The Use of Verb Noun Collocations in Writing Stories among Iranian EFL Learners

An important aspect of native speakers' communicative competence is collocational competence which involves knowing which words usually come together and which do not. This paper investigates the possible relationship between knowledge of collocations and the use of verb noun collocation in writing stories because collocational knowledge distinguishes native speakers and foreign language learners and is a significant factor in productive skills especially writing. This study examined the correlation between knowledge of verb noun collocations and their use in written essays. The participants in the study were 27 PhD Iranian students in a Malaysian university. A specially constructed C-test measured the subjects' collocational knowledge and the use of collocations was measured by the number of collocations used in essays written by the subjects. For this purpose, participants wrote six different stories in six weeks based on a writing task designed to illicit verb noun collations. The statistical results demonstrate that there exists a strong positive relationship between knowledge of collocations and the use of verb noun collocation in the writing stories.