HOW CORPUS-BASED APPROACH CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE STUDY OF SEEMINGLY SYNONYMOUS WORDS

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.

Source Work in China-Based and Western SSCI Journal Articles:Preferences of Reporting Structures of English Academic Articles Published in China and in English-Speaking Countries

The purpose of this study is to examine the use of reporting verbs(RVs)in China-based and Western SSCI indexed English journal articles.Writing samples(N=168)are compared in terms of the frequencies of RVs,selection of high-frequency RVs and the evaluative orientations of RVs.The results suggest that whereas both English academic articles published in China and English academic articles published in English-speaking countries use similar varieties of RVs.Using the resources of appraisal theory,we found that English academic articles published in Chinas use fewer discourse RVs;they tend to use more neutral RVs,providing no overt intersubjective stance on the cited evidence,whereas English academic articles published in English-speaking countries favor more positive RVs to endorse the evidence during the argument.In particular,English academic articles published in China rarely employ negative and critical RVs.Academic writers’preferences of RVs are not only due to their language proficiency,but also due to their discursive tradition and underlying cultural values.They also have to do with the journals’coverage of topics and attitude toward academic debates and original thinking.The comparative findings have implications for English academic articles published in China,especially those based in non-English-speaking countries,when they try to use RVs to develop authorial stance in English:that is,to distinguish the semantic stance of RVs and cultivate cross-language and-culture awareness.

大学英语语言能力标准的研制——理论、实践及启示

本文旨在对大学英语语言能力标准的研究与实践进行探讨。首先,本文对语言能力标准研制的背景进行了介绍,并系统回顾了国外语言能力标准的发展历程及其代表性的标准。随后,本文对我国半个世纪以来的大学英语能力标准的研制进行了回顾与分析,指出语言能力标准的研制历经了"专家经验"、"实践者认知"及"学习者表现"三个阶段,开展基于语料库的数据驱动研究是未来语言能力标准研制的必然趋势。