英语特异组合及其在外语教学上的验证

Unusual English Word Combinations and Their Validation in English Language Teaching

从双语对比视角出发,依据"平行(语法模式一致)"和"不对应(构成成分不能直译)"的原则,本文界定了英语"特异组合",基于各类语言资源的综合利用,提出一个发现英语特异组合的可操作性强的方法,以"V+N"构成的VO特异组合为例,介绍了该方法的实施过程。以某外语院校非英语专业本科一年级学生和英语专业在读硕士各30名作为受试,测试其对特异组合产出性知识的掌握情况,实验结果表明,不同层次的受试在特异组合的掌握方面没有显著差异,进而说明特异组合的掌握与英语学习的水平并非同步发展。特异组合对不同平等级的英语学习者都是难点,应成为词汇教学的重点。

From a bilingual contrastive perspective, ＂unusual English word combinations （UEWCs）＂ proposed in this paper are defined as ＂non-correspondent＂ （i. e. unidiomatic verbatim translation） lexical items with ＂parallel＂ （i. e. shared overall grammatical） patterns between Chinese and English. As such, UEWCs are conceived as most probable cases of Chinglish as well as hurdles for Chinese EFL learners. A highly operational procedure of identifying UEWCs is suggested based on the test with such language resources as bilingual word lists, thesauri, monolingual and bilingual corpora. VO （ i. e. V ＋ N） UEWCs are described to illustrate the UEWC identification procedure. A follow-up translation test is designed to assess the command of UEWCs of a cohort of 30 non-English major freshmen at a foreign studies university and the other cohort of 30 MA candidates of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. The two groups of students show no significant difference in producing UEWCs, which implies that the mastery of UEWCs does not improve with language proficiency development, thereby becoming stumbling blocks for English learning and teaching.