to have access to the

library of Ohio State University

THE AUTHOR

Mashadi Said is a Professor in Teaching English as a Foreign Language He earned his PhD

in teaching English as a Foreign Language from State University of Malang Indonesia in

1998 His teaching and research interests include lexicon and translation He can be

reached at mashadisaid77gmailcom