An Error Analysis Of Senior High School Students' Lexical Collocation In English Composition

Vocabulary is the basic element of language. Lexical collocation is the important components of vocabulary, which plays a critical role in language learning, especially in vocabulary learning,as it is the basis for the development of creative language and the major element of language fluency both in spoken and written language. It also enables learners'language to be more easily understood and more idiomatic. In the past two decades, the importance of lexical collocation in vocabulary teaching has been gradually realized and some achievements have been made in lexical collocation research. But these researches are mainly on theoretical aspects and the research subjects of empirical research are medium-advanced learners while few researches are on senior high school students'lexical collocation errors. Therefore, we make an empirical research on the lexical collocation errors in senior high school students'compositions to find out the distribution of the lexical collocation errors in the subjects'compositions and the causes of the errors and put forward some pedagogical suggestions according to the causes.We analyze 132 students'compositions on the basis of error analysis and the procedures of error analysis. By quantitative and qualitative analysis, we find that there are 163 lexical collocation errors in these compositions, and according to Hausmann's classification of collocation, these errors can be categorized into five types: adjective + noun collocation, noun + verb collocation, noun + noun collocation, verb + adverb collocation and verb + noun collocation. The distribution of lexical collocation errors made by the subjects is unbalanced. Verb + noun collocation takes place most frequently, accounting for 69.33 percent of the total, and the following is adjective + noun collocation (12.27%).Through the analysis and study of specific examples of lexical collocation error extracted from the subjects'compositions, we find that there are many reasons for the errors, including: (1) negative transference by native language interference. (2) overgeneralization of collocation. (3) misselection of collocate. (4) ignorance of collocation restriction. (5) incomplete comprehension of word meaning. (6) confusion of synonyms. Sometimes a cause for a certain collocation is not sole, but many causes overlap.Based on the causes, we put forward some pedagogical suggestions in teaching lexical collocation. Firstly, negative native language influence should be minimized. Secondly, collocation dictionary should be applied to vocabulary teaching. Thirdly, teachers should raise students'awareness in lexical collocation. We hope that by teachers'and students'joint-effort, students'lexical collocation errors can be reduced, students can improve their competence in lexical collocation and improve their language in general.Even though some achievements have been made in the present study, there are some limitations in the designing of the research and the analysis. For example, the samples are not very massive and some causes may be missed, so more efforts are needed to further the study in the future.