A Colligation Study Of Academic Nouns In English Major Master’s Theses:the Case Of The College Of Foreign Studies, Guangxi Normal University

The prevalence and importance of the academic vocabulary in academic settings has been explored extensively by researchers abroad, while in China this research has not been rich. On the other hand, according to a review "The Application of Corpus Method in the Chinese EFL Teaching and Research from2000to2011:A Review Based on the12English Core Periodicals in CNKI" by the author, such researches focus on undergraduate EFL students’interlanguage output, such as the compositions in CET-4and CET-6tests, but rarely on the EFL learners’interlanguage output of academic English, especially the output of postgraduate students. The objective of postgraduate English teaching in China is to facilitate postgraduate students with adequate knowledge of academic English in addition to general English proficiency so that they can succeed in future academic learning and communication. On the basis of corpus linguistics theories and corpus methods, this thesis focuses on the colligation study of academic nouns in different research areas of English major master’s theses, by use of the corpus-based approach, in order to provide some suggestions for postgraduate students and teachers in academic English learning and teaching.In order to investigate the colligation of academic nouns in different research areas of English major master’s theses, we first built a Corpus of English Postgraduates Theses (CEPT for short). The corpus data were the master’s theses of English major postgraduate students collected from the Laboratory for Corpus-based EFL Research at the College of Foreign Studies, Guangxi Normal University, ranging from the year2000to2007(by the year postgraduates entering the school). Based on our research objectives and the different research areas of these master’s theses, we classified the master’s theses into two genres, i.e., the genre of literature master’s theses (literature genre for short) and the genre of linguistic master’s theses (linguistic genre for short). The literature genre was the literature area including the master’s theses orientated around British&American Literature. The linguistic genre was the language area being much wider in the subordination, i.e. theses on Cognitive Linguistics, Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Functional Linguistics, Language and Culture, English Teaching Methodology and Translation Studies and Practice. Second, the relevant data were collected in two stages. In the first stage, all the nouns were extracted in each of the two genres, next on the basis of Coxhead’s AWL (Academic Word List) and West’s GSL (General Service List) and Online Etymology Dictionary, the academic nouns with more than100times in their standard frequency were selected, in which there were thirty identical academic word families in the two academic nouns lists of the two genres, being the research items of the following colligation analysis. In the second stage, the colligation patterns were fixed in the five ones (1) n+N;(2) adj+N;(3) N+of+n;(4) v+N;(5) prep+N according to the practical analysis of this study. Then the relevant statistics of the five colligation patterns used in each genre were counted.Two questions are addressed in this study:(1) Are the five colligation patterns of academic nouns used differently between the two genres?(2) What are the semantic features of collocates of academic nouns in the five colligation patterns?The main findings of this study:(1) The five colligation patterns on the whole in the two genres are significantly different; each academic noun is also greatly different except for the word family COMMUNICATE, FEATURE and STATUS;(2) The features of colligation of the academic nouns in each genre are endowed with the corresponding semantic properties of genres. In the literature genre, the collocates co-occur with the academic nouns in the five colligation patterns usually have the semantic properties of literature, art and human spirit; in the linguistic genre, the collocates mainly focus on the semantic field of language research and EFL teaching research.These findings play direct positive role in the academic theses writing for the postgraduate students in different research areas, and have certain guiding effect on the teaching mode reform of the academic English writing and postgraduates training objectives at present. In addition, to build a Corpus of English Postgraduates Theses (CEPT for short) is a valuable attempt, which provides the colligation features of academic nouns in different research areas of English major master’s theses, and it can help the postgraduate students in the academic English writing and also provide a valuable tool for the academic English teaching and research for teachers in universities.