Collocations in the Eyes of a Multilingual Language Learner

The aim of this article is to explore the approach of multilingual learners to foreign language collocations. Firstly, the article demonstrates the importance of collocations for foreign language learners. Secondly, it presents language learning strategies and teaching techniques which can be applied in the process of learning and teaching collocations. Subsequently, the article focuses on previous research on multilingual vocabulary learning. Furthermore, it is intended to present a study which attempts to discover whether multilingual language learners are aware of the need to learn collocations, whether they actually learn them and which vocabulary learning strategies they employ, or would employ, to this task. The study is conducted on Polish learners of English as the second language as well as on Polish learners of Italian and French as third languages. The main tool of the research is a questionnaire. Some attention is also devoted to collocational content of the learners' textbooks, in order to determine their influence on the learners' attitudes to learning collocations.