The Effectiveness of “Basic Technical Collocations in Economics” for International Students

Abstract

In this study, the author examines three foundation course textbooks used in economics faculties as a data source, to verify the effectiveness of "Basic Technical Collocations in Economics", a list of 527 collocations that can serve as usage examples of technical terms, selected from junior and senior high school textbooks in subjects related to economics. As a result, the 527 collocations were grouped into 184 collocations that were used in the same form in the data source, 115 that were used in a synonymous form, and 228 that were not used.

In the 184 collocations found in the same form, the collocates of terms were verbs and nouns in roughly equal numbers. As for classification by origin, there were almost three times as many Sino-Japanese as native Japanese words. The 115 collocations found in synonymous forms corresponded to 88 collocations and 27 compound words in which the parts of speech, classification of origin, etc., of collocates differed from the "Basic Technical Collocations in Economics" selected from school textbooks. For the 228 collocations that not used, 180 terms with the same form were used in social studies literature not included in the data for this study. These might therefore be used in specialist textbooks other than the data source. Given the above observations, the 527 "Basic Technical Collocations in Economics" appear to be effective for specialized learning in economics.