Students' Collocational Competence and Their Collocational Density in Writing at the English Department of Haluoleo University

Abstract

This study attempts to discover students' collocation competence and their collocation density in writing. Two tests were administered to the subjects: (i) collocation competence test (an English 'fill in the blank' version and an Indonesian translation version), and (ii) the writing tests requiring the students to write two topics of 250 words. 57 subjects were involved in this study. The result indicated that learners had serious deficiency of the mastery of collocations. On average, the students could only elicit 36 of 33 collocations. The students' collocation density in 250 running words ranged between 0.4 to 5.4 collocations. On average, their collocation density was 2.32. There was a significant correlation between the students' collocation competence and the students' collocation density at the 0.05 level.