This research aims to examine the possibility of collocation learning in an English as a foreign language (EFL) class. During the entire pedagogical process based on a lexical approach (Lewis, 1997; 1999; 2000), the study examines this method’s practical application in an EFL context, from selecting appropriate collocations to assessing students’ collocational learning after instruction. EFL students face difficulties learning collocations due to their arbitrary nature as many of them cannot be semantically inferred from students’ L1 knowledge. The collocations in this study were thus selected and taught through literary texts where the story’s grammar provides students with a unified and meaningful frame. The research process was as follows: first, researchers examined the process of selecting collocation through a corpus-driven approach including a parallel corpus of an English source text and a Korean target text as well as key words in the target and reference corpus. Second, the researchers discussed students’ performance in collocation learning through a comparative analysis of their responses, including mis-collocations, evaluating students’ awareness of the story based on the result of correlation test. Finally, students’ attitudes in collocation learning were discussed based on a survey. Through both quantitative and qualitative measures along with professional experience, I conclude that there is a possibility of collocation learning and emphasize the necessity of repetitive exposure to collocations in a meaningful and consistent context, discuss the limitations of the study, and provide further suggestions better suited to EFL language class.
