THE EFFECT OF LEARNER DIFFERENCES AND TEACHING OF COLLOCATION ON STUDENTS’ COLLOCATION COMPETENCE

(2020), 3 (1): 26–35 THE EFFECT OF LEARNER DIFFERENCES AND TEACHING OF COLLOCATION ON STUDENTS’ COLLOCATION COMPETENCE Endah Ginanti1), Eko Fachtur Rochman2) STIE Jaya Negara Tamansiswa Abstract Collocation has a fairly prominent role in English Language. For non-native speakers, the years learning English does not mean non-native speakers are able to apply collocation correctly. Non-native speakers will face great difficulty in collocation because they have limited quantity of doing much exposure and their learner differences such as motivation. This current study critically reviews Mansoor Ganji’s (2012) work which investigated the influence of Gender and Years of Instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ Collocational Competence. Ganji’s found that Iranian English majors were weak in lexical collocation in spite of English had been taught at least 6 years and English teachers were blamed since they seemed not to pay enough attention to collocation teaching in Iran. This study is descriptive quantitative. The results indicates that students of nursing department at STIKES Widya Cipta Husada are also weak in collocation. However, English teachers cannot be blamed on students’ weaknesses on collocation because English teachers had taught collocation both implicitly and explicitly. Keywords: learner differences, collocation, students’ competence ©Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris FPISH IKIP BU Malang importance of collocation, this paper investigates the effect on Introduction Collocation is a blend of two or more words to form a unity of meaning. If one does mistake when combining collocation, the result is not wrong but it is not appropriate. Prendergast (1864:82) stated that students learn not only just words but also chunks of a language. When students memorized it as complete units, the chunks is seemed to be so well-mastered and students later use it fluently. Native speakers will not make mistake in using collocation since they are familiar and it is used all the time. However, non-native speakers will face great difficulty in using collocation because they do not use collocation all the time. For non-native speakers, the mastery of collocation not only is obtained by a lot of reading and listening but also must do much exposure. For non-native speakers learn collocation, if not accompanied by much doing the exposure, the vain non-native speakers learn collocation. In relation to the learner differences and language learners in producing collocation error. Ganji’s proposal and comments The view of Mansoor Ganji’s (2012) in his CCS journal article (Vol. 5, Issue 2; February 2012) was used as the main reference. Ganji (2012) conducted a research investigating the influence of Gender and Years of Instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ Collocational Competence. His research had three different aims. First, Ganji examined the knowledge of lexical collocations of freshmen, sophomores, and juniors of Iranian university students. Secondly, Ganji was to test whether the years of instruction and participants’s gender affected student's lexical collocation knowledge. Third, Ganji was to find out what was the most difficult and easiest collocation for Iranian students. Although Ganji’s research focused on those purpose, Ganji’s research showed 26 Available online at: http://ejurnal.budiutomomalang.ac.id/index.php/journey (2020), 3 (1): 26–35 that he concerned more on about how many years Iranian EFL had started to learn English and blamed teachers’ role which did not pay much attention in teaching collocation. It seems that there are still many factors should be considered before taking to those final result. To know Iranian EFL learners competence in using collocation, Ganji conducted his research by covering 5 research questions to find out Iranian students' proficient in English lexical collocations, the difference between boys and girls in their knowledge of English lexical collocations, the difference knowledge about English lexical collocations from three different academic levels, and the easiest and most difficult English lexical collocations for Iranian students. Ganji chose Iranian EFL learners because the issues among Iranian EFL learners was that they could not construct a good and natural speech and writing, even though they possessed good grammatical competence. They could get high grades in grammar tests, but regrettably their writing were full of wrong combinations of words (Ganji, 2012). He also added that Iranian EFL collocation’ competence was lower than the competence of native speakers. Ganji used descriptive method in his research. He claimed that his study was the first study in collecting data comprehensively about the collocational competence of Iranian EFL students. The participants were 43 students which twenty-five were males and eighteen were females and age ranged from 18 to 23. Eleven participants were in first year (freshmen), seventeen students were in second year (sophomore), and fifteen students in the third year (junior). Ganji’s conducted his research in the English Department of Chabahar Maritime University. All participants were registered in B.A. in Translation Studies of 2011, a period of 15 weeks. Participants’ first language is the official language of Islamic Republic of Iran, Farsi, which is also called Persian. The instrument used by Ganji was a 50-item fill-in-the-blank of English lexical collocation test which consisted of 5 types of lexical collocations. There were 10 questions for each type of collocation. Five types of collocation used on the test were: verb-noun, adjective-noun, noun-verb, adverb-adjective, and verb-adverb. Ganji employed SPSS version 17, independent sample t-test for comparing the male and female students’s performance and oneway ANOVA for comparing students’ performances at three academic levels. The finding showed that Iranian university students answered just more than 50% of the questions. Unfortunately, Ganji does not use treatment in his study. Ganji directly given lexical collocations test to participants. The result of Ganji’s research indicated that Iranian university students were quite weak in lexical collocations in spite of they had studied English for at least 6 years before enrolled the university. Ganji’s work seems only as observation at a glance to know students’ prior knowledge since there is no clear explanation of what the explicit reasons giving the collocational test directly. He believed that the years students had learned English before entering to the university would increase students’ competence in collocation. Ganji stated that Iranian EFL learners did not know what collocation was. It means that Iranian EFL learners never use collocation in their daily life, or if collocation had been taught when they were in Junior High School, if collocation never used by Iranian EFL learners the knowledge of collocation will not be in their long memory term. 27 Available online at: http://ejurn (...truncated)