Collocation: Its Case Analysis In Teaching College English Writing

Collocation is an important part in applied linguistics and one aspect of profound lexical knowledge . It is often one of the greatest trouble for a college EFL learner. If error analysis is applied to the collocation study, we may find out the reasons and rules of EFL learners' errors in collocation, which will benefit the students- oriented teaching method very much.This paper is mainly divided into three parts. In the first part , to make the following error analysis more grounded , the importance of collocation study , the definition of some special terms and the differences between Chinese and English collocation are discussed .Semantic prosody is an important principle to govern the collocation. In the second part , according to the error analysis theory discussed in the previous part , with some certain number of college students whose mother tongue is Chinese taken as the subject, typical improper collocations are analyzed . In the third part , thereasons of these improper collocations are summed up .The reasons are manifold , but can be reduced to three. The first reason is the disturbance of mother tongue . Either grammar or word meaning of native language is responsible for the errors. Another reason is the different cultural background. The third reason is overgeneralization. Having aquired some knowledge concerning the second language , the learners tend to use the knowledge to explain all the language phenomena they meet.In this process of research , some enlightenment can be drawn. The level of a learner' s language capability is shown by his ability to choose and use typical collocations .One distinction between native speakers and EFL users is that the native speakers tend to output their feelings by using typical words . So , if the textbook , classroom activities, and teaching plans can be designed accordingly, the EFL learners may improve more rapidly. And if some further research in the collocation differences in details between the native speakers and second language speakers is made in the future, we can create a breakthrough in this regard.