| The purpose of this study is to make a quantitative and qualitative investigation of the collocations utilized by Japanese students in English writing. The definition of collocations was based on that given in A Guide to A Course of Study by the Ministry of Education in Japan. The academic levels of the students investigated ranged from the first year of senior high school to the sophomore year of university.
In order to conduct the research, a total of 121 students were required to write an essay in English on a single, directed theme. The essays, upon completion, were searched for collocations by the close reading of researchers who referred to three different English-Japanese dictionaries. To ensure reliability, the investigation was conducted again the following year on another 96 students.
The results demonstrated a strong correlation between the first investigation and the second. The data analyzed revealed the following facts: (1) forty-one per cent of the first-year students at senior high school cannot utilize any collocations at all; (2) with increasing levels of education, the number of collocation types utilized increases gradually; (3) there exist some collocations which uniquely characterize Japanese students' usage as compared to that of native speakers.
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