A Contrastive Study Of English Public Speeches Written By Both Chinese And American College Students

Along with the emergence of large- scale corpus and computer language statistical software, the corpus method is now increasingly and widely used as a new research method in language study. The paper conducts the corpus and contrastive analysis methods on vocabulary study for forty English public speeches, sampled twenty from Chinese undergraduates and the other twenty from American undergraduates.Through the comparison of Chinese and American college students'speeches, the paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis on the characteristics of the vocabulary in the speeches of the Chinese students. With computer- aided method, especially the use of RANGE software and a series of statistical software tests, the author has a quantitative analysis on token, type, vocabulary, lexical frequency and vocabulary coverage, and many other aspects, as well as the high frequency words and the appearing rate of the words.The results of the study show that, Chinese students have a certain gap in vocabulary using with the English native speakers of American students, which is a disadvantage obviously revealed. The positive vocabulary in the speeches of the Chinese students is less, and to a great extent, is less flexible than that in the speeches of the American students.By data analysis, the author infers main causes of differences between Chinese and American students in using speech vocabulary, such as the improper habits and purposes of the learning, the inappropriate education system for college students, mother tongue interference, unstable ability to choose appropriate vocabulary, wrong understanding of the target word, etc. The findings highlight Chinese students'incompetence in vocabulary application, and, more significantly, help to foster their awareness in English communication efficiency. The author proposed that the Chinese students should improve the vocabulary mastery level. English learners should conscientiously take all kinds vocabulary into consideration, be familiar with the use of intermediate or advanced vocabulary, and try to have a good command of vocabulary as the native speakers. Only by doing so, can those who study English as a second language speak English more fluently and decently.