基于语料库的大学生英语写作词汇特征研究

Corpus-Based Study of Lexical Features of English Essays Written by Chinese College Students

通过纵向比较自建语料库WECNEM(2009-2012)、中国学习者语料库CLEC(1996-2002)和中国口笔语语料库中的笔语库WECCL(-2005),以及横向对比上述三个中介语语料库和英语本族语写作语料库NESSIE(-2012),并对我国大学生英语写作的词汇特征进行研究发现,大学生词汇运用确实存在稳定化的趋势,这也是石化的前兆。但目前的非英语专业学生词汇应用相关数据比十年前有明显提高,与WECCL的英语专业学生相当;三个中介语语料库在词汇丰富度、平均词长和句长上具有共性,均低于本族语库;常用词分布模型表明,第1000至3000词的使用是大学生二语习得中的一个关键点。

This study investigates the lexical features of English essays written by Chinese college students by comparing three interlanguage corpora WECNEM, CLEC, WECCL and one native speaker corpus NESSIE from longitudinal and horizontal dimensions.The results confirms the stabilization trend of the acquisition of second language lexicons and the common features of interlanguage including lower level of lexical richness,average word and sentence length.But it’s also found that the current lexical data shows significant improvement compared with those of ten years before and the acquisition of the most-frequently-used 1000th to 3000th words plays a critical role in second language writing.