Document Type
Preprint
Publication Date
Summer 6-5-2026
Journal / Book Title
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
Abstract
This study examines how L1-L2 congruency affects the processing of Chinese collocations by English-speaking learners in the United States. Seventy-nine participants completed an online acceptability judgment task involving congruent (L1 and L2 structurally and semantically aligned) and incongruent collocations. Results showed that learners of Chinese judged congruent items more accurately than incongruent ones, particularly at lower proficiency levels. However, no clear congruency effect was observed in response times. Meanwhile, collocational frequency significantly predicted both accuracy and speed, with stronger effects among higher-proficiency learners. In contrast, native speakers performed near the ceiling, showing no sensitivity to congruency. L2 proficiency modulated the congruency effect in accuracy: lower-proficiency learners demonstrated greater sensitivity to congruency, while higher-proficiency learners processed both types more uniformly. These findings suggest that congruent collocations benefit from L1-based processing, especially for lower-proficiency learners, and that frequency plays a crucial role in facilitating collocational processing. The study has implications not only for Chinese instruction in English-speaking contexts but also for understanding formulaic language processing in logographic languages.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2025-0245
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Lu, Xiaolong; Fang, Shaohua; and Liu, Xiaoyu, "How frequency and L2 proficiency moderate the congruency effect in collocational processing? Evidence from L2 Chinese learners in an acceptability judgment task" (2026). Department of Linguistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 64.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/linguistics-facpubs/64
Rights
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by De Gruyter in International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching on June 5, 2026, available at https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2025-0245. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. If you wish to use this manuscript for commercial purposes, please contact rights@degruyter.com.