The aim of this study is two-fold. Firstly, it attempts to determine the role of presenting collocations by organizing them based on (i) the keyword, (ii) topic related and (iii) grammatical aspect on retention of collocations. Secondly, it investigates the relationship between participants' general English proficiency and the presentation types on retention of collocations. Each collocation was presented in a single glossed sentence and distributed among 48 Turkish EFL learners, prospective English teachers, majoring in English at a Language Teaching department. Participants were upper-­intermediate, lower-intermediate and advanced level learners. A pre-­ and two recall (immediate post and delayed post) collocation tests were administered to compare the effect of presentation types of collocations and their relationship between the participants' general English proficiency on retention. The results indicated a significant difference in grouping collocations based on grammatical aspect, especially for advanced and lower-intermediate learners. No significant difference was found in grouping collocations related to keyword and topic between the learners of any level on retention of collocations.