A Study On Corpus-based Compilation Of English Dictionary For Junior Secondary School Learners In China

Students in junior middle school are at the early stage of English learning. Using English dictionaries can contribute a lot to cultivating their autonomous learning ability. Currently, a rich variety of dictionaries of different kinds have been published, however, there are only few corpus-based English dictionaries available which are particularly tailored for Chinese junior secondary school learners. Thus, this thesis attempts to explore the compilation of a corpus-based productive-oriented learner dictionary for the sake of better fulfilling the actual needs of English learners of Chinese junior secondary school.The study first conducts a preliminary research for dictionary compilation, including a simple investigation of junior middle school students and teachers for the purpose of getting a rough picture of the situation of dictionary use among junior middle school learners, and a comparative analysis of advantages and disadvantages among three widely-used English learner’s dictionaries. Based on the literature review and the preliminary survey, the compiling principles and main dictionary structure of the English Dictionary for Junior Secondary School Learners (EDJSSL) are put forward. The core principle is productive-oriented and the main methodology is corpus-based.The main part of the thesis is the detailed exploration of EDJSSL compilation. The exploration is mainly based on a self-built corpus. The data of the corpus is collected particularly for Chinese junior high school learners, which includes many series of domestic textbooks, such as Go For It. American primary textbooks, children’s English readings, subtitles of kids’movies and animation. The size of the self-built corpus is1,898.439tokens.EDJSSL tries to make innovations in the following four aspects based on the self-built corpus, they are:entry selection, sense (including sense division and definition), illustrative examples and collocations.(1) In terms of entry selection, the headword of EDJSSL will be chosen in a principled way. The selection will consider the syllabus words and phrases required by English Syllabus for Nine-Year Compulsory Education in Fitll-Time Junior Secondary Schools (2010). the top2.000words from BNC and also words with a relatively high frequency in the self-built corpus. Altogether, the number of headwords is around6.000to fulfill the learners’diversifying needs.(2) In terms of the way of sense division and word definition. CALD3,OALD7and LDOCE4are the three chief blueprints. However, in the choice of sense divisions, self-built corpus is indispensable source which makes the sense selection more relevant and appropriate. As for the word definition, bilingual definition is used, moreover, both the phrasal paraphrase and whole sentence paraphrase are adopted accordingly to define words. The choice and adaptation of a definition is also principled. The defining vocabulary is controlled within1,500common words so that the definition is more scientific and easier to be understood.(3) In terms of illustrative examples, the principles for the choice of illustrative examples from the self-built corpus are typicality and naturalness, informativeness, intelligibility. Cultural and pragmatic information is also considered for the choice. A large number of typical and authentic illustrative examples are selected based on the self-built corpus.(4) In terms of collocation, frame of collocation and idioms are particularly emphasized. The choice of collocations for EDJSSL is a balanced consideration of three resources:the collocation information extracted from BNC corpus by the Sketch Engine and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English, and most importantly, the collocation information from self-built corpus. The frequently used and level-appropriate collocations are selected to improve the learners’abilities of using English vocabulary.Samples of entry compilation of ’dog’ and ’heavy’ is finally presented to demonstrate the innovation in the compilation of EDJSSL.It needs to be pointed out that the study itself is mainly an exploratory research, rather than a complete compilation of EDJSSL. Furthermore, the self-built corpus is still not big enough. Therefore, more studies are still needed for corpus-based compilation of English dictionary for junior secondary school learners.