The effect of spacing on incidental and deliberate learning of L2 collocations

Previous studies investigating the effects of spacing on vocabulary learning have primarily focused single words. There is limited research how distributed practice affects phrasal lexicon. The present study addresses this gap by focusing collocations. In a pretest-treatment-delayed-posttest design, two controlled quasi-experiments (N = 55 and N 50) were conducted in order to evaluate schedules, spaced versus massed. participants learned 25 adjective-noun collocations either incidentally (Experiment 1) or deliberately 2). each experiment, control group was included. Participants’ collocational gains measured at form-recall level mastery three weeks after treatment. Mixed-effects regression modelling results indicate that had significantly large effect deliberate condition small incidental condition. Massing, other hand, appears be more effective (with medium effect) situations. Implications for pedagogy materials design are followed suggestions future research.