A Comparative Study On The Use Of Derivational Affixes By Chinese English Learners And English Native Students

In the process of English learning, English derivational affix is a difficult and important aspect that needs to be mastered. Effective grasp of derivational affix has important significance in broadening the breadth and depth of vocabulary acquisition for students. For Chinese English learners, a good mastery of English derivational affix knowledge will expand their vocabulary, so they can read some reading materials which contain the words that they are not very familiar with more easily. In that way, their vocabulary reserves will definitely increase and will lay a solid foundation to the in-depth study of the English language. Based on corpora, this paper elaborates the use of derivational affixes between Chinese English learners and English native students through comparative analysis. Some appropriate advice and guidance are put forward for further in-depth study of Chinese English learners, and certain suggestion is offered to the teachers.This paper mainly selected articles from LOCNESS and WECCL and made a comparison on the use of derivational affix by Chinese English learners and English native students by Antconc, SPSS and FoxPro programs. Results show that English native students use more derivational affixes than do Chinese English learners, and they use more derived word types than do Chinese English learners; In writing, the proportion of derivational words used by American and British students is also higher than that used by Chinese English learners; For Chinese English learners, they tend to use high-frequency affixes which are more capable of forming new words, while are not good at using the affixes related to special fields; At the same time, affixes with Negative and Time & Space semantic meaning account for a high proportion of derivational affixes they used.