<p>This review article examines the concept of collocational competence in learning English as a foreign language, considering its theoretical foundations, definitional development, empirical research, and pedagogical implications. Drawing on Firth&rsquo;s principle that word meaning is shaped through its typical co-occurrence patterns and Halliday&rsquo;s concept of lexicogrammar, collocational competence is situated within contemporary theories of phraseology. The paper synthesizes findings from corpus-based studies and classroom research, which demonstrate that collocational knowledge plays a crucial role in the development of idiomaticity, fluency, and overall communicative competence across diverse educational contexts. Existing research consistently shows that collocational competence develops more slowly than vocabulary size, and that even advanced learners experience difficulties in the productive use of conventionalized word combinations. Verb&ndash;noun collocations, low-frequency and semantically opaque combinations, as well as collocations that are incongruent with learners&rsquo; first-language patterns, are particularly problematic. These findings confirm that collocational knowledge does not emerge spontaneously through exposure to language alone but requires targeted and systematic pedagogical intervention. The paper further highlights the importance of explicit, corpus-informed, and strategy-based instruction, which has proven significantly more effective than implicit learning. Successful approaches include working with authentic corpora, developing noticing and memory strategies, and integrating collocations into tasks focused on real-life language use. At the same time, key methodological and conceptual challenges are identified, including inconsistent definitions, a limited number of longitudinal studies, and insufficiently contextualized assessment models. The study concludes by emphasizing the need for integrated curricular frameworks and mixed-method assessment approaches that link collocational competence to communicative outcomes across different proficiency levels.</p>

Academic writing is a crucial skill for university students, with argumentative essays being a fundamental form of written expression. Despite various instructional approaches, students, particularly those with lower foreign language proficiency, continue to struggle with essay writing. Grounded in the socio-cognitive theoretical framework and metacognitive strategies, this study examines the impact of explicit writing instruction on English major students. It explores the effectiveness of strategies such as modelling, practice with feedback, and independent practice in enhancing students’ essay-writing performance. A total of 110 argumentative essays, produced by experimental and control groups over one semester, were analysed. The findings reveal a statistically significant improvement in overall writing performance across seven assessed criteria, though not all elements improved equally. The results underscore the necessity of teaching essay writing explicitly, demonstrating that explicit instruction is an effective approach to enhancing academic writing skills among university students.

Collocational competence, the ability to use grammatical and lexical collocations accurately, is a crucial aspect of language proficiency, closely linked to natural and fluent language use. Despite its importance, non-native speakers often struggle with collocations, particularly in productive tasks such as writing. This study examines the frequency, types, and errors of collocations among B2-level English language students at the University of Zenica, as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference (2001). A corpus of 150 student essays (76,319 words) was compiled. Collocations were extracted, classified, and analysed based on Benson et al. (2010). The results indicate that lexical collocations (3.3%) were more frequent than grammatical collocations (2.68%), confirming the first hypothesis. However, grammatical collocations exhibited a higher error rate (6.53%) compared to lexical collocations (5.15%), supporting the second hypothesis. Error analysis revealed that negative L1 transfer was the main cause of grammatical collocation errors, while synonymy and analogy contributed significantly to lexical errors. The findings also indicated that students tend to rely on familiar collocations, showing limited experimentation with less common structures. The study has pedagogical implications, suggesting that contrastive analysis, exposure to authentic materials, and creative writing activities could enhance students’ collocational competence. Addressing L1 interference and verb-preposition collocations through targeted instruction could further improve accuracy. These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of collocational competence in EFL learning, offering practical strategies for improving teaching methods and student writing skills.

This study offers a comprehensive evaluation of two English language textbooks, Way to Go 8 and Challenges 4, widely used in primary schools in the Canton of Central Bosnia. Utilizing Littlejohn's analytical framework for material analysis and Xiao's model of cultural categorization, the research investigates the structural design, learner engagement strategies, curriculum alignment, and cultural content integration in both textbooks. The findings reveal that Challenges 4 exhibits greater coherence in design and organization, while Way to Go 8 demonstrates a fragmented presentation of topics and grammar. Both textbooks predominantly emphasize individual written exercises, focusing on information decoding and selection, while offering limited opportunities for developing functional skills such as problem-solving, communication, and critical thinking. Although both textbooks align with the official curriculum regarding topics, grammar, and vocabulary, the integration of cultural content is minimal and lacks depth, with cultural references being sporadic and not thoroughly embedded within the learning material. The study suggests that enhancing the incorporation of functional skill development activities and more substantial cultural content could improve the effectiveness of these textbooks in fostering comprehensive language proficiency among learners.  Article visualizations:

Linguistic errors remain a persistent challenge for B2-level EFL learners, with research showing that grammatical misapplication accounts for nearly half of the language inaccuracies. This study investigates 942 errors in argumentative essays written by Bosnian EFL learners, focusing on grammatical, lexical, and typographical challenges that impact their English writing proficiency. The data, consisting of 90 essays with a total word count of 45,786, were collected and analyzed following a structured procedure: collection, identification, description, and evaluation of learners’ errors. A descriptive-qualitative error analysis approach was employed to classify errors and examine their underlying causes systematically. To ensure reliability and consistency in the analysis, three instructors independently reviewed the essays. Inter-rater reliability was achieved through collaborative discussions, where any discrepancies in error classification were resolved through consensus. Errors were categorized into grammatical (50.2%), word-choice (29.3%), and typographical (20.5%) types and further analyzed to determine their origins as intralingual or interlingual. A deeper investigation revealed that 58% of errors were intralingual, resulting from overgeneralization and rule misapplication, while the remaining 42% were interlingual, influenced by Bosnian language interference. These findings highlight the need for focused interventions, particularly in grammar and vocabulary instruction. By uncovering error patterns and their causes, the study contributes to refining pedagogical strategies that support EFL learners’ writing proficiency.

This study explores the application of subject-verb concord rules among Bosnian EFL students, focusing on the influence of proficiency level, academic performance in grammar-related subjects, and preferences for American or British English. Guided by three research questions, the study examines whether students’ general language proficiency impacts their ability to correctly apply subject-verb concord rules, whether there is a correlation between their grammar course grades and performance on a concord-focused questionnaire, and whether students demonstrate a preference for American or British English concord rules. The research involved 41 university students with proficiency levels of B2 and C1. The findings reveal that students’ proficiency levels and grammar score grades do not significantly influence their application of subject-verb concord rules. Despite demonstrating a good overall understanding, students frequently struggled with specific categories, such as plural nouns and coordination with or/nor. Additionally, the results indicate a notable preference for American English concord rules over British English. These findings underscore the pedagogical importance of subject-verb concord and highlight the need for targeted instructional strategies to address persistent errors. The study also emphasizes the value of error analysis in identifying interlingual influences and improving language learning materials.  Article visualizations:

This paper is a review article providing an overview of five methods of English language teaching: Grammar-Translation Method (GTM), Direct Method, Audiolingual Method, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT). For each method, a brief historical background is provided, followed by the aims, principles, techniques, and limitations. Continuous examination of ELT methods is essential because they provide an organized framework for teachers to deliver instructions and knowledge effectively. The choice of teaching method is vital to meet all the requirements of successful language teaching and learning. Additionally, different learning approaches suit different students. Today there are many teaching methods, but this paper will touch on the most significant ones that marked the historical development and beginnings of methods in language teaching and learning. By exploring the features of each method, this paper aims to enhance the understanding of their differences and to provide a critical view of each, in order to inform and assist young English language teachers in evaluating their own teaching practices. Keywords: English language teaching, teaching methods, English language learning

Corpus-based activities (CBAs) have been used in FLT in recent decades, especially in countries where educational systems are well developed. However, this is not the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is why a case study was conducted in a primary school in Bosnia and Herzegovina including 48 7th grade students divided into an experimental and a control group to investigate the effect of the use of corpus-based activities on vocabulary acquisition. In both groups blended learning methods were applied due to COVID restrictions. The aim was also to determine whether the use of CBAs had any impact on the students' motivation for participating in vocabulary learning activities. The students' results achieved in the pre- and post-tests which included new vocabulary items were analyzed and compared. The students' responses in the five-point Likert scale motivation questionnaires completed prior to and after the use of CBAs were also compared and discussed. Statistical analysis of the results confirmed that there was a positive effect of the use of CBAs on vocabulary acquisition of A1 – A2 level seventh graders, as well as on their motivation for participating in such activities. Contrary to statistically significant improvement in vocabulary acquisition, there is no statistically significant increase in the motivation to learn new vocabulary items in either of the groups, for which some possible explanations are also discussed in the paper.  Article visualizations:

This paper investigates how successful B2 level English language learners (ELLs), high school students are in translating a group of most common false friends (FFs) from English to BCS and vice versa and examines whether they are more successful in translating absolute or partial FFs. In line with the classification by Otwinowska-Kasztelanic (2015), false friends are considered to be a class of cognates. They are further sub-classified into absolute FFs, which have the same or similar form and dissimilar meaning in two languages (e.g. eventually, meaning finally in English and eventualno, meaning possibly in BCS) and partial false friends with the same or similar form and one same and another dissimilar meaning. (e.g. argument in English, meaning reason, the same as argument in BSC and disagreement, the meaning for which a different word is used in BCS, rasprava). Due to their deceptive nature, FFs have been researched within different theoretical frameworks - theoretical, contrastive, applied linguistics, semantics, pragmatics and translation studies. By means of a survey and descriptive and inferential statistics, this paper confirms the hypothesis that there is a statistically significant difference between correct translation of FFs from English to BCS and their correct translation from BCS to English. Furthermore, the second hypothesis was also confirmed, namely that the B2 ELLs are more successful in translating partial than in translating absolute FFs. The research results suggest that in teaching FFs as items of deceptive vocabulary both explicit and implicit methods need to be applied

<p>Compounding in English is a complex linguistic phenomenon.Analyses of compounds can be quite demanding as it is sometimes necessary to analyze word classes comprising compounds in order to distinguish between composite nominals and compound nouns. Due to the complexity of their form, it may be rather difficult to interpret their meaning appropriately, especially in the absence of proper contextual clues. The present paper investigates the frequency and types of compounds in a selection of texts in economics collected from the 1995 and 2015 journal volumes. The analysis includesfrequency data and comparisons between different types of compounds used in the two-decade period. The results show that the frequency of compounds in economic texts has increased, along with their complexity. The most frequent type were the nominal compounds,neoclassical being the least used.</p>