A Study Of Senior High School Students’ Acquisition Of Textual Colligation Knowledge

Since Firth (1957) puts forward the concepts of collocation and colligation, research on the investigations of collocation and colligation has experienced rapid development. In a broad sense, collocation refers to the co-occurrence between words and words. Colligation is concerned with the co-occurrence between lexical items and grammatical categories. Sinclair (1996) describes colligation as the co-occurrence of a class of grammatical items with certain node word. Hoey (2005) puts forward the lexical priming theory and claims that a lexical item may be primed to occur in or with a particular grammatical function. According to the co-selection theory, there exists co-selection of lexis and lexis, lexis and grammar and patterns and meanings. Also, lexis co-selects with certain positions in a discourse. Hoey (2005) argues that words may be primed to occur at the beginning or end of recognized discourse units. These are their textual colligations. In English, there is a certain kind of words which are primed to occur in sentence-initial positions within a discourse unit to play certain functions.Most scholars use corpus-based method to analyze EFL learners’colligation behavior compared with native language speakers. However, few researchers focus on Chinese EFL learners’ usage of textual colligation. And even fewer researches are conducted to investigate high school English learners’textual colligation knowledge of linking adverbials. According to the previous studies, it can be found that Chinese EFL learners have difficulties in using colligation, which may influence their fluency and accuracy in language communicating.This study is within the theoretical framework of co-selection, and it aims to explore the effects of different frequency and enhancement on the acquisition of high school English learners’ textual colligation knowledge of linking adverbials and discuss the possible reasons behind the effects.This paper mainly addresses the following three questions:(1) What effects does different frequency of exposure have on high school students’acquisition of textual colligation knowledge of linking adverbials?(2) What effects does different enhancement have on high school students’acquisition of textual colligation knowledge of linking adverbials?(3) What are the possible reasons which are responsible for the above effects?In the present study, two experiments were conducted among senior high school English learners. Each experiment involved two classes, namely an experiment class and a control class. Sixteen linking adverbials were used according to the following two treatments:eight linking adverbials were exposed to high frequency in Experiment Class 1, while in Control Class 1 the same adverbials were exposed to low frequency. The rest eight linking adverbials were exposed to with enhancement in Experiment Class 2 and in Control Class 2 these adverbials were exposed to with no-enhancement. The study has generated the following major findings:(1) Different frequency of exposure has different effects on high school students’acquisition of textual colligation knowledge of linking adverbials. Experiment Class 1 outperforms Control Class 1 on the acquisition of textual colligation knowledge and there is significant difference between these two classes (P=0.000<0.05). It implies that high frequency of exposure does have a significant role in the acquisition of textual colligation knowledge of linking adverbials.(2) Different enhancement has different effects on high school students’acquisition of textual colligation knowledge of linking adverbials. Experiment Class 2 performs much better than Control Class 2 on the acquisition of textual colligation knowledge and their difference is at the significant level (P=0.021<0.05). It indicates that enhancement contributes to the acquisition of textual colligation knowledge on linking adverbials.(3) Three reasons are responsible for the above effects:first, high frequency of exposure help participants acquire the textual colligation knowledge implicitly. Second, enhancement input (underlying) helps participants acquire textual colligation knowledge explicitly. Third, second language learners’ L1 influence should be responsible for the different results on their acquisition. The positive L1 influence facilitates participants’performance on the acquisition, and there is no significant difference even they are exposed to different frequency and enhancement. The negative L1 influence leads to the significant difference on the acquisition when they are exposed to different frequency and enhancement.The major findings of this study can bring some pedagogical implications in future’s textual colligation knowledge teaching on linking adverbials. It shows that different treatments have different effects on high school English students’acquisition, high frequency and enhancement can help high school students acquire the textual colligation knowledge more effectively. However, there are still some limitations in this research because of the limited time, samples and academic ability of the researcher, and they need to be improved in further study.