This study examined whether explicit or implicit teaching is more efficient in improving Korean middle school students’ English verb−noun collocation knowledge. Forty Korean EFL middle school students participated in the study and they were assigned to either the explicit instruction or implicit instruction group. The participants’ English verb−noun collocation knowledge was measured through pre-, immediate post-, and delayed post-tests over the 5- week experimental period, and a survey of participants’ opinions on the instruction they received was carried out. The results showed that the students who received the explicit collocation instruction displayed better learning outcomes, suggesting the immediate influence of the explicit instruction, and more importantly the sustained initial advantage. That is, the explicit group students did retain the target items significantly better than the implicit group students. The responses from the two groups also indicated the positive effects of the explicit collocation instruction. The explicit group students were mostly satisfied with the instruction and showed increased confidence in acquiring English collocations while the implicit students did not. This study provides L2 teachers with valuable information on how to teach L2 collocation more effectively.

With the changing status of vocabulary, the notion of vocabulary has been broadened from single words to multi-word expressions or units. Many lexicologists focus on vocabulary rather than grammar, and maintain that these lexical units or collocations are the most powerful force in comprehension and production of language. Little action research, however, has been performed to identify the best practices and to aid students in learning English in a real classroom. Collocational approaches to vocabulary acquisition view the basic premise of language learning as noticing and acquiring multi-word units like individual words. Focusing on this concept, this research presents practical collocation teaching methods, beginning with a brief definition, the pedagogical implications, and the most commonly occurring collocations. It suggests eight collocation- teaching methods, to be directly used in classroom activities. Finally, implementation of the suggestions presented here will produce more meaningful and effective vocabulary learning activities so that the EFL learners acquire knowledge of the English language more communicatively.

This study has focused on the two factors. The first things has investigated the way the Korean L2 learners apply the pattern of ‘adverb+ verb collocation’ in English to their ‘opinion paragraph writing’ on the topic sentences, with the focus on two factors: meta-discourse perspective on the genre of paragraphs and the writers’ strategies for selecting particular collocation types. Second element with the findings of the first step has suggested the effective writing methods for the Korean L2 learners. From 15th October to 2nd November, 2018, the researchers had examined the L2 learners’ topic sentences shown as in the their first drafts, to identify the attitude (I agree), engagement (consider) markers or self-mentions (I, We) and boosters (completely, fully, strongly, etc.) in meta-discourse resources which were founded on the types of essays. We had proposed that the learners would produce proper English ‘adverb+verb’ collocations based on the semantic features for verbs and adverbs in English and Korean with the feedback comments. Secondly, the researchers had reanalyzed the learners’ final products which have been focused on the learners’ self-correction for the deviant English-Korean collocations or non-collocation in English. The researchers had found out some pedagogical implications which had suggested for learning the suitable English collocation usage based on the findings of the study. The major thing has shown that the learners would depend on the meta-discourse resources in the process of accepting the academic writing styles or genre. Another implication of the findings is that the new insights into the development of L2 ‘adverb+verb’ collocational competence should be based on the nature of teaching methods that stress input-based or refrain from explicit vocabulary teaching.