Abstract

The acquisition of lexical collocations, in general, has been regarded as a stumbling block for EFL learners; it is one of the most difficult areas as it is often perceived as being arbitrary. This study tests whether fifty Kuwait EFL learners are aware of one type of lexical collocations, namely, binomials (e.g., up and down, salt and pepper, men and women). Specifically, it investigates whether the participants’ English proficiency level and the syntactic category of the internal components of binomials play a role in their acquisition. For this purpose, the researchers used an acceptability judgment task to check the participants’ awareness of binomials in English. The results revealed that the participants’ English proficiency level affected their answers on the test. In particular, the advanced learners performed better than the intermediate learners. However, the difference between the two groups was not enough to differ statistically. Additionally, the statistical analysis shows that the syntactic category of the components of binomials i.e., N+N and V+V had no influence on the participants’ answers. The researchers concluded that Kuwaiti EFL learners have little awareness of English binomials. Their lack of awareness was attributed to several reasons, such as L1 negative transfer, the existence of culture-specific items and lack of exposure to certain items. The study recommended that further research is required in this area.

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