Teaching Lexical Collocation (Adjective + Noun and Verb + Noun) Using Scent of a Woman

Abstract

This study used a test which was administered to forty students who were in their third and fourth year of study in the Department of English Language and Literature in Gyeonggi area. The test consisted of two parts: eight “adjective + noun” collocations and twelve “verb + noun” collocations. These twenty collocations were actual collocations found in the script of Scent of a Woman (Brest, 1992) and were spoken by the movie’s protagonist Colonel Slade played by Al Pacino. Hence, based on the analyses of Korean EFL students’ performance on the test on the two types of lexical collocation – adjective + noun and verb + noun – the following conclusions can be drawn. First, Korean EFL students need more collocation-rich reading and audiovisual materials in their learning of lexical collocation. Second, they need to be exposed to collocations which are used in a diverse number of contexts. Context-rich collocations will result in more long-lasting acquisition of collocations. Third, more semantically challenging collocations should be presented to the Korean EFL students rather than limiting their learning to most popular collocations. Hence, these three points must be kept in mind in our effort to foster collocation-acquisition in Korean EFL students.