A Corpus-based Study Of The Use Of TO And FOR In Chinese EFL Learners' Compositions

This thesis investigates Chinese EFL learners' use of high frequency function words, particularly the use of TO and FOR, two major representatives of this group. The main questions addressed in the study are:1. Do Chinese EFL learners tend to overuse or underuse these two words?2. Do Chinese EFL learners understand the basic meanings of these two words in the same way as native speakers do or not?3. What are specific features of Chinese EFL learners' misuse of the words TO and FOR?4. What are the reasons underlying such specific features?5. Are there any pedagogical implications?To answer these questions, authentic data collected from Chinese EFL learners have been compared with data collected from native speakers by using computerized corpora and linguistic software tools to speed up the initial stage of the linguistic analysis. Results show that EFL learners, even at the advanced proficiency level, have great difficulty with high frequency function words, such as TO and FOR. Error analyses show that the degree of mother tongue interference in Grade 8 level students is higher than that in Band 4 level students. In the conclusion part, the pedagogical implications of the study are discussed and suggestions are made for using concordance-based exercises as a way of raising learners' awareness of the complexity of high-frequency function words.