This paper reports a mixed methods study using an exploratory design. It aims to record the responses of young adult students in learning English collocations in EFL classrooms when their awareness of the linguistic items was raised through instructional interventions. A total of 116 students whose ages ranged from 16 to 24 years old participated in the research procedure. First, the participants responded to the surveys, then 50 of those students were interviewed for in-depth exploration of their English collocation awareness. A statistical analysis of the survey data, a theme analysis of the interview data, and an interpretation of integrated quantitative/qualitative findings were included in this study’s data analysis scheme. Findings show that as students' awareness of collocation is raised in EFL classrooms, they perform better in learning English collocation and are more confident speakers of English who sound more natural when they practice.

Zipfian distribution, applied to the context of linguistics, suggests that the most common 100 words comprise 50% of most written or spoken texts; 1000 covers 80%; and 5000 covers 98%. Scholars such as Nation (2013) suggest language learners should learn words systematically, meaning that it would be most logical to learn the most common words in a Zipfian way. Corpora - large databases of authentic written or spoken text - can assist EFL material creators through vocabulary frequency rankings. However, it is unknown whether textbook writers use corpus data, at least in Japan. Thus, a simple analysis of the word frequency of three government-approved Junior High School textbooks was undertaken using the CANCODE Corpus. The results showed that there was evidence of a frequency-based allocation, with some abnormalities resulting from regional variations and exam focus.

Propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, learning technologies have played a central role in facilitating educational experiences for students of all ages. Effective use of technology, however, requires functional understanding of the entailed lexicon, posing significant challenges to multilingual learners, especially to students studying abroad in higher education settings. Because technology vocabulary varies internationally and locally with university-specific technology jargon, terms can be easily conflated and confused. While the importance of academic vocabulary development in English for academic purposes (EAP) settings is widely established in the literature (e.g., University Word List, Xue & Nation, 1984; New Academic Word List, Coxhead, 2000), the explicit teaching of vocabulary associated with technology to support multilingual students’ academic success has been overlooked. This interactive workshop presents creative ways English instructors can identify, teach, and reinforce technology vocabulary to ensure equitable access and student success appropriate for their teaching context.

This study examined the vocabulary size of junior high school students in southern Taiwan. Altogether, 343 participants from two junior high schools, 1 urban and 1 rural, in Kaohsiung City Taiwan participated. The data were collected by the Test of the First 1,000 Words of English (Nation, 1993), and the 2,000-word level and 3,000-word level tests of the revised version of Nation’s Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, 2000). The averaged vocabulary size of the first-, second-, and the third-year students were 503, 534, and 658 words respectively.

The results indicated that the junior students of higher academic levels carried a larger vocabulary. Moreover, the vocabulary size of the urban students was found to have a slighter lead than that of their counterparts in the rural area. The findings could suggest possible improvements for the teaching and learning of English vocabulary for the junior high school classrooms in Taiwan and Asia.