Effects of Pre‐Reading Study and Reading Exposure on the Learning and Processing of Collocations

Abstract

Abstract Little is known about the effect of pre‐reading exposure on collocational learning. This study used eye‐tracking and offline measures (form recall and recognition) to explore the effectiveness of pre‐reading study and reading exposure on the processing and learning of novel collocations. Three learning conditions were evaluated: reading‐only (target items were simply embedded in sentences), study‐only (explicit learning of target items), and pre‐reading study plus reading (explicit learning of target items followed by reading). Pre‐reading study plus reading was the most effective learning condition, while reading‐only was more effective than study‐only. More specifically, studying collocations before reading led to increased attention when encountering the same collocation in subsequent reading. Furthermore, greater attention, in the pre‐reading study phase, as indicated by fixations, was associated with larger collocational gains.