| High-frequency verbs are early learned and simple in form,but they to some extent impede learners’ vocabulary learning and prevent L2 learners from gaining native-like proficiency.Chinese high school learners have difficulty in learning high-frequency verbs as a result of their polysemic nature.Based on error analysis procedures modified by Gass and Selinker,the present study investigated the distribution features of the uses of high-frequency verbs have,make,take,get and give in high school learners’ English writings,and the common “verb + noun”collocational errors,and tried to provide some suggestions for teaching and learning of high-frequency verbs.Under the guidance of Error Analysis(EA),the author collected all the concordance lines of have,make,take,get and give respectively from Thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners in High School(TECCLHS)corpus with the help of Ant Conc 3.5.8.Additionally,by referring to previous studies,as well as Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary(CALD)and Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary(OALD),the distribution of different usages of the five high-frequency verbs was exhibited first.Secondly,the improper collocations were tagged and classified into different error types based on the labelling method used in Chinese Learners’ English Corpus(CLEC).Finally,the possible error sources of collocations were tentatively explored.It was discovered that the distribution of the usages of have,make,take,get,give varied from word to word,but similarity also existed.As far as the frequency was concerned,“have” was most used in high school learners’ English writings(totally3177 instances after removing its modal and auxiliary usages).As for the types of usages,“make” ranked first(having nine major types of usages).Different from the other four verbs,the usages of give were restricted(only four types of usages)and more than a half of them relating to the intuitive meaning “provide”.Moreover,referring to Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary(OALD),Oxford Collocations Dictionary(OCD)and the online reference corpus: Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA),based on Nesselhauf’s classification of collocational errors,five types of collocational errors in verb-noun collocations,phrasal verbs and verb phrases were identified in general,namely,error in the use of nouns,verbs,phrasal verbs,verb phrases and prepositions.Among them,errors in the use of verbs constituted the largest proportion of all collocational errors.Furthermore,a detailed error analysis showed that two possible error sources were prominent,namely,interlingual transfer and intralingual transfer.It was suggested that more attention should be paid to the usages of high-frequency verbs both for teachers and students.In addition,more assistant tools like native speakers’ corpora could be adopted in collocation teaching. |
