A Corpus-Based Study On Verb-Noun Collocation Errors In Senior High School Students’ English Writing From The Perspective Of Conceptual Transfer

English Curriculum Standards for Senior high schools(2017 Edition,2020 Revision)clearly points out that writing is an important part of language skills and an expressive skill that students must master.Meanwhile,with the gradual promotion of the new college entrance examination,senior high school English writing accounts for an increasing and larger proportion in the college entrance examination,so English writing is also paid more and more attention by teachers and students.However,the current situation of English writing in senior high school is not optimistic,especially the error rate of verb-noun collocations in students’ English writing is relatively high.Moreover,with the continuous development of conceptual transfer theory,more and more scholars gradually shift their research perspective to the level of conceptual transfer to explore the reasons for the verb-noun collocation errors in students’ English writing,which also provides a new development direction for this study.In view of this,from the perspective of conceptual transfer,this thesis studies the verb-noun collocation errors of senior high school students’ English writing,aiming to answer three main questions:(1)What are the types of verb-noun collocation errors in senior high school students’ English writing?(2)Are there any differences in verb-noun collocation errors among three grades of senior high school?(3)What are the causes of the verb-noun collocation errors in senior high school students’ English writing from the perspective of conceptual transfer? In order to answer the above questions,the study selects 606 English compositions from the three grades of senior high school and builds a small corpus.Furthermore,the number of each type of verb-noun collocation error is retrieved by Ant Conc software.With the help of SPSS software,one-way ANOVA is used to determine whether each type of verb-noun collocation error is difference among the three grades or not.Finally,based on the theory of conceptual transfer and interview,the causes of each type of verb-noun collocation error is analyzed qualitatively.The results show that:(1)There are nine types of verb-noun collocation errors in senior high school students’ English writing,among which,the number of verb errors,noun errors,errors of numbers,nonexistent collocations,misuse verb with prepositions,errors of determiners is relatively large,while the number of errors of syntactic structure,misuse noun with prepositions,collocations exist but are not used correctly is relatively less.(2)There are differences in the six error types among the three grades: verb errors,noun errors,nonexistent collocations,misuse verb with prepositions,errors of determiners,errors of numbers.(3)According to the conceptual transfer theory,the causes for verb-noun collocation errors can be divided into three categories:cause of L1-based concepts,cause of shared concepts,cause of L2-based concepts.Part of verb errors and noun errors,nonexistent collocations which are caused by L1-based concepts.While part of verb errors,collocation exists but is not used correctly which are caused by shared concepts.Additionally,part of verb errors and noun errors,misuse verb with prepositions,misuse noun with prepositions,errors of determiners,errors of numbers,errors of syntactic structure which are caused by L2-based concepts.Based on the results,this study puts forward some suggestions for the teaching and learning of verb-noun collocation errors in senior high school English writing,and discusses the limitations of this thesis and the suggestions for future studies.