基于语料库的大学英语学习者三种体裁写作词汇复杂度差异实证研究

文章旨在探究英语学习者在不同体裁二语写作任务中词汇复杂度的差异,采用定量和定性相结合的方法,收集60名东北某大学非英语专业一年级学生的记叙文、说明文、议论文三种体裁的写作文本,探究其词汇复杂度差异,并建立常用词频表进行对比分析。研究结果显示:(1)记叙文词汇复杂度最高,词汇种类最多,议论文词汇复杂度和词类次之,说明文词汇复杂度相对前两者较低,词汇种类最少;(2)根据词频表的对比分析,发现记叙文词频表中前40个常用词汇多以人称代词、冠词、介词为主;而议论文、说明文前40个常用词汇中除常用介词、人称代词外,多数为与其主题相关的名词。在教学实践中,研究有助于教师根据学生不同体裁写作的特点及时调整教学方案及相应策略,帮助学生掌握跨文体写作词汇应用技巧,提高跨文体写作语言复杂度,提高学生语言产出的质量。

The purpose of this study is to investigate the differences in English learners’ lexical complexity in different genres of second language writing tasks. It adopted a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the lexical complexity in narrative, expository and argumentative writing by 60 first-year non-English majors at a northeastern university, and to establish word frequency lists for comparative study. The results of this study show that:(1)Among the three genres, narrative writing has the highest lexical complexity and the most word types;argumentative writing has the middle lexical complexity and the word types also the middle one;expository writing has the lower lexical complexity than the former two and also the fewest word types;(2)According to the comparative analysis of word lists, it is found that the top-40 frequent words in the word list of narrative writing are mainly personal pronouns, articles and prepositions;in addition to prepositions and pronouns, the top-40 frequent words in the word list of argumentative and expository writing are the nouns related to their themes. In teaching practice, the study helps teachers adjust their teaching programs and corresponding strategies according to the characteristics of students’ writing in different genres, helps students master the vocabulary application skills of cross-genre writing, improves the lexical complexity of cross-genre writing, and enhances the quality of students’ language output.