An Investigation Of Junior High School Students' English Vocabulary Collocation Ability

Vocabulary forms an important part in the basic language knowledge for junior high school curriculum,which also draws increasing academic attention from linguistic researches over the recent years.With the deep research into vocabulary,the study of vocabulary is shifting its ground from the lexical width into the lexical depth.Many linguists hold the view that the lexical depth has the same importance as the lexical width.Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standard(2017)raised the cap on requirements for junior high school students’ vocabulary knowledge,saying that vocabulary learning is not only reflected in the magnitude of the words known,but also in in-depth vocabulary knowledge(how specifically words could be understood).Relevant researches emerged to shed light on the fact that lexical collocation is an important aspect of in-depth vocabulary knowledge,therefore,importance is worth attaching to lexical collocation in the process of vocabulary teaching.In order to investigate the lexical collocation competence among Grade three students in junior high school,this study aims to identify the problems and obstacles in the lexical collocation of junior high school students,and to find out the factors influencing their ability of lexical collocation.Based on error analysis and interlanguage theory,this study adopts the methods of tests,questionnaires and interviews.With the help of Hausmann’s six vocabulary misclassifications and the relevant theory of collocation and the vocabulary requirements of Compulsory Education Curriculum Standards for junior high school,the study specifically designed the test papers on junior students’ ability of lexical collocation targeting 108 students from a key junior high school in Qufu,so that junior high school students’ lexical collocation ability could be better known.In addition,questionnaires for both students and teachers would also be designed on the test results to get a further inquiry of the influencing factors in students’ lexical collocation ability.Through the analysis of collocational test,questionnaire data and interview results,this study found that the overall competence of lexical collocation among Grade three students is not high.The main deficiencies are verb+noun collocation and adjective+noun collocation.The major influencing factors are as follows:(1)Language-relevant factors,such as mother tongue transfer,target language rules,relative synonyms and delexical verbs;(2)Student-relevant factors,such as learningawareness and learning strategies involved in their lexical collocation;(3)teacher-relevant factors,including teaching awareness and strategies in lexical collocation teaching.Finally,suggestions have been proposed with the hope that the importance of vocabulary collocation teaching in vocabulary teaching could be enhanced,teachers’ attention could be paid to lexical collocation teaching and emphasis could be placed on improving junior high school students’ ability of lexical collocation.