Study On The Semantic Features Of IL Lexis And Vocabulary Teaching

IL (Interlanguage) theory holds that second language learners create a unique language system in the process of second language acquisition because they make an incorrect induction and deduction of the disciplines in TL. IL lies between MT and TL and develops towards TL gradually as learners' TL knowledge grows. IL is different from TL and under strong influence of MT so it is naturally imperfect and contains many errors.As for the Chinese learners, IL has its unique features which can be shown at different levels: phonetics, lexis, syntax, and discourse etc. According to the Text Corpus of non-English majors in Chinese colleges, the semantic misuse of vocabulary takes up more than 30 percent of all the mistakes they make, which by no means should be overlooked. For ordinary learners the rate may be much higher. Learners' MT semantic features at lexical level are mainly due to MT negative transfer which includes factors both intra-lingual and extra-lingual. Hence many semantic features of IL lexis show in practical use such as, improper word choice, redundancy, and wrong collocation etc. Study of these features is not only valuable to correct use of word but also meaningful to vocabulary acquisition and teaching.This paper will discuss IL between Chinese and English with the focus on the semantic features at lexical level. It is an attempt to describe the differences between English and Chinese semantic system of vocabulary and to analyze the learners' transfer errors at lexical level, with the purpose of showing how the Chinese learners of English are negatively influenced by their MT knowledge in learning English vocabulary, and putting forward some pedagogic implications. The study is conducted on the basis of the theories of contrastive analysis, error analysis, and transfer analysis.