A Corpus-based Study Of Adjective-Noun Collocation Errors Committed By Chinese EFL Learners

From the1950s, collocation began to be a heated topic for research by linguists and applied linguists. With the development of corpus linguistics, the research of collocation has entered a period of rapid development based on learners’ corpora. A series of studies indicate that collocational ability plays an important role in affecting the understanding and expression in foreign language learning (EFL). EFL learners are capable of constructing grammatically correct sentences, but most of them sound unnatural and unacceptable to native-speakers. Therefore, scholars and researchers’ attention has been gradually shifted from traditional grammar to lexico-grammar. As a matter of fact, grammatical pattern and lexical pattern roughly correspond to colligation and collocation respectively. The reason why many scholars emphasize the central role of collocation in linguistics is that colligation and collocation are combinations of both lexis and grammar. Besides, collocation is also regarded as a key parameter for measuring interlanguage on its proficiency. However, without the utilization of corpora, it would be unreliable and inconvincible to study collocation if a large number of materials for qualitative and quantitative analysis are not provided.However, domestic researchers mainly pay attention to the collocations of commonly used words as well as verb+x collocation, especially the verb+noun pattern. Therefore, there is still a large room left for us to continue research. Adjectives rank third after verbs and nouns among all the categories of notional words, which leads adjective-noun collocation (A+N collocation) to become a commonly used colligation. Up to now, according to the author’s search:the existing studies about A+N collocation at home are as follows:A Corpus-based Study of Semantic Characteristics of Adjective Collocation in CLEC by Sun Haiyan and The Collocational Characteristics of Twenty Adjectives of High Frequency in Chinese English Newspapers by Yu Xi and Wen Qiufang. Based on corpus, the present study aims to investigate the use of three adjective collocations(good, large and healthy) and two nouns (knowledge and commodities) by Chinese EFL learners with the adoption of contrastive interlanguage analysis approach. Meanwhile, through the comparison between the sub-corpora ST3and ST4in Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the characteristics of the adjective-noun collocations produced by EFL and adjective-noun collocational errors in ST3and ST4are presented in terms of quantity, appropriateness and typicality as well as error tagged collocations.Sources of errors are explored and explained from the perspectives of mother tongue influence and learning strategies selection which consists of over generalization, breaking co-occurrence restrictions and cross-association. Several teaching suggestions are made: First, we should strengthen the awareness of both teachers and learners towards collocation learning; then we should use collocational dictionaries during English learning process; thirdly, through cross-language comparison, English learners would have access to authentic English refraining from Chinglish. Last but not the least, traditional teaching methods such as memorization and recitation should be revived and paid attention to.