Abstract：Abstract: As an important topic in SLA, V-N collocations have received much attention. However, how L2 proficiency and cross-linguistic similarity affect the use of V-N collocations remains inadequately investigated. Besides, nearly all the existing studies analyzed written data with a cross-sectional design. Tracking 32 Chinese undergraduates for two years, this paper reports on their dynamic use of V-N collocations in the oral English narratives in five tests and the influence of English-Chinese similarity on their use. After data analysis, the two following findings are obtained. First, with the improvement of general L2 proficiency, the correct rate of V-N collocations does not increase significantly. When English-Chinese similarity is taken into account, congruent collocations show a change pattern similar to the general pattern, whereas the four incongruent collocations demonstrate a significant nonlinear change in their correct rates. Second, with the improvement of general L2 proficiency, the percentages of the errors in V-N collocations show insignificant nonlinear fluctuations, while in some types of collocations, the fluctuations are significant.
Key words: V-N collocations; oral English narratives；English-Chinese similarity；errors
