COLLOCATIONAL COMPETENCE OF POLISH GFL-HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES – ASSESSED ON THE BASIS OF WRITTEN PRODUCTION

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to examine and describe the collocation competence of Polish GFL high school graduates. The analysis focuses on 150 essays, investigating whether collocations, in the phraseological sense, and metaphorical collocations occur in them. The influence of the proficiency level of the GFL-learners on the use of collo­cations was also analysed. Additionally, collocations closely related to the themes of the essays, thus playing a key role in them, were analysed. Collocational errors were analysed in terms of their quantity and quality.

The results indicate that the collocational competence of Polish high school graduates is poorly developed. They primarily use free word combinations, and if collocations are used, they tend to be lexically comparable to the learners’ L1. The use of metaphorical collocations is very rare. On average, higher-performing test subjects used more collo­cations than the lower-performing ones. Collocational errors do not seem to depend on language proficiency and only play a marginal role in the analysed material. Inter­ference errors are mostly attributed to the learners’ L1. This contribution emphasizes the need for a modified vocabulary teaching approach in GFL-instruction.