A Longitudinal Corpus-based Study Of Chinese EFL Learners’Acquisition Of Delexical Verb+ Noun Collocation

Collocations have received increasing attention in language teaching and learning in recent years.Delexical verb+noun collocation,despite of being particularly treacherous for English learners,has been an under-researched area.Therefore,based on a self-built learner corpus—the Diachronic Written English Learner Corpus(DWLEC),this paper explored the developmental features(specifically the frequency,variety and accuracy dimensions)of Chinese EFL learners’ performance in the use of delexical structures over six consecutive semesters.Altogether six typical delexical verbs are chosen for research,including have,do,make,get,take,and give.After quantitative and qualitative analyses,findings show that:over the six semesters,1)learners are generally using less delexical structures because of increased vocabulary and a more formal writing style;2)learners are using a greater variety of delexical collocations although they still rely on certain ones;3)learners are not making consistent improvement in producing appropriate delexical constructions,and there are repeated deviations.On the basis of the results,this paper discussed the underlying factors affecting learners’ acquisition of delexical combinations and suggested ways for improvement,i.e explicit teaching and corrective feedback.Above all,this research is one of the first longitudinal studies to have examined learners’acquisition of delexical verb+noun collocations,and provides pedagogical implications for delexical structure learning as well as collocation teaching.