Acquisition of italian multi-words verbs and collocations by spanish speaking learners

Abstract

To achieve effective socio-pragmatic competence and expressive fluency development inthe teaching-learning process of a foreign language it is essential to include the phraseological units toenhance their discursive potential. This is especially true in the case of typological and cultural proximityof the involved languages (mother tongue and target language). This work aims to examinethe acquisition level of some Italian phraseological units, with a particular focus on collocations andsyntagmatic verbs 1 by undergraduate Spanish-speaking students in the Italian Philology Departmentat the University of Granada. By means of two tests, we have examined different aspects of thereceptive and productive knowledge of these lexical combinations. Furthermore, the analysis of theresults has allowed identifying some of the strategies adopted by the informants to compensate for thelack of direct knowledge of these structures.