The use of collocations across proficiency levels: a literature review

This literature review focuses on the use of formulaic language by English as a second language students (L2). Research on the field of phraseology has shown that mastery of formulas is central for fluency and linguistic competence (Ellis, 1996). Studies on the use of formulaic language by native speakers (Ellis et al., 2008) have shown that native speakers process these structures as a single word. Considering the use of formulaic language by L2 students, research has shown that this can be problematic to learners as they do not know the correct word association (Men, 2018). This paper presents a literature review on the studies of formulaic language, more specifically of collocations, used by L2 learners. The first part of this paper deals with the different definitions of collocations, while the second part focuses on studies on collocation use by L2 learners.