A Case Study Of DHFV Collocational Errors In The Compositions By Non-English Majors In A Chinese University

As a major part of a language,collocation plays an important role in language learning.The most obvious reason for its importance is because the way words combine in collocations which are fundamental to all language use.Collocation is an important part of native speakers' language competence,and their inclusion in foreign and second language teaching is widely acknowledged today.Learning collocations,apart from increasing the mental lexicon,leads to an increase in fluency.Collocation is also part of communicative competence.However,with such significance,it has not gained enough attention in English teaching in China.Middle school teachers are comparatively more active in encouraging students noticing collocation,because it is an inevitable part in the college entrance examination.When it comes to English teaching in college,teachers no longer focus on collocation but structures,styles,or techniques of the texts.What's more,they seldom point out students' collocational errors in class,as if believing that students themselves will recognize them.This,later,becomes one cause for students' collocational errors.What's more,learners tend to memorize a word by means of equivalence in their mother tongue.They consider vocabulary as a unit of individual words,and neglect their connection with the words co-occurring with them.We can draw the conclusion that both teachers' teaching methods and students' learning strategy are problematic.It is urgent to have a general understanding of the status quo of Chinese English learners' use of collocations,and causes for their collocational errors.As there are many different types of collocations in English,it is unnecessary and impossible for us to investigate all of them. Delexicalized high frequency verb collocations which are a very typical kind and often neglected,become the focus of this thesis.The present study started with investigation of delexicalized high frequency verb (DHFV) collocational errors in compositions of non-English majors in Southwest University.200 sophomore non-English majors from four schools(School of Law,School of Chinese,School of Resources and Environment,School of Engineering and Technology) were included to be the subjects.Through statistic analysis,it was found that DHFV collocations were widely used in the subjects' compositions,and errors of this kind were made rather frequently,which meant that the status quo of the subjects' use of DHFV collocations was unsatisfying.The subjects were also interviewed to reveal their certainty of the rightness of collocations they use,and the reason why they used certain collocations. Results showed that the most of the subjects were over-confident of themselves in DHFV collocation use,and over-generalization was the major cause for their DHFV collocational errors.Under such circumstances,teachers,students,and relevant education department can do their own duty to avoid such kind of errors.Teachers should try their best to raise students' awareness of DHFV collocations,apply corpus in English teaching,and pursuit professional development.Students should change their way of learning,and try to use some learning strategies consciously.Relevant education department should provide English teachers with opportunities of teacher training,and import more foreign collocation resources.This thesis consists of six parts.Chapter one serves as an introduction to the study, which describes the origin,purpose,and significance of the study.Chapter two reviews the theoretical and empirical research literature relevant to both collocations and delexicalized verbs,and introduces some theoretical basis to guide the study.Chapter three is a brief account of the methodology of this thesis,including the hypothesis and research questions, the subjects and instruments being used.Chapter four is the body part of this thesis.It describes how non-English majors are using DHFVs,what the characteristics of errors made in their compositions are,and what the causes of their errors are.In chapter five, pedagogical suggestions for English teaching and learning are proposed based on the students' errors and the causes for the errors.Chapter six is a conclusion of the whole thesis.