A Corpus-Based Study On Collocation Errors Of Verb Make By Chinese English Learners

Collocation is an important part in English learning and also one of the most difficult parts for Chinese English learners too. This thesis focuses on the collocation errors in Chinese English learners'production, trying to find out their collocation behavior and enhance English teaching and learning.The author takes the verb MAKE as an example to investigate Chinese English learners'collocation behavior, because MAKE is a high-frequency verb with many extensional usages. The author collects the data from CLEC, and adopts the error analysis and corpus approach to process the data. The result of the analysis shows that the error types of vp1 (verb pattern error) and cc3 (verb/noun collocation error) are the most frequent by Chinese English learners, and these errors are classified into inter- and intra-lingual divisions to interpret the causes of these errors. What's more, to investigate the differences between low proficiency and high proficiency Chinese English learners on collocation usages of verb MAKE, a further division is done based on the different usages of the verb MAKE. And the finding is that Chinese English learners with low language competence usually only master the basic usages of MAKE, meanwhile high competence learners may know the extensive usages. However, they can't use it freely and correctly. Finally, the thesis emphasizes the importance of collocations of high-frequency verbs in pedagogic practice, and provides some suggestions for collocation acquisition, for instance, increasing authentic materials and using Data Driven Learning. Moreover, the implications and limitations for the study are pointed out.