Year 32 No. 3 (2024): Issue 3/2024
Articles

Learner Adverb + Adjective Collocations: A Study on Frequency and Collocationality

Francesca Poli
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Published 12/27/2024

Keywords

  • Collocations,
  • Spoken Language,
  • Learner Corpus,
  • English as a Foreign Language (EFL)

How to Cite

Poli, F. (2024). Learner Adverb + Adjective Collocations: A Study on Frequency and Collocationality. L’Analisi Linguistica E Letteraria, 32(3). Retrieved from https://www.analisilinguisticaeletteraria.eu/index.php/ojs/article/view/648

Abstract

This study examines adverb + adjective collocations in the Italian Spoken Learner Corpus (ISLC), comprising advanced Italian learners of English, and compares them with a native English speaker reference corpus (LOCNEC). With a proficiency-controlled approach, the ISLC includes 34 participants from three Italian universities. The analysis employs a frequency-based method, calculating mean t-score and Mutual Information (MI) values per text. Results reveal that learners produce significantly fewer collocations, both in types and tokens, with lower collocational strength compared to native speakers. Unexpectedly, a difference in t-score values suggests a potential lag in learners’ spontaneous generation of collocations in spoken language. These findings emphasise the need to address both comprehension and production in collocational competence for language learners, particularly in spoken contexts. The study contributes to learner corpus research (LCR), offering insights into collocation development in language acquisition.

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