A thesis Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of "Licence en langues et literature anglaises

RESUME

The present study investigates

(i) The extent ot which thrd year students from the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Burundi use Verb+Noun and Adjectiv eNoun collocations ;

(ii) The typme of collocations (between Verb+Noun and Adjective+Noun) which causes more problems among third year students from the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Burundi.

(iii) The main Causes of Verb+Noun and Adjective+Noun collocation errors made by Third Year Students from the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Burundi.

To this end, a sample of forty essays written by Third Year students from the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Burundi was analyzed. Results of the study show that the use of collocations is problematic for Burundian English majors, i.e. they used fewer collocations in their essay wrtings, and almost half of V+N combinations were used incorrectly whereas more than fifty percent of Adj+N collocations were sed incorrectly. Moreover, scores from both types (V+N and Adj+N) collocations were compared and Adj+N collocations were found to be more difficult among the same participants. Concerning error causes, an overwhelmng majority of errors was found to be resulted from overgeneralization for both types, i.e. V+N and Adj+N collocations. It was followed by Freach interference and L. influence (Kirundi influence) come at the third position of errors' causes. The rest of errors found in the present study were found to be resulted from invention of entirely wrong expressions and choice of incorrect adjectival suffix, for Adj+N combinations. Some few plausible combinatons, i.e. combinations which are not listed in collocation dictionaries but acceptable in English were also detected.