Roles of collocation in L2 oral proficiency revisited: Different tasks, L1 vs. L2 raters, and cross-sectional vs. longitudinal analyses

There is emerging evidence that collocation use plays a primary role in determining various dimensions of L2 oral proficiency assessment and development. The current study presents the results three experiments which examined relationship between degree association (operationalized as t scores mutual information scores) intuitive judgements comprehensibility (i.e. ease understanding). topic was approached from angles different task conditions (Study 1), rater background (first language or L1 vs. second L2) 2) cross-sectional longitudinal analyses 3). findings showed that: (1) emerged medium-to-strong determinant structured (picture description) compared to free (oral interview) production tasks; (2) with sufficient immersion experience, raters can demonstrate much sensitivity raters; (3) conversational experience associated more coherent mutually-exclusive combinations words speech, resulting greater