The Effects of Collaborative Versus Non-collaborative Massed and Distributed Presentation on the Comprehension and Production of Lexical Collocations

To investigate the effect of massed and distributed collaborative and non-collaborative presentation on L2 learners’ comprehension and production of lexical collocations, 105 participants at Takestan Islamic Azad University in 4 groups were assigned to four different treatment conditions (collaborative-massed; collaborative-distributed; noncollaborative-massed; and noncollaborative-distributed presentation of collocations). Participants were given recognition and production posttests. To compare the participants' comprehension of collocations, a two-way ANOVA was used. Results indicated that the differences among the types of presentation and method were not statistically significant. Another two-way ANOVA was used to compare the learners' production of collocations, which showed that there was no significant difference between types of presentation- massed and distributed. The differences between methods of teaching- collaborative and non-collaborative- were not statistically significant either. However, the results indicated that the interaction effect of method and presentation of lexical collocations was statistically significant in the production of collocations.  The findings of the present study can have theoretical and practical implications for teachers and learners of English.