Description

Acquisition of collocations (e.g., strong tea, play the guitar) and other phrases is key to mastery of a language.

Previous research has shown that second-language speakers can learn collocations when they repeatedly encounter them in written texts. However, it has been unclear whether reading collocations in bold type—which can draw attention to the collocations—or without bold type improves real-time access to collocational knowledge by second-language readers.

Mark Toomer's research indicates that repeated encounters with unbolded collocations may promote more fluent reading of collocations than repeated encounters with bolded collocations. This finding suggests that second-language readers may gain this fluency more quickly by reading easy texts containing multiple repetitions of unbolded collocations.