Effects of retrieval formats on the acquisition and processing automaticity of L2 verb–noun collocations

This study investigated the effects of different retrieval formats on the acquisition and processing automaticity of second language (L2) verb–noun collocations. Chinese learners of English completed retrieval practice that included a familiarization stage (using flashcards and form–meaning matching practice) and two spaced retrieval attempts (i.e. verb-retrieval-twice, noun-retrieval-twice, verb/noun-retrieval-once) with corrective feedback for each target collocation. In near-immediate and one-week delayed posttests, the acquisition of L2 collocations was assessed by an off-line form recall task (explicit knowledge), and the processing automaticity was operationalized as collocation processing advantage (automatized-explicit knowledge) in an online acceptability judgment task and collocation priming (implicit knowledge) in an online primed lexical decision task. Results showed that: (1) all retrieval formats led to the development of explicit knowledge, initial automatized-explicit knowledge, and implicit knowledge; (2) the formats involving noun retrieval were particularly effective in retaining automatized-explicit knowledge over time; (3) the verb-retrieval-twice format was most beneficial in developing implicit knowledge, as evidenced by the largest priming effects. The findings suggest that focusing learners’ attention on specific components of verb–noun collocations may yield different learning outcomes for the different types of collocational knowledge.