EFL Learners’ Collocational Errors in Speaking across Proficiency Levels: The Role of L۱ Transfer Revisited

Speaking ability has been inevitably the core purpose of language teaching courses in the past decades. Moreover, it has been recurrently shown that speaking ability cannot be improved without students’ learning proper collocations. However, erroneous use of collocations in learners’ oral performance is unavoidable. Considering the interlanguage hypothesis and linguistic interdependence hypothesis, it was hypothesized that the majority of collocational errors may be attributed L۱ transfer. Considering the current body of literature on speaking error analysis, there is a gap in the literature with regard to the analysis of collocation errors in EFL learners’ speaking performance with a focus on learners’ L۱ transfer. This study was conducted in order to explore the collocation errors across pre-intermediate and upper-intermediate levels and also determine the role of the learners L۱ in making collocation errors. ۲۳ participants at each level, totally ۴۶ learners took part in this study after taking OPT. The data were gathered through a collocation test and a speaking test. They were analyzed based on a taxonomy including Verb + Noun, Adjective + Noun, Noun + Preposition, and Verb + Preposition collocations. The results were then analyzed using descriptive analysis and chi-square analysis. The findings showed that the ranking of difficulty of collocation types are similar across the two levels and the collocation types are not equally difficult for the learners of both levels. Moreover, it was shown that except verb + proposition, transfer from L۱ is the most important source of making collocation errors at both levels. It was concluded that the results were in line with both interlanguage hypothesis and linguistic interdependence hypothesis. These results can have implications for EFL teachers in speaking classes, especially, in terms of scaffolding and giving appropriate feedback.