The present study answers the research question: A corpus-based analysis of collocate directionality in academic English writing

The concept of collocation is deeply rooted in modern linguistics, and it is studied extensively. Most studies focused on structure, frequency, and association measures of collocates while other studies focused on semantic prosody and collocation competence. These studies have consistently found that words tend to co-occur within certain parameters, and this co-occurrence varies across disciplines and can be standardized based on specific statistical measures. However, certain aspects of collocation have been neglected and received limited attention, such as the directionality of collocates. As the directionality of collocates can provide insightful implications of how writers utilize collocations, the current study attempts to explore this area by analyzing the collocates of two interchangeable words namely study and research in academic writing. The study used a one-million-token corpus compiled of research articles written by Arab scholars in the field of Applied linguistics, literature, and translation. It analyzed the corpus using two software: AntConc and #LancsBox. The results showed variation in the positioning of the shared collocates of the two nodes, nevertheless, these patterns were not exclusive when it comes to formulaic expressions common in academic writing. Such results can have implications for both collocation instruction and provide practical insights to develop academic writing skills. With these findings, educators can concentrate on teaching the syntactic features of collocations and emphasizing vocabulary instruction that prioritizes word pairs over individual words. Ultimately, this approach fosters collocation awareness and enhances the readability of students' written work.