A Multiple-Choice Exercise on Collocations: What Do Learners Actually Remember?

Abstract

Contemporary materials for second language (L2) learning feature exercises on collocations (i.e., word partnerships such as catch fire), many of which require learners to select correct word combinations from two or more candidates. A few studies of the effectiveness of these selected-response exercises, which are essentially multiple-choice exercises, have found that learners later reproduce wrong collocations that they were exposed to in the exercise. However, it is unclear if this is a side effect of the exercises or if the re-emergence of wrong candidate responses is just accidental. The present study examines if wrong candidate responses that learners see in collocation exercises interfere with learners’ recall of the correct responses by having learners of L2 English tackle multiple-choice items on verb-noun collocations and verbally report two weeks later in a post-test what they remember about them. The verbal reports revealed that the learners recalled reading and responding to most of the exercise items, but for only one- third of them did they also recall which candidate response had turned out to be correct according to the feedback they received. Furthermore, for close to one- fifth of collocations that learners said they already knew at the start of the exercise, these participants mistook a wrong candidate response for the correct one when they revisited the exercise two weeks later. The findings call for a cautious approach to the implementation of selected-response exercises for collocation learning.