EFFECTIVENESS OF A CORPUS-BASED METHODOLOGY FOR DEVELOPING COLLOCATIONAL SKILLS IN WRITTEN AND ORAL SPEECH: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS OF BUKHARA REGION

Abstract

This article reports the results of an experimental study that tested a corpus-based methodology for developing collocational skills in the written and oral speech of upper-grade learners. The study was carried out in the 2025–2026 academic year in 13 general secondary schools – one in each of the 11 districts and the two cities of Bukhara region – with about 1500 learners of grades 8 and 9. The experimental groups were taught with the “Corpus Detective” exercise system and the “CORPUS-BASED COLLOCATIONS’ LAB” website using the SkELL and COCA corpora, while the control groups followed the standard textbook. By the end of the experiment, experimental-group learners used 70–80% of collocations correctly in their written and oral speech, and first-language-based collocation errors became markedly less frequent in their work. The findings suggest that corpus-based instruction adapted to the school context is an effective way of developing collocational skills.