The Effect of L2 Proficiency, L1 Congruency, and Collocation Frequency on L2 Collocation Processing: An Experimental Study of Korean EFL Learners

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to examine how L2 proficiency, L1 congruency, and collocation frequency influenced the processing of English collocations and to see whether there existed interaction effects among the variables. Fifty Korean EFL university students and twenty native speakers of English in Korea participated in the current study. An acceptability judgment task was utilized in the experiment in which the participants were asked to decide whether the English expressions given were appropriate or not, and their error rates on and reaction times to the collocations were measured. It was revealed that there existed a significant effect of collocation frequency, L2 proficiency, and L1 congruency on the processing of the English collocations. It was also found that L1 influence on the error rate and the reaction time appears to wane as the level of English proficiency enhances and the collocation frequency increases. The findings suggested that EFL learners may be able to develop the intralexical knowledge of L2 collocations departing from L1 mediation as their English proficiency enhances and they are exposed to more L2 input.