Tracing The Development Of L2 Word Knowledge--A Longitudinal Study Of Meaning & Collocation On BBA-in English Students

The present research investigates how students in BBA class (Bachelor of Business Administration) in GDUFS (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies) acquire English words through one year of school instruction. This study examines the developmental pattern of two types of word knowledge (meaning and collocation) both receptively and productively.Seven students from three different language proficiency levels are selected to be the subjects and are grouped into pairs based on their education background. Altogether twelve words from different vocabulary frequencies are selected as target words for the test. They are rich in meaning and collocation and have business-related word knowledge as well as business-unrelated word knowledge.Qualitative approach is applied to the analysis of the data of this longitudinal study. The results are analyzed in comparisons: receptive knowledge vs productive knowledge, business-related word knowledge vs business-unrelated word knowledge, word knowledge development of English major student vs word knowledge development of non-English major student and comparison of word knowledge development among three levels of subjects, etc.The results show that all subjects display great increase in meaning and collocation both receptively and productively. The subjects have better development in receptive knowledge than productive knowledge and better development in business-related word knowledge than business-unrelated word knowledge. Subjects who used to be non-English majors demonstrate better development than subjects who used to be English majors. Generally, the top-level subjects have the best development in word knowledge, followed by intermediate-level subjects and elementary-level subject.