A Corpus-based Analysis Of Lexical Collocation Errors In Senior High School English Writing

The collocation of words integrates the semantic,syntactic and grammatical relationships among the components,so the collocation competence reflects the fluency and idiomaticity of L2 learners' language expression.At the same time,as an important part of language learning,lexical collocation plays an important role in English learning and teaching.Learners should realize the importance of learning lexical collocation and improve their ability of collocation learning through various effective means,so as to enhance the overall level of English learning.This thesis establishes a micro closed corpus through the investigation of the collocation ability of 135 senior one students in a key middle school in Jinan.Through the analysis of the collected English writings of those 135 senior one students in the mid-term exam,the thesis is aimed to solve the following questions:(1)What is the distribution of the six collocation errors in the senior one students' English writing of mid-term exam?(2)What are the main factors that affect the collocation competence of senior high school students? Based on the classification of Hausmann's collocation,this study divides the lexical collocation errors into six groups: “noun +noun”,“noun + verb”,“verb + noun”,“adjective + noun”,“verb + adverb” and “adverb +adjective”.The six types of lexical collocation errors in those 135 compositions are respectively labeled by CI,C2,C3,C4,C5 and C6.Different types of errors are judged with the help of Collins English Chinese Dictionary and CLEC,and those compositions labeling errors are converted into the form of TXT,and then all the documents including 135 compositions are imported into the retrieval software Antconc 3.4.4 to build a micro closed corpus.Input C1,C2,C3,C4,C5,and C6 respectively in the search box to retrieve different types of lexical collocation errors.The distribution of each kind of collocation errors in English writing can be obtained by counting the number of times,and the characteristics of students' lexical collocation errors can be classified.Through the data analysis,it is found that the overall level of English collocation ability of senior high school students is not high.The type of “verb + noun”,“adjective + noun”,“noun + verb”,“noun + noun”,“verb + adverb” and “adverb + adjective”collocation errors account for 29%,28%,20%,13%,7% and 3% respectively,among which“verb + noun” and “adjective + noun” accounts for the largest proportion of the total.In order to further analyze the causes of the collocation errors of senior high school students,the questionnaire about the lexical collocation ability of senior high school students is designed.The subjects of this questionnaire are those 135 senior one students whose compositions are collected in the self-built corpus,which can accurately analyze the causes of lexical collocation errors in senior high school students' English writing.In addition,an interview outline is designed based on the questionnaire.The interviewees are three English teachers who teach those 135 senior one students in class 17,class 20 and class 27 respectively.Through the analysis of the questionnaire and interview,it is found that there are three main factors that affect the collocation ability of senior high school students:(1)language factors,such as negative transfer of mother tongue,overgeneralization of target language rules,confusion of synonyms and misuse of part of speech;(2)students' factors,such as students' learning awareness and learning strategies of lexical collocation;(3)teachers' factors,such as teachers' teaching awareness and teaching strategies of lexical collocation.Based on the research results,this thesis puts forward the following teaching suggestions:(1)introducing corpus into vocabulary teaching;(2)encouraging students to use English-English dictionaries;(3)cultivating students' cross-cultural communication awareness.Teachers' behavior can make a difference to students',so they should first raise their awareness of lexical collocation and then choose the appropriate teaching method of lexical collocation,so as to cultivate students' collocation ability.Through the analysis of the causes of senior high school students' lexical collocation errors,this research is aimed to provide some reference for teachers' teaching and students' learning combined with teaching practice.