English lexical approach to study the collocational errors of foreign language learners of Arabic

Abstract EN

This study has a twofold purpose.

First, to present the level of collocational knowledge among foreign learners of Arabic Language and the degree to which they know Arabic collocations.

Second, to analyze the learners' collocational errors, to explore their causes, and to provide some practical ways to enhance the learners' collocational knowledge.

This knowledge was assessed through the learners' performance on a 50 – item test which was administered to 60 students learning Arabic at the International Institute for Teaching Arabic to Speakers of Other Languages at the University of Jordan.

The results of the Statistical analyses show that the overall learners' performance isn't satisfactory.

The learners' collocational errors are because they tend to join words which are semantically compatible, but joining such words doesn't always produce an acceptable co-occurrence.

Since it is assumed that the applied test is an effective measure, the study findings point to the importance of improving the learners' collocational knowledge to enhance their proficiency level in Arabic.

It's suggested that foreign Language vocabulary teaching be aimed at raising learners' awareness of collocation with the help of their teachers and well-prepared collocation – based exercises.

Key words: foreign learners, Arabic collocations, errors, pedagogical implications.