A Study On The Lexical Collocation Competence Of Freshmen In High School

Vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of the linguistic knowledge inhigh school, which is also the heated topic in linguistics in the recent years. With thedeep research into vocabulary, the study of vocabulary is shifting its ground from thelexical width into the lexical depth, or rather, from word alone to a variety ofmulti-word lexical phenomenon which plays an important role in everydaycommunication. Many linguists hold the view that the lexical depth has the sameimportance as the lexical width. There are higher requirements in Ordinary HighSchool English New Curriculum (New Curriculum Standards for short, People’sEducation Press,2003), especially in vocabulary, which includes twodimensions---the lexical width and the lexical depth. As the relevant study showscollocation, including grammatical collocation and lexical collocation, is an importantaspect of the lexical depth, it deserves considerable emphasis in the process ofteaching vocabulary.This thesis is to investigate the current status of lexical collocation competenceamong freshmen in high school, to find out the existing problems and to analyze themain factors of these problems. Then the effective and efficient teaching suggestionsare put forward, including teaching methods and teaching activities. It also aims tocultivate students’ collocation ability, improve students’ comprehensive applicationability and enhance teacher’s awareness of collocation. Besides, to some extent, thisstudy also broadens the scope of vocabulary teaching in high school. The purpose isto investigate the present situation among high school freshmen, which type ofcollocations are easier to make mistakes and why these mistakes are made easily.Accordingly, the teaching suggestions are put forward.The research method is qualitative and quantitative studies. The procedures are asfollows: the Freshmen English Collocational Test are designed according to therelevant theory of collocational test and students’ concrete situation. The subjects arefifty six first-year students in Fengcheng High School. The overall collocation abilityis described by SPSS17.0and the causes are summarized according to the relevant study. Then the effective teaching method, teaching activities and learning strategiesare brought forward to promote the development of teaching vocabulary under thebackground of New Curriculum Standards, which provide a basis of theoretical andpractical for improving students comprehensive ability.The result demonstrates that the overall collocation competence among freshmenin high school is not high. As far as I am concerned, the main reason is that there isweak awareness of collocations among the teachers and students. There are moreproblems in two types, that is, Adj+N, second only to V+N. The main reason is due tothe fact that mother tongue transfer and omnipotent verbs are involved. The result alsoshows that it is of necessity and feasibility to teach collocation in high school, whichalso proves that the limited collocation ability is one of the main factors to preventstudents from communicating fluently, appropriately and accurately.