It is difficult for L2 English learners in general, and especially Chinese learners of English, to form idiomatic collocations. This article presents a comparison of the use of intensifier-verb collocations in English...It is difficult for L2 English learners in general, and especially Chinese learners of English, to form idiomatic collocations. This article presents a comparison of the use of intensifier-verb collocations in English by native speaker students and Chinese ESL learners, paying particular attention to verbs which collocate with intensifiers. The data consisted of written production from three corpora: two of these are native English corpora: the British Academic Written English(BAWE) Corpus and Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers(MICUSP). The third one is a recently created Chinese Learner English corpus, Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners(TECCL).Findings suggest that Chinese learners of English produce significantly more intensifier-verb collocations than native speaker students, but that their English attests a smaller variety of intensifier-verb collocations compared with the native speakers. Moreover, Chinese learners of English use the intensifier-verb collocation types just-verb, only-verb and really-verb very frequently compared with native speaker students. As regards verb collocates, the intensifiers hardly, clearly,well, strongly and deeply collocate with semantically different verbs in native and Chinese learner English. Compared with the patterns in Chinese learner English, the intensifiers in native speaker English collocate with a more stable and restricted set of verb collocates.展开更多
This paper reports a study into the use of amplifiers and amplifier collocations in the doctoral dissertations of Chinese EFL learners. A sample corpus of doctoral dissertations by Chinese doctoral students and a cont...This paper reports a study into the use of amplifiers and amplifier collocations in the doctoral dissertations of Chinese EFL learners. A sample corpus of doctoral dissertations by Chinese doctoral students and a control corpus of doctoral dissertations by native speaker doctoral students were compiled and used for the analyses. Results showed that the overall number of amplifiers used by the Chinese students and the native speaker students were comparable. However, the Chinese learners overused totally, very and really and underused entirely and highly in their writing. Moreover, the Chinese learners tended to use more amplifier collocations than their native speaker counterparts. In particular, they tended to use clearly much more frequently to intensify the reporting verbs and to use the amplifiers to intensify the meaning of general adjectives in their writing. It was also found that many amplifier collocations used by the Chinese learners were congruent collocations. The findings may indicate a non-native style within Chinese learners＇ writing. We argue that Chinese learners overuse amplifiers and amplifier collocations in order to focus the reader＇s attention as well as to enhance the meaning of general adjectives. Meanwhile, the Chinese learners＇ mother tongue exerts a clear influence on their use of amplifiers and amplifier collocations. Pedagogical implications are also discussed within the paper.展开更多
文摘It is difficult for L2 English learners in general, and especially Chinese learners of English, to form idiomatic collocations. This article presents a comparison of the use of intensifier-verb collocations in English by native speaker students and Chinese ESL learners, paying particular attention to verbs which collocate with intensifiers. The data consisted of written production from three corpora: two of these are native English corpora: the British Academic Written English(BAWE) Corpus and Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers(MICUSP). The third one is a recently created Chinese Learner English corpus, Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners(TECCL).Findings suggest that Chinese learners of English produce significantly more intensifier-verb collocations than native speaker students, but that their English attests a smaller variety of intensifier-verb collocations compared with the native speakers. Moreover, Chinese learners of English use the intensifier-verb collocation types just-verb, only-verb and really-verb very frequently compared with native speaker students. As regards verb collocates, the intensifiers hardly, clearly,well, strongly and deeply collocate with semantically different verbs in native and Chinese learner English. Compared with the patterns in Chinese learner English, the intensifiers in native speaker English collocate with a more stable and restricted set of verb collocates.
文摘This paper reports a study into the use of amplifiers and amplifier collocations in the doctoral dissertations of Chinese EFL learners. A sample corpus of doctoral dissertations by Chinese doctoral students and a control corpus of doctoral dissertations by native speaker doctoral students were compiled and used for the analyses. Results showed that the overall number of amplifiers used by the Chinese students and the native speaker students were comparable. However, the Chinese learners overused totally, very and really and underused entirely and highly in their writing. Moreover, the Chinese learners tended to use more amplifier collocations than their native speaker counterparts. In particular, they tended to use clearly much more frequently to intensify the reporting verbs and to use the amplifiers to intensify the meaning of general adjectives in their writing. It was also found that many amplifier collocations used by the Chinese learners were congruent collocations. The findings may indicate a non-native style within Chinese learners＇ writing. We argue that Chinese learners overuse amplifiers and amplifier collocations in order to focus the reader＇s attention as well as to enhance the meaning of general adjectives. Meanwhile, the Chinese learners＇ mother tongue exerts a clear influence on their use of amplifiers and amplifier collocations. Pedagogical implications are also discussed within the paper.
