Collocations are words that often arbitrarily cluster in a particular language context (e.g., make progress). Native Arabic learners of English often find difficulty using English collocations in their English discourse. This is probably because such expressions, though occurring in Arabic, are not as frequently used as they are in English. Contrastive studies shedding light on the status of English and Arabic collocations often list collocational expressions in English and provide corresponding equivalent collocations in Arabic. Unlike such studies, the present research does not simply concern itself with whether collocations exist in Arabic as they occur in English. It goes beyond this to compare the rate of frequency and rigidity of English collocations with that of Arabic collocations in reading texts, then relates the results to native Arabic learners' failure to appreciate the use of collocations in English. My research raises two questions. The first is: do collocations in Arabic occur in ordinary discourse as frequently as they do in equivalent English linguistic contexts? The second is: do Arabic collocations consist of words combined as rigidly as those constituting English collocations? The findings have implications for ESL practitioners, syllabus designers, and reading specialists.