ABSTRACT

Multiple test tasks are available for assessing L2 collocation knowledge. However, few studies have investigated the characteristics of a variety of recognition and recall tasks of collocation simultaneously, and most research on L2 collocations has focused on verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations. This study investigates (1) the relative informativeness of different tasks for assessing L2 collocation knowledge and (2) the effect of collocation type on learners’ scores on collocation tasks. Four tasks were developed based on an extensive review of research on L2 collocations: a sentence writing task, fill-in-the-blank task, multiple-choice task, and Yes/No acceptability judgment task. Each task targeted 64 English collocations, including verb-noun, adjective-noun, adverb-adjective, and adverb-verb collocations. Four groups of adult ESL learners representing different levels of academic English literacy (n = 205) completed the tasks. An item response theory analysis showed that the sentence writing and fill-in-the-blank-tasks had similar difficulty and discriminating power, the eight-option multiple-choice task had the highest discriminating power, and the Yes/No judgment task had the lowest difficulty and discriminating power. The type of collocation did not have a significant effect on learners’ scores when collocation frequency was held constant, regardless of task and learners’ level of academic English literacy.

摘要

多个测试任务可用于评估 L2 搭配知识。然而，很少有研究同时调查多种搭配的识别和回忆任务的特点，大多数关于二语搭配的研究都集中在动词-名词和形容词-名词搭配上。本研究调查 (1) 不同任务在评估 L2 搭配知识方面的相对信息量和 (2) 搭配类型对学习者在搭配任务中得分的影响。基于对 L2 搭配研究的广泛回顾，开发了四项任务：句子写作任务、填空任务、多项选择任务和是/否可接受性判断任务。每个任务针对64个英语搭配，包括动词-名词、形容词-名词、副词-形容词和副词-动词搭配。n = 205) 完成了任务。项目反应理论分析表明，句子写作和填空任务具有相似的难度和判别力，八选项选择题的判别力最高，是/否判断任务的判别力最高。最低的难度和辨别力。当搭配频率保持不变时，搭配类型对学习者的分数没有显着影响，无论任务和学习者的学术英语素养水平如何。