A Corpus-Based Empirical Study On The Use Of English Near-Synonyms By English Majors

The study of English near-synonyms has been the concern of many linguists and foreign language teachers in recent years. Using near-synonyms in a correct and an appropriate way is an essential part for Chinese EFL learners to improve English lexical competence as well as the key to enhance English writing capability.On the basis of literature review, this study proposes the working definition of English near-synonyms. With a corpus-based Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis, this study reveals the differences of English near-synonyms used by Chinese EFL learners compared with native speakers in terms of frequency, colligation, collocation and semantic prosody. The learner data analyzed in this study are from CLEC corpus and the native reference corpus is Freiburg-LOB-Corpus of British English (FLOB). Two groups of English near-synonyms (GET, GAIN, OBTAIN and EFFECT, INFLUENCE, IMPACT) are selected in the present study. Chi-square test is applied to the data analysis.In response to the research questions, this study has obtained the following findings:(â…°) From the aspect of frequency, both ST5 and ST6 learners overuse the basic word GET significantly compared with native speakers. As to EFFECT near-synonyms, ST5 learners underuse INFLUENCE significantly compared with native speakers, and ST6 learners overuse INFLUENCE significantly. None of the concordance lines of IMPACT is found in ST5. It can be seen that Chinese EFL learners have a tendency to use basic words which occur frequently; (â…±) As to the colligation, Chinese EFL learners usually overuse the most frequent and basic colligations compared with native speakers; (â…²) In terms of collocation, although both Chinese EFL learners and native speakers use some common collocates, Chinese EFL learners misuse some collocates compared with native speakers. As to semantic prosody, Chinese EFL learners use semantic prosody of some words correctly, but they misuse semantic prosody of some words compared with native speakers; (â…³) The present study has pointed out that L1 transfer, insufficiencies of CE dictionaries and language input are the main objective factors which might influence English near-synonyms learning by Chinese EFL learners among various kinds of factors. At present some insufficiencies in English vocabulary teaching and CE dictionary compiling are still existed in our country. Based on these findings, the thesis finally discusses some pedagogical and lexicographical implications of the present study. In addition, it offers the limitations and suggestions for future research.