A CLEC-based Study On The Acquisition Of Colligation Of Common Verbs In Senior High School

Vocabulary acquisition, as an important part of the SLA, is always an important issue worth exploring and studying in English teaching and learning, especially in senior high school. However, the overemphasis revealed in the statistics of vocabulary led by the syllabus makes current situation of both learning and teaching vocabulary in senior high school far from satisfactory. Students are weak in the acquisition of vocabulary,especially the common verbs, which can be clearly reflected in the relatively low level of comprehending in-depth knowledge of vocabulary. Compared with other aspects of vocabulary like meaning and collocation, colligation is rather abstract as the embodiment of vocabulary on the syntactic level. So far the colligation in vocabulary acquisition has not received due attention. As an indispensable part in vocabulary knowledge especially in verb knowledge, colligation should be taken into consideration not only in explaining the improper language phenomenon but also in specialized study.To draw a comprehensive view of Chinese learners’ current acquisition of common verbs in senior high, this paper tries to make a comparative analysis from the point of view of a certain common one: keep. And the analysis will be carried between the sub-corpus of CLEC: CLEC_STU2 and FROWN, the native speakers’ corpus. Based on the theory from the book Natural Grammar, the four basic colligation patterns of keep are clear. To fulfill the tasks of tagging and searching, online tagging software CLAWS4 and Antconc are needed. With the assistance of SPSS(11.0), further analysis and comparison can be done and the comprehensive view of Chinese learners’ acquisition of keep in senior high can be preliminarily drawn. Firstly, current situation of Chinese learners’ colligation acquisition of keep is far from satisfactory. Secondly, present defect of Chinese learners’ acquisition of keep in senior high can be summarized as follows: the overuse and misuse of colligation and collocation, which can be clearly reflected in the colligation pattern V+adj/adv of keep(X 2 =16.56,p=0.000). Thirdly, the possible causes can be categorized as inaccurate acquisition of meaning, lack of awareness,ready-made structure from Chinese, negative transfer of the native language and the singularity in language input.Based on the possible causes, several corresponding advice are put forward to improve the proficiency of English learning and teaching in senior high and to arouse the concerns of teachers in teaching colligation,the in-depth knowledge of vocabulary, in senior high.