Evaluación de la competencia colocacional de aprendices de español como lengua extranjera

Abstract

The search for an adequate method to measure the collocational competence of learners of Spanish as a foreign language is the main purpose of this research. This involved the development of a diagnostic and competency test, the Spanish Collocation Test (TCE), from creation to administration. To carry out this task, we proposed the operational definition of collocation and the description of a collocation knowledge model, as well as the selection of a sample of testable collocations, which entailed the creation of a leveled collocation list and allowed us to propose some criteria for their leveling, as well as the design of the test itself. The TCE consists of a battery of tests that seek to provide a panoramic perspective of the knowledge that learners of Spanish as a foreign language have of Spanish collocations. The battery is composed of four modalities that measure production and comprehension from recognition and retrieval. The results show that learning collocations is not always a challenge for learners of Spanish as a foreign language, since only in the case of production from retrieval does it pose a challenge for them, unlike what the results related to comprehension show, which are positive.