Little is known about the effect of pre-reading exposure on collocational learning. This study used eye-tracking and offline measures (form recall and recognition) to explore the effectiveness of pre-reading study and reading exposure on the processing and learning of novel collocations. Three learning conditions were evaluated: reading-only (target items were simply embedded in sentences), study-only (explicit learning of target items), and pre-reading study plus reading (explicit learning of target items followed by reading). Pre-reading study plus reading was the most effective learning condition, while reading-only was more effective than study-only. More specifically, studying collocations before reading led to increased attention when encountering the same collocation in subsequent reading. Furthermore, greater attention, in the pre-reading study phase, as indicated by fixations, was associated with larger collocational gains.