Lexical Collocational Knowledge of Iranian Undergraduate Learners: Implications for Receptive & Productive Performance

The present study intends to probe into the possible relationship between collocational competence and vocabulary knowledge of Iranian undergraduate learners. First, the participants were given a vocabulary test to identify their basic knowledge of common word meanings and to show how they can identify the meanings of words at different levels. Second, productive collocational test and a receptive collocational test were given to the participants to reveal the possible difference between the participants’ receptive and productive knowledge. As the results revealed, there was a significant difference between the receptive and productive lexical knowledge of the undergraduate learners. It was also revealed that there was a significant relationship between the collocational knowledge and the vocabulary knowledge of their learners.