The impact of collocation interventions on the lexical accuracy of students’ timed writings

A collocation-driven approach to language acquisition has proved to be effective in enhancing students’ understanding of target vocabulary, but recent research suggests that there is a gap in the literature on the impact of productive vocabulary interventions and student writing performance. A previous case study piloted at a Japanese university by the researchers found a noticeable increase in intermediate-level students’ accuracy in spoken vocabulary after receiving collocation-targeted interventions. Based on these findings, the researchers conducted a follow-up study to assess how the same group of students (n = 71) performed in a timed writing assignment by comparing student accuracy of intervened target vocabulary with the accuracy of other non-intervened taught vocabulary. The findings indicate that students used the targeted collocations more accurately. Thus, it can be argued that a collocation-focused approach to teaching vocabulary can positively influence students’ accuracy in both writing and speaking.