Language, Individual & Society, Volume 8, 2014

Abstract: The current research was to explore the relationship among knowledge of collocation and reading, writing, speaking and listening proficiency of Iranian EFL students. To this end, 50 students involved in the study took a test of both lexical and grammatical collocations to measure their collocational knowledge, first. Then, an IELTS sample test (IELTS Practice Plus Pearson Education Longman University, Version two) was administered in order to find the students’ reading, writing, speaking and listening proficiency. Pearson correlation coefficient and regression model were used to analyze the data. Pearson correlation coefficient illustrated a significant correlation between knowledge of collocation and reading (P=0.724), writing (P=0.724), listening (P=0.706) and speaking (P=0.885) proficiency. Regression model was conducted to find the exact contribution between variables. It indicated that knowledge of collocation can be a predicator for all four language skills. In addition, knowledge of collocation has the greatest impact (R2=78.3%) on participants’ speaking proficiency. Based on the above mentioned results, knowledge of collocation proved to be a prerequisite for successful language learning. This research confirmed the influential role of collocation knowledge in essential language learning.