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
It has been widely acknowledged that vocabulary is central to language acquisition; however, vocabulary teaching in college classrooms does not seem quite fruitful. Students' oral and wriuten discourse reveals sur...It has been widely acknowledged that vocabulary is central to language acquisition; however, vocabulary teaching in college classrooms does not seem quite fruitful. Students' oral and wriuten discourse reveals surprisingly high rate of deviant usages. A scientific and effective way of teaching and learning vocabulary is therefore strongly desired. This essay explores a comparatively new approach — 'chunking', which is considered as the key to an understanding of how language works. Theoretical underpinnings of this approach suitable for college classrooms are examined before suggestions and pedagogical implications are made as to how to raise students' chunking awareness.展开更多
Though collocations have drawn much attention in the field of language acquisition, difficulties with them have not been investigated in much detail. This paper reports on a corpus-based exploratory study that analyze...Though collocations have drawn much attention in the field of language acquisition, difficulties with them have not been investigated in much detail. This paper reports on a corpus-based exploratory study that analyzes the mistakes learners made when they produced English collocations. The current study shows that not only beginners but also advanced learners have difficulties in choosing the right collocates and the difficulties that learners of different levels have are more or less the same. The L1 influence on the production of L2 collocations exists at every stage of learning though it varies with the learners' L2 competence.展开更多
In the English language, there are many words which are considered synonymous in that dictionaries and thesauruses often define them in identical meanings. Under such circumstances, EFL learners are confronted with a ...In the English language, there are many words which are considered synonymous in that dictionaries and thesauruses often define them in identical meanings. Under such circumstances, EFL learners are confronted with a big difficulty in acquiring these words of similar meanings. They often regard synonymous words as equivalents and use them alternately, which sometimes result in ambiguity or awkwardness of their language. However, with the advent of corpora and concordancing programs, a new way of investigating and learning English synonymous words has emerged. This paper explores colligational patterns, collocational behavior and semantic prosody of two seemingly synonymous verbs, gain and obtain, in two native speaker corpora, the Brown Corpus and the LOB Corpus, in order to show how these 'equivalencies' can be misleading because 'synonymous' words are typically used in different ways. The study also examines EFL learners' behavior in using synonymous words by investigating the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). From the results of the study, it can be seen that Chinese EFL learners have not yet acquired a full understanding of the usage of gain and obtain with respect to colligation, collocation and semantic prosody. Their underuses and overuses of some grammatical forms and lexical patterns of the two target synonymous words might be influenced either by their mother tongue or by the registers of their English writing or by both. The paper finally discusses the implications of corpus-based study in vocabulary teaching and learning in general.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It has been widely acknowledged that vocabulary is central to language acquisition; however, vocabulary teaching in college classrooms does not seem quite fruitful. Students' oral and wriuten discourse reveals surprisingly high rate of deviant usages. A scientific and effective way of teaching and learning vocabulary is therefore strongly desired. This essay explores a comparatively new approach — 'chunking', which is considered as the key to an understanding of how language works. Theoretical underpinnings of this approach suitable for college classrooms are examined before suggestions and pedagogical implications are made as to how to raise students' chunking awareness.
文摘Though collocations have drawn much attention in the field of language acquisition, difficulties with them have not been investigated in much detail. This paper reports on a corpus-based exploratory study that analyzes the mistakes learners made when they produced English collocations. The current study shows that not only beginners but also advanced learners have difficulties in choosing the right collocates and the difficulties that learners of different levels have are more or less the same. The L1 influence on the production of L2 collocations exists at every stage of learning though it varies with the learners' L2 competence.
文摘In the English language, there are many words which are considered synonymous in that dictionaries and thesauruses often define them in identical meanings. Under such circumstances, EFL learners are confronted with a big difficulty in acquiring these words of similar meanings. They often regard synonymous words as equivalents and use them alternately, which sometimes result in ambiguity or awkwardness of their language. However, with the advent of corpora and concordancing programs, a new way of investigating and learning English synonymous words has emerged. This paper explores colligational patterns, collocational behavior and semantic prosody of two seemingly synonymous verbs, gain and obtain, in two native speaker corpora, the Brown Corpus and the LOB Corpus, in order to show how these 'equivalencies' can be misleading because 'synonymous' words are typically used in different ways. The study also examines EFL learners' behavior in using synonymous words by investigating the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). From the results of the study, it can be seen that Chinese EFL learners have not yet acquired a full understanding of the usage of gain and obtain with respect to colligation, collocation and semantic prosody. Their underuses and overuses of some grammatical forms and lexical patterns of the two target synonymous words might be influenced either by their mother tongue or by the registers of their English writing or by both. The paper finally discusses the implications of corpus-based study in vocabulary teaching and learning in general.
