Collocational competence via awareness-raising

Abstract EN

The main concern of this paper is to find effective means to build the foreign learner's collocational competence via awareness-raising.

the term collocational competence refers to the language users' knowledge of collocations (habitual word combinations), and their ability to use this knowledge naturally, effectively and spontaneously in different communicative situations; in speech or writing.

this collocational competence can be achieved, the writer contends, by means of certain awareness-raising strategies.

these include conscious/explicit treatment, noticing and revisiting, miscollocations and extra sources.

to verify the role and impact of awareness-raising as an effective tool to achieve collocational competence, an experiment was conducted by which the samples of the study were divided into two groups: an experimental (control) group and a free (uncontrolled) group.