COLLOCATIONAL COMPETENCE OF EFL MAJORS IN NAJRAN UNIVERSITY

The current study investigates competence of EFL majors in Najran University, Saudi Arabia to translate into Arabic simple English collocations. The study assumes the learners are not fully aware of how to translate collocations into Arabic. For this purpose, a sample of fourth level EFL learners were asked to translate some sentences, each of which contained an English collocation. The sentences were carefully designed to meet the average level and the few numbers of students in the rural Province of Sharorah. The responses were thoroughly analyzed for receptive and translational errors as well as for the causes behind them. The overall findings are not entirely satisfactory since they demonstrate a striking challenge in translating collocations due to collocational weakness at both the receptive and production levels, displaying numerous examples of L1 negative transfer. The test has revealed four types of translation errors: 1. Wrong Translation 2. Violation of Arabic collocation 3. Inaccuracy 4. Excessive wording. In light of the evaluation of the participants' collocational skills, the study also makes recommendations for ways to improve the current situation. Keywords: English-Arabic translation. collocational competence, lexical collocation, receptive knowledge, Saudi EFL.