Difficulties encountered by English department students in using noun-noun collocations

Abstract EN

The current study explores noun-noun collocations in English.

The main problem which the study attempts to tackle is the difficulty encountered by undergraduate, English department students in predicting noun-noun collocations in English.

The hypothesis on which the study is based is the existence of hundreds of noun-noun collocations in English, be they noun and/or noun (binomial phrases), e.

g.

fish and chips, friend or foe; or noun + of-phrase combinations, e.

g.

sheet of paper, cup of tea.

As regards the study approach adopted, the paper advocates Biber et al.

(1999) (see sections 6 and 7).

This approach is within 'lexical collocations', which is in contrast to 'grammatical collocations' in which a preposition is used with a noun, a verb or an adjective, e.

g.

by accident, account for, amazed at.

The aim of the study is to define and explain different types and combinations of binomial phrases and noun + of-phrases.

The results of the two tests administered to measure fourth year, English department students' mastery of different categories of lexical collocations (100 participants who sat a 40-item twofold tests) show that students face great obstacles in mastering collocations.

Noun + noun sequences like water supplies, chess board, exam papers, speech impediment, and press release, are out of the scope of this study.

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