A Corpus-based Study Of Patterns Of English Degree Adverbs In Writing By Chinese Senior High School Learners

Degree adverbs are frequently used by both native speakers and Chinese English learners in written and spoken materials. They are mainly modifiers and supplements to express the speakers’and writers’attitudes toward specific programmatic situation. Degree adverbs have highly frequencies and diversified usages. Commanding usages of degree adverbs has an effect on English learning process. However, Chinese English learners can not use degree adverbs as accurately and idiomatically as native speakers do. Senior high school is a critical period for leaning degree adverbs; so it is very important to do the investigation of Chinese senior high school learners. Doing research on characteristics of colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody of each degree adverb by Chinese senior high school learners influences their English learning process in the future.This thesis adopts British National Corpus (BNC) as a reference and takes ST2(one sub-corpus of Chinese Learners English Corpus) to study the colligations, semantic preferences and semantic prosodies of three commonly used degree adverbs, namely "very","much" and "too ". Then, the author concentrates on the possible factors responsible for differences in usages by Chinese senior high school learners and native speakers. The thesis aims at solving the following three questions:(1) What is characteristic of the patterns of degree adverbs in native English?(2) What is characteristic of the patterns of degree adverbs in writing by Chinese senior high school learners?(3) What are the possible factors responsible for characteristic of patterns of EI:I. learners?The results show:(1) Three degree adverbs used by native speakers have their specific characteristics in colligation. semantic preference and semantic prosody. In colligation. the collocational words of three degree adverbs are diversified in BNC. In semantic preference and semantic prosody. three degree adverbs co-occur with collocational words which intend to express positive meanings and negative meanings. Therefore."very"."much and "loo" can be used to express attitudes of approval and attitudes of oppositions.(2) Three degree adverbs used by Chinese senior high school learners exhibit speciiic features in colligation. semantic preference and semantic prosody. In colligation. Chinese senior high school learners overuse a certain colligation of a degree adverb. In semantic preference and semantic prosody."very" and "much" are more likely to co-occur with collocational words with positive meanings. While "loo" tends to co-occur with collocational words with negative meanings. Chinese senior high school learners have the tendency of employing "very" and "much" conveying altitudes of approval. However."loo" tends to express attitude of opposition.(3) The possible factor responsible for differences in patterns is Chinese senior high school learners rely on their familiar in Chinese and then translate them into English correspondents.The results show that Chinese senior high school learners do not have adequate knowledge of degree adverbs. The above findings have implications for pedagogy can be summarized as follows. For one thing, English teachers should be aware of the vital role of degree adverbs in the course of English teaching. For another thing, Chinese English learners should notice possible factors responsible for difficulties in English learning. Chinese English learners have to be more exposed to more English materials so as to have a clear picture of usages of degree adverbs by native speakers. However, the limitations still exist in this thesis.