A Study On The Features Of The Semantic Prosodies Of CONSEQUENCE Near-synonyms Used By Chinese EFL Learners

The near-synonym discrimination plays an important role in English learning. Based on the contrastive analysis of CONSEQUENCE near-synonyms,the present study is intended to investigate the behavior of Chinese EFL learners' use of semantic prosody of CONSEQUENCE near-synonyms.With a series of computations and tests carried out with AntConc 3.2.1w and SPSS 11.5,the present study uses the main corpora--CLEC and LCMC,and the reference corpora--LOB&BROWN.By the quantitative analysis of CONSEQUENCE near-synonyms(CONSEQUENCE,RESULT,AFTERMATH and OUTCOME) and the contrastive analysis of collocation varieties and colligations,the features of semantic prosody of CONSEQUENCE near-synonyms used by the Chinese EFL learners are revealed.The study shows that,compared with the NSs,the Chinese EFL learners correctly use the negative semantic prosody of CONSEQUENCE and misuse the positive semantic prosody of RESULT(noun) and the neutral semantic prosody of RESULT (verb).The semantic prosodies of CONSEQUENCE near-synonyms are compared between Chinese and English.The present study shows that the main reason of the semantic prosody misused by Chinese EFL learners is Chinese positive and negative language transfers.Based on the above findings,the thesis provides significant implications for EFL teaching and learning.Firstly,it is suggested that the knowledge of semantic prosody should be transferred to students so that they are able to gain due awareness of semantic prosody.Secondly,it implies that the knowledge of semantic prosody can also provide insight into the teaching of near synonyms and the collocations.Thirdly,in order to enhance EFL teaching and learning,the corpora and the concordance should be employed widely.