The 4th International Scientific Conference Multilingual and Multicultural Learning: Policies and Practices (MMLPP) was held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria from 14 to 18 October 2025. Dr. Goranka Blagus Bartolec (Institute of the Croatian Language), Dr. Gorana Duplančić Rogošić (Faculty of Economics, University of Split), and Dr. Antonia Ordulj (Faculty of Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb) discussed collocational competence in the Croatian language and the most common problems and challenges faced by non-native speakers.

The number of students learning Croatian has been steadily increasing over the past two decades, especially after Croatia’s accession to the European Union. As a result, there is a growing need for high-quality linguistic resources that assist non-native speakers in mastering the structure of the Croatian language.

The paper presented the progress of research within the INIKOL project (Multiword Expressions in the Croatian Language – A Lexicological, Computational Linguistic and Glottodidactic Approach, HRZZ IP-2022-10-7697), which aims to develop a database of verbal and nominal collocations specifically adapted to Croatian as a foreign language. The database is conceived as an additional resource to enhance collocational competence, since practice shows that non-native speakers—regardless of their proficiency level—often encounter difficulties in understanding and using collocations in writing, listening, and comprehension (Goh 2000; Ordulj 2018).

In addition to presenting the INIKOL database, the main objective of this paper was to categorize three key challenges that hinder the acquisition of collocations in Croatian:

1. complex morphological paradigms of nouns and verbs;

2. verb valency;

3. associative strength of collocational components (Ordulj & Žauhar 2018).

This categorization is based on data from the CROLTEC corpus, which includes written texts and audio recordings produced by foreign students learning Croatian (Mikelić Preradović et al. 2015).