Designing a Corpus-Based Syllabus of Italian Collocations: Criteria, Methods and Procedures

Abstract

Lexical combinations are central to language learning because they can be processed quickly (Siyanova-Chanturia 2013) and their use gives the idea of fluency in production (Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992). However, the acquisition of L2 phraseological competence is difficult for learners. This is particularly true for collocations, “sequences of words that tend to occur in stable and privileged combinations” (Simone 1990: 440). The difficulty is partially due to the fact that, unlike other types of lexical combinations, such as idiomatic phrases and proverbs, collocations are usually not emphasized in language courses, so learners do not notice them and do not assimilate them as complex lexemes (Bini et al. 2007). To fill this gap and provide teachers with a useful reference point for teaching collocations in language courses, we designed a corpus-based syllabus of Italian collocations. In this article, we illustrate the methodological choices and criteria followed for the realization of the syllabus.