The present study reports on the use of the high-frequency verb do in written English performance based on the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). The native English corpus for comparison is the Louvain Corpus of N...The present study reports on the use of the high-frequency verb do in written English performance based on the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). The native English corpus for comparison is the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). A corpus-based Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) approach has been adopted in the study. A comparison is made between Band 4 and 8 English majors' writings in CLEC and the native college students' writings in LOCNESS. Results indicate that as far as the overall frequency of do is concerned, there is no significant difference between Band 8 English majors and the native speakers, but Band 4 English majors use less than native speakers. With regard to the different uses of do, marked differences have been found between Chinese learners and native speakers, especially when do is used as an auxiliary verb or a delexical verb. To be specific, Chinese learners show a strong tendency to underuse do as an auxiliary verb to form an interrogative, negative or inverted sentence. Moreover, they tend to overuse do as a delexical verb, allowing it more freedom to collocate with a wider range of nouns. The underlying reasons might be mother-tongue interference, intralingual transfer, and overgeneralization, etc. In conclusion, the pedagogical implications of the study are discussed and suggestions made for adopting corpus-based exercises as a way of raising learners' awareness of the use of high-frequency words.展开更多
文摘The present study reports on the use of the high-frequency verb do in written English performance based on the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). The native English corpus for comparison is the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). A corpus-based Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) approach has been adopted in the study. A comparison is made between Band 4 and 8 English majors' writings in CLEC and the native college students' writings in LOCNESS. Results indicate that as far as the overall frequency of do is concerned, there is no significant difference between Band 8 English majors and the native speakers, but Band 4 English majors use less than native speakers. With regard to the different uses of do, marked differences have been found between Chinese learners and native speakers, especially when do is used as an auxiliary verb or a delexical verb. To be specific, Chinese learners show a strong tendency to underuse do as an auxiliary verb to form an interrogative, negative or inverted sentence. Moreover, they tend to overuse do as a delexical verb, allowing it more freedom to collocate with a wider range of nouns. The underlying reasons might be mother-tongue interference, intralingual transfer, and overgeneralization, etc. In conclusion, the pedagogical implications of the study are discussed and suggestions made for adopting corpus-based exercises as a way of raising learners' awareness of the use of high-frequency words.
