A Corpus-based Study Of High Frequency Verbs In SL Writings Of The English Majors

Recently,researches of English vocabulary,especially of verbs and collocations have become a focus in the field of second language acquisition,and it has attached great attention from researchers.Generally,vocabulary is the basic unit of foreign language learning,in which verbs account for a large proportion.Many researches at home and abroad indicated that high frequency verbs play a rather important role in learners' second language acquisition.The appropriate application of high frequency verbs and the relevant collocations make SLA process more effectively.Besides,verb collocations occupy a large proportion in all types of lexical bundles.Therefore,to conduct a research in this field is helpful for learners to master the target language better.This thesis aims to make a research on general characteristics of Chinese English majors' application of the high frequency verbs and collocations and on the main differences in using high frequency verbs between the Chinese English learners at different levels.And a contrastive study is mainly applied to analyze the differences between the Chinese English learners and native speakers of use of high frequency verbs and the relevant collocations.In the process of research,the Corpus for Chinese English Majors and Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays are employed.By using software AntConc3.2.1,ten high frequency verbs in each corpus were extracted.And then a descriptive analysis for the characteristics of the verbs and their collocations is carried out.Moreover,contrastive studies of the differences of the use of those high frequency verbs and their collocations between the Chinese English learners at different levels and between the Chinese English learners and native speakers are conducted.The reasons that caused those differences and suggestions for further research are given in the end.In this study,a mixed method of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis is employed.Quantitative analysis contains descriptive analysis and paired samples T-test.Descriptive analysis is employed to describe general characteristics of the application of high frequency verbs and their collocations in the two corpora.Paired samples T-test is applied to verify whether there is a significant difference between the Chinese English learners at different levels and between that of the Chinese English learners and native speakers.Qualitative analysis is employed to make an analysis for the reasons that caused the differences.The study reveals that there are differences between Chinese English majors and native speakers in the application of the high frequency verbs and there are differences in Chinese English majors at different levels.Firstly,the English majors show a tendency of overusing five verbs:write,know,think,decide and help.And they use the pattern like"V+N" type of lexical bundles and those bundles with two to three words more frequently.Secondly,there is no significant difference between learners of English majors at different levels in the application of high frequency verbs.But for the specific cases of using the same verb,the higher level learners' use shows a higher frequency than the lower level learners.Thirdly,by the comparison with native speakers,the Chinese English learners overuse some high frequency verbs.And the Chinese learners use "V+N" type of lexical bundle more frequently while the native speakers use "V+ clause" pattern more frequently.This thesis also makes a further explanation on reasons that caused those differences.