Thai EFL Undergraduate Students' English Collocational Knowledge: Receptive and Productive Competence and Acquisition Processes
Keywords:
Collocation, receptive knowledge, productive knowledgeAbstract
This study investigated the collocational knowledge of 104 Thai undergraduate students studying English for Business Communication and examined their approaches to acquiring this knowledge during their English learning experience. Data were collected by four tests measuring receptive (COLLEX and COLLMATCH) and productive (Recall and CONTRIX) knowledge of lexical and grammatical collocations, as well as semi-structured interviews with 30 participants. The results revealed a significant receptive–productive gap, which was larger for lexical collocations than for grammatical collocations. Classroom instruction was reported as the primary learning approach by most participants, although they also used additional methods such as AI-assisted translation, movies, and learning applications. Most participants indicated that they had no prior knowledge of collocations before learning in the university, highlighting a gap in the secondary school curriculum. The findings also show that experience with diverse authentic materials and the use of active learning approaches can enhance productive collocational competence.
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