USING COLLOCATIONS TO IMPROVE ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ SPEAKING PROFICIENCY

Abstract

This article investigates the capacity to use collocations in English speaking of second year English major students at Thai Nguyen University of Education. The study aimed to learn about the real situation of the students’ English speaking, the effectiveness of using collocations to improve their speaking performance, the difficulties and possible solutions to enhance the effectiveness of using collocations. The experiment was conducted when the participants were in their speaking lessons, which belong to the module Practical English 4. The data were collected by using questionnaires and tests. The results of the tests show that teaching students how to use collocations properly improved their speaking proficiency. 100% of the students indicated that they became more confident with their vocabulary; 90% of them stated that they spoke more fluently; and 80% of them stated that collocations were useful in topic development.