The Importance of Teaching Collocations in the Development of Kuwaiti ESL/EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension

Collocation refers to a group of two or more words that often go together or located in a certain manner in speech and writing. In other words we may describe collocation as a group of two or more words that like to hang out together. This research was intended to observe the importance of teaching collocations in the development of Kuwaiti ESL/ EFL learners’ reading comprehension.
The setting of this pragmatic study was English Language Unit (ELU), Kuwait University. Keeping in view the objective of study, 80 Arabic-speaking English learners (Kuwaiti ESL/EFL learners), both male and female, at intermediate level were selected from English Language Unit (ELU), of Kuwait University. The participants’ age ranged 22-25 years. The level of these participants’ English was determined on the basis of their scores on Nelson Proficiency Test which was administered at the same time in four different classes i.e., two classes as the experimental group while the other two classes as the control group for the purpose of recent research. Some participants, however, were disqualified from the data analysis due to some reasons. For instance, a few of them didn’t show up in the pre-experimental test, while others missed some of the sessions in the experimental stage, or failed to answer the questionnaire. Due to these reasons, the participants in the experimental group and the control group were not equal. Finally, there were 32 students in the experimental group and 35 students in the respective control group. Therefore, the final total number of the sample was 67 subjects.
The statistics for this study were collected from 67 participants. The paired-sample t-test showed very interesting results. The participants in the experimental group performed better than the participants in the control group in reading comprehending test. This research verified that teaching collocations, before the test is administered, could play an important role in the development of Kuwaiti ESL/ EFL learners’ reading comprehension. The study concludes with pedagogical implications, limitations, and suggestions and recommendations for future research.