A Corpus-based Analysis Of Chinese EFL Learners’Verb-Noun Collocational Errors In Oral Production

Collocation is one of the most important parts in learners’language competence. The correct collocation can make the production language smooth and clear. Most language teachers attach importance to the interpretation of the single word and ignorance the teaching about collocation in traditional language teaching, which lead to the students’ shortening of awareness about collocation and missing the restriction of the collocation. Students always make all kinds of errors about collocation when deal with two words or more than two words co-occurrence. In order to change this situation, the research about the reasons of the verb-noun collocation errors in the students’oral language been presented, because verb-noun collocation errors are the most frequent collocation errors in students’ production. And above all, the research manages to discover some useful pedagogical application to improve the language teaching.The research is going on according to the three questions:1. What are the frequencies of verb-noun collocation errors distributed in learners’oral production?2. Is there any significant correlation between the frequencies of verb-noun collocation errors committed by learners in the spoken language and their oral English proficiency levels?3. What types of verb-noun collocation errors are found in learners’ oral production and what are the possible diagnosis caused these errors?First, the frequency of the verb-noun collocation errors in the learners’ oral language been counted by Antconc3.2.1; second, the correlation between verb-noun collocation errors and the students’ oral proficiency been analyzed by SPSS. It is found that there is no correlation between the two elements; Third, all the V-N CEs been classified into different types and the diagnosis for each errors been analyzed. It is found that the transfer of the mother-tongue and the wrong induced from teacher are important factors which caused plenty of collocation errors.Some suggestions for the L2learners and teachers and the schools been posed to improve the language learning. For the learners, they should read more native materials, use English-English dictionary, grasp the difference of the synonyms, avoid using the strategies of transfer and ignorance the restrictions and not use the de-lexicalized verbs as all-powerful words; for teachers, they should pay attention to the words’interpretation and collocation, attach importance to the difference between Chinese and English and cultivate students’ability of using dictionary properly; for schools, they can try to provide native-tongue materials and more collocational practice.