A Corpus-based Study On Misuse Of Part Of Speech In Chinese English Learners

As a basic component of any language, vocabulary carries the basic information. A good mastery of vocabulary directly affects learners in listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation during the process of language acquisition. So vocabulary teaching has become an important part of English teaching. With the rise of corpus linguistics, researches about vocabulary are developing prosperously in recent years, many of which focus on collocation of words, the relationship between students'vocabulary size and their English proficiency and many other fields. While misuse of parts of speech occurs frequently among Chinese English learners, studies concentrated on this topic are comparatively insufficient. Therefore, based on error analysis theory, this thesis adopts the research method of combining qualitative and quantitative analysis. With the guide of data-driven principle, this paper analyzes the misuse of parts of speech in Chinese English learners'writing. We hope to find the features of this error and to explore the causes of behind it, so as to throw some light on English learning and foreign language teaching.In this paper, we adopt "Chinese Learner English Corpus" (CLEC), which is composed of students'compositions at different proficiency. With the five sub-corpora st2, st3, st4, st5, st6 as the research objects, we use the corpus software myfinder to collect data by analyzing the errors marked with [wd2]. This paper is committed to answer the following two questions: 1) what are characteristics of misuse of part of speech among Chinese English learners at different proficiencies? 2) What are the possible main causes behind this error?The following findings are obtained: 1) misuse of parts of speech distributes widely in all English learners in China. Non-English majors commit this error most frequently, followed by high school English learners, and English majors commit lest error of this kind. 2) As for Chinese English learners, misuse of parts of speech mainly concerns the misuse of adjective, misuse of noun, misuse of verb and misuse of adverb, and misuse of other types of parts of speech only takes a small part. 3) Misuse of adjective occurs most frequently among Chinese learners at all five different levels. 4)Intralingual transfer and interlingal transfer take the main responsibility for the commitment of this error. Besides, this paper also explores the effects of cognitive factor and some other extra factors.Based on the findings above, this paper gives some suggestions on vocabulary learning and teaching. First, we should have a correct attitude towards error and raise our awareness of parts of speech. Second, teachers are advised to encourage students to utilize vocabulary learning with affixes. Third, teachers should also supply sufficient and perfect input, help learners to strengthen their sense of language and overcome the interference of Chinese.