A Study of the Relationship between EFL Learners’ Knowledge of Near Synonyms and their Collocational Behaviour

Moussa  Ahmadian; Ali  Darabi

Authors

Moussa Ahmadian Associate professor, Dept. of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Arak University, Arak 38156-8-8349, PO. Box 879, Iran
Ali Darabi MA in TEFL, Dept. of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Arak University, Arak 38156-8-8349, PO. Box 879, Iran

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate the relationship between EFL learners’ knowledge of near synonyms and their performance
on a corpus-driven test of collocational behaviour. Near synonyms are defined here as lexical pairs that have very similar cognitive or
denotative meanings (e.g. powerful and strong), but may differ in collocational behavior (strong tea but powerful car). The study is based
on a random sampling of subjects (N= 60) drawn from a pool of 200 EFL learners taking English classes at different language institutes
in Khorramabad, Iran. To elicit the data, two types of tests: a Near Synonym Test (NST) and a Collocational Behavior Test (CBT), were
constructed, validated, and used. The items for both tests were mainly selected from COBUILD Dictionary. Pearson-Product Correlation
was applied to measure the relationship between the specified variables. The results showed that there is a significant relationship
between EFL learners’ knowledge of near synonyms and their Performance on the corpus-driven test of collocational behavior. The
implications of the findings for language pedagogy are discussed.